“Shan’t I be able to go up for the examination?”
“Let me see—that’s about a month off. We shall have to see about that.”
Dr. Young’s daughter was at Miss Glover’s school, too, and he knew all about the terrible importance of the examination. Nevertheless, he gave Lydia no permission to resume her studies.
“Don’t worry, dear, there’s plenty of time before you, and now I’ve got some nice fruit jelly for you,” said Aunt Beryl, and Lydia always thanked her very gratefully and lay back against the pillow, trying all the time to recapitulate the French verbs and the list of Exceptions to Rules that she had been learning when she first fell ill.
Except for anxiety about the examination, convalescence was agreeable.
Uncle George came up to see her one day, and brought her some grapes, and explained to her why it was that the great pieces of ice in her glass of barley-water did not cause it to overflow, quite in the old Mr. Barlow manner, and once Nathalie Palmer came by invitation and had tea with her upstairs, and told her how sorry all the girls had been about her illness.
“And you’ll miss the exam,” moaned Nathalie, “and it seems such a shame. I know you’d have done splendidly.”
“What have you been having in class?” asked Lydia.
“Almost all recapitulation. The only really new thing that we’re doing is Henry V. for literature.”
That evening Lydia made Gertrude, the servant, bring her the volume of Shakespeare from the drawing-room.