He sank back among his pillows, but did not take his eyes from her face.
At last he asked: "What are you sitting bent up that way for? Are you
hiding anything?"

Suzanna flushed. "You're not supposed to ask a visitor if she's hiding
anything; especially when her leg's asleep and she's suffering."

A spasm crossed his face. Perhaps he was trying to smile. He said only:
"Well, put your leg down, then. Seems to me you're old enough and ought
to have sense enough not to sit on it when it's asleep. Put it down, I
say!"

She did not move. "Will you please turn your head away a whole minute?"
she finally asked.

He did so, somewhat to his own surprise. He was unaccustomed to obeying
others. When he turned again, she uttered a cry: "Why didn't you keep
your head turned the other way till I told you to look," she exclaimed,
indignantly. "You don't play fair."

"See here, little girl," he commenced, when his eyes fell to her foot,
which for the moment she had forgotten, a small black-shod foot with two
protruding toes. "Eh, what's that!"

"My toes!" she answered. Her face flamed, then with sudden anger against
him, against circumstances, against everything that had conspired to
spoil this beautiful and long-dreamed-of day: "They're sticking through
my slipper. That's why I had to sit on my foot. That's why my leg went
to sleep. That's why I couldn't go out in the garden with the others."