Instalment Eighteen

There was a little girl who lived in a big house, with loving parents, attentive servants and all the toys she could desire. Her bedroom was painted sky blue with puffy white clouds on the ceiling and walls. Some people thought she may be the luckiest little girl in all the world. She even had a dog.

Luck was, as a matter of fact, the only thing she never caught. Every morning she woke up under the weather. Not the picture postcard weather of her walls but poor health and illness.

“Nanny,” she would yell.

“Yes ma lady?” Nanny would reply.

“I don’t feel well,” she would answer.

And she didn’t. She wasn’t faking, she was sick. Always. Everyday. Poorly. Off-colour. Infected or ailed.

“Ma lady has a cold today master,” Nanny would tell the Man of the House.

“Ma lady is suffering tuberculosis,” Nanny informed the household.

So it went.

It got to be that the staff made light of it. What else could they do in the face of such a bleak milieu. On the rare occasions they were unwell, they would send word. “I won’t be in, I’m laid up in bed with a malady today.”