Betty shook her head. "Please don't let Meg know, but I don't feel like talking, somehow. The girls are so sweet and sympathetic. And I try to be brave, but until I know——"
With magically quick footsteps the younger girl had again crossed the room and her firm arms were soon about her friend's shoulders.
"You are going to be all right, dear. Dr. Barton is almost sure of it and I am quite. There won't be any scars that will last and your eyes—why, you protected them marvelously, and they only need resting. You are too beautiful, Betty dear, to have anything happen that could in any way mar you. I can't, I won't believe it."
And somehow Sylvia was one of those people in whose judgment and faith one must always find healing. Betty said nothing more, only put out her hand with an appealing gesture and caught hold of Sylvia's dress.
"I don't want to talk or to see people, and I'm tired of being read to. What is there for me to do, Sylvia child, to make the hours pass?"
Rather desperately the younger girl looked about the great, sunshiny room. It was not Betty's old blue room, but the room once used as a store-room and afterwards occupied by Esther, into which Betty had moved a short while before her accident. Imagination was not Sylvia Wharton's strong point. She was an excellent nurse, quiet, firm and patient and always to be relied upon. But what to do to make Betty Ashton stop thinking of what might await her at the end of her weeks of suffering must have taxed a far more fertile brain than Sylvia's. However, the suggestion did not have to come from her; for at this instant there was a knock at the door, so gentle that it was difficult to be sure that it really was a knock.
Outside stood the German professor with his violin under his arm. And he looked so utterly wretched and uneasy that Sylvia wondered how he could feel so great an emotion over Betty, although the entire village seemed to be worrying as though in reality she had been their own "Princess." No one could talk of anything else until her condition became finally known; but Herr Crippen was a newcomer and Betty had never cared for him.
"Would the little Fräulein like it that I should play for her?" he now asked gently.
And Sylvia turned to the girl on the bed.
At first Betty had shaken her head, but now she evidently changed her mind.