looks simply vile. I
am going to give it to--ahem! I mean that's the sort of thing that
always happens to me--it makes me mad! You can't sew at all, I suppose?
What do you do with yourself all day long, now that you are able to get
up?"

Peggy's eyes twinkled.

"I sleep," she said slowly, "and eat, and sleep a little more, and eat
again, and talk a little bit, roll into bed, and fall fast asleep.
_Voila tout, ma chere! C'est ca que je fais tous les jours_."

Rosalind gave a shriek of laughter at Peggy's French, and Mellicent
rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

"How s-imply lovely!" she sighed. "I wish I were you! I'd like to go
to bed in November and stay there till May. In a room like this, of
course, with everything beautiful and dainty, and a maid to wait upon
me. I'd have a fire and an india-rubber hot-water bottle, and I'd lie
and sleep, and wake up every now and then, and make the maid read aloud,
and bring me my meals on a tray. Nice meals! Real, nice invalidy
things, you know, to tempt my appetite." Mellicent's eyes rolled
instinctively to the table, where the jelly and the grapes stood
together in tempting proximity. She sighed, and brought herself back
with an effort to the painful present. "Goodness, Peggy, how funny your
hands look! Just like a mummy! What do they look like when the
bandages are off? Very horrible?"

"Hideous!" Peggy shrugged her shoulders and wrinkled her nose in
disgust. "I am going to try to grow old as fast as I can, so that I can
wear mittens and cover them up. I'm really rather distressed about it,
because I am so--so addicted to rings, don't you know. They have been a
weakness of mine all my life, and I've looked forward to having my
fingers simply loaded with them when I grew up. There is one of
mother's that I especially admire--a big square emerald surrounded with
diamonds. She promised to give it to me on my twenty-first birthday,
but, unless my hands look very different by that time, I shall not want
to call attention to them. Alack-a-day! I fear I shall never be able
to wear a ring--"

"Gracious goodness! Then you can never be married!" ejaculated
Mellicent, in a tone of such horrified dismay as evoked a shriek of
merriment from the listeners--Peggy's merry trill sounding clear above
the rest. It was just delicious to be well again, to sit among her
companions and have one of the old hearty laughs over Mellicent's quaint
speeches. At that moment