"I've seen your acrobat," he said to the figure in yellow silk and lace, reading beside the lamp. "Don't get up. Been out? I hardly thought I'd find you in; you're such a pair of worldlings."
"We came away early. I had a headache," said Tate, shading his eyes with one hand and offering the other to the visitor. "Or, rather, I pretended I had."
The Doctor, a short, stout man of fifty, with grayish brown hair, and little red whiskers jutting out from either side of his face, and with enormous eyebrows shading his keen eyes, gathered his coat-tails in his hand, and took a seat on the couch.
"It's late for a call—must be after ten. But I knew this lady of yours would want to hear about her acrobat. Nice little creature, isn't she? Seems ridiculous she should belong to a circus."
"She doesn't belong there," Mrs. Tate replied, briskly inserting a paper-knife in her book and laying the book on the little table beside her. "I've never seen any one so utterly misplaced. Did you have a talk with her?"
"Yes—a talk. That was all; but that was enough. Her husband was out."
"O, you conspirators!" Tate exclaimed.
"Then you've satisfied yourself about her?" said his wife, ignoring him.
"Yes. She has a very common complaint, a form of meningitis; slumbering meningitis, it's often called. Many people have it without knowing it; and she might have had it even if she hadn't taken to thumping her spine half a dozen times a week. The trouble's located in the spine."
"There, I told you so!" exclaimed Mrs. Tate; and "What a lovely habit women have of never gloating over anything!" her husband added amiably.