"
"H'm," said Sir Richmond. "I think that is a fair description. When she
cares, that is. When she is in good form."
"Which she isn't at present," hazarded the doctor. He exploded a mine of
long-pent exasperation.
"She is the clumsiest hand at keeping well that I have ever known.
Health is a woman's primary duty. But she is incapable of the most
elementary precautions. She is maddeningly receptive to every infection.
At the present moment, when I am ill, when I am in urgent need of help
and happiness, she has let that wretched child get measles and
she herself won't let me go near her because she has got something
disfiguring, something nobody else could ever have or think of having,
called CARBUNCLE. Carbuncle!"
"It is very painful," said Dr. Martineau. "No doubt it is," said Sir
Richmond.
"No doubt it is." His voice grew bitter. He spoke with deliberation. "A
perfectly aimless, useless illness,--and as painful as it CAN be."
He spoke as if he slammed a door viciously. And indeed he had slammed
a door. The doctor realized that for the present there was no more
self-dissection to be got from Sir Richmond.
For some time Sir Richmond had been keeping the boat close up to the
foaming weir to the left of the lock by an occasional stroke.
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