When she woke the next morning, her aunt was much as usual. The midnight talk seemed a dream; neither of them alluded to it, and life went on as before till the following Sunday.
Peggy went to school that morning with a fixed resolve in her busy brain.
She lingered behind the other children when school was over.
"Please, teacher, I wants to arsk you somethink."
"Then you shall walk to church with me, Peggy. We are quite early, so sit down again. What is it?"
"Please, teacher, is there no ways of gettin' a cripple cured now, same as the leper capting in the Bible?"
"You mean Naaman? Well, no, Peggy. God does not work miracles now, nor let His servants do it; there is no need."
Peggy's face fell.
"Then poor cripples can't be done good to by no one?"
"Oh yes, indeed," and Miss Gregory's face brightened. "Their hearts may be made well and sound and happy, Peggy; and after all, that is the best part of us, isn't it? We think a lot of our body, with its aches and pains, but it is only a cage. I passed down a narrow dark street yesterday, and outside a window there was a thrush, singing as sweetly as if he were perched on a tree with a beautiful green world all around him. Do you know where thrushes generally live, Peggy? In the sweet country, with flowers and dew-laden grass, and the free, clear air to fly in, with nothing above them but the infinite blue, and other birds to live and play with all day long. That is the world to sing in, and this little fellow was in a smoke-grimed cage about a foot square; he could only see soot and dust and fog, and screaming, quarrelsome men and women, and children who sometimes tried to hit him with stones. Yet he sang his song as merrily and sweetly as any free, country bird. He had a happy heart. And if we have a crippled body, we can have a singing heart."