“We must try and spare your aunt as much as possible,” Uncle George said gravely to Lydia. “I’m afraid that we’ve all been allowing her to do far too much for us.”
Lydia found it curiously disagreeable to see the focus of general interest thus shifted. Unconsciously, she had occupied the centre place in the little group in Regency Terrace ever since her arrival there, as the twelve-year-old orphan, in her pathetic black frock. Without consciously posing, she had certainly, as the eager student at Miss Glover’s bringing back prizes and commendations, been the most striking personality of that small world, and she had known that her elders discussed her cleverness, her steady industry, even her increasing prettiness, as topics of paramount interest.
Lydia, in other words, was complacently aware of being the heroine of that story, which is the aspect worn by life to the imaginative. Now it appeared that this rôle had been summarily usurped by Aunt Beryl.
Lydia’s sense of drama was far too keen for her to undervalue the possibilities of the aspect presented by her aunt. It was pathetic to have toiled, without appreciation, all these years, to have nursed one’s niece devotedly day and night, and then to faint away helplessly without a word of complaint. But the more Lydia realized how pathetic it was, the more annoyed she became.
Her own convalescence was a very rapid one, partly owing to her determination to get to the Town Hall for the examination. Both Grandpapa and Uncle George, with the masculine inability to entertain more than one anxiety at a time, appeared to have forgotten that she had ever been ill, and Dr. Young himself, when applied to, only said:
“Well, well, if you’ve really set your mind on it—the weather’s nice and warm. But you must wrap up well and keep out of draughts. We don’t want a relapse, mind. Miss Raymond can’t do any more nursing, you know. She ought to be nursed herself.”
Lydia would cheerfully have nursed Aunt Beryl, if only to retain her own sense of self-importance, but well did she know that her aunt would give her no such opportunity. Really, unselfish people could be very trying.
She went to the Town Hall, and was greatly restored by the enthusiastic greetings of her fellow-candidates.
“Oh, Lydia, how plucky of you to try, after all! Don’t you feel fearfully behindhand? Fancy, if you do get through! It’ll be even more splendid than if you hadn’t been ill, and had no disadvantage of missing such a lot.”
Lydia had a shrewd suspicion that she had not missed nearly so much as they all thought. Nathalie had said that most of the work done in class during her absence had been recapitulation, and recapitulation, to Lydia’s sound memory and habits of accuracy inculcated by Uncle George, had never been more than a pleasant form of making assurance doubly sure.