“I don’t like that cough of yours, Lydia.”
“It’s only a cold, auntie.”
“It doesn’t seem to get any better. Let me see, how long have you had it now?”
Lydia pretended to think that Aunt Beryl was only talking to herself, and bent lower over her books. She always worked at her preparation in the evenings after supper now.
It was damp, chilly weather, and her cough grew worse, although she stifled it as far as possible, and said nothing about the pains in her back and sides.
Aunt Beryl brought her a bottle of cough mixture recommended by Mrs. Jackson, and Lydia put it on the mantlepiece in her bedroom, and carefully dusted the bottle every day, and sometimes poured away a little of the contents.
But one morning, one important morning when there was a French lesson which it was essential that Lydia, with whom French still remained the weakest of links in an otherwise well-forged chain, should attend, she found herself quite unable to go downstairs to breakfast.
Her head swam, her eyes and mouth were burning, and her legs unaccountably trembled beneath her.
“No such thing as can’t,” muttered Lydia fiercely, repeating Grandpapa’s favourite axiom.
The pain in her side had increased without warning, and suddenly gave her an unendurable stab every time that she tried to move.