CHAPTER XXXII. — AN OMINOUS COUGH.
“I say, Jenkins, how you cough!”
“Yes, sir, I do. It’s a sign that autumn’s coming on. I have been pretty free from it all the summer. I think the few days I lay in bed through that fall, must have done good to my chest; for, since then, I have hardly coughed at all. This last day or two it has been bad again.”
“What cough do you call it?” went on Roland Yorke—you may have guessed he was the speaker. “A churchyard cough?”
“Well, I don’t know, sir,” said Jenkins. “It has been called that, before now. I dare say it will be the end of me at last.”
“Cool!” remarked Roland. “Cooler than I should be, if I had a cough, or any plague of the sort, that was likely to be my end. Does it trouble your mind, Jenkins?”
“No, sir, not exactly. It gives me rather down-hearted thoughts now and then, till I remember that everything is sure to be ordered for the best.”
“The best! Should you call it for ‘the best’ if you were to go off?” demanded Roland, drawing pen-and-ink chimneys upon his blotting-paper, with clouds of smoke coming out, as he sat lazily at his desk.
“I dare say, sir, if that were to happen, I should be enabled to see that it was for the best. There’s no doubt of it.”