“Gerald, it’s my advice to you to go right to bed and let your doctor come and prescribe. A cold is nothing in a way, but a neglected cold can grow into a mean sort of thing. Say you’ll do it. Don’t you know how good it will feel to you just to give in and go to bed and let some one else do all the looking after you? Oh, I wish I could speak Italian enough to have a talk with your Giovanna.”
281“Giovanna has taken care of me and my malanni for years. She gives me tar-water, and rice-water, and tamarind-water, and linden-tea, and cassia. She threatened me this morning with a sinapism if I were not better by evening. I shall be better. I do not wish for a sinapism.”
“Is that a poultice on your chest? I guess it’s what you need. Now, if I have any influence with you, Gerald, if you love me one little bit, you’ll promise to go right to bed, and you’ll give me your doctor’s address so that on my way home I can leave word for him to come.”
“You shall not take that trouble. I can send Gaetano.”
“You promise me you’ll do it, then?”
“I seem to have been left no choice, dear lady.”
“That’s real sweet of you. You’ll go to bed the minute I’ve gone?”
“Yes. But don’t go quite yet!”
“With that temperature, I don’t see how you can care who stays or who goes, or anything in the world but to lay your head down on a pillow. I won’t stay any longer now. Go to bed like a good boy. To-morrow I’ll run in and see how you’re getting along.”
His last word was, after a moment of seeming embarrassment: