Royal Flush

She lay in bed, hugging her shoulders, her knees drawn up to her thin chest, her toes cramped close together with the cold. Sometimes she stretched down her hands to rub them and then she could feel her knees jerking against her ribs. She was small for her age, and if she did not lie stretched out in bed she would never grow up to be tall and straight as a princess should be. She was not quite straight; one shoulder was a little higher than the other (but only a very little, she was told).