"To think that I ought to have been sitting inside that bus, and my box ought to have been on that cart!" she lamented. "Oh, I could howl! Mother will have got our tickets for Paris. I wonder if she'll go without me? Oh, why didn't I powder my face and say nothing about it?" "You couldn't have hidden that rash! Besides, it's horribly dangerous to catch cold on the top of measles. Get back into bed, you silly! I'll tell Miss Birks if you don't! Do you want what the doctor called 'complications'? I think you're the biggest lunatic I know, standing in your night-dress by an open window!" Dulcie's remarks were sage if not complimentary, so Deirdre tore herself away from the tantalizing spectacle of the start below and dutifully returned to her pillow just in time to save herself from being found out of bed by Miss Birks, who, having said good-bye to the travellers, came upstairs to condole with the three invalids. "I can't think how we caught it!" sighed Dulcie. "At our performance of _Coriolanus_, I'm afraid," said Miss Birks. "Dr. Jones tells me that all the little Hargreaves are down with it. He was called in to attend them yesterday. Probably they were sickening for it and gave you the infection." "I hope Ronnie won't have caught it!" gasped Gerda. "I trust not, indeed. I shan't feel easy till I have sent to the Castle to enquire about him. It certainly is the most unfortunate happening. But Deirdre may be glad she had not started for Paris. There is nothing so miserable or so disastrously expensive as to be laid up in a foreign hotel. The proprietor would have demanded large compensation for measles, even if he had allowed her to remain in the house. Probably she would have been removed to a fever hospital." "Not a pleasant way of seeing Paris!" said Deirdre, summoning up a smile. "You'll have a holiday there another time, I'm sure. And now you must all be brave girls and try to make the best of things. Fortunately, none of you seem likely to be really ill. We'll do what we can to amuse ourselves." Miss Birks spoke brightly, and her cheery manner hid her own disappointment, though she might justly have indulged in a grumble, for she had been obliged to cancel all her arrangements for a motor tour and stay to attend to her young patients. The responsibility of looking after them and the subsequent disinfecting which must be done would completely spoil her holiday. She was not a woman to think of herself, however, and she put her aspect of the case so entirely aside that the girls never even suspected that her regrets were equal, if not superior to their own. As the doctor had prophesied, both Dulcie and Gerda developed the rash on the following day. Fortunately, all three girls had the complaint very slightly, and beyond a touch of sore throat and sneezing were not troubled with any very disagreeable symptoms.