human
Don, you poor devil, you've been killing yourself over there. Don't tell _me_. I've a mind to appoint myself your physician and order you to bed for a month.
gpt
Good Lord, do I look as bad as that? laughed the other.
human
If I do, looks are deceitful, for I feel fit as a fiddle. I need only one thing to make a complete new man of me.
gpt
And that is ...?
human
A secret, at present.
gpt
I've managed to keep myself pretty well posted on the work that you've been doing, without knowing any of the details of your life--you're a rotten correspondent. Come, did you have any 'hairbreadth' 'scapes or moving accidents by field and flood?
human
Nary one. My life has been one dead, monotonous waste.
gpt
Like ... the deuce it has. Come, I've got just ten minutes to stay; tell me the whole detailed history of your two years and a half. Knowing your natural verbosity, I should say that it would take you just about half that time, which will leave me the balance for my own few remarks.
human
Five minutes? I could tell you the whole history of my life in that time. But, before I start, I want to ask you about my little niece, Muriel? I've just been reading a letter from Ethel, which seems to indicate that they are rather worried about her; but, when I called her by long distance, she either couldn't, or wouldn't tell me anything definite.
gpt
I don't think that there is any real occasion for being disturbed, answered Philip, quietly.
human
Although I'll confess frankly that things haven't been going just right, and I'm not sorry to have you back and in charge of the case. Muriel made the acquaintance of a typhus bug--the Lord knows how--and, although I succeeded in getting the best of the fever fairly quickly, thanks to the able assistance of that nurse whom you swear by ...
gpt
Miss Merriman?
human
Yes, she's a wonder, isn't she? Well, as I said, we took care of the fever, all right; but the cerebral affection has been more persistent, and she hasn't convalesced as you would expect in a twelve-year-old child. She seems to be laboring under a sort of nervous depression, not so much physical as mental ... in fact, a psychos. It's common enough in older people, of course; but hanged if I ever saw anything just like it in a perfectly normal, and naturally happy child.
gpt
H-m-m-m. What are the symptoms?
human
Psychological, all of them. She mopes; seems to take no healthy interest in anything, and, as a result, has no appetite; bursts out crying over the most trivial things--such as the chance of you're being blown up by a submarine on the way home--and frequently for no cause at all. Of course I packed the family off to the shore, as soon as she was able to be moved, in the belief that the change of scene and the sea air would effect a cure, but it hasn't. I can't find a thing wrong with her, physically, nor could Morse. I took him down on my own hook, in consultation, one day. It's a rather unusual case of purely psychological depression, and in my opinion all she needs is ...
gpt
A generous dose of Smiles,
human
By thunder, you've struck it, cried Philip, as he gave the arm of his chair a resounding thump.
gpt
What an ass I've been not to have thought of that before, particularly as she has been so constantly in my thoughts. It's another case of a thing being too close to one for him to see it.