Part 64

X. THE HOUSE THAT CAUGHT COLD

“Can you cure a cold?” asked Grandma Sharpless.

A flare from the soft-coal fire flickered across the library, revealing a smile on the Health Master’s face.

“Am I a millionaire?” he countered.

“Not from your salary as Chinese physician to the Clydes,” laughed the head of that family.

“If I could cure a cold, I should be, easily, more than that. I’d be the foremost medical discoverer of the day.”

“Then you can’t cure a cold,” pursued Mrs. Sharpless.

“What is a cold?” countered the Health Master in that insinuating tone of voice which he employed to provoke the old lady into one of those frequent verbal encounters so thoroughly enjoyed by both of them.

“An ordinary common cold in the head. You know what I mean perfectly well, young man. The kind you catch by getting into drafts.”

“Oh, that! Well, you see, there’s no such thing.”

“No such thing as a cold in the head, Dr. Strong?” said Julia, looking up from her book. “Why, we’ve all had ‘em, loads of times.”

“And Bettina is coming down with one now, if I’m any judge,” said Mrs. Sharpless. “She’s had the sniffles all day.”

“Let’s hope it isn’t a cold. Maybe it’s only chicken-pox or mumps.”

“Are you wishing chicken-pox and mumps on my baby?” cried Mrs. Clyde.

In the three years during which Dr. Strong had been the “Chinese physician” of the household, earning his salary by keeping his patients well instead of curing them when ill, Mrs. Clyde had never quite learned to guard against the surprises which so often pointed the Health Master’s truths.

“Not by any means; I’m only hoping for the lesser of evils.”

“But mumps and chicken-pox are real diseases,” protested Clyde.

“And you think that a ‘cold,’ as you call it, isn’t.”

“Why, no,” said Clyde hesitantly. “I wouldn’t call it a disease, any more than I’d call a sprain a broken leg.”

“But it is. A very real, serious disease. Its actual name is coryza.”

“Bogy-talk,” commented Grandma Sharpless scornfully. “Big names for little things.”

“Not a little thing at all, as we should all realize if our official death-records really dealt in facts.”

“Death-records?” said Grandma Sharpless incredulously. “People don’t die of colds, do they?”

“Hundreds every year; all around us.”

“Well, I never hear of it.”

“Are you sure? Think back and recall how many of your friends’ obituary notices include some such sentence as this: ‘Last Thursday evening Mr. Smith caught a severe cold, from which he took to his bed on Saturday, and did not leave it again until his death yesterday morning?’ Doesn’t that sound familiar?”

“So familiar,” cried Mr. Clyde, “that I believe the newspapers keep it set up in type.”

“But the newspaper always goes on to say that Mr. Smith developed pneumonia or grip or bronchitis, and died of that, not of the cold,” objected Mrs. Sharpless.