“Well?” questioned Mrs. Clyde, facing the Health Master haggardly, as he entered the library.
“Oh, come!” he protested with his reassuring smile. “Don’t take it so tragically. You’ve got a pretty sick-looking boy there. But any thoroughgoing fever makes a boy of nine pretty sick.”
“What fever?” demanded the mother. “What is it?”
“Let’s start with what it isn’t—and thank Heaven. It isn’t typhoid. And it isn’t diphtheria.”
“Then it’s—it’s—;”
“It’s scarlet fever,” broke in her mother, Mrs. Sharpless, who had followed the doctor into the room. “That’s what it is.”
Mrs. Clyde shuddered at the name. “Has he got the rash?”
“No. But he will have to-morrow,” stated the old lady positively.
“Do you think so, too, Dr. Strong?” Mrs. Clyde appealed.
“I’ll accept Grandma Sharpless’s judgment,” answered the physician. “She has seen more scarlet fever in her time than I, or most physicians. And experience is the true teacher of diagnosis.”