“No,” admitted Barlow. Then he said, in indirect defence of the kitchen, “I think you hadn’t ought to be out in the night air,—well, not a great deal.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it does do me much good,” Mrs. Maynard said, turning her eyes seaward.
Barlow let his hand drop from the piazza post, and slouched in-doors; but he came out again as if pricked by conscience to return.
“After all, you know, it didn’t cure him.”
“What cure him?” asked Mrs. Maynard.
“The whiskey with the white-pine chips in it.”
“Cure who?”
“My brother.”
“Oh! Oh, yes! But mine’s only bronchial. I think it might do me good. I shall tell Grace about it.”
Barlow looked troubled, as if his success in the suggestion of this remedy were not finally a pleasure; but as Mrs. Maynard kept her eyes persistently turned from him, and was evidently tired, he had nothing for it but to go in-doors again. He met Grace, and made way for her on the threshold to pass out.