"But I would make it so long that there would be no necessity of having to catch up, as you call it. You could simply make a fresh start in a new class."
Lloyd looked up in alarm. "When?" she demanded.
"Um—well, next fall, let us say," he answered, deliberately. "Yes, surely by that time you'll be well and sound as a new dollar."
"Next fall!" she gasped, her face growing white and her eyes strangely big and dark. "You don't mean—you couldn't mean that I must leave school."
"Yes, that's exactly what I mean. You are overtaxing yourself and must stop—"
"Oh, I can't!" interrupted Lloyd, speaking very fast. "I won't! It's cruel to ask it when I've worked so hard to keep from falling behind Betty and the girls. Oh, you don't know what it means to me!"
The old doctor looked up in amazement at this unexpected outburst.
"No," he answered, slowly, after a moment's silence. "I don't suppose I do. I had no idea it would be a disappointment to you. I would gladly save you from it if I could. But listen to me, my little girl, and try to be reasonable. You are on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Nothing can mean as much to you as your health. What will keeping up with the other girls amount to if the strain and the overtaxing makes an invalid of you for life, perhaps?
"Mind you, I am not saying that the work itself is too great a tax. Madam Chartley's is one of the best regulated schools I have ever inquired into. Ordinarily a girl ought to be able to take the course with perfect ease. But you see that little spell of la grippe left you weak and unfit for any extra strain, and, instead of easing up a bit, you went on piling on all that extra load of lessons and Christmas preparations and vacation dissipations. It was like trying to walk on a broken foot. The more you tried, the worse it got. The mischief is done now, and there is no remedy but to stop short off."
Lloyd sat very still for a moment, staring out of the window in a dazed, unseeing way, as if not fully understanding all he said. Then she turned with a piteous appeal in her face to Mrs. Sherman.