One lung was badly inflamed, the doctor said; it was
a mystery to him, he kept telling them, how she had kept up so long;
an ordinary girl would have given in and taken to her bed long ago.
But then he was not acquainted with the indomitable spirit and pluck
that were Judy's characteristics.
"Didn't you have any pain?" he asked, quite taken aback to find such
spirits and so serious a condition together.
"H'm, in my side sometimes," she answered carelessly. "How long
will it be before I can get up, Doctor?" She used to ask the latter
question of him every morning, though, if the truth were known, she
felt secretly more than a little diffident at the idea of standing up
again.
There was a languor and weariness in her limbs that made her doubtful
if she could run about very much, and slower modes of progressing she
despised. Besides this, there was a gnawing pain, under her arms,
and the cough was agony while it lasted.
Still, she was not ill enough to lose interest in all that was going
on, and used to insist upon the others telling her everything that
happened outside--who made the biggest score at cricket, what flowers
were out in her own straggling patch of garden, how many eggs the
fowls laid a day, how the guinea-pigs and canaries were progressing,
and what was the very latest thing in clothes or boots the new
retriever puppy had devoured.
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