Slowly she began to distinguish other faces, those of three repentant professors, who brought her flowers and sent her fruit and squab, and Miss Ellingwood, equally repentant and even more attentive, who made Sarah proud by whispering to her that she was going to marry Mr. Sattarlee, and that no one but Sarah was to know it until school was over.
Presently Ethel and Gertrude came, one at a time, and one day, after she was sitting up, Edward Ellis, with his mother and an armful of flowers.
"I never knew that being sick was like this!" she said to her nurse.
"It isn't for everybody," answered the nurse, smiling.
At the end of two weeks she was allowed to get up, and even to study a little. Every one was anxious to help her. Eugene sprang to take her up in the elevator, even though it was not elevator hours, and Mabel and Ellen said awkwardly that if she would come back and sleep in her own room they would be very quiet. Fortunately, they made the offer before Miss Ellingwood, who said at once that she could not spare Sarah. It was amazing how the sentiment of the school had changed during her illness.
Dr. Ellis stopped her and spoke to her whenever he met her in the hall, and one day he asked her to come into his office.
"Sarah," he said, "I had a talk with your brother about you, and what he told me made me very proud to have you here, and more sorry than ever that between us we should have let you get sick. Now every Monday morning I want you to come in and report to me how you feel. No, we'd better make it Friday evening. One is most apt to be tired on Friday evening. And Sarah,"—he smiled at the sudden flush of frightened color,—"you won't climb any more gymnasium beams, will you?"
Sarah clasped her hands.
"Ach, no! I—I was up before I thought. That is the trouble with me. I do things before I think always. I—I promise."
She went out of the office with her old swift step. She felt almost entirely well physically. Mentally, she seemed a stranger to herself. Her illness, her watching Miss Ellingwood's happiness, her association with the older girls, made her feel grown up. She was homesick for the twins and Albert and the farm and her old, childish self.