Dora looked at him very gravely from head to foot, making as it were a résumé of him and the situation. Then she gave forth her judgment reflectively, as of a thing which she had much studied. “It is not an ugly name,” she said, with a partially approving nod of her head.
CHAPTER XIV.
“No, Mannering,” said Dr. Roland, “I can’t say that you may go back to the Museum in a week. I don’t know when you will be up to going. I should think you had a good right to a long holiday after working there for so many years.”
“Not so many years,” said Mr. Mannering, “since the long break which you know of, Roland.”
“In the interest of science,” cried the doctor.
The patient shook his head with a melancholy smile. “Not in my own at least,” he said.
“Well, it is unnecessary to discuss that question. Back you cannot go, my good fellow, till you have recovered your strength to a very different point from that you are at now. You can’t go till after you’ve had a change. At present you’re nothing but a bundle of tendencies ready to develop into anything bad that’s going. That must be stopped in the first place, and you must have sea air, or mountain air, or country air, whichever you fancy. I won’t be dogmatic about the kind, but the thing you must have.”
“Impossible, impossible, impossible!” Mannering had begun to cry out while the other was speaking. “Why, man, you’re raving,” he said. “I—so accustomed to the air of Bloomsbury, and that especially fine sort which is to be had at the Museum, that I couldn’t breathe any other—I to have mountain air or sea air or country air! Nonsense! Any of them would stifle me in a couple of days.”
“You will have your say, of course. And you are a great scientific gent, I’m aware; but you know as little about your own health and what it wants as this child with her message. Well, Janie, what is it, you constant bother? Mr. Mannering? Take it to Miss Bethune, or wait till Miss Dora comes back.”
“Please, sir, the gentleman is waiting, and he says he won’t go till he’s pyed.”