elt the lump--I felt it," choked out Colin. "I knew I should. I
shall have a hunch on my back and then I shall die," and he began to
writhe again and turned on his face and sobbed and wailed but he didn't
scream.

"You didn't feel a lump!" contradicted Mary fiercely. "If you did it was
only a hysterical lump. Hysterics makes lumps. There's nothing the
matter with your horrid back--nothing but hysterics! Turn over and let
me look at it!"

She liked the word "hysterics" and felt somehow as if it had an effect
on him. He was probably like herself and had never heard it before.

"Nurse," she commanded, "come here and show me his back this minute!"

The nurse, Mrs. Medlock and Martha had been standing huddled together
near the door staring at her, their mouths half open. All three had
gasped with fright more than once. The nurse came forward as if she were
half afraid. Colin was heaving with great breathless sobs.

"Perhaps he--he won't let me," she hesitated in a low voice.

Colin heard her, however, and he gasped out between two sobs:

"Sh--show her! She--she'll see then!"

It was a poor thin back to look at when it was bared. Every rib could be
counted and every joint of the spine, though Mistress Mary did not count
them as she bent over and examined them with a solemn savage little
face. She looked so sour and old-fashioned that the nurse turned her
head aside to hide the twitching of her mouth. There was just a minute's
silence, for even Colin tried to hold his breath while Mary looked up
and down his spine, and down and up, as intently as if she had been the
great doctor from London.

"There's not a single lump there!" she said at last. "There's not a lump
as big as a pin--except backbone lumps, and you can only feel them
because you're thin. I've got backbone lumps myself, and they used to
stick out as much as yours do, until I began to get fatter, and I am not
fat enough yet to hide them. There's not a lump as big as a pin! If you
ever say there is again, I shall laugh!"

No one but Colin himself knew what effect those crossly spoken childish
words had on him. If he had ever had any one to talk to about his secret
terrors--if he had ever dared to let himself ask questions--if he had
had childish companions and had not lain on his back in the huge closed
house, breathing an atmosphere heavy with the fears of people who were
most of them ignorant and tired of him, he would have found out that
most of his fri