"Why did you bring him out in the cold?" responded the father snappishly. "And where's the nurse? At home? Upon my word, Rachel, we might as well be spared the expense of servants altogether, for all the use you make of them. No, I won't kiss him--I might give him a sore throat." "Have you a sore throat, dear?" inquired Rachel meekly, tucking the child into her own corner of the carriage, and whispering to him to sit very still. "I should rather say so--not so much a sore throat, perhaps, as a general bad cold--the most confounded bad cold I ever had in my life. I'm regularly seedy and done up," grumbled Mr. Kingston, climbing into his seat beside her. "Oh, dear, I'm so sorry!" "That is why I have come home to-day," he added. "It's the most wretched thing to be in other people's houses when you don't feel well." "Indeed it is," assented Rachel sympathetically; "and I am very glad you came back. How did you catch it, do you think?" "I think I must have got it before I started. But that idiot Lambert sent an open trap to meet me--you know what a pouring wet day it turned out? --and I had to sit and be soaked for an hour and a half. Umbrellas were no good in that rain, and there was a sharp wind, too, and before we reached the house--great, cold barrack of a place, with stingy little coal fires--fancy _coal_ fires!--shows what an idiot the fellow is, and she's worse--before we got there I was thoroughly wet through, and chilled to the bone. I never was so cold in my life. I took a hot bath before I dressed for dinner, and I got Lambert to send me up some brandy, but it was no use--it seemed to have regularly struck into me. I _couldn't_ get warm--not till about the middle of the night, and then I felt as if I'd got a fever. I believe I have too." "Oh, Graham, I hope not." "It has settled on my chest," he went on. "I haven't been able to sleep for coughing--you know I have never had a cough in my life--and I can't draw a breath without feeling as if I was dragging something up by the roots. Can't you hear how I breathe? You never heard me breathe like that before did you?" Rachel turned her blooming face, now grave and anxious, to listen to his respiration, which certainly was strangely quick and laboured, and noisy, and she was struck by a great change in _his_ since she had seen it four days ago. It had become all at once wrinkled, and hollow, and haggard--the face of an old man. "Oh, my dear," she exclaimed, in an accent of genuine distress, "you _have_ got a bad cold, indeed! Hadn't you better call on the doctor at once--it won't be much out of our way--and see what he says about it? It may be nothing, but I think it seems like bronchitis, and it is best to be on the safe side." "I think I will," said Mr. Kingston, covering his mouth with his wraps again. "It seems worse than it was when I started--the cold day, I suppose. Hang it, I wish you had brought the brougham--it is colder than ever!"