“Oh, I don’t know. It’s everywhere; so I don’t see how I ever hoped to escape it. Yet I’ve worn gloves every minute. I think I must have touched it when I went up the mountain trail with Jack. I’m a perfect fright already, and I suppose it has only begun.”
“Is it very painful?” asked Polly, sympathetically. “Oh, you do look so funny, I can hardly help laughing, but I’m as sorry as I can be.”
“I should expect you to laugh—you generally do,” retorted Laura. “No, it’s not painful yet; but I don’t care about that—it’s looking so ridiculous. I wonder if Dr. Winship could send me home. I wish now that I had gone with Scott, for I can’t be penned up in this tent a week.”
“Oh, it won’t hurt you to go out,” said Bell, “and you can lie in the sitting-room. Just wait, and let mamma try and cure you. She’s a famous doctor.” And Bell finished dressing hurriedly, and went to her mother’s tent, while Polly and Margery smoothed the bed with a furtive kick of straw over the offending gopher-holes, and hung a dark shawl so as to shield Laura’s eyes.
Aunt Truth entered speedily, with a family medical guide under one arm, and a box of remedies under the other.
“The doctor has told me just what to do, and he will see you after breakfast himself. It doesn’t look so very bad a case, dear; don’t run about in the sun for a day or two, and we’ll bring you out all right. The doctor has had us all under treatment at some time or other, because of that troublesome little plant.”
“I don’t want to get up to breakfast,” moaned Laura.
“Just as you like. But it is Polly’s birthday, you know (many happy returns, my sweet Pollykins), and there are great preparations going on.”
“I can’t help it, Mrs. Winship. The boys would make fun of my looks; and I shouldn’t blame them.”
“Appear as the Veiled Lady,” suggested Margery, as Mrs. Winship went out.