CHAPTER XVII 155
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 tantrum having passed, she was softened too and met him half-way with her hand, so that it was a sort of making up.