emotions, and her only wonder now
was why any one had made a fuss about Barbara's accident at all.

But the tears were raining down Jean's cheeks for the first time, and the
hard, queer look was gone from her face. She flung herself away to her
own room, and left Angela to puzzle over her behaviour as best she might.

CHAPTER XVII

SEVEN TIMES ROUND THE WORLD

'Have the girls gone home?' asked the invalid, about a week later. She
had made such strides towards recovery that she was to be allowed her
first visitor that day, and she could not help wondering whether Jean
Murray was going to be the privileged person. Everything had been so
strange and quiet since the morning she had woke up in Finny's bed; and
she had slept away so many hours of the days that followed, that she had
lost count of the time altogether. She seemed to have been lying in a
kind of delicious enchantment, with people doing things for her just as
though she were a princess; while Jill was always at hand to tell her
stories in her beautiful soft voice, whenever she grew tired of lying
still. For Jill was the nicest person in the world to be with, when one
was enchanted; she never bothered, and she always seemed to come to
the rescue just in time, when the pain of being strapped in one position
began to grow intolerable. Then, there was the Doctor too. No one would
have expected the Doctor to turn out such a trump. Only to-day, after
being so strict in the morning about what she was to eat, he had run
in again after lunch to bring her a packet of sweets. They were very
wholesome sweets, as he had assured Jill; but still they were sweets,
and a doctor who was a beast would never have thought of bringing them,
even if they were wholesome. So, clearly, he was not a beast. Even Jill
had been surprised at his coming twice in one day, now that she was so
much better; so that showed that he must be a particularly nice sort of
doctor. For Jill had once nursed Auntie Anna when she was ill, and she
knew a lot about doctors, so she would not have been surprised at his
coming twice in one day, if it had been a usual thing for a doctor to do.
Babs smiled happily to herself as she settled the Doctor's claims to
niceness; then she remembered that she was going to have a visitor after
tea, and she asked again if the girls had gone home.

'Yes, they went five or six days ago,' said Jill, without impatience,
though she had answered the same question once alr