“Send the cat away.”
“Bless you, my dear, there’s no cat here,” she answered. “There’s nobody been here but me and Mrs Clarkson.”
At last there came a day when she woke up from a long sleep and found that the pain in her head was gone, and that the things in the room which had been taking all manner of queer shapes looked all right again.
“And how do you feel, Miss Ruth, my dear?” asked Nurse, who sat sewing by the bedside.
“I’m quite well, thank you,” said Ruth. “Why am I in bed in the middle of the day?”
“Well, you haven’t been just quite well, you know,” said Nurse.
“Haven’t I?” said Ruth. She considered this for some time, and when Nurse came to her with some beef-tea in her hand, she asked:
“Have I been in bed more than a day?”
“You’ve been in bed a week,” said Nurse. “But you’ll get along finely now, and be up and about again in no time.”
Ruth drank her beef-tea and thought it over. Suddenly she dropped her spoon into the cup. The kitchen cat! How it must have missed her if she had been in bed a week. Unable to bear the idea in silence, she sat up in bed with a flushed face and asked eagerly: