Press.) He took out a life insurance policy for two hundred and fifty
pounds, and an accident policy which provided enormous sums for all
sorts of queer emergencies. Indeed, Henry was armed at every point. He
could surely snap his fingers at Chance.

If any young man in London had the right to be bumptious and didactic,
Henry had. And yet he remained simple, unaffected, and fundamentally
kind. But he was very serious. His mother and aunt strained every nerve,
in their idolatrous treatment of him, to turn him into a conceited and
unbearable jackanapes--and their failure to do so was complete. They
only made him more serious. His temper was, and always had been, what is
called even.

And yet, on this particular evening when Sarah had been instructed to
put a hot-water bottle in his bed, Henry's tone, in greeting his aunt,
had been curt, fretful, peevish, nearly cantankerous. 'Don't worry me!'
he had irascibly protested, well knowing that his good aunt was
guiltless of the slightest intention to worry him. Here was a problem,
an apparent contradiction, in Henry's personality.

His aunt, in the passage, and his mother, who had overheard in the
dining-room, instantly and correctly solved the problem by saying to
themselves that Henry's tone was a Symptom. They had both been
collecting symptoms for four days. His mother had first discovered that
he had a cold; Aunt Annie went further and found that it was a feverish
cold. Aunt Annie saw that his eyes were running; his mother wormed out
of him that his throat tickled and his mouth was sore. When Aunt Annie
asked him if his eyes ached as well as ran, he could not deny it. On the
third day, at breakfast, he shivered, and the two ladies perceived
simultaneously the existence of a peculiar rash behind Henry's ears. On
the morning of the fourth day Aunt Annie, up early, scored one over her
sister by noticing the same rash at the roots of his still curly hair.
It was the second rash, together with Henry's emphatic and positive
statement that he was perfectly well, which had finally urged his
relatives to a desperate step--a step involving intrigue and
prevarication. And to justify this step had come the crowning symptom
of peevishness--peevishness in Henry! It wanted only that!

'I've asked Dr. Dancer to call in to-night,' said Aunt Annie casually,
while Henry was assuming his toasted crimson carpet slippers. Mrs.
Knight was brewing tea in the kitchen.

'What for?' Henry deman