III
The next day Christina was really ill. It was not only the ankle, but she had caught a chill, the doctor said, and they must be very careful with her. Roy went about with a sad and sadder face, for Christina was his only playmate, and he loved her more than anything else; besides, there was now no one to bowl to him, and also it seemed so silly not to be able to mend a doll’s eyes. He moped in the house all the morning, and was continually being sent away from Christina’s door, because she was too ill to bear anyone in the room except nurse. She was wandering in her mind, nurse said, and kept on saying that she had blinded her doll, and crying to have its eyes made right again; but she would not let a hand be laid upon her, so that to have Diana mended seemed impossible. Nurse cried too, as she said it, and Roy joined with her. He could not remember ever having been so miserable.
The doctor looked very grave when he was going away. “That doll ought to be put right,” he said to Mrs. Tiverton. “She’s a sensitive little thing, evidently, and this feeling of disobeying you and treating her father’s present lightly is doing her a lot of harm, apart altogether from the chill and the sprain. If we could get those eyes in again she’d be better in no time, I believe.”
Roy and his mother heard this with a sinking heart, for they knew that Christina’s arms locked Diana to her side almost as if they were bars of iron.
“Anyway,” the doctor said, “I’ve left some medicine that ought to give her some sleep, and I shall come again this afternoon.” So saying, he touched up his horse, and Mrs. Tiverton walked into the house again.
Roy stood still pondering.
Suddenly his mind was made up, and he set off for the high road at a good swinging pace. At the gate he passed Jim. “If they want to know where I am,” he called, “say I’ve gone to Dormstaple, to the Miss Bannisters’ Brother.”