“These go five years back,” said she. “You’ll find ‘em pretty complete. We’ve had our fair share of trouble; measles, whooping-cough,—I thought Betsy was going to bark her poor little head off,—mumps, and chicken-pox. I nursed ‘em through, myself.”
“All of them?”
“All of ‘em didn’t have all the things because Tom Clyde sent the rest away when one of ‘em came down. All nonsense, I say. Better let ‘em get it while they’re young, and have done with it.”
“One of the worst of the old superstitions,” said Dr. Strong quietly.
“Don’t tell me, young man! Doctor or no doctor, you can’t teach me about children’s diseases. There isn’t any of those measly and mumpy ones that I’m afraid of. Bobs did scare me, though, with that queer attack of his.”
“Bobs,” explained Mr. Clyde, “is Robin, one of the eight-year-old twins.”
“Tell me about the attack.”
“When was it?” said the grandmother, running over the leaves of a selected diary. “Oh, here it is. Last March. It was short and sharp. Only lasted three days; but the child had a dreadful fever and pretty bad cramps.”
“Anything else?”
“Why, yes; though that idiot of a cousin of Tom’s snubbed me when I told him about it. The boy seemed kind of numb and slow with his hands for some time after.”