s."

"Right. For instance, we prefer to call an old-fashioned cold in the
head, 'Naso-pharyngitis.' The worse it sounds, the more credit we get
for curing it, you see. Well, 'sticks and stones may break our bones,
but _words_ will never hurt us,' so don't let that Latin expression
worry you. Just take things a bit easy, don't overdo physically or get
overexcited, and you'll be good for many a moon yet," he added lightly.

Jerry fastened up his shirt with big, fumbling fingers and walked slowly
outside, while Rose, tears of pity shedding a misty luminousness over
her eyes, stepped close to Donald and laid her hand appealingly on his
arm, "Is it something pretty bad, Doctor Mac?" she breathed.

"Well, it's apparently a mild case ... so far."

"But the trouble ... is it ... is it dangerous?"

He hesitated an instant, then responded quietly, "Nurses have to know
the truth, of course, and I am sure that you have a brave little heart,
so I'm not afraid to tell you that it _is_ bad. It is almost sure to be
fatal, in time, but not necessarily soon. If he will take things easy,
as I told him to, he'll live for a considerable time yet; but we mustn't
allow him to get very greatly excited, or do any very heavy work."

Suddenly very white, but calm and tearless, Smiles answered, "I reckon I
can help him better if I know all about it, doctor. I _got_ to help him,
you know. He's all I have now in the whole world."

"Of course you're going to help him--we both are--but ... you have me,
little sister, and your life work," he answered with awkward tenderness.
"Now let us see if I can make you understand what I believe the trouble
to be. In its incipient--that is, its early stages, it would be rather
hard to tell from angina pectoris, for the symptoms would be much the
same--pain about the heart and shortness of breath. But one can get
over the latter, and feel perfectly well between attacks."

He picked up from his open suitcase a folded newspaper which he had
tossed in half read, on leaving the city, and drew for her a crude
diagram of the heart and major arteries.

"This biggest pipe which goes downward from the heart is called the
great artery, and it and its branches--just like a tree's--carry the
blood into all parts of the body, except the lungs. Another name for it
is the descending thoracic aorta, and that is where grandfather's
trouble is. If you knew something about automobile tires I would explain
it by saying that h