Leisurely Letters

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 47, 19 November 1936, Page 6

Leisurely Letters

Patsy tells her friend Tanya how she trembled on the brink of social ostracism . . . bill was saved.

My Dear, —I have been terribly ill and am still a little sunken. (Not a word of sympathy from Mike, either — the beast. When he gets, the backs of his legs sunburnt this summer, it won’t be me that will sour the milk for him.

It began with a curious feeling in my head. “Mike,” I said, interrupting him in the middle of the Spanish war. “Mike, I think I’m sickening.” But he just put down the paper for a second and patted me on the shoulder and said: “Don't be so hard on yourself, Patsy. I know it’s not your fault the oven gets too hot and I’ve had four meals running at the restaurant. We all make mistakes.” I was too seared about my illness to explain to him again about the temperature thing on the oven being difficult to read, so I said: “No, I don’t mean that, Mike. I’m itchy.” “Oh,” he said. “I thought you had given up contract?”

Sometimes, you know, Tanya, I wonder about Mike. . . . And yet his clients apparently think lie has a brain. “No,” I told him in a low voice, “I think I’ve got ringworm, Mike.”, He started, and moved noisily to the other end of the sofa, men are tactless, and said quite shakily, “Oh, uo, Patsy. Dash it, that’s a dirty sort of disease.”

“Though, come to think of it,” he continued, “I have always suspected that you couldn’t spend so long in the bathroom before breakfast unless you took a book in.” Well, my 'dear, I felt criminal. Because I know you can get ringworm when you are as clean as a plate, but everyone else thinks it’s a simply disgusting disease. Why, when poor Diana Jane had it people wouldn’t visit her house for nearly two years because someone had heard the ringworms Talked in the wood like borer, waiting to jump out at you. “Of course, Mike,” I said bravely, “of course we’ll have to leave town, as soon as I can be moved.” I just felt it would be too awful to stay here and net be in a position to answer back to Mabel Snobblederm.

“Oh, come now, Patsy, I don't suppose you will be marked after it.” pleaded Mike. “Anyway, what, are ringworms like?” And, do you know, eveu after Diana Jane, when 1 came

to think of it I couldn’t tell him! “Shouldn’t you come out in circles or; something?” be asked. “Perhaps the rings don’t form until the ringworms have married and settled down on me,” I suggested. Mike laughed brutally. So in the end I went to a doctor and asked him if he knew of any modern way of killing ringworms, because I know what the old way was like. They used to lock the bathroom door to stop the ringworms escaping and stand you on a piece of newspaper and take off all your clothes and shave your head. I would have looked an absolute fright. The doctor was quite brave and looked at my head very carefully and asked me lots of questions about where I’d been and what I’d done. lie was awfully sweet and in the end he smiled and said, “You haven’t got ringworm at all, you’ve got a childish complaint called impetigo—pronounced im-pe-ti-go, with the ‘i’ as in ‘why,’ not empyaema.” And he gave me a list of instructions to get rid of it. So I went home to Mike and said. “I’ve got a childish complaint, Mike.’’ And he shrugged his shoulders and said: “Well, Patsy, that’s not unusual, but it’s the first time you’ve admitted it’s childish.” I kept my temper. “No,” I explained gently to him, “my ringworms are just a childish complaint called impetigo. I forgot to ask the man if it was infectious, but I expect your skin will be quite thick enough to resist; it.” Since then I have been treating myself with ointments and tablets. four au hour, and some sort of mercury solution that lias already ruined one basin. I left it overnight by mistake, and when Mike went to shave there it was still fizzling and corroding the sides of the basin. I haven’t been able to go out with my impetigo because I look so odd. Occasionally I catch Mike just staring at me and grinning. Impetigo makes you awfully sensitive about ridicule, but I think I am not as childish as I was. Your loving,