Why!—why, that was the kind of a step-one a boy’d like to have come home with his father! That was the very kind! While you’d been lying there thinking you couldn’t imagine one, you’d imagined! And it was easy!
The step-one a boy would like to have come home with his father seemed to materialize out of the dim, soft haze from the shaded night-lamp,—seemed to creep out of the farther shadows and come and stand beside the bed, under the ring of light on the ceiling that made a halo for its head. The room seemed suddenly full of its gracious presence. It came smiling, as a boy would like it to come. And in a reg’lar mother-voice it began to speak. Morry lay as if in a wondrous dream and listened.
“Are you the dear little boy whose legs won’t go?” He gasped a little, for he hadn’t thought of there being a “dear.” He had to swallow twice before he could answer. Then:—
“Oh yes’m, thank you,” he managed to say. “They’re under the bedclothes.”
“Then I’ve come to the right place. Do you know—guess!—who I am?”
“Are—are you a step-one?” breathing hard.
“Why, you’ve guessed the first time!” the Gracious One laughed.
“Not—not the one, I s’pose?” It frightened him to say it. But the Gracious One laughed again.
“The one, yes, you Dear Little Boy Whose Legs Won’t Go! I thought I heard you calling me, so I came. And I’ve brought you something.”
To think of that!