‘Hurly-Burly said they couldn’t tell till the Doctor’s next visit,’ replied Ruth. ‘She hadn’t recovered consciousness when he left, you see.’
‘Don’t!’ muttered Margaret, hastily. She dug the compass a little deeper, and cleared her throat once more. ‘When did you see Hurly-Burly?’ she asked.
‘Just after prayers,’ said Ruth. ‘She said I wasn’t to tell the younger ones, so don’t split. The Doctor stayed till five this morning, and he’s coming again presently. He’s rather cut up, she says.’
‘That Doctor? Don’t believe it!’ said Margaret, shading some of the circles with a pencil.
‘Hurly-Burly said so,’ maintained Ruth, in her resolute way. ‘Perhaps he isn’t so stiff and stupid as he seems. I saw him last night, talking to Jill Urquhart, and he looked quite young and jolly. You never know, do you?’
‘Perhaps not. It doesn’t matter, does it?’ said the head girl, indifferently.
‘Hurly-Burly is pretty bad, too,’ continued Ruth. ‘She thinks it’s her fault, because there was a gap in the mattresses, so that the Babe fell half on the boards. That’s how she cut her head. You see, the mattresses were arranged for the rings, and when Hurly-Burly altered them for the trapeze she didn’t stop to test them to see if they were in the right place. Anybody else might have done the same, with the whole room waiting for her; but still, she is reproaching herself like anything.’
‘She needn’t,’ said Margaret, with quiet vehemence. ‘It’s only the fault of that idiot Scales.’
‘Poor Scales!’ murmured Ruth. ‘I saw him too wandering about the hall; and he was crying just like a baby, and he didn’t seem to mind my seeing him a bit. I suppose foreigners are always like that.’
Margaret curled her lip contemptuously. ‘I shouldn’t waste my pity on him, if I were you,’ she remarked. ‘No one but a foreigner would have anything to cry about.’