Towards the end of their stay Teddy alarmed his family by falling really ill. The local doctor took a gloomy view of his case, and talked of unripe blackberries and appendicitis. Papa thereupon carried the whole family back to Edinburgh before the end of the month. This time they stayed at the Caledonian Hotel, where the noise of Princes Street and the constant trains tried papa even more than the infernal bugles in Ramsay Gardens.
A great doctor, who had not yet started for his holiday, was consulted about Teddy, and he was even graver than the doctor up in Kingussie, and said there must be an operation at once.
That was a puzzling day for Teddy.
He was kept in bed till evening, and nurse and everybody were extraordinarily kind to him.
Then mummy came and sat beside him and held his hand, and told him that he was to go that night to another house, and that the next day the great doctor would do something for him that would make him quite well.
"Why can't he do it here?" Teddy asked.
It seemed that people didn't have these things done in hotels; that doctors were particular men who liked to make people well in specially chosen houses called Nursing Homes, and that Teddy was to go to one of those homes that very night in a taxi-cab.
"Will my nurse come?" he asked anxiously.
"I will come," said mummy, and her voice sounded as if she, too, had got one of the Kingussie colds.
"Not nurse," he repeated, rather puzzled. "Who will dress me?"