He desired to know if she could possibly conceive his memory to be so short.
"I was immensely mortified," said she, "to learn that I had given you a cold--it was a cold, wasn't it?--or whooping-cough?--by keeping you so long in the night air that evening. I've worried so about it all these weeks. Am I too late to inquire?"
"I kick myself to have gone away leaving you anxious," said Canning, with entire gravity. "The attack, as it chanced, was transitory. There was no coughing--whooping or otherwise. The trouble was purely localized, in the head, and--"
"In the imagination, might one almost say?"
"In the head. You must have heard somewhere of cold in the head? A well-known though unfashionable complaint, throughout the north. I, on the other hand, was much troubled about you, whom I was compelled, by your command, to leave to the mercies of the nocturnal caller. However, Kerr assured me, before I was obliged to go away, that you had come through alive and uninjured."
"Ah, but did I?"... She added, after a brief pause: "Should you call a biting lecture on one's shortcomings from a strange man no injury?"
"But surely, speaking to that topic alone, my supplanter could not have spun it out for two hours, while I, luckless one, tramped alone on the piazza."
"Two hours?... As I say," Carlisle laughed at him, nibbling a little pink cake, "I like your pretty speeches."
The fire crackled merrily. The masculine paraphernalia stood, convenient. Canning stretched out an indolent but man's sized hand and refilled his glass. From across the room Kerr's voice sounded, conveying enthusiasm founded on the solid rock of patience:
"And this little poem about roses and how cold your nose is--I must really show you that, ma'am. Spicy, you know! And the witty picture!"