He had to repeat this assurance very often to Georgy, whose angry feelings had given place to extreme tenderness and affection now that Tom was an invalid, quite unfitted for the society of jolly good fellows, and willing to receive basins of beef-tea and arrow-root meekly from his wife's hands, instead of those edibles of iniquity, oysters and toasted cheese.
Mr.Halliday's illness was very tiresome.

It was one of those perplexing complaints which keep the patient himself, and the patient's friends and attendants, in perpetual uncertainty.

A little worse one day and a shade better the next; now gaining a little strength, now losing a trifle more than he had gained.

The patient declined in so imperceptible a manner that he had been ill three weeks, and was no longer able to leave his bed, and had lost alike his appetite and his spirits, before Georgy awoke to the fact that this illness, hitherto considered so lightly, must be very serious.
"I think if--if you have no objection, I should like to see another doctor, Mr.Sheldon," she said one day, with considerable embarrassment of manner.

She feared to offend her host by any doubt of his skill.
"You see--you--you are so much employed with teeth--and--of course you know I am quite assured of your talent--but don't you think that a doctor who had more experience in fever cases might bring Tom round quicker?
He has been ill so long now; and really he doesn't seem to get any better." Philip Sheldon shrugged his shoulders.
"As you please, my dear Mrs.Halliday," he said carelessly; "I don't wish to press my services upon you.