to travel to-morrow."
"She shan't!" declared Nina indignantly. "I wouldn't stay there. I'd
get up and go home if I were coughing and sneezing till I couldn't see
out of my eyes."
"Then they'll roll you up in a blanket," said Connie, who loved to
tease, "with a shawl tied over your head, and carry you down to a cab
as they did with Rosie when she began with chicken pox and was sent to
the fever hospital. You'll have to travel in the luggage van, because
everybody'll think you're infectious, and won't have you in their
carriage. The doctor'll go with you, and keep taking your temperature
and feeling your pulse, and telling you to put out your tongue, and
listening at your bronchial tube all the time. He won't be able to
hear much, though, because of the rattling of the train. Perhaps he'll
take it for the rattling of your breath, and think you're very bad!
It'll be a most exciting journey for you."
"You horrid girl! I haven't caught the cold yet, and I don't mean to!"
said Nina, pursuing Connie, who dodged away round the summer house,
calling out as a parting shot:
"Be sure to let us know how many bottles of medicine you take!"
"I travelled in the guard's van once," said Jessie Ellis. "Mother
couldn't bring me to school herself, and nobody we knew was going to
Wales either, so the guard took me with him. I rather liked it. There
was such a lovely big window, and he let me look at a kitten that
somebody was sending in a basket, and when we stopped at Chester he
got me a glass of milk from the refreshment room. I'm going straight
to Llandudno to-morrow; we're to stay there for three weeks. My
brother's school broke up yesterday, and he's coming here with Father
and Mother this afternoon."
"What are you going to do, Marian?" asked Linda.
"I'm not quite sure. We wanted the Isle of Man, but it's such a
trouble to take the little ones on the steamer. We have to choose a
nice safe place where there's sand for them to dig, and the tide
doesn't come in too fast. Gwennie was nearly drowned at Arnside when
she was five, and it's made Mother so nervous ever since."
"I'm going to learn the bicycle," said Brenda. "My eldest sister's
promised to lend me hers, and lower the saddle. If I can manage well
enough to ride on the road I'm to go with Ada and Willie to Ashmere,
and that's eight miles off. But father's dreadfully afraid of motor
cars. Hazel isn't coming home this summer; Aunt Cicely's taking her a
tour in Switz
|