Then she had gone on to say, still skipping about: “He has two holes for his eyes, and they seem to look at me; and his face is as round as a plate; he just looks like the man in the moon smoking a pipe.”
This description had roused Johnnie’s excitement, and he had stretched an eager little hand toward his crutch.
“Please take me to see him! please take me to see him!” he had entreated.
Kitty remembered that she had hesitated. “I am afraid it would give you a cold,” she had said, looking at Johnnie with her head on one side.
“I shall put on my hat and comforter,” Johnnie had replied, grasping his crutch.
Still, she remembered, she had hesitated.
Her mother had said, “Johnnie must not go out in the snow.” But then Kitty had thought: “The sun is shining; and it will be for a moment only.” She did so long for Johnnie to see the snow-man, and he wished it so much. She remembered she had thought: “It can do him no harm just for a moment.”
She had helped Johnnie on with his overcoat, and wrapped his comforter round him, and put on his hat, and together they had gone out. There was no one in the hall, or on the stairs; they had gone out unobserved.
Johnnie had not a notion he was disobeying his mother. His tiny crutch danced merrily along with a muffled thud in the snow. He swung his small body as he hopped along; and he laughed as he looked round on the glistening white garden. So brisk and joyous was his laugh that Kitty had thought it was like the crow of a little cock. When Johnnie saw the snow-man he shouted a feeble hurrah! and he laughed more and more merrily as Kitty danced about and pelted the snow-man with snow-balls. Kitty remembered how she had gone on dancing awhile. Then all at once she noticed that Johnnie looked pinched and blue. She had run up to him, just in time to catch him as he was falling; his arm had lost its power, and his crutch had dropped. She had held him tight; but he looked so pale and thin that she thought he was going to die. Her screams had brought the gardener to the rescue, and Johnnie had been carried indoors. That night Johnnie’s illness had begun, and ever since the doctor had come twice a day.
Kitty had never been able to tell any one of the load that had been weighing on her heart during those nine “dreadful days.” Once she had tried to say it to her mother; but she burst into such a fit of sobbing that the words refused to come. No one had reproached her for having taken Johnnie out, no one had even mentioned it to her; but she knew it was she who had brought all this suffering on him. She who loved him so much! she who loved him so much!