‘I said Kit might come; I thought you would like to have him best,’ answered Jill.
‘Kit? Is he going to bicycle over from Crofts?’ asked the child.
‘Why, no,’ explained Jill, smiling. ‘They have all been in the house ever since you were taken ill. Finny invited them to stay, you know, and Auntie Anna too.’
Barbara laughed a little. ‘They’ll never be able to tease me again, now that they’ve stopped in a girl’s school themselves,’ she remarked with a chuckle.
There was a pause, which the invalid occupied in thinking over the things she had been too lazy to consider before. She had a great many questions to ask, but somehow it was too much exertion to ask them. Fortunately, Jill was so clever that she always guessed what she wanted to know without waiting to be asked first; and that saved a lot of trouble. In this way the child had learned that the gymnastic prize was to be divided between Jean and herself; and thinking about the gymnastic prize produced another question from her, rather unexpectedly.
‘Wasn’t it Scales who moved the trapeze away?’ she asked.
Jill looked up surprised. None of them knew how much Babs remembered of what had happened on the night of her accident. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘He has been very unhappy about it, poor man! He writes every day from Hanover to say how miserable he is. But, of course, it was an accident.’
‘Of course,’ said Barbara, looking distressed; and Jill was afraid she had said too much.
‘Shall I write and send him a message from you?’ she suggested quickly. Babs brightened up, and nodded.
‘Tell him it’s awfully jolly to be ill and to have every one doing things for you, and bringing you sweets, and all that,’ she said eagerly. ‘And say that if he wants me to pay him out, just to make us quits, don’t you know, he can think of the awful way I am sure to play my pieces next term.’