The Arts mistress said with a sigh—
“Oh, wouldn’t it be heavenly to run away from it all, and have a week-end in the country! The gorse will be out, and the hawthorn still in blossom. What’s the very cheapest one could do it on for two days?”
Mademoiselle said—
“Absolutely, ma chère, there is no help for it. It is necessary that I have a distraction. I must buy a new hat.”
Sophie Blake said defiantly to herself—
“Crippled? Ridiculous! I refuse to be crippled. I want to run, and run, and run, and run, and dance, and sing, and jump about! I feel pent! I feel caged! And all that precious money squandered on injections...”
The six weeks’ course of treatment had been, from the doctor’s point of view, a complete success; from Sophie’s a big disappointment. She argued that she was still stiff, still in pain, that the improvement was but small; he pointed out that without the injections she would of a certainty have been worse, and since in arthritis even to remain stationary was a success, to have improved in the smallest degree in six weeks’ time might be regarded as a triumph. He prescribed a restful holiday during the Easter vacation, and a second course of treatment on her return. Sophie resigned herself to do without new clothes for the summer, and sold her most treasured possession, a diamond ring which had belonged to her mother, so that the second ten pounds was secure. But how was she to pay back the original loan?
Meanwhile Mrs Willoughby was inquiring among her friends for a suitable post, and had played the good fairy by arranging to send Sophie for the Easter holidays to a country cottage on the Surrey heights, which she ran as a health resort for gentlewomen. Here on a fine dry soil, the air scented with the fragrant breath of the pines, with nothing to do, and plenty of appetising food to eat, the Gym. mistress’s general health improved so rapidly that she came back to school with her thin cheeks quite filled out.
“Very satisfactory,” said the doctor. “Now I shall be able to get on to stronger doses!”
“What’s the good of getting better, only to be made worse?” cried Sophie in rebellion.