"Where are you going?" he asked, as she left the room.
"To put it away," said she. "I must get some moth-powder to-morrow."
He protested with inarticulate noises, removed his own furs, which he
threw down on to the old worn-out sofa, and drew a Windsor chair up to
the fire. After a while his mother returned, and sat down in her
rocking-chair, and began to shiver again under the shawl and the
antimacassar. The lamp on the table lighted up the left side of her face
and the right side of his.
"Look here, mother," said he, "you must have a doctor."
"I shall have no doctor."
"You've got influenza, and it's a very tricky business--influenza is;
you never know where you are with it."
"Ye can call it influenza if ye like," said Mrs Machin. "There was no
influenza in my young days. We called a cold a cold."
"Well," said Denry, "you aren't well, are you?"
"I never said I was," she answered grimly.
"No," said Denry, with the triumphant ring of one who is about to
devastate an enemy. "And you never will be in this rotten old cottage."
"This was reckoned a very good class of house when your father and I
came into it.
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