Miss Lovelace's heroics, though they mightily impressed the audience, apparently did not solve the problem of how she was to take her holiday without losing her post at school. Her fertile brain, however, supplied the key to the situation.
"I must get an attack of measles," she declared. "Then I shall be infectious and quite unable to teach my form."
Springing from the sofa, she seized Mabel Andrews' paint-box, and with the aid of a glass of water and a sable brush dabbed spots of crimson over her face, neck, and chest. Then, falling back on to the sofa in a semi-prostrate attitude, she called loudly for Mrs. Jones.
Cissie, as the landlady, with a school towel pinned on for an apron, came bustling in, and held up hands of horror at the sight of the violent eruption on the face of her lodger. She rapidly catalogued the various complaints, from smallpox to scarlatina, which included a rash among their symptoms, and readily agreed to hurry forth and fetch the doctor.
Apparently she found him just round the corner, for he was ushered in immediately. Marion, with the scanty materials at her command, had made a very gallant attempt at masculine attire. She wore Pauline Kingston's waterproof, and a white collar made from a sheet of exercise paper. On her head was Nina Wakefield's soft black felt hat (the audience waived the point of a physician wearing his hat in his patient's parlour), and a black moustache was charcoaled on her upper lip. He examined Miss Lovelace in orthodox medical fashion, felt her pulse, examined her tongue, took her temperature (with a stilo-pen for thermometer), and asked numerous questions, to which, lying on the sofa with half-closed eyes, she groaned the answers in apparent agony. He shook his head over the case and declared he must at once send a hospital nurse to her assistance.
Miss Lovelace protested vigorously at this suggestion, but Dr. Pillbox was adamant, and departed saying that Nurse Harding would arrive directly with full instructions as to the treatment of the complaint. Aldora had had a little more time than the others to complete her costume and she was proud of it. She had borrowed Betty Wroe's pocket handkerchief, and with that and the blackboard duster constructed an apron with a bib. Her own handkerchief formed a Red Cross cap, and pieces of exercise paper made the collar and cuffs of her uniform. She took the patient in hand with the air of one who is going to stand no nonsense, and proclaimed her immediate intention of washing her.
Miss Lovelace, who had been languishing and half fainting upon the couch, repudiated the necessity of such extreme measures, declaring that water would only irritate the rash. Nurse insisted that such were the doctor's orders and she must obey them. A violent struggle ensued between herself and her patient, with the result that she completely wiped off the eruption and revealed the shameless fraud practised by the artful governess. At this interesting crisis Dr. Pillbox (evidently a most attentive practitioner) arrived to pay a second visit. Miss Lovelace, bursting into tears, begged the favour of an interview with him alone. Nurse Harding reluctantly retired, and the youthful teacher, falling on one knee in a picturesque cinema attitude of supplication, threw herself on the doctor's mercy and revealed not only her ingenious deception but the reason why she wanted a holiday. Dr. Pillbox was kindness itself. He assured her he had at once detected the imposture but promised to condone it. He pulled a notebook from his pocket and wrote a medical certificate to the effect that she was incapable through illness of performing her duties as teacher upon the following day, and recommended a trip upon the river as the quickest cure for re-establishing her health. It was received by his patient with an exuberance of gratitude.
Then Nurse Harding and Mrs. Jones, who were hovering in the background anxious to butt in, were called upon the platform, and all four performers stood in a line and made bows of more or less graceful quality.
As Lesbia, whose acknowledgement to the applause had been low and sweeping, rose to her usual level her eyes encountered the amused and interested gaze of no less a person than Miss Pratt. She started and conveyed her unwelcome discovery to her fellow actresses. They retired hastily in much embarrassment.
"I'd no idea she was there!" fluttered Marion.