“I won’t have lumbago in my throat till after this party,” Cricket repeated grimly, to herself, as she went up-stairs to get ready for school. “Only—I do wish the party was last night, and I could go into mamma’s room and lie down all day, instead of going to school. My throat gets sweller and sweller. Do you suppose it could swell up so that I couldn’t eat anything, and would starve to death?”
At this cheerful thought, Cricket groaned so deep a groan that Eunice looked around in amazement.
“Was that you, Cricket? Did you hurt yourself?”
“No, I was only thinking. Do you know those irregular French verbs? Aren’t they awful?”
“I should think they were. They are enough to make a cow groan. Ready? Come on. Why, aren’t you ready?”
Cricket swallowed an unhappy lump in her throat, and winked back a tear. How her throat did hurt, and how her head ached!
“I’m not quite ready. I didn’t have ’Liza brush my hair out, and it’s all full of bones, as Zaidie says. Upsetting that water pitcher, and mopping it up, took up so much time. There! that must do. Where are my books? Oh, here. I’m ready. Come on,” and Cricket ran out first, lest Eunice should see her face.
The keen, fresh air seemed to do her head good, and by the time she reached school, she felt a little better. All the girls were chattering so hard about the party that night, that, for the time being, Cricket forgot her throat.
Under any other circumstances her manner and appearance would have attracted notice and comment. But it must be confessed that from a school point of view, the day was a general failure, and among the many flushed faces, hers passed unnoticed. She was sometimes languid and dull, and then excited and inattentive, making all kinds of queer blunders. She finally distinguished herself by announcing in her history class that Tecumseh, the Indian chief, died of a severe attack of lumbago, exclaiming as he fell, “Don’t give up the ship.”
“Really, Jean, it is fortunate that parties do not come every day,” said her long-suffering teacher, rather surprised that it should be Cricket who said this, for the child’s quick memory rarely failed her. Cricket sat scarlet and mortified, and did not recover even when that stupid Mary Blair wrote on the board in the grammar class, “Troy was concord by the Greasians.”