“And never will, so long as you give your body and brains no rest. Out you go by nine o’clock, in all weathers, ill or well, and there you are at your business till evening; stooping yourself double over the writing, dancing abroad on errands, wearing out your lungs with answers to callers! There’s no sense in it.”
“But, my dear, the office must be attended to,” said Jenkins, with much deference.
“There’s no ‘must’ in the case, as far as you are concerned. If I say you shan’t go to it, why, you shan’t. What’s the office, pray, in comparison with a man’s life?”
“But I am not so ill as to remain away. I can still go and do my work.”
“You’d be for going, if you were in your coffin!” was Mrs. Jenkins’s wrathful answer. “Could you do any good then, pray?”
“But I am not in my coffin,” mildly suggested Jenkins.
“Don’t I say you’d go, if you were?” reiterated Mrs. Jenkins, who sometimes, in her heat, lost sight of the precise point under dispute. “You know you would! you know there’s nothing in the whole world that you think of, but that office! Office—office—office, it is with you from morning till night. When you are in your coffin, through it, you’ll be satisfied.”
“But it is my duty to go as long as I can, my dear.”
“It’s my duty to do a great many things that I don’t do!” was the answer; “and one of my duties which I haven’t done yet, is to keep you indoors for a bit, and nurse you up. I shall begin from to-day, and see if I can’t get you well, that way.”
“But—”