shamelessly been doing that which they
so strongly deprecated in Sarah, came back into the room.

In half an hour Henry was in bed, and a kettle containing eucalyptus was
steaming over a bright fire in the bedroom; and his mother was bent upon
black-currant tea in the kitchen; and Aunt Annie was taking down from
dictation, in her angular Italian hand, a letter which began: 'Dear Sir
George,--I much regret to say'; and little Sarah was standing hooded and
girt up, ready to fly upon errands of the highest importance at a
second's notice.

'Sarah,' said Mrs. Knight solemnly, when Sarah had returned from the
post and the doctor's, 'I am going to trust you. Your master has got the
measles, but, of course, we don't want anyone to know, so you mustn't
breathe a word.'

'No'm,' said Sarah.

'He never had them as a boy,' Mrs. Knight added proudly.

'Didn't he, mum?' said Sarah.

The doctor, whose gift for seriousness was not marked, showed a tendency
to see humour in the situation of Sir George's private secretary being
down with measles. But he was soon compelled to perceive his mistake. By
a united and tremendous effort Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie made measles
august. As for Sarah, she let slip the truth to the milkman. It came out
by itself, as the spout of a teapot had once come off by itself in her
hand.

The accident policy appeared to provide for every emergency except
measles.

CHAPTER VIII

CREATIVE

The sick-room--all due solemnity and importance must be imported into
the significance of that word--the sick-room became a shrine, served by
two ageing priestesses and a naive acolyte. Everything was done to make
Henry an invalid in the grand manner. His bed of agony became the pivot
on which the household life flutteringly and soothingly revolved. No
detail of delicate attention which the most ingenious assiduity could
devise was omitted from the course of treatment. And if the chamber had
been at the front instead of at the back, the Fulham Vestry would
certainly have received an application for permission to lay down straw
in the street.

The sole flaw in the melancholy beauty of the episode was that Henry was
never once within ten miles of being seriously ill. He was incapable of
being seriously ill. He happened to be one of those individuals who,
when they 'take' a disease, seem to touch it only with the tips of their
fingers: such was his constitution. He had the measles, admittedly. His
tempe