Blue Robin, the Girl Pioneer — Part 103

“Are you sure of that?” questioned conscience-stricken Nathalie. “The doctor told me I was to tell you stories.”

“Of course he did, but because he said a thing doesn’t make it so; Mamma told him that, I guess, but you are really to do as I say.”

There was a note of decision in the girl’s voice, which was an intimation that she was used to having her own way. Nathalie somehow felt awkward and uncertain as to what course to pursue, and became suddenly silent, inwardly racking her brains, trying to think of some story that would please a young girl of about the age she judged her companion to be.

“Oh, aren’t you going to tell me about the Girl Pioneers?” was the question that suddenly interrupted Nathalie’s train of thought.

“The Girl Pioneers!” echoed Nathalie, wondering how her companion came to know about that organization.

“I want to tell you a secret,” the princess whispered at that moment. Nathalie felt a slim hand touch her with a clinging pressure on the arm. “Do you know the doctor and I are great friends, we have lots of jolly talks together. Oh, I just love to hear his step; don’t tell, but sometimes I make believe I’m suffering terribly so Mamma will send for him!”

“But you shouldn’t do that!” cried Nathalie, rather shocked at the idea of simulating pain, suddenly remembering a story she had heard of a young girl who had finally come to suffer from the very disease she had feigned.

“Oh, what difference does it make as long as it brings him?” retorted the princess. “You see he tells me of the outside world, and makes me laugh when I have pain, for I do have lots of it sometimes. One day when I was having an awful time with my back he almost made me forget the pain by telling me some of the funny things that have happened to the Boy Scouts and to the Girl Pioneers.

“He told me all about you, too, how you sprained your foot and about your brother Dick, and about your finding the blue robin’s nest in the old cedar. He said you were pretty, too. I like pretty people. I wish you didn’t have that horrible thing on your eyes, I want to see them. Mother said I would have been pretty, too, if I had not had this terrible hump—oh,” she cried abruptly, “I was not to tell you anything about myself, for I’m a horrible thing to look at now.”