I've got backbone lumps myself, and they used to stick out as much as yours do, until I began to get fatter, and I am not fat enough yet to hide them.

There's not a lump as big as a pin! If you ever say there is again, I shall laugh!" No one but Colin himself knew what effect those crossly spoken childish words had on him.

If he had ever had any one to talk to about his secret terrors--if he had ever dared to let himself ask questions--if he had had childish companions and had not lain on his back in the huge closed house, breathing an atmosphere heavy with the fears of people who were most of them ignorant and tired of him, he would have found out that most of his fright and illness was created by himself.

But he had lain and thought of himself and his aches and weariness for hours and days and months and years.

And now that an angry unsympathetic little girl insisted obstinately that he was not as ill as he thought he was he actually felt as if she might be speaking the truth.
"I didn't know," ventured the nurse, "that he thought he had a lump on his spine.