It is a sign of advancing age.

Repress it.
The pipe!" And he flicked impatient fingers.
"Monsieur is forgetting that the doctor--" "The devil take the doctor," said Mr.Caryll with finality.
"Parfaitement!" answered the smooth Leduc.

"Over the bridge we laugh at the saint.

Now that we are cured, the devil take the doctor by all means." A ripple of laughter came to applaud Leduc's excursion into irony.
The arbor had another, narrower entrance, on the left.

Hortensia had approached this, all unheard on the soft turf, and stood there now, a heavenly apparition in white flimsy garments, head slightly a-tilt, eyes mocking, lips laughing, a heavy curl of her dark hair falling caressingly into the hollow where white neck sprang from whiter shoulder.
"You make too rapid a recovery, sir," said she.
"It comes of learning how well I have been nursed," he answered, making shift to rise, and he laughed inwardly to see the red flush of confusion spread over the milk-white skin, the reproachful shaft her eyes let loose upon Leduc.
She came forward swiftly to check his rising; but he was already on his feet, proud of his return to strength, vain to display it.