“Like nothin’! Nobody likes ’em,” came with more gloom yet from the boy with legs.
“Oh!” It was almost a cry from the boy without. This was terrible. This was a great deal terribler than he had expected.
“Would one be angry if—if your legs wouldn’t go? Would it make her very, do you think?”
Still thinking of empty things that ought to have been filled, Jolly nodded emphatically.
“Oh!” The terror grew.
“Then one—then she—wouldn’t be—be glad to see anybody, I suppose, whose legs had never been?—wouldn’t want to shake hands or anything, I suppose?—nor be in the same room?”
“Nope.” One’s legs may be kind even to the verge of agony, but how unkind one’s tongue may be! Jolly’s mind was busy with his own anticipated woes; he did not know he was unkind.
“That’s all,—thank you, I mean,” came wearily, hopelessly, from the pillows. But Morry called the other back before he got over the threshold. There was another thing upon which he craved enlightenment. It might possibly help out.
“Are they pretty, Jolly?” he asked, wistfully.
“Are who what?” repeated the boy on the threshold, puzzled. Guilt and apprehension dull one’s wits.