“I take cod-liver oil three times a day,” Lucian assured her, with equal gravity.
“How? In port wine?”
“I should consider that a sacrilege. No; I will describe the operation,” said Lucian, warming to his subject, which in any of his many conversations with pretty girls he had never discussed before. “I squeeze half a lemon into a wineglass, so; then I pour the oil in on it; next I squeeze the juice of the other half-lemon into another wineglass; and finally I swallow first the lemon plus oil and then the lemon solus. It is a process which requires great nicety and precision. Farquhar is not so careful as I could wish. Of course, it is nothing to him if I suffer.”
“Port wine would be far more nourishing than lemon-juice,” Dolly asseverated, knitting her brows. “Or milk would be better. Have you ever tried goat’s milk?”
“I have not; is it a sovereign specific?”
“I have known it work wonderful cures on emaciated people. How much do you weigh?”
“Six stone eleven, I believe.”
“That is far too little. You should test your weight every day—are you laughing at me?”
“I’m awfully sorry!” said Lucian, who certainly was. “But, Miss Fane, what a nurse you would make! I was expecting you to feel my pulse, and take my temperature, and look at my tongue.”
“So I was intending to do; I have a clinical thermometer at home,” Dolly proudly answered. “I do not know how to behave. I have never learned any manners.”