Direxia lifted her hands and eyes with an eloquent gesture. "She is the beat of all!" she murmured, and fled to her kitchen.
Entering the parlor Doctor Stedman found Mrs. Tree sitting by the fire as usual, with her feet on the fender. Sitting, but not attired, as usual. She was dressed, or rather enveloped, in a vast quilted wrapper of flowered satin, tulips and poppies on a pale buff ground, and her head was surmounted by the most astonishing nightcap that ever the mind of woman devised. So ample and manifold were its flapping borders, and so small the keen brown face under them, that Doctor Stedman, though not an imaginative person, could think of nothing but a walnut set in the centre of a cauliflower.
"Good afternoon, James Stedman!" said the old lady. "I am sick, you see."
"I see, Mrs. Tree," said the doctor, glancing from the wrapper and cap to the bowl and spoon that stood on the violet-wood table. He had seen these things before. "You don't feel seriously out of trim, I hope?"
Mrs. Tree fixed him with a bright black eye.
"At my age, James, everything is serious," she said, gravely. "You know that as well as I do."
"Yes, I know that!" said Doctor Stedman. He laid his hand on her wrist for a moment, then returned her look with one as keen as her own.
"Have you any symptoms for me?"
"I thought that was your business!" said the patient.
"Hum!" said Doctor Stedman. "How long, have you been—a—feeling like this?"