o 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 get any fresh air and die if he liked! It would serve him right!
She felt so sour and unrelenting that for a few minutes she almost
forgot about Dickon