had a jolly time. She'd be game till the end. Hell-fire—that was all stuff and nonsense—she knew that. It would be just nothing—like a sleep. Not even painful: she'd be just shut down in a coffin, and she wouldn't know that they were doing it. Ah! but they might do it before she was quite dead! It had happened sometimes. And she wouldn't be able to get out. The lid would be nailed, and there would be earth on the top. And if she called, no one would hear.
Ugh! what a fit of the blues she was getting! It was beastly, being alone. Why the devil didn't Dick come back?
That noise, what was that?
Bah! only some one in the street. What a fool she was!
She winced again as the fierce feeling of revolt swept through her, the wild longing to fight. It was damned rough—four months! A year, six months even, was a long time. The pain grew acute, different from anything she had felt before.
"Good Lord! what am I maundering on about? Four months I'll go out with a fizzle like a firework. Why the devil doesn't Dick come?—or Liz—or somebody? What do they leave me alone like this for?"
She dragged at the bell-rope.
* * * * *
He came in, white and blear-eyed.
"Whatever have you been doing all this time?" she began angrily.
"I've been chatting with the doctor." He was pretending to read a newspaper: there was something funny about his voice.
"It's ripping. He says you'll soon be fit again, as long as you don't get colds, or that sort of thing. Yes, he says you'll soon be fit again"—a quick, crackling noise—he had gripped the news paper in his fist.
