“Not as contagious as a cold in the head.”
“I don’t know how contagious a cold is,” said Grandma Sharpless; “but I do know this: once it gets into a house, it goes through it like wildfire.”
“Then the house ought to be ashamed of itself. That’s sheer carelessness.”
“Half the kids in our school have got stopped-up noses,” contributed Charley.
“Why hasn’t the Committee on Schools reported the fact?” demanded the Health Master, turning an accusing eye on Julia.
“Why—why, I didn’t think of it,” said she. “I didn’t think it was anything.”
“Oh, you didn’t! Well, if what Charley says is correct, I should think your school ought to be put under epidemic regimen.”
“You’d have a fine row with the Board of Education, trying to persuade them to special action for any such cause as that,” remarked Mr. Clyde.
“There’s the measure of their intelligence, then,” returned the Health Master. “Sickness is sickness, just as surely as a flame is fire; and there is no telling, once it’s well started, how much damage it may do.”
“But a cold is only in the head, or rather, in the nose,” persisted Mrs. Sharpless.