“How s–imply lovely!” she sighed. “I wish I were you! I’d like to go to bed in November and stay there till May. In a room like this, of course, with everything beautiful and dainty, and a maid to wait upon me. I’d have a fire and an india-rubber hot-water bottle, and I’d lie and sleep, and wake up every now and then, and make the maid read aloud, and bring me my meals on a tray. Nice meals! Real, nice invalidy things, you know, to tempt my appetite.” Mellicent’s eyes rolled instinctively to the table, where the jelly and the grapes stood together in tempting proximity. She sighed, and brought herself back with an effort to the painful present. “Goodness, Peggy, how funny your hands look! Just like a mummy! What do they look like when the bandages are off? Very horrible?”
“Hideous!” Peggy shrugged her shoulders and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I am going to try to grow old as fast as I can, so that I can wear mittens and cover them up. I’m really rather distressed about it, because I am so—so addicted to rings, don’t you know. They have been a weakness of mine all my life, and I’ve looked forward to having my fingers simply loaded with them when I grew up. There is one of mother’s that I especially admire—a big square emerald surrounded with diamonds. She promised to give it to me on my twenty-first birthday, but, unless my hands look very different by that time, I shall not want to call attention to them. Alack-a-day! I fear I shall never be able to wear a ring—”
“Gracious goodness! Then you can never be married!” ejaculated Mellicent, in a tone of such horrified dismay as evoked a shriek of merriment from the listeners—Peggy’s merry trill sounding clear above the rest. It was just delicious to be well again, to sit among her companions and have one of the old hearty laughs over Mellicent’s quaint speeches. At that moment she was one of the happiest girls in all the world.
Chapter Twenty Six.
Alas, for Arthur!
A few days later Peggy was driven home to the vicarage, and stood the drive so well that she was able to walk downstairs at tea-time, and sit at the table with only a cushion at her back, to mark her out as an invalid just recovering from a serious illness. There was a special reason why she wished to look well this afternoon, for Arthur was expected by the six o’clock train; and the candidate who had come out first in his examination lists must not have his reception chilled by anxiety or disappointment.
Peggy was attired in her pink dress, and sat roasting before the fire, so as to get some colour into her cheeks. If her face were only the size of the palm of a hand, she was determined that it should at least be rosy; and if she looked very bright, and smiled all the time, perhaps Arthur would not notice how thin she had become.
When half-past six struck, everyone crowded into the schoolroom, and presently a cab drove up to the door, and a modest rap sounded on the knocker.