‘Oh, rats!’ laughed Kit, who had quite got over his awkwardness by this time, and was rapidly forgetting that she was an invalid and that he had been told not to tease her. ‘He may be twenty-eight perhaps, if you just count his birthdays, but he’s as old as the hills for all that. He was born grown-up; that sort of chap always is.’
‘He’s been awfully kind to me, Kit,’ persisted the child, her troubled look returning.
‘You always think people are nicer than they are, don’t you?’ observed her brother, with gentle scorn. ‘When we had that beast of a housekeeper who used to smack you and Robin, you always said her Sunday bonnet was beautiful, or something like that.’
‘Oh, Kit!’ was all Barbara felt capable of replying, and the boy rattled on heedlessly.
‘That Doctor is the rottenest of rotters,’ he declared in a cheerful tone. ‘He only pretends to like you because you’re what he calls a “case.” If you’d got asthma, now, he’d treat you as if you were putting it all on, and make you feel a jolly humbug. I know him!’
‘Of course, you’re always right, Kit,’ said Babs, growing more unhappy every minute, ‘but–but––’
‘He treated us all like kids the first day you were ill,’ said Christopher, scowling at the recollection; ‘and once, when Jill was blubbing because you weren’t so well, we got in a funk and went off on our own, Peter and I, to fetch him; and he wouldn’t come. He said no one could do anything for you by just coming and looking at you, and we weren’t to disturb him for nothing at all–or some such rot. Then we found that he’d cooked up an arrangement with Finny not to come unless she sent for him. Just like him!’
Barbara was struggling feebly to keep back her tears. She could not think what was making her want to cry so much.
The boy had stopped scowling, and was chuckling softly to himself. Barbara held her breath, and thought that if he would only talk about something else, she might be able to keep from crying. Perhaps the table by the window might stop swimming about, too.
‘We’ve scored one against him at last, though,’ her brother was saying, in a voice that seemed suddenly to have gone a long way off. ‘He must be quite at the other end of the gallery,’ Babs thought. Yet some one was certainly sitting on the edge of her bed, because she could feel the mattress jumping up and down.