"Oh, nonsense, mother! It's nothing," said Fred, putting out his
hot dry hand to her, "I shall soon be all right. I must have taken
cold in that nasty damp ride."
"Mamma!" said Rosamond, who was seated near the window (the
dining-room windows looked on that highly respectable street called
Lowick Gate), "there is Mr. Lydgate, stopping to speak to some one.
If I were you I would call him in. He has cured Ellen Bulstrode.
They say he cures every one."
Mrs. Vincy sprang to the window and opened it in an instant,
thinking only of Fred and not of medical etiquette. Lydgate was
only two yards off on the other side of some iron palisading,
and turned round at the sudden sound of the sash, before she called
to him. In two minutes he was in the room, and Rosamond went out,
after waiting just long enough to show a pretty anxiety conflicting
with her sense of what was becoming.
Lydgate had to hear a narrative in which Mrs. Vincy's mind insisted
with remarkable instinct on every point of minor importance,
especially on what Mr. Wrench had said and had not said about
coming again. That there might be an awkward affair with Wrench,
Lydgate saw at once; but the ease was serious enough to make him
dismiss that consideration: he was convinced that Fred was in the
pink-skinned stage of typhoid fever, and that he had taken just
the wrong medicines.
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