“Oh, dear me!” cried Dot, “has Sammy scarlet fever and quarantine, both?”
“Huh?” said the doctor, trying his starter. Then he laughed. “I should say he had. And you children must stay away from there. It’s bad enough to have one scarlet fever patient on Willow Street. I don’t want an epidemic.”
That last puzzled Dot a good deal. She went back into the house very soberly when the doctor drove away.
“Mrs. MacCall,” she asked, “what is a epidermis? Dr. Forsyth doesn’t want one.”
“Well, that’s ‘no skin off your nose,’ Dot,” said Agnes, giggling at her own fun.
“If the doctor had no epidermis he’d be a rare lookin’ object,” said the housekeeper, “for that’s his skin, just as your sister says.”
“He said ‘epidemic,’” Tess declared, with disgust. “Dot! you do make the greatest mistakes.”
“Well, has Sammy got that too?” cried Dot, horrified by the possibility of such a complication of diseases. “Has he got scarlet fever, and quarantine, and ep—epic—well, that other thing, too?”
Ruth came through the kitchen dressed to go out. Her face was very grave and her eyes suspiciously red; but she pulled her veil down over her face and so hid the traces of her emotion from the family.
“Where are you going, Ruthie?” asked Dot, eagerly.