Part 22 (1/2)

”Delicious!” decreed Tattie, critically.

”Couldn't have been better if Toddlekins had reared the piglets on our own farm,” chimed in Peggy.

”Diana, you haven't taken a bite yet,” commented Wendy.

”I'm not sure that I want any. I think I'll only have a biscuit, after all.”

”Not want any? Not want the lovely sausages that I risked so much to get? Diana Hewlitt, what's the matter with you?”

”Oh, nothing--only----”

”Only nothing, I should say! Eat up that piece of sausage double quick, if you value my friends.h.i.+p.”

”Suppose you eat it for me? That would be sentiment.”

”No, it wouldn't; you must eat it yourself. There'll be a s.h.i.+ndy if you don't. Our first feast! It's a sort of ceremonial!”

”Not 'the cup of brotherhood' but 'the sausage of sisterhood'!” hinnied Jess.

Diana looked doubtfully at the two inches of brown, porky substance on her ivy-leaf plate, and sighed.

”I feel like the elephant at the Zoo when they offered him his hundredth bun: It may kill me, but it's a beautiful death,” she demurred. ”Well, if you're all nuts on my having some, I guess there's nothing else for it. Here goes! What a life!”

”The Sisterhood of the Sausage,” murmured Jess fatuously.

”Don't make such a fuss; you know you're enjoying it, old sport,” said Wendy. ”It isn't every day in your life you can come and have a blow-out on Crusoe Island.”

On Thursday morning Diana, who had been restless and fidgety in the night, awoke with a rash all over her face and chest. Loveday, much alarmed, would not allow her to get up till the authorities had seen her, and fetched Miss Todd. The Princ.i.p.al, dismayed at the prospect of infection in the school, mentally ran over the gamut of possible diseases from scarlatina to chicken-pox, ordered Diana to stop in bed, and sent at once to Glenbury for the doctor.

Now it happened that Dr. Hunter was himself in bed, suffering from a severe attack of influenza, and, as it was extremely difficult for him, at a few hours' notice, to secure the services of a really competent medical man as loc.u.m tenens, he had been obliged to put up with a Hindoo doctor who was sent by the London agent in answer to his urgent telegram. It was a case of ”any port in a storm”, and though Dr.

Jinaradasa's qualifications might be such as only just to satisfy the board of the Royal College of Surgeons, it was better to send him to look after the patients than to leave them utterly unattended.

Therefore, when the neat little two-seater car drew up at Pendlemere Abbey it was not the bluff, rosy-cheeked Dr. Hunter who stepped out of it, but a foreign-looking gentleman with a very dark complexion. He explained his presence to Miss Todd, who gasped for a second, but recovered herself, received him gratefully, and conducted him upstairs to view his patient. Diana, I regret to say, behaved like the spoilt child she really was. She buried her head under the bedclothes, and at first utterly refused to submit to any examination. Miss Todd coaxed, wheedled, stormed, and finally pulled the clothes away by force and displayed the rash to the dark, l.u.s.treless eyes of Dr. Jinaradasa. He asked a few questions--which Diana answered sulkily--took her temperature, felt her pulse, and retired downstairs to talk over the case with Miss Todd, leaving a very cross and indignant patient behind him. Ten minutes afterwards the door of the ivy room swung gently open, and Wendy's interested and sympathetic face made its appearance.

”Di!” she whispered impressively; ”I'm coming to see you, even if it's smallpox you've got. I'm supposed to be practising, but I just did a bolt. Well, old sport, you do look an object, I must say!”

Diana hitched herself higher in bed.

”You needn't be afraid. I'm not infectious,” she remarked.

”They say you've got measles,” ventured Wendy.

”Measles!” snorted Diana scornfully. ”That's all they know about it.

I've told them till I'm tired that it's nettle-rash. I've had it before.

I always _do_ get the wretched thing when I eat sausages. They sort of poison me. It'll go away all right if they only let me alone. What did Miss Todd want bringing that black doctor up to see me? I had nearly forty fits when he came marching into my room.”

”Well, he says you've got measles at any rate, and Toddlekins is in no end of a state. Thinks it's going to spread all through the school.