One day he finds Lydia's mother upstairs sick-a-bed, and thus breaks forth to his godchild: 'About your mother--I know without going upstairs that she is floored with one or another manifestation of the great disease of _social-ambitionitis_.

But calm yourself.

It's not so bad as it seems when you've got the right doctor, I've practiced for thirty years among Endbury ladies.

They can't spring anything new on me.

I've taken your mother through doily fever induced by the change from tablecloths to bare tops, through portiere inflammation, through afternoon tea distemper, through _art-nouveau_ prostration and mission furniture palsy, not to speak of a horrible attack of acute insanity over the necessity of having her maids wear caps.