"You ought to close up the house," he said, "and spend the winter in a warm climate. You need complete rest and change, for a long time, a year at least," he told her. I urged her to go.
"Do make a change," I begged. "Here's Mrs. Sibthorpe perfectly willing to keep Mirabella—she'd be just as well off there; and you do really need a rest."
Emma smiled that saintly smile of hers, and said, "Of course, if Mirabella would go to her sister's awhile I could leave? But I can't ask her to go."
I could. I did. I put it to her fair and square,—the state of Emma's health, her real need to break up housekeeping, and how Arabella was just waiting for her to come there. But what's the use of talking to that kind? Emma wasn't sick, couldn't be sick, nobody could. At that very moment she paused suddenly, laid a fat hand on a fat side with an expression that certainly looked like pain; but she changed it for one of lofty and determined faith, and seemed to feel better. It made her cross though, as near it as she ever gets. She'd have been rude I think, but she likes my motor, to say nothing of my fudge.
I took them both out to ride that very afternoon, and Dr. Lucy with us.
Emma, foolish thing, insisted on sitting with the driver, and Mirabella made for her pet corner at once. I put Dr. Lucy in the middle, and encouraged Mirabella in her favorite backsliding, the discussion of her symptoms—the symptoms she used to have—or would have now if she gave way to "error."
Dr. Lucy was ingeniously sympathetic. She made no pretence of taking up the new view, but was perfectly polite about it.
"Judging from what you tell me", she said, "and from my own point of view, I should say that you had a quite serious digestive trouble; that you had a good deal of pain now and then; and were quite likely to have a sudden and perhaps serious attack. But that is all nonsense to you I suppose."
"Of course it is!" said Mirabella, turning a shade paler.
We were running smoothly down the to avenue where Arabella lived.