“My dear Hugh! How can you say that when you know that my father’s life was prolonged ten years by homœopathy? You know Dr. New rescued him, one may say, out of his coffin that time.”
“I mean there would be no use in your writing to Darrell about it. He would laugh at you.”
“I don’t mind his laughing, if I could persuade him to try it. He has always been civil to me, and I have not written to him for an age. I will write to him this very day.”
“You will do nothing of the sort,” snapped the colonel; “he is quite old enough to manage his own affairs and look after his own health.”
“My dear Hugh, a man never knows how to manage himself,” protested Mrs. Redacre gently. “You all want a woman to do that for you; and it seems to me the dean is a particularly helpless creature. He does absolutely nothing for his rheumatism, and if it goes on as he describes it it may go to his heart one of these days and carry him off in an instant.”
“Do as you like; you always get your own way,” said the colonel. “My opinion is you had better not meddle with Darrell’s concerns; if he gives in to you, and if the rheumatism goes to the heart, people will say it was homœopathy that killed him.”
“Let them say what they like. The rheumatism is much more likely to kill him if it is left to itself. If he goes on in this agony without something being done to relieve him, he can’t hold out many months, I feel certain.”
“Do as you like, do as you like,” said the colonel.
“Now, don’t say that, my dear Hugh. You know how I hate you to give in to me in that way. I won’t write, if it annoys you.”
“Why the deuce should it annoy me? You don’t suppose I wish him dead? Heaven knows I want the money. It is becoming impossible to make ends meet on our present income, and things grow worse and worse in this infernal country, where the rent is perpetually being raised, and where a tradesman can’t send in a bill without announcing that tout est augmenté, monsieur, as an excuse for swelling his items. I don’t know where it is to end—I don’t, indeed.”