'Oh, Kit!' was all Barbara felt capable of replying, and the boy rattled on heedlessly.
'That Doctor is the rottenest of rotters,' he declared in a cheerful tone. 'He only pretends to like you because you're what he calls a "case." If you'd got asthma, now, he'd treat you as if you were putting it all on, and make you feel a jolly humbug. _I_ know him!'
'Of course, you're always right, Kit,' said Babs, growing more unhappy every minute, 'but--but----'
'He treated us all like kids the first day you were ill,' said Christopher, scowling at the recollection; 'and once, when Jill was blubbing because you weren't so well, we got in a funk and went off on our own, Peter and I, to fetch him; and he wouldn't come. He said no one could do anything for you by just coming and looking at you, and we weren't to disturb him for nothing at all--or some such rot. Then we found that he'd cooked up an arrangement with Finny not to come unless _she_ sent for him. Just like him!'
Barbara was struggling feebly to keep back her tears. She could not think what was making her want to cry so much.
The boy had stopped scowling, and was chuckling softly to himself. Barbara held her breath, and thought that if he would only talk about something else, she might be able to keep from crying. Perhaps the table by the window might stop swimming about, too.
'We've scored one against him at last, though,' her brother was saying, in a voice that seemed suddenly to have gone a long way off. 'He must be quite at the other end of the gallery,' Babs thought. Yet some one was certainly sitting on the edge of her bed, because she could feel the mattress jumping up and down.
'We struck that little kid in the yard just now--the one who nearly gave you scarlet fever,' Christopher went on gaily. 'He came to know how you were, or something. Bobby Hearne, I think he called himself. Well, we got him to go to the doctor's house with a message from his aunt, who lives five miles t'other side of Crofts, to say that she had just fallen downstairs and nearly killed herself, and would he go to her at once! Thirty miles there and back, all for nothing! Rather a score, eh? It was my idea, too, not Peter's!'
He turned to Barbara for approval, and found her sobbing bitterly. She had heard every word he said, with horrible distinctness, though his voice had come from such a long way off. She had tried to stop him, but she could not make a sound till she began to cry.