"N-no, only----" Isobel managed to get to her feet, but she leaned dizzily against the scene propping. "Whoever left that old rope here!

They ought to be reported!" She glared angrily at poor Jerry as though the fault must be hers. "I've--I've ruined my dress," she sobbed.

Jerry examined the satin skirt. "There isn't the tiniest spot, Isobel.

But are you sure you are not hurt? Please try to walk."

That was exactly what Isobel did not want to do, for there was a horrible aching pain around her knee. Then she heard Mr. Oliver's voice again. The curtain had been fixed; in a moment----

"_Leave_ me alone! You'd just _like_ it if I couldn't go on----"

"Isobel! Oh, here you are." Dana King stuck his head around the corner.

Isobel let her cape drop to the floor. The whiteness of her face only added to the pleasing effect. "_Whew!_" Lysander whistled. "Some class!

Say, you're _great_! Come on--old Oliver's throwing a fit."

With Jerry's anxious eyes and Dana King's admiring gaze upon her, it was possible for Isobel to walk out upon the stage. Somehow or other she got through her part--miserably, she knew, for again and again Mr. Oliver made her repeat her lines and once, in despair, stopped everything to ask her if she was ill, and did not wish to have Miss Lee take her part.

Isobel did not intend giving up her part to anyone; she gritted her little white teeth and went on.

Upon arriving home she declined the hot cocoa Mrs. Westley had waiting for her and hurried to her room on the plea of being very tired. She sat huddled in her dressing gown waiting, with a white, strained face, until she heard the girls' steps on the stairs. Then she called Jerry.

"Close the door," she whispered, without further greeting. "I want you to promise not to tell mother or--or anyone that--I hurt myself. I didn't hurt myself--_much_, and, anyway, I'm going to be in that play _if I die_!" Isobel had hard work to keep back the tears.

Jerry was all sympathy. "I won't tell anyone, Isobel, if you don't want me to. And let me look at your knee--it is your knee, isn't it? I know a lot about those things 'cause Little-Dad's a doctor, you see." Jerry knelt by the side of Isobel's chair and gently drew aside the dressing gown. "Oh, Isobel!" she cried softly. The knee was badly swollen and the flesh had discolored. "That looks--maybe you ought----"

Isobel jerked away from her. "If you're going to make a fuss you can go to bed! But if you _know_ anything--oh, it hurts--terribly----"

Without another word Jerry went after hot water and towels. Half through the night she sat by Isobel's bed, her eyes heavy with sleep, patiently administering pack after pack. Gradually the pain subsided and Isobel dropped off into slumber.

All the next day Isobel's secret weighed heavily on Jerry's conscience; with it, too, was an uncertain admiration for Isobel's grit. But Jerry wondered if she, even though she might be the Hermia that Isobel was and wear the rose satin--could want it enough to endure the pain silently.

Isobel had begged to be allowed to stay in bed all day and "rest" and her mother had willingly acquiesced, carrying her meals to her room and chatting with her, unsuspecting, while she nibbled at what was on the tray.

Jerry helped Isobel dress. The pain caused by the effort to stand on the injured leg brought a deep flush to Isobel's cheeks and tiny purplish shadows under her pretty eyes, so that she made even a lovelier Hermia than on the evening before. That knowledge, the murmur of admiration that swept through the crowded hall, the envy she read on the other girls' faces, the shy, boyish wonder in Lysander's lingering glance, helped her through the agony of it all until the very end when, quite suddenly, she crumpled into Lysander's quickly-outstretched arms! The last scene had a touch of reality not expected; no one had the presence of mind to ring down the curtain; the girls and boys rushed pell-mell upon the stage.

Graham and Dana King carried Isobel to an empty classroom where she quickly regained consciousness. Her first sensation was a deep thankfulness that the play was over and that she could tell about her injured knee. Jerry had already done so, a little conscience-smitten, and Uncle Johnny had rushed away for a doctor. Isobel looked at her crumpled rose-pink skirts with something akin to loathing and clung tightly to her mother's hand. Graham, in a voice that sounded far off, was assuring her that he could carry her out to the car without hurting her the least bit! And Dana King was asking, at regular intervals, and in an anxious voice, if she felt better. Oh, it was _nice_ to have them all care--it made the pain easier----

...She liked the funny bright lights swimming all around her and the quick steps and the hushed voices.... Mrs. Hicks' little round eyes blinking at her ... the feel of the soft sheets and the doctor's cold touch on her poor, swollen knee ... the swinging things before her eyes and the far-off hum of voices that were really very close and the tiny star of light over the blur in the other end of the room ... the million stars ... the slippery taste of the medicine someone gave her ... and always mother's fingers tight, tight about her own....

"This is very serious," came in a small voice that couldn't be the doctor's because _he_ spoke with a deep boom ... then she went to sleep....

CHAPTER XXII

JERRY WINS HER WAY

Poor, pretty Hermia--trying days followed her little hour of triumph.

While the whole school buzzed over the gorgeousness of her costume, over the satin and silver-heeled slippers, over her prettiness and how she had really acted just as well as Ethel Barrymore, she lay very still on her white bed and let one doctor after another "do things" to her poor knee. There were consultations and X-ray photographs, and all through it old Doctor Bowerman, who had dosed her through mumps and measles, kept saying, at every opportunity, with a maddening wag of his bald head: "If you only hadn't been such a little fool as to walk on it!" Finally, after what seemed to Isobel a great deal of needless fuss, the verdict was given--in an impressive now-you'll-do-as-I-tell-you manner; she had torn the muscles and ligaments of her knee; some had stretched, little nerves had been injured; she must lie very quietly in bed for a few weeks and then--perhaps----

"I know what he means," Isobel had cried afterwards, in a passion of fear; "he means he can tell then whether I will ever be able to--to dance again or not!" The thought was so terrible that her mother had difficulty soothing her.

