“Miss Winthrop!” exclaimed both, in dismay.
“Yes. She was going into Miss Forester’s room, and when she opened the door, down came a basin of water. She started back, her foot slipped, and she fell down-stairs. They took her up senseless.”
Her listeners wrung their hands in anguish.
“Oh! If we have killed her!” said Carrie, aside.
Florence paced up and down the room almost beside herself. It had never entered into her calculations that any one but Miss Forester could be the sufferer from her trick.
That Miss Winthrop, who was a general favourite and whom she herself dearly loved, should have received the bath intended for Miss Forester would have been bad enough; but to have been the means of injuring her, perhaps fatally, was almost too much to bear.
The injury, however, proved to be of a less serious character than was at first supposed.
Miss Forester’s room was situated at the head of a flight of stairs; and when Miss Winthrop’s foot slipped, as she started back from the sudden fall of water, she had wrenched her ankle. Fainting from the pain, she had fallen down the stairs; but, though she had received numerous bruises, she was not seriously injured. Her sprained ankle would, however, confine her to her room for some time.