aid Mary sourly. "You just say that to make
people sorry. I believe you're proud of it. I don't believe it! If you
were a nice boy it might be true--but you're too nasty!"

In spite of his invalid back Colin sat up in bed in quite a healthy
rage.

"Get out of the room!" he shouted and he caught hold of his pillow and
threw it at her. He was not strong enough to throw it far and it only
fell at her feet, but Mary's face looked as pinched as a nutcracker.

"I'm going," she said. "And I won't come back!"

She walked to the door and when she reached it she turned round and
spoke again.

"I was going to tell you all sorts of nice things," she said. "Dickon
brought his fox and his rook and I was going to tell you all about
them. Now I won't tell you a single thing!"

She marched out of the door and closed it behind her, and there to her
great astonishment she found the trained nurse standing as if she had
been listening and, more amazing still--she was laughing. She was a big
handsome young woman who ought not to have been a trained nurse at all,
as she could not bear invalids and she was always making excuses to
leave Colin to Martha or any one else who would take her place. Mary had
never liked her, and she simply stood and gazed up at her as she stood
giggling into her handkerchief.

"What are you laughing at?" she asked her.

"At you two young ones," said the nurse. "It's the best thing that could
happen to the sickly pampered thing to have some one to stand up to him
that's as spoiled as himself;" and she laughed into her handkerchief
again. "If he'd had a young vixen of a sister to fight with it would
have been the saving of him."

"Is he going to die?"

"I don't know and I don't care," said the nurse. "Hysterics and temper
are half what ails him."

"What are hysterics?" asked Mary.

"You'll find out if you work him into a tantrum after this--but at any
rate you've given him something to have hysterics about, and I'm glad
of it."

Mary went back to her room not feeling at all as she had felt when she
had come in from the garden. She was cross and disappointed but not at
all sorry for Colin. She had looked forward to telling him a great many
things and she had meant to try to make up her mind whether it would be
safe to trust him with the great secret. She had been beginning to think
it would be, but now she had changed her mind entirely. She would never
tell him and he could stay in his room and never g