The Youngest Girl in the School Part 30

'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.

'I'm afraid I don't _quite_ understand,' said the princess, from the window.

'You see,' continued Babs, solemnly, 'he began by being a beast; then I disenchanted him and made him into a handsome and gallant young prince; and after that he was so horrid to Jean and Angela in the quarantine that I had to turn him out of my kingdom, and make him wander over the earth once more in the shape of a beast.'

'Oh,' said Jill, bending rather closely over the embroidery frame. 'Let me see, what kingdom was that?'

'_My_ kingdom,' answered Barbara, in an important tone. Then she realised that Jill did not know about her kingdom. 'I've never told any one before,' she went on doubtfully. 'If I tell you, Jill, will you promise not to laugh?'

Jill promised, and worked on steadily at her embroidery while the small voice from the bed painted her the fairy kingdom she had never described to any one before.

'And so,' concluded Barbara, with a sigh, 'I can't make it come right, because now there's a princess without a prince. Do you mind waiting until I find you a prince, Jill?'

'Not at all,' answered Jill, turning to the light rather abruptly, and taking quite a long time to choose between two shades of silk.

'It was so stupid of Dr. Hurst to get himself turned out like that, wasn't it?' continued Babs.

'He--perhaps he didn't know,' said Jill, with some hesitation.

'You can't be a beast without knowing it,' answered Barbara, positively.

'Are you sure he _is_ a beast?' asked Jill, who was still looking out of the window, though she had chosen her silk some moments ago.

'Oh, he's not a beast now. I _love_ him. Don't you?' cried the child, enthusiastically.

Jill began putting her work away in a great hurry. 'It's time for tea,'

she remarked.

Barbara did not seem to have heard. The dreamy look had returned to her face, and she was almost thinking aloud.

'You see,' she murmured, 'however nice he is now, he _must_ walk round the world seven times, and kill a giant, and rescue a beautiful princess, before he can be disenchanted a second time. You can't alter that. It's a pity you haven't got to be rescued or anything, Jill, because then----'

'If you talk any more, child,' interrupted Jill, with decision, 'you will be too tired to have a visitor after tea.'

Jill _was_ a nice person, Barbara settled again in her mind, as they had tea together out of Finny's private tea-set that the Canon had given her last Christmas. She was so nice that she even slipped away afterwards, when Christopher came into the room, so that he and Babs could have their talk together without feeling that somebody else was listening. For all that, neither of them seemed to find it easy to begin, and they remained looking at each other in silence for some moments after Jill had closed the door upon them.

Then Christopher made a great effort and addressed her from the end of the bed, where he had taken up his position.

'Hullo!' he said, tugging at his collar as if to remove some obstruction to his voice.

'Hullo!' answered Babs, faintly, from among her pillows.

Then followed another pause. They both felt there were plenty of things to be said, but somehow they could not think of them just then. Presently, Kit remembered that she was an invalid, and that invalids always had to be kissed. He also decided that the sooner he got it over the better; so he marched round to the side of the bed and kissed her.

'How are you, Babe?' he asked, feeling more at his ease now that this formality was over and he was free to climb on the edge of her bed and sit there swinging his legs.

'Oh, I'm all right,' answered Barbara, heartily.

They both knew she was nothing of the sort, but in the Berkeley family it was a point of honour with every one, even during a visitation of toothache, to declare himself 'all right.'