words had on him. If he had ever had anyone to talk to about his secret
terrors if he had ever dared to let himself ask questions if he had had
childish companions and had not lain on his back in the huge closed
house, breathing an atmosphere heavy with the fears of people who were
most of them ignorant and tired of him, he would have found out that
most of his fright and illness was created by himself. But he had lain
and thought of himself and his aches and weariness for hours and days
and months and years. And now that an angry unsympathetic little girl
insisted obstinately that he was not as ill as he thought he was he
actually felt as if she might be speaking the truth.
I didn t know, ventured the nurse, that he thought he had a lump on
his spine. His back is weak because he won t try to sit up. I could
have told him there was no lump there. Colin gulped and turned his
face a little to look at her.
C-could you? he said pathetically.
Yes, sir.
There! said Mary, and she gulped too.
Colin turned on his face again and but for his long-drawn broken
breaths, which were the dying down of his storm of sobbing, he lay
still for a minute, though great tears streamed down his face and wet
the pillow. Actually the tears meant that a curious great relief had
come to him. Presently he turned and looked at the nurse again and
strangely enough he was not like a Rajah at all as he spoke to her.
Do you think I could live to grow up? he said.
The nurse was neither clever nor soft-hearted but she could repeat some
of the London doctor s words.
You probably will if you will do what you are told to do and not give
way to your temper, and stay out a great deal in the fresh air.
Colin s tantrum had passed and he was weak and worn out with crying and
this perhaps made him feel gentle. He put out his hand a little toward
Mary, and I am glad to say that, her own tantum having passed, she was
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