CHAPTER IX
MISS POTTS COMES TO TEA
LOVEDAY had been gone more than a week, Geoffrey was nearly well again, and Priscilla was on the mend—the dreadful pain in her head had almost left her, so had her other aches and bruises, but the broken arm bothered her a good deal, and she was very weak and languid, so that it was still necessary that she should be kept very quiet and not be allowed to exert herself.
She had reached the stage, though, when it becomes tiresome to keep still; when one wants to do things, yet feels one can’t; or others want one to do things, and one feels one cannot possibly do them, and altogether one is cross and teasy without knowing why.
To read made her head ache, and it was tiresome to hold up a book with only one hand, and to have none to turn the pages with; neither could she very well play with her dolls, or her bricks, or anything with but one hand. Her mother read to her sometimes, and talked to her; but, of course, she could not do so all the time, and Priscilla would have grown tired even if she could.
“Mother,” she said one day, after every one had tried to think of something to amuse her, “I know what I would like very, very much indeed!”
“Well, dear, tell me what it is?”
“I would like to ask Miss Potts to come and see me. I like her so much, and I think she must miss me, because I often went in to talk to her to cheer her up after I knew she was an ‘only’!”
“Very well, darling; I am going out presently, and I will ask her. I don’t quite know, though, how she could manage to leave her shop.”
“I don’t think it would matter much if she did—not if she came while the children are in school, ’cause there isn’t any one else to go and buy much—except on Saturdays.”
“I see. Well, I will go and talk to her about it, and see what she has to say.”