"I am sure such wine ought to do you good," said Georgy, almost querulously. She thought this bright blooming creature had no right to be ill. The headaches, and little weaknesses and languors and ladylike ailments, were things for which she (Georgy) had taken out a patent; and this indisposition of her daughter's was an infringement of copyright.
"I dare say the port will do me good, mamma, in time. No doubt I shall be as strong as that person who strangled lions and snakes and dogs with incalculable heads, and all that kind of thing."
"I really wish you would not talk in that absurd manner, my dear," said Mrs. Sheldon with offended dignity. "I think you really cannot be too grateful for your papa's kind thoughtfulness and anxiety about you. I am sure I myself am not so anxious as he is; but of course his medical knowledge makes him doubly careful. Six weeks ago he noticed that you wanted strength—tone is what he calls it. 'Georgina,' he said to me, 'Charlotte wants tone. She is beginning to stoop in a really lamentable manner: we must make her take port or bark, or something of a strengthening kind.' And then a day or two afterwards he decided on port, and gave me the key of the cellar—which is a thing he rarely gives out of his own hands—and told me the number of the bin from which I was to take the wine—some old wine that he had laid by on purpose for some special occasion; and no one is to have it but you, and you are to take a glass daily at eleven o'clock. Mr. Sheldon is most particular about the hour. The regularity of the thing is half the battle in these cases, he says; and I am sure if you do not observe his wishes and mine, Charlotte, it will be really ungrateful of you."
"But, dear mamma, I do observe Mr.—papa's wishes. I take my glass of port every morning at eleven. I go to your cupboard in the breakfast-room and take out my special decanter, and my special glass, in the most punctiliously precise manner. I don't like the wine, and I don't like the trouble involved in the ceremony of drinking it; but I go through it most religiously, to please you and papa."
"And do you mean to say that you do not feel stronger after taking that expensive old port regularly for nearly six weeks.
"I am sorry to say that I do not, mamma. I think if there is any change, it is that I am weaker."
"Dear, dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheldon captiously, "you are really a most extraordinary girl."
Mrs. Sheldon could almost have found it in her heart to say, a most ungrateful girl. There did seem a kind of ingratitude in this futile consumption of old port at fifteen shillings a bottle.
"I'll tell you what it is, Lotta," she said presently, "I am convinced that your illness—or your weakness—is all fancy."
"Why so, mamma?"