nd."

* * * * *

On Thursday morning Diana, who had been restless and fidgety in the
night, awoke with a rash all over her face and chest. Loveday, much
alarmed, would not allow her to get up till the authorities had seen
her, and fetched Miss Todd. The Principal, dismayed at the prospect of
infection in the school, mentally ran over the gamut of possible
diseases from scarlatina to chicken-pox, ordered Diana to stop in bed,
and sent at once to Glenbury for the doctor.

Now it happened that Dr. Hunter was himself in bed, suffering from a
severe attack of influenza, and, as it was extremely difficult for him,
at a few hours' notice, to secure the services of a really competent
medical man as locum tenens, he had been obliged to put up with a Hindoo
doctor who was sent by the London agent in answer to his urgent
telegram. It was a case of "any port in a storm", and though Dr.
Jinaradasa's qualifications might be such as only just to satisfy the
board of the Royal College of Surgeons, it was better to send him to
look after the patients than to leave them utterly unattended.
Therefore, when the neat little two-seater car drew up at Pendlemere
Abbey it was not the bluff, rosy-cheeked Dr. Hunter who stepped out of
it, but a foreign-looking gentleman with a very dark complexion. He
explained his presence to Miss Todd, who gasped for a second, but
recovered herself, received him gratefully, and conducted him upstairs
to view his patient. Diana, I regret to say, behaved like the spoilt
child she really was. She buried her head under the bedclothes, and at
first utterly refused to submit to any examination. Miss Todd coaxed,
wheedled, stormed, and finally pulled the clothes away by force and
displayed the rash to the dark, lustreless eyes of Dr. Jinaradasa. He
asked a few questions--which Diana answered sulkily--took her
temperature, felt her pulse, and retired downstairs to talk over the
case with Miss Todd, leaving a very cross and indignant patient behind
him. Ten minutes afterwards the door of the ivy room swung gently open,
and Wendy's interested and sympathetic face made its appearance.

"Di!" she whispered impressively; "I'm coming to see you, even if it's
smallpox you've got. I'm supposed to be practising, but I just did a
bolt. Well, old sport, you do look an object, I must say!"

Diana hitched herself higher in bed.

"You needn't be afraid. I'm not infectious," she remarked.

"They say yo