“There. All over. Merely testing your reflexes.”
She hadn’t known she had any.
The nurse wrote on the card while the doctor listened to her heart, thumped both her chest and between her shoulder blades. Carefully he noted her posture. She was weighed, height measured and before it was over her footprints noted.
Mimi had laughed about this. First, she had stepped in a basin of water and then made wet tracks like the ones she left in the hall when Cissy called her to the telephone from the bathtub. One more test and the examination was over. The last nurse wiped the tip of Mimi’s finger with alcohol, stuck it so skillfully that it did not hurt, and squeezed a drop of blood on a small glass plate. Then wiping the finger again she sent Mimi to her room.
Sue was there before her, crosswise of the bed, sobbing softly.
Homesick, Mimi guessed. Then she remembered the letter in Box 207. She ran all the way downstairs and when she got it, it was for Chloe. She took the letter back upstairs and put it on Chloe’s dresser.
“Sue, honey, can I do anything about it?” Mimi asked gently.
“No,” Sue blubbered, “it’s done. Miss Taylor cut my finger nails nearly to the quick so I wouldn’t fray my violin strings and peck the keyboard and now that old nurse sticks my middle finger. I know my fingers will be so sore I can’t practice for days. I hope I can’t!” She dabbed at her eyes with her middy collar. “Whose letter?”
“It is not Betsy’s. She didn’t have any and I am glad! It’s Chloe’s. Say, we have to keep study hall tonight seven-thirty to nine. I thought we stayed in our rooms and studied that time like the college girls, but we don’t. We have to sit at those desks in the chapel. I’ll never live through it. Cheer up, Sue. If I can sit still an hour and a half every night, you can surely stand your fingers a little bit sore. What a life!”
What a life it was that week——