months and years. And now that an angry unsympathetic
little girl insisted obstinately 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

[[224]]

p223 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p224w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p225

v?