"I shall hold you tight all the time, and then you won't be able to go. Shall I speak first or will you?"
"I will listen," said Jean, laughing. "Your little head will be lightened, if I let you relieve it."
"Yes," assented the child gravely, "it will. My head has got to be taken care of—it's the oldest part of me; for as to my body I don't understand it at all, it is going to be quite different and quite new again. Let me tell you, painter, dear. It was last week they made me stand, and two doctors besides Cousin Leslie were looking at me. And do you know, I did it! And it didn't hurt me, only I felt funny afterwards. And yesterday, they made me try to walk, and I actually could, holding nurses hand, only I felt giddy and it made me cry, and I told them I wasn't sure whether God would want me to, for that was going to be His treat for me when I got to heaven. It's all very wunnerful, isn't it? But I keep thinking I will wake up and find I have been dreaming. And then mother is so—so different. She came in one night and put her arms round me and cried, and said, 'Sunnie, we're going to live a new, life, you and I, but we shall have God between us.' I s'pose dear mother is so happy because I'm going to walk; she looks so pretty and young when she smiles."
"And when are you going back to Scotland, darling?" asked Jean.
"I don't know."
Sunnie raised herself up in her cushions.
"I want to go back, and I don't want to go back. I don't like the train. It will be years before I can walk like you, I expect; and oh dear! Oh dear! I should like to pull my soul out of my body, and put little wings on it and fly away! I'm afraid I don't like my feet. They seem so waggly, and make my back ache, and I've got to try, and go on trying, they say, to make them walk!"
Sunnie's brightness for one instant deserted her.
Jean could not bear to see the shadow on her face.
"Oh, Sunnie, think of picking the primroses in the woods when you go home, of chasing the butterflies, of running over the lawn, and playing with the dogs, of running messages for mother."