CHAPTER VII
THE SACRIFICE
"I expect it's one of them abscies again," said Mrs. Rickett sympathetically. "Have you been to the doctor about it, my dear?"
Robin, sitting heaped in the wooden arm-chair in her kitchen, looked at her with a smouldering glow in his eyes. "Don't like doctors," he muttered.
Mrs. Rickett sighed and went on with her ironing. "No more do I, Robin.
But we can't always do without 'em. Have you told your brother now?"
Robin, sullenly rocking himself to and fro, made no reply for several seconds. Then very suddenly: "He asked me if I'd got a headache and I told him No," he flung out defiantly. "What's the good of bothering him? He can't do anything."
"The doctor might, you know," Mrs. Rickett ventured again, with a glance through the window at Freddy who had been sent out to amuse himself and was staggering with much perseverance in the wake of an elusive chicken. "It's wonderful what they can do now-a-days to make things better."
"Don't want to be better," growled Robin.
She turned and looked at him in astonishment. "You didn't ought to say that, my dear," she said.
Again he raised his heavy eyes to hers and something she saw in them—something she was quite at a loss to define—went straight to her heart.