“Just dreadful!” exclaimed Lilian. “What are we to do about it?”
“I have a plan, if there aren’t any bones broken. We’ll talk about it as soon as this is over. I wonder if Hilary could drink some of this?”
“We’ll take her over some. Of course, she is at the pest house now. I believe everybody’s been served and the cakes have been around twice, except these.”
“It is only five o’clock, an hour before dinner.”
Laden with good things, the two girls and Betty started over to the hospital building. “My plan is this,” said Cathalina, “that I take a stateroom, if we can get a reservation, and just put Hilary to bed and take her along. We girls can take care of her, don’t you think so?”
“Indeed we can. The nurse will show us how to bandage her foot. Or perhaps her aunt will go along. I’ll ask her to come to our house.”
“Oh, no, Lilian. They’d better come to our house because we have so much extra room. I’ll tuck Hilary away in her own rose room.”
“Do you suppose Hilary could manage on crutches?”
Aunt Hilary was on guard, sitting outside the building on a rustic bench under a tree. As the girls hurried up with their hands full, she smiled and said, “Hilary had orders to go to sleep, but I will tiptoe in and see.” Carefully she peeped inside the door, to discover Hilary with wide open eyes, and surprise a long sigh from the injured senior.
“You bad child, you did not go to sleep at all.”
“You poor dear, how are you by this time? What did the doctor say about your foot?”
“There isn’t a thing broken, Lilian, but of course it hurts. It’s all bandaged up as tight as anything and he is going to see what the prospect is in the morning.”
“Cathalina has thought up a wonderful plan and we are going to take you with us if your aunt will let us, and we were hoping that she would go too.”
“Yes,” eagerly assented Cathalina. “We girls can take care of you just as easy as pie, put you in a stateroom,—I will arrange for one tomorrow, and Mrs. Garland, if you can _possibly_ come, please come and add to our happiness and Hilary’s comfort by being our guest. I know that you will like my mother.”
“Aren’t you the dearest girls in Greycliff or anywhere else!” exclaimed Hilary. “Everybody is planning for poor me. I feel ashamed of my broken heart, but honestly I thought, it was cracked in two at first. And Aunt Hilary, too, had the plan to take me East.”