"I don't think so. Only, she seemed rather feverish to-night when she went to bed. I made her drink some black-currant tea."
"Poor old lady! She'll be well by morning, never fear, lest you should give her another dose."
But the old lady was far from well on the morrow, and Griff began to grow anxious. At the end of the day he would hear of no refusal, but set off on Lassie to fetch the doctor from Marshcotes. The doctor pronounced it a case of pleurisy, and anticipated no great danger so far as the patient's present condition went.
"She will get wet through, that mother of yours, and go about afterwards without changing. You're an obstinate lot, you Lomaxes, and why you haven't died out long ago as a race, passes my wits."
The old doctor had known Griff's father, and he exercised his privilege as a friend of the family to grumble on the slightest pretext.
"Carelessness toughens people, if they begin early enough. It is coddling that sends up the death-rate," laughed Griff.
"Nonsense! There's a mean in all things. Only the other day I called to see a patient down in the village, and there was your mother, reading away by the fire as if her clothes were not filling the room with steam. She had been out for a walk in the rain, she told me, and hadn't had time to change. Well, now she has time to be ill. I wish you good day, young man. You're an obstinate lot."
Mrs. Lomax weathered her illness so easily that she thought lightly of it, and fumed at the ridiculous fuss they were making about her convalescence. One morning she announced her intention of going out; the October sun shone temptingly over the heather, and there was a fresh breeze blowing.
"Not for another week, mother," pleaded Griff, "you know what the doctor said."
"Fiddlesticks, Griff! Because he's an old woman himself, he likes to think I am one, too. But I'm not. Out I go this morning, to get the cobwebs blown away."