"If you do what he tells you now you'll be dancing again in less than no time," reassured Uncle Johnny. "Dr. Bowerman wants to frighten you so that you will be careful."

The first week or so of the enforced quiet passed very pleasantly; mother had engaged a cheery-faced nurse who proved to be excellent company; every afternoon some of the girls ran in on their way home from school with exciting bits of school gossip and the whispered inquiry--of which Isobel never wearied--how had it felt to faint straight into Dana King's arms? Uncle Johnny brought jolly gifts, flowers, books, puzzles; Gyp tirelessly carried messages to Amy Mathers and Cora Stanton and back again.

But as the days passed these pleasant little excitements failed her, one by one. Mother decided that the nurse was not needed--there was no medicine to be given--and a tutor was engaged, instead, to come each morning. Her school friends grew weary of the details of Isobel's accident and the limitations of her pink-and-white room; other things at school claimed their attention--a new riding club was starting, and the Senior parties; they had not a minute, they begged Gyp to tell Isobel, to play--they were "awfully" sorry and they'd run in when they could.

Gyp and Jerry, too, were swimming every afternoon in preparation for the spring inter-school swimming meet. The long hours dragged for the little shut-in; she nursed a not-unpleasant conviction that she was abused and neglected. She consoled her wounded spirit with morbid pictures of how, after a long, bedridden life, she would reap, at its end, a desperate remorse from her selfish, inconsiderate family; she refused to be cheered by the doctor's assertion that she was making a tremendously "nice" recovery and would be as lively on her feet as she'd ever been--though he never failed to add: "You don't deserve it!"

One afternoon, three weeks after the accident, Isobel looked at her small desk clock for the fourth time in fifteen minutes. A ceaseless patter of rain against the window made the day unusually trying. Her mother had gone, by the doctor's orders, to Atlantic City for a week's rest, leaving her to the capable ministrations of Mrs. Hicks. That lady had carried off her luncheon tray with the declaration that "a body couldn't please Miss Isobel anyways and if Miss Isobel wanted anything she could ring," and Isobel had mentally determined, making a little face after the departing figure, that she'd die before she asked old Hicks for anything! It was only half past two--it would be an hour before even Tibby would come, or Gyp or Jerry. What day was it?

When one spent every day in one small pink-and-white room it was not easy to remember! Thursday--no, Wednesday, because Mrs. Hicks had said the cook was out----

A door below opened and shut. Footsteps sounded from the hall; quick, bounding, they passed her door.

"Gyp!" Isobel called. There was no answer. Someone was moving in the nursery; it was Jerry, then, not Gyp.

"Jerry!" Still there was no answer. Jerry was too busy turning the contents of her bureau drawer to hear. She found the bathing-cap for which she was hunting and started down the hall. A sudden, pitiful, choky sob halted her flight.

When she peeped into Isobel's room Isobel was lying with her face buried in her pillow.

"Isobel----" Jerry advanced quickly to the side of the bed. "Is anything wrong? What is the matter?"

"I--I wish I--were dead!"

"Oh--_Isobel_!"

"So would you if you had to lie here day in and day out a--a helpless cripple and left all alone----"

Jerry looked around the quiet room. There was something very lonely about it--and that patter of the rain----

"Isn't Mrs. Hicks----"

"Oh--_Hicks_. She's just a crosspatch! You all leave me to servants because I can't move. Nobody loves me the least little bit. I--I wish I were dead."

To Jerry there was something very dreadful in Isobel's words. What if her wish came true, then and there? What if the breath suddenly stopped--and it would be too late to take back the wish----

"Oh, _don't_ say that again, Isobel. Can't I stay with you?"

Isobel turned such a grateful face from her pillow that Jerry's heart was touched. Of course poor Isobel was lonely and she and Gyp _had_ selfishly neglected her. Even though Isobel did not care very much for her, she would doubtless be better company than--no one. She slipped the bathing-cap in her pocket and slowly drew off her coat and hat.

"Do you mind staying?" Isobel asked in a very pleading voice.

Jerry might reasonably have answered: "I do mind. I cannot stay; this is the afternoon of the great inter-school swimming meet and I am late, now, because I came home for my cap," but she was so thrilled by the simple fact of Isobel's wanting her--_her_, that everything else was forgotten.

"Of course I don't. It's horrid and stupid for you to lie here all day long. Shall I read?"

"Oh, _no_--after that dreadful tutor goes I don't want to see a book!"

"Let's think of something jolly--and different. Would you like to play travel? It's a game my mother and Little-Dad and I made up. It's lots of fun. We pick out a certain place and we say we're going there. We get time-tables for trains and boats and we decide just what we'll pack--all pretend, of course. Then we look up in the travel books all 'bout the place and we have the grandest time--most as good as though we really went. Last winter we traveled through Scotland. It made the long evenings when we were shut in at Sunnyside pass like magic. Little-Dad has a perfect passion for time-tables and he never really goes anywhere in his life--except in the game."