A hundred and one. He turned the thermometer in his hand, gazing earnestly at the slender silver thread. He was gratified to know that his temperature was a hundred and one and that Fanny was frightened and had sent for the doctor. He had a queer, satisfied, exalted feeling, now that he was in for it. When Barbara came back she would know what he was in for and be frightened, too. He would have been still more gratified if he had known that without him dinner was a miserable affair. Fanny showed that she was frightened, and her fear flattened down the high spirits of Ralph and Barbara and Horry, returned from their skating.
"You see, Barbara," said Ralph, when they had left Fanny and Horry with the doctor, "we can't live without him."
They listened at the smoke-room door for the sound of Dr. Ransome's departure, and Ralph waited while Barbara went back and brought him the verdict.
"It's flu, and a touch of congestion of the lungs."
They looked at each other sorrowfully, so sorrowfully that they smiled.
"Yet we can smile," he said.
"You know," said Barbara, "he got it standing in the snow, while
Pyecraft photographed him."
"It's the way," Ralph said, "he would get it."
And Barbara laughed. But, all the same, she felt a distinct pang at her heart every time she went into her bedroom and saw, in its glass on her dressing-table, the bunch of snowdrops that Mr. Waddington had picked for her in the snow. They made a pattern on her mind; white cones hanging down; sharp green blades piercing; green stalks held in the crystal of the water.
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