“I like broiled chicken very much in the spring, but I never did care very much for chicken in the summer. People seem to have chicken so much in the summer. I never could see why.”
“It might be because it is cheaper when they are plentiful,” he suggested, finding it difficult to keep the scorn he felt for this foolish little butterfly out of his voice.
“Perhaps it is, I never thought of that.”
Helen came in just then, bringing a bouquet of garden flowers that Mr. McRae had sent to the ladies of the camp.
“I might as well tackle them together,” he thought, taking a long breath.
“Ahem—are your plans for the winter made yet?” he asked Mrs. Carter.
“Why, the girls—at least Douglas and Nan, have some ridiculous scheme about taking a cottage in the suburbs and letting those people keep my house. I don’t see why I need call it my house, however, as I seem to have no say-so in the matter,” she answered complainingly. “Helen and I both think it would be much more sensible to go into our own house and be comfortable. Douglas is very unreasonable and headstrong. The paltry sum that these tenants pay is the only argument she has against our occupying the house ourselves.”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Carter, but as your husband’s physician, I may perhaps be able to point out the relation of the steady, if small, income from the house and his very serious condition.”
“I—I thought he was almost well.”
“No, madam, much better but not almost well! Do you think that if he were almost well he would sit passively down and let his daughters decide for him as he is doing now? Has he not always been a man of action, one to take the initiative? Look at him now, not even asking what the plans are when you leave the camp, which you will have to do in the course of a few weeks. Can’t you see that he is still in a very nervous state and the least little worry might upset his reason? No troubles must be taken to him. He must not be consulted about arrangements any more than Bobby would be. His tired brain is beginning to recover and a few more months may make him almost himself again, but,” and Dr. Wright looked so stern and uncompromising that Helen and her mother felt that the accusing angel had them on the last day, the day of judgment, “if he is worried by all kinds of foolish little things, there will be nothing for him but a sanitarium. I am hoping that he will be spared this, and it rests entirely with his family whether he is spared it or not.”