Part 30 (1/2)

'Why, Jean, I do believe you're crying,' said Angela, in surprise, when Miss Finlayson had pushed them outside again, and they were retreating slowly along the gallery. Angela herself felt no further inclination to cry, now that she had seen the Babe and found she was not a bit altered.

There was no middle course in Angela's emotions, and her only wonder now was why any one had made a fuss about Barbara's accident at all.

But the tears were raining down Jean's cheeks for the first time, and the hard, queer look was gone from her face. She flung herself away to her own room, and left Angela to puzzle over her behaviour as best she might.

CHAPTER XVII

SEVEN TIMES ROUND THE WORLD

'Have the girls gone home?' asked the invalid, about a week later. She had made such strides towards recovery that she was to be allowed her first visitor that day, and she could not help wondering whether Jean Murray was going to be the privileged person. Everything had been so strange and quiet since the morning she had woke up in Finny's bed; and she had slept away so many hours of the days that followed, that she had lost count of the time altogether. She seemed to have been lying in a kind of delicious enchantment, with people doing things for her just as though she were a princess; while Jill was always at hand to tell her stories in her beautiful soft voice, whenever she grew tired of lying still. For Jill was the nicest person in the world to be with, when one was enchanted; she never bothered, and she always seemed to come to the rescue just in time, when the pain of being strapped in one position began to grow intolerable. Then, there was the Doctor too. No one would have expected the Doctor to turn out such a trump. Only to-day, after being so strict in the morning about what she was to eat, he had run in again after lunch to bring her a packet of sweets. They were very wholesome sweets, as he had a.s.sured Jill; but still they were sweets, and a doctor who was a beast would never have thought of bringing them, even if they were wholesome. So, clearly, he was not a beast. Even Jill had been surprised at his coming twice in one day, now that she was so much better; so that showed that he must be a particularly nice sort of doctor. For Jill had once nursed Auntie Anna when she was ill, and she knew a lot about doctors, so she would not have been surprised at his coming twice in one day, if it had been a usual thing for a doctor to do.

Babs smiled happily to herself as she settled the Doctor's claims to niceness; then she remembered that she was going to have a visitor after tea, and she asked again if the girls had gone home.

'Yes, they went five or six days ago,' said Jill, without impatience, though she had answered the same question once already. Babs certainly did not need an illness to make her absent-minded.

'Then who is coming to see me after tea?' was Barbara's next inquiry.

'I said Kit might come; I thought you would like to have him best,'

answered Jill.

'Kit? Is he going to bicycle over from Crofts?' asked the child.

'Why, no,' explained Jill, smiling. 'They have all been in the house ever since you were taken ill. Finny invited them to stay, you know, and Auntie Anna too.'

Barbara laughed a little. 'They'll never be able to tease me again, now that they've stopped in a girl's school themselves,' she remarked with a chuckle.

There was a pause, which the invalid occupied in thinking over the things she had been too lazy to consider before. She had a great many questions to ask, but somehow it was too much exertion to ask them.

Fortunately, Jill was so clever that she always guessed what she wanted to know without waiting to be asked first; and that saved a lot of trouble. In this way the child had learned that the gymnastic prize was to be divided between Jean and herself; and thinking about the gymnastic prize produced another question from her, rather unexpectedly.

'Wasn't it Scales who moved the trapeze away?' she asked.

Jill looked up surprised. None of them knew how much Babs remembered of what had happened on the night of her accident. 'Yes,' she replied. 'He has been very unhappy about it, poor man! He writes every day from Hanover to say how miserable he is. But, of course, it was an accident.'

'Of course,' said Barbara, looking distressed; and Jill was afraid she had said too much.

'Shall I write and send him a message from you?' she suggested quickly.

Babs brightened up, and nodded.

'Tell him it's awfully jolly to be ill and to have every one doing things for you, and bringing you sweets, and all that,' she said eagerly. 'And say that if he wants me to pay him out, just to make us quits, don't you know, he can think of the awful way I am sure to play my pieces next term.'

'Very well,' answered Jill, laughing; and there was silence once more.

Jill looked very pretty as she sat there by the window, working away at her embroidery in the frame; and Babs congratulated herself, with a glow of satisfaction, on having made her a princess in her fairy kingdom. It was so nice of Jill, she reflected, to behave exactly like a princess, and to sit at the window of her lonely turret making tapestry, to while away the time until her prince should come thundering over the drawbridge below. Jill's prince had not come yet, so of course she would have to go on working by the window till he did; she deserved an extra nice prince too, and Babs sighed as she remembered that she had not been able to find her any sort of a prince so far.

'It's a pity, isn't it, that Dr. Hurst had to be enchanted again so soon?'

she murmured aloud.