“Are you sure it’s gout?” she asked.
“Quite sure!” he answered, gravely. “It was the death of my father, and my grandfather, and my great-grandfather. It will be the death of me.”
Her brows clouded. Then catching the humorous gleam in his eyes, she laughed.
“I believe you’re joking!” she said. “You want to make me anxious.”
“Would you be anxious?” he asked. “Not really?”
She was silent.
“If I had the gout,” he resumed; “if I were laid up with a burning toe, would you be sorry?”
“Of course I should!” she answered, promptly. “I’m always sorry for a man who is ill: he gets so easily frightened and bears it so badly.”
“That all?” he exclaimed. “You would only feel sorry if I was frightened! Not because I suffered? Well! You women beat everything!”
“Your fright would be worse than your suffering in any case!” she said, firmly. “I know it would! If you were laid up with a burning big toe, as you say, you would at once imagine that the trouble in the toe was bound to fly to the head—then you would turn up some dreadful medical book which would coldly inform you that gout in the head is always fatal—then you would begin to tremble inwardly,—you would pass sleepless nights thinking it out till you pictured your last end in the blackest colours—you would almost see the undertaker arriving—you would, as it were, witness your own procession to the grave—and—and—and perhaps you might feel the grief of all your friends—”