“Grmph!” said Mr. Dunne, indicating that he was unimpressed.
“I c-c-c-can’t do it and I won’t!” said Darcy, like a very naughty child.
“Yah paid me three hundr’n sixty dollars, didn’t yah?”
“Yes,” replied Darcy, her heart sinking, at the recollection of the sum which she had invested in assorted agonies.
“Did yah think that was going to buy yah what yah’r after?”
Darcy gulped dismally.
“It ain’t. Money can’t buy it. Yah gotta have gu—grit.” Mr. Dunne achieved the timely amendment in the middle of the stronger qualification.
Darcy’s mind went back to Gloria Greene’s preachment upon the text of “grit”: “You don’t know what the word means, yet.” Apparently she was in a fair way to find out.
“Two minutes gone,” announced the trainer’s inexorable voice.
How she did it she never knew. But under impulsion of the sterner will, she got into her gymnasium suit and was on the floor only three minutes past the hour. The apparatus which she had at first encountered with so much interest and curiosity now had a sinister effect of lying in wait like the implements of a dentist’s office. She speculated, with a shrinking of her whole frame, upon which one would be selected as the agency of the initial agony. Giving them not so much as a look, Mr. Andy Dunne led her to a large, rough mat and bade her stretch out on her back.