"I don't want to go—without Merryl."
"Shall I come too? Run and get your garden-hat, and wait for me at the back-door. Don't go upstairs."
Frip obeyed, and Pen turned to Magda. "We don't want much said before Frip," she breathed. "Dr. Cartwright is afraid that it may be scarlet fever. There are one or two bad cases in the town."
"Then it wasn't going out in the sun that made her ill."
"That has made her worse. She never ought to have gone—if any one had had the least idea that she was so poorly. No one knew except Frip; and of course Frip did not understand. I can't think how it was that none of us saw; but mother and I were very busy; and she had such a colour. Frip says she turned quite white before she started—and when she asked you to go."
The words, though pointed, were not unkindly spoken; and Magda was too unhappy for vexation.
"I don't think I looked at her—particularly. And she never said she wasn't well. If I had known, of course I would have gone."
"It is such a pity you did not. She fell from her bicycle with her head against the gate-post, and it almost stunned her. That makes things so much worse. She was quite wandering before Dr. Cartwright came, and he found her in a high fever. He cannot know for some hours how much is due to the blow, and whether it really is scarlet fever; but he seems pretty sure. Poor dear little Merryl. If only we had known!"
Pen spoke tenderly and went away. Magda, left alone, with nothing to do, nobody wanting her, nobody turning to her, felt very wretched. When she thought of Merryl's plaintive petition, and of her own curt refusal, she hardly knew how to bear herself. It was too terrible to think that she might have refused Merryl's very last request—the very last time that she would ever see and speak with her sister. It was not her way to cry easily; but she sat long, looking straight before her, and feeling acutely that if that came to pass, she could never be happy again.
Yet nobody seemed to think that she was to be pitied. This dawned upon her with a sense of surprise. All the others were full of loving sympathy one for another; while towards herself there was only blame; and no one expected her to mind very much. It startled her to find things thus, and made her realise, more than she had ever done before, the manner of life she had been living.