She bustled out of the room, and Sylvia stared into space with a doleful face.
“It’s all very well to ask me to be cheerful, when she tells me in the same breath that I am ruining her, and her beloved furniture. I’m sure I didn’t want to be ill! If dad were at home he would never reproach me.” The tears were very near falling once more, but just at that moment there came the sound of a manly footstep, and in walked the doctor, large, stout, beaming, a very incarnation of health and good spirits.
“Well, and so nurse tells me you think of going to the seaside to-day! You are getting tired of yourself, and want a change—eh? I don’t wonder at that. You think you would enjoy having a little peep at the world again? Let me feel your pulse and see if I can allow it.”
The pulse was quite satisfactory, so nurse and doctor promptly set to work to spread blankets on the couch, draw forward screens to prevent possibility of draught, and bank up pillows to allow a glimpse of the road beneath. Then Sylvia clasped her arms tightly round the nurse’s neck, the doctor raised her feet, there was a moment’s dizzy confusion, while her eyes swam and her ears hummed, and there she lay on the sofa, as at the end of a long and arduous journey, while her attendants wrapped her up in blankets and eiderdowns, and looked anxiously to see how she had borne the exertion. The little face was very white, but bright with pleasure and excitement, and the offer of smelling salts and cordials was laughed aside with good-natured contempt.
“No, no—I’m all right—just a little breathless after that whirl through space. How funny the room looks! I’ve looked at it broadways so long that I can’t recognise it from this point of view. Is that the water-bed? What a strange-looking thing! just like a lot of hot bottles joined together. It is comfortable over here! I’d like to stay all day. Oh, oh, oh! here’s the butcher’s cart! How lovely it is to see the world again!”
The jovial-looking doctor shrugged his shoulders as he took his departure. The poor child must have been in sad straits indeed if she found the sight of a butcher’s cart so exciting! He would have enjoyed sitting beside her and listening to her rhapsodies, but was obliged to hurry off to other patients, while Whitey seated herself beside the couch, and began hemming strips of muslin to be made into those starched cap-strings which were tied so jauntily beneath her chin.
“Oh, Whitey,” cried Sylvia, “I feel better already! It all looks so bright, and cheerful, and alive! I’m simply dying to go out for a drive, and to see the people walking about. I used to think this such a dull little road, but now it seems quite gay and fashionable. I’ve seen three perambulators already, to say nothing of the butcher’s cart! I wish the Number Seven lady would go out for a walk, and let me see her autumn clothes. She wears all the colours of the rainbow, and looks like a walking kaleidoscope... Whitey! Oh, Whitey!”
The weak voice rose to a squeal of excitement, and the nurse bent forward curiously to discover the reason of so much agitation. To the ordinary eye, however, there was nothing to be seen, for Sylvia’s outstretched hand pointed to a semi-detached villa in no way distinguished from the rest of the row.
“It’s taken!” she cried—“Number Three is taken! It has been empty for a year, and I have simply longed for someone to come, for it is the most convenient house to watch, and I take such interest in the neighbours. It’s pretty lonely for me here, for I haven’t a single girl-friend. Father kept me at school in Brussels for the sake of learning the language, but almost all the girls were French or American, and none of them live in London. Aunt Margaret introduced me to some ‘young friends’ when I first arrived, but I thought they were horrid prigs, and I suppose they thought I was mad, so the friendship didn’t progress. I amuse myself with my music and in dreaming of the time when father comes home, but every time a house changes hands I have a wild hope that there will be a girl in the family, who would be lively and jolly like myself. I’m very nice when I’m well, Whitey—I am really! You needn’t laugh like that. I daresay you would be fractious yourself if you had to lie in bed for months and months, and had an old griffin to mount guard over you, who made you eat against your will, and bullied you from morning till night... What was I talking about last? Oh yes, I wanted to ask if you had seen anything of these new people, and what they were like.”
“I haven’t had much time for looking out of the window, but I have seen a young lady and gentleman going out and in. I think they are a newly-married couple, for they look very juvenile and affectionate. He is dark and handsome, and she is fair, and I should say very pretty.”