"Why, there are thousands," cried Montagu, aghast.
"Sure to be in Wordsworth," said Mr. Wycherly. "Anyway, we'll mark the places."
CHAPTER X
FORTUNE'S WHEEL
"But that's all shove be'ind me
Long ago and fur away."
RUDYARD KIPLING.
The boys had been back at school a fortnight. Jane-Anne was quite convalescent and got up to breakfast, but the date of her return to the Bainbridge was still undecided.
The doctor came at longer intervals, but every time he came he still declared that there was "a roughness" in Jane-Anne's lung, and that it would be madness to send her North until that roughness was smoothed away.
Night and morning and many times during the day, Jane-Anne bombarded heaven with petitions that "the roughness" might perhaps increase a very little, since it gave her no inconvenience whatever; anyway, that it might remain sufficiently rasping to confirm the doctor in his view that her return to the Bainbridge was at present out of the question.
Mrs. Dew, although properly respectful to the doctor as a friend of Mrs. Methuen, yet felt that in this case he pushed professional caution to the verge of the ridiculous. Here was Jane-Anne eating and sleeping as well as could be, with pinker and plumper cheeks than she had had for many a long day, looking, in fact, as her aunt said, "the picture of health," though some people might have thought the picture rather elusive and misleading; here was Jane-Anne eating the bread of idleness with almost aggressive satisfaction in Holywell when she ought to have been reaping the benefits of her "nomination" up in Northumberland.
Why all this fuss about a slight roughness? "Mark my words and anyone can 'ear anything as he listens for," said Mrs. Dew.