"Are you sorry you were so naughty?" nurse asked, ever desirous to improve the occasion. "No," said Teddy firmly. "I hate Kingussie." But after all he didn’t hate Kingussie. He would have liked it immensely but that it rained nearly all the time. July seemed to have used up all the nice weather, and August was very cold and wet. He got one chill on the top of another, and sneezed and snuffled, and snuffled and sneezed, and lost all the pretty pink colour in his cheeks that he had gained in Edinburgh. Kingussie is a beautiful place with woods and streams and a glorious golf links covered with short springy turf. Their lodgings were right on the top of a hill, and the view from the windows was very lovely, but even the loveliest view palls when it can only be seen through a veil of driving rain. Towards the end of their stay Teddy alarmed his family by falling really ill. The local doctor took a gloomy view of his case, and talked of unripe blackberries and appendicitis. Papa thereupon carried the whole family back to Edinburgh before the end of the month. This time they stayed at the Caledonian Hotel, where the noise of Princes Street and the constant trains tried papa even more than the infernal bugles in Ramsay Gardens. A great doctor, who had not yet started for his holiday, was consulted about Teddy, and he was even graver than the doctor up in Kingussie, and said there must be an operation at once. That was a puzzling day for Teddy. He was kept in bed till evening, and nurse and everybody were extraordinarily kind to him. Then mummy came and sat beside him and held his hand, and told him that he was to go that night to another house, and that the next day the great doctor would do something for him that would make him quite well. "Why can’t he do it here?" Teddy asked. It seemed that people didn’t have these things done in hotels; that doctors were particular men who liked to make people well in specially chosen houses called Nursing Homes, and that Teddy was to go to one of those homes that very night in a taxi-cab. "Will my nurse come?" he asked anxiously. "I will come," said mummy, and her voice sounded as if she, too, had got one of the Kingussie colds. "Not nurse," he repeated, rather puzzled. "Who will dress me?" "There are lots of nice nurses in the Home who can do that, but you won’t be dressed just at first, you know. The doctor will want to keep you in bed a little while after the operation." "What’s a operation? What’s it do to you?" But this mummy did not seem able to explain very clearly, and Teddy began to feel rather doubtful about the whole thing. "Will it hurt?" he asked at last. "Not at the time, my precious," said mummy, "but afterwards it may. I’m afraid it will, rather. I’m afraid it may hurt a good deal. But you will try to be brave. I know you will be brave."