"Oh—is Doctor Lavendar ill?" she said. And Doctor King answered, dryly, that when you are eighty-two you are not particularly well.
"I thought I'd just drop in and ask his advice on something—nothing important," said Johnny's mother, breathlessly. "I'll go away, and come some other time."
Upon which, from the open window overhead, came a voice: "I won't be wrapped up in cotton batting! Send Mary Robertson upstairs."
"Haven't I any rights?" Willy called back, good-naturedly, and Doctor Lavendar retorted:
"Maybe you have, but I have many wrongs. Come along, Mary."
She went up, saying to herself: "I'll not speak of it. I'll just say I've come to see him." She was so nervous when she entered the room that her breath caught in her throat and she could hardly say, "How do you do?"
The old man was in bed with a copy of Robinson Crusoe on the table beside him. He held out a veined and trembling hand:
"William's keeping me alive so he can charge me for two calls a day. Well, my dear, what can I do for you?"
Mrs. Robertson sat down in a big armchair and said, panting, that—that it was terribly hot.
Doctor Lavendar watched her from under his heavy, drooping eyelids.