an attitude of strange dejection. At the click of the latch he
looked up slowly, fixing a lustreless stare on Ann Eliza. For a
moment she thought he did not know her.

"Oh, you're sick!" she exclaimed; and the sound of her voice
seemed to recall his wandering senses.

"Why, if it ain't Miss Bunner!" he said, in a low thick tone;
but he made no attempt to move, and she noticed that his face was
the colour of yellow ashes.

"You ARE sick," she persisted, emboldened by his
evident need of help. "Mr. Ramy, it was real unfriendly of you not
to let us know."

He continued to look at her with dull eyes. "I ain't been
sick," he said. "Leastways not very: only one of my old turns."
He spoke in a slow laboured way, as if he had difficulty in getting
his words together.

"Rheumatism?" she ventured, seeing how unwillingly he seemed
to move.

"Well--somethin' like, maybe. I couldn't hardly put a name to
it."

"If it WAS anything like rheumatism, my grandmother
used to make a tea--" Ann Eliza began: she had forgotten, in the
warmth of the moment, that she had only come as Evelina's
messenger.