“Well, I felt rather out of order, and they said I ought to see some one, and it seems that my tiresome spine is getting crooked, and the long and the short of it is that Mr. Doctor Osmond says I shall get quite well again if I'm careful; but” she added, lightly, yet with the gentleness of one who thinks merely of the hearer's point of view “I shall have to be a passive verb for a year, and you will have to be my very strong man Kwasind.'”
“A year?” he exclaimed in dismay.
“Brian half gave me hope that it might not be so long,” said Erica, “if I'm very good and careful, and of course I shall be both. I am only sorry because it will make me very useless. I did hope I should never have been a burden on you again, father.”
“Don't talk of such a thing, my little son Eric,” he said, very tenderly. “Who should take care of you if not your own father? Besides, if you never wrote another line for me, you would help me by just being yourself. A burden!”
“Well, I've made you look as grave as half a dozen lawsuits,” said Erica, pretending to stroke the lines of care from his forehead. “I've had the morning to ruminate over the prospect, and really now that you know, it is not so very dreadful. A year will soon pass.”
“I look to you, Eric,” said her father, “to show the world that we secularists know how to bear pain. You won't waste the year if you can do it.”
Her face lighted up.
“It was like you to think of that!” she said; “that would indeed be worth doing.”
Still, do what she would, Erica could not talk him back to cheerfulness. He was terribly distressed at her news, and more so when he found that she was suffering a good deal. He thought with a pang of the difference of the reality to his expectations. No walk for them in the park that evening, nor probably for many years to come. Yet he was ignorant of these matters, perhaps he exaggerated the danger or the duration; he would go across and see Brian Osmond at once.
Left once more to herself, the color died out of Erica's cheeks; she lay there pale and still, but her face was almost rigid with resoluteness.