“Only yesterday,” Mynheer continued, triumphantly, “I purposely asked your doctor what was wrong with you. And what do you think his answer was? He said he really couldn’t tell. There!” Mynheer Mopius stood out, defiant, protruding his portly prosperity. “He—said—he—really—couldn’t—tell.”
It gave Mevrouw Mopius some comfort to learn how literally the physician fulfilled the promise she had extracted from him.
“And it’s absurd to have the whole house made wretched by an illness the doctor don’t even put a name to. If you’re not down to breakfast to-morrow I shall send for a professor from Amsterdam.”
“Don’t, Jacóbus,” gasped the lady. “I’m feeling better to-day. I really am. I don’t want no professors from anywhere.”
“But I do. Sarah, I believe you enjoy being ill. Thank goodness I can afford to cure my wife.”
“There’s another reason, besides,” he added, after a moment, “why I want you to hurry up. There’s this wedding of Ursula’s coming on. They’ve behaved very badly, I know; but Roderick was never a man to know about manners—never in society, poor fellow. However, I’m not one to take offence. I intend to give a big party here in the ‘bride-days.’”[I]
“Jacóbus!” exclaimed his wife. “Why, we don’t even know the Van Helmonts. She hasn’t even presented him here!”
“My dear, did I not say that Roderick is a boor? Josine tells me they have paid none of the customary visits on either side. In one word, they behaved as people who don’t know how to behave, and I am going to behave as a person who does know.”
“But, Jacóbus—”