"I have been sent with a note to your house, and I'm to stay with you all day till three, and if I go out I'm not to go near home," replied Trix in an awful tone.
"Going to spend the day? I'm glad. What's the matter, Trix, that you look so solemn," asked Margery.
"Don't you know what that means?" demanded Trix, in such a horror-stricken manner that Margery trembled and shook her head.
"I'll tell you, then," said Trix. "You know mamma fell down-stairs three weeks ago and sprained her ankle?"
"Yes, I know that," said Margery.
"Well, the doctors are coming to-day to cut her leg off," declared Trix, and Margery gasped, as did Amy, though she had been told this before.
"How do you know?" demanded Margery, recovering from the shock.
"I'm sure of it," Trix replied. "I've heard how they do those things. They send the children out of the way always, and mamma thought I would never guess, and it would be easier for me to come home and find her leg gone than to be there and smell the ether and hear her groan, and I know that's it, and I shall die, I shall die!"
Margery and Amy looked at each other, feeling helpless in the face of such a calamity as this.