Edward Phillips Oppenheim

The Mischief-Maker Edward Phillips Oppenheim

The girl who was dying lay in an invalid chair piled up with cushions in a sheltered cornerof the lawn. The woman who had come to visit her had deliberately turned away her headwith a murmured word about the sunshine and the field of buttercups. Behind them wasthe little sanitarium, a gray stone villa built in the style of a château, overgrown withcreepers, and with terraced lawns stretching down to the sunny corner to which the girlhad been carried earlier in the day. There were flowers everywhere-beds of hyacinths, and borders of purple and yellow crocuses. A lilac tree was bursting into blossom, thebreeze was soft and full of life. Below, beyond the yellow-starred field of which the womanhad spoken, flowed the Seine, and in the distance one could see the outskirts of Paris."The doctor says I am better," the girl whispered plaintively. "This morning he was quitecheerful. I suppose he knows, but it is strange that I should feel so weak-weaker even dayby day. And my cough-it tears me to pieces all the time."