"How queer you didn't know! It was three days ago. I strained myself somehow or other, and it kept getting worse, till it's about as bad as it was at first."

"Oh, Billy!" Theodora's overstrained nerves were giving way. After her outbreak, after the shame which had followed and the week when she had missed her friend daily and hourly, this last was too much. After all her protestations of loyalty, he had been ill and suffering, and she had not known it, nor been near him at all.

"And you have to lie flat on your back, like this?" she demanded almost fiercely.

"Yes."

"And it hurts?"

"Yes."

"Much?"

"Some--yes, a good deal."

"All the time?"

He nodded.

"And I didn't know it, and you wanted to see me, and I never came near you." All at once, Theodora's head went down on her hands. "What did you think, Billy?"

"I thought you'd got sick of me," he answered frankly. "I couldn't see any other reason you should go back on me just now. I did miss you like fury, Ted."

"Why didn't you send word to me?"

He looked up at her with an odd little smile.

"Wait till you are flat on your back and no special good, and you'll know why."

His smile hurt her. She laid her hand on his again.

"Did you think that, Billy, really and truly?"

"Yes; that is, sometimes, but I don't now. You've stuck to me pretty well, Teddy."

"Do you know what was the reason I didn't come?" she asked impulsively.

"No."

"It was this." She pulled off her hat and sat before him, a strange, forlorn-looking Teddy, with her cropped head and tear-stained eyes.

"Jove!"

"Yes, I did it," she confessed bluntly. "I was mad at Hope and cut it off."

The boy lay staring at her in surprise. She drooped her head, unable to meet the amused look in his eyes.

"It's awful; isn't it?" she asked.

"Why, no; I don't think it is so bad," he said consolingly. "It isn't exactly pretty, and you look a good deal like a boy. When I get used to it, though, I think I shall rather like it. It seems to suit you, somehow."

She looked up gratefully.

"What a dear old fellow you are, Billy! That was the reason I didn't come. I couldn't bear to have you see me, or to know about it. Now I don't mind anybody else. I hated to have you know I was so horrid."

"You are peppery, Teddy, for a fact. Don't get in a tantrum again, or you will cut off your nose next, and that won't grow again." He tried to laugh; but his color was coming and going, and Theodora saw that he was suffering.

She sprang up and stooped to arrange the cushions about him.

"What is it?" she asked, startled at his changing color.

"It's the old pain. It won't last but a minute."

"What does papa say?" she asked, when he was easier again.

"Nothing, except that it's a strain and that I must keep quiet."

"How long?"

"That's the worst of it." There was an utter dreariness in his tone which Theodora had never heard before. "I didn't mean you to know; but I was going to surprise you all by walking over to your house, Thanksgiving morning, and now--" he hesitated, and, boy as he was and a plucky boy, too, two great tears came and splashed down on Theodora's fingers; "now he says it will be two or three weeks before I can even sit up again."

That night, when Theodora rose to go home, she turned back to the lounge once more, after she had said good-by to Mrs. Farrington.

"You must come in, every day," Mrs. Farrington said. "Will is better already for your being here."

Theodora herself saw the change, as she bent down to shake hands. He looked brighter and better than when she had come, more animated and eager, more like his old self.

"Billy," she said steadily; "I want you to promise me something."

"What's that?"

"That, if the time ever comes again when you want me, or when I can help you, you'll send for me, without waiting. I'm only a girl, I know; but I'm better than nothing, and I never go back on my friends."

Billy smiled up at her benignly.

"No, Ted; I don't believe you ever do. And there are times when 'only a girl' is about as good as anything you can find. Come again."

"I will," she answered.

She kept her word so well that, during all Billy's imprisonment, she never failed to spend a part of each day with him. It did her good to feel that some one counted on her coming and was the better for it. It made her steadier, more reliable; and, in the long, dreary days that followed, she gained a new gentleness from her constant a.s.sociation with her suffering friend. There were days when he was irritable and nervous, days when he was despondent, days when he was too weak with pain to talk; but, during all this time, Theodora was loyal to him, soothing him, cheering him up and bearing his ill-temper with a gentleness which surprised even herself, ministering to his comfort and content to an unmeasured degree, and at the same time gaining a quiet womanliness which she had never known before.

And the days pa.s.sed on, and the youth and the maiden reaped from them all a harvest of good, a mutual gain from their frank intimacy.

CHAPTER NINE