Julia promptly rose, lifted the stand with her cards on it, carried it to the center of the library, and planted it so that the central light fell across it from a little behind her.
“One recruit to the side of common sense,” observed the physician. “Next!”
“What’s wrong with me?” demanded Mr. Clyde, looking up. “Newspaper print?”
“Newspaper print is an unavoidable evil, and by no means the worst example of Gutenberg’s art. No; the trouble with you is that your neck is so scrunched down into a tight collar as to shut off a proper blood supply from your head. Don’t your eyes feel bungy?”
“A little. What am I going to do? I can’t sit around after dinner with no collar on.”
“Sit up straight, then; stick your neck up out of your collar and give it play. Emulate the attentive turtle! And you, Bobs, stop imitating an anchovy. Uncurl! Uncurl!!”
With a sigh, Robin straightened himself out. “I was so comfortable,” he complained.
“No, you weren’t. You were only absorbed. The veins on your temples are fairly bulging. You might as well try to read standing on your head. Get a straight-backed chair, and you’re all right. I’m glad to see that you follow Grandma Sharpless’s good example in reading by a student-lamp.”
“That’s my own lamp,” said Mrs. Sharpless. “Seventy years has at least taught me how to read.”
“How, but not what,” answered the Health Master. “That’s a bad book you’re reading.”