His mother laughed until she cried when she told me all this, but there is no solemnity like that of a child, and to me it was a marvellous story.  I conceived a deep admiration for the doctor’s boy, and saw myself with eyes of worship walking reverently by his side.  I suppose my poor lonely heart was hungering after comradeship, for being a sentimental little ninny I decided to offer myself to the doctor’s boy as his sister.

The opportunity was dreadfully long in coming.  It did not come until the next morning, when the door of my room flew open with a yet louder bang than before, and the boy entered in a soap-box on wheels, supposed to be a sledge, and drawn by a dog, an Irish terrier, which being red had been called William Rufus.  His hat was tied over his ears with a tape from his mother’s apron, and he wore a long pair of his father’s knitted stockings which covered his boots and came up to his thighs.

He did not at first take any more notice of me than on the previous day, but steering his sledge round the room he shouted to his dog that the chair by the side of my bed was a glacier and the sheep-skin rug was floating ice.

After a while we began to talk, and then, thinking my time had come, I tried to approach my subject.  Being such a clever little woman I went artfully to work, speaking first about my father, my mother, my cousin, Nessy MacLeod, and even Aunt Bridget, with the intention of showing how rich I was in relations, so that he might see how poor he was himself.

I felt myself a bit of a hypocrite in all this, but the doctor’s boy did not know that, and I noticed that as I passed my people in review he only said “Is she any good?” or “Is he a stunner?”

At length my great moment came and with a fluttering heart I took it.

“Haven’t you got a sister?” I said.

“Not me!” said the doctor’s boy, with a dig of emphasis on the last word which cut me to the quick.

“Wouldn’t you like to have one?”

“Sisters isn’t no good,” said the doctor’s boy, and he instanced “chaps” at school—­Jimmy Christopher and others—­whose sisters were afraid of everything—­lobsters and crabs and even the sea.

I knew I was as timid as a hare myself, but my lonely little heart was beginning to bleed, and as well as I could for my throat which was choking me, I said: 

“I’m not afraid of the sea—­not crabs neither.”

In a moment the big mushroom hat was tipped aside and the sea-blue eyes looked aslant at me.

“Isn’t you, though?”

“No.”

That did it.  I could see it did.  And when a minute afterwards, I invited the doctor’s boy into bed, he came in, stockings and all, and sat by my right side, while William Rufus, who had formed an instant attachment for me, lay on my left with his muzzle on my lap.

Later the same day, my bedroom door being open, so that I might call downstairs to the kitchen, I heard the doctor’s boy telling his mother what I was.  I was a “stunner.”