"She'll rouse you all—you may trust Pollie Dicks for that!" cried her father, rubbing his hands, while Miss Cottrell hovered near him, looking absurdly self-conscious. "Say, doesn't she look as if scarlet fever agreed with her?"
She certainly did. I had expected to see her looking thin and pale and languid, but it was not so. She had put on flesh in her convalescence, and the sea air had given her a more ruddy hue than I had yet seen her wear. She appeared to be in robust health, and was undoubtedly in excellent spirits. I need not have been anxious on the score of her happiness.
"If you mention scarlet fever again, I'll fine you a thousand pounds!" she cried, turning on her father. "I don't want to hear the name again, do you understand? All the same, Nan," she added, turning to me, "it is not half bad having a fever. It is good for the complexion. It rejuvenates you altogether, I guess. You'll be sorry one of these days that you haven't had it. Anyway, I've had a jolly time for the last fortnight, with nothing to do save eat and drink and take mine ease."
"You have changed if you have grown fond of repose," I said, as we went upstairs.
"Ah, Nan! Sharp-tongued as ever!" she replied. "I know you thought me a terrible gadabout, and I certainly never went to sleep in the middle of the day like some one I know. But you must have been deadly dull without me, and your cousin gone too, and the Professor. What a miserable little party you must have been here!"
"We have managed to bear up somehow," I said, smiling; "but it is good to have you here again, Paulina."
I spoke in all sincerity. I had not taken readily to Paulina Dicks. Her odd, American ways had jarred on me when first she came. I had not realised how much I liked her, or how I missed her, till now that her eager, vivid personality once more made a pleasant stir in the house. I think I laughed more in the first half-hour after her arrival than I had laughed during the whole of her absence. A cheerful disposition wields a potent charm.
Yet I had seen Paulina other than cheerful. What a different Paulina she was from the girl who had gone away in sore anxiety and dread! She made no allusion to the manner of her departure, yet I knew it was in her mind as she opened the door of her room. I had suggested to aunt that we should make a little alteration in the arrangement of Paulina's room. So the bedstead now stood in another position, and the aspect of the room did not inevitably recall the long, weary night in which she had suffered so much. I saw that she noted the change with satisfaction. All she said was, "Nan, you are a darling!" It was not Pollie Dicks's way to indulge in sentiment or make a parade of emotion.
Yet ere we slept that night she opened her heart to me as she had not done save on that night when she looked death in the face and was afraid.
Dinner had been over about half-an-hour. I chanced to be alone in the drawing-room. It was growing dusk, but the lamps were not yet lighted, when I heard Paulina's voice at the open window.