She really meant to say “fundamentally wrong” and that she wanted to know what it was; but in truth Ruth Kenway was light-headed, and it was some hours before she became her usually sane self. Agnes was not so seriously ill, but she was threatened, as Ruth was, with complications which might have resulted in the dreaded pneumonia.
“And I don’t want them to get the flu, either,” growled Dr. Forsyth. “That’s going around, too. Now, no school, remember, for the little ones! Nor are they to leave the warm rooms of the house—no playing in that ghost-haunted garret.” That referred to an old joke that had haunted the four Corner House girls when first they had come to live in Milton. “And keep them away from the sick ones. We do not know what may develop.”
“Oh, goodness gracious!” gasped Agnes, who chanced to hear this. “You don’t mean to say I’ve got anything catching, Dr. Forsyth?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, Miss Flyabout,” he declared grimly.
“Oh!” cried Agnes, and then began coughing what Neale declared to be the real ‘Hark, from the tomb’ cough. “Do I spray everything with microbes when I cough like that?” she panted.
“Then give me a veil. I must strain ’em,” gasped Agnes.
“Never mind straining them,” chuckled Dr. Forsyth. “We’ll do the straining. You don’t want to keep all those squirmy germs to yourself. Cough and get rid of them.”
But although he could joke with Agnes (and she would certainly have been in a very bad way if she could not joke) the physician took extra precautions that this serious cold should not spread to the other members of the Corner House household. He left medicine for all.
After Tess and Dot had taken their several doses of medicine, they did not clamor to go to school.