“Guess, you Dear Little Boy! What would you like it to be?”
Oh, if he only dared! He swallowed to get up courage. Then he ventured timidly.
“A Rec-om-pense.” It was out.
“Oh, you Guesser—you little Guesser! You’ve guessed the second time!”
Was that what it was like? Something you couldn’t see at all, just feel,—that folded you in like a warm shawl,—that brushed your forehead, your cheek, your mouth,—that made you dizzy with happiness? You lay folded up in it and knew that it made up. Never mind about the sorrowful, limp legs under the bedclothes. They seemed so far away that you almost forgot about them. They might have been somebody else’s, while you lay in the warm, sweet Rec-om-pense.
“Will—will it last?” he breathed.
“Always, Morry.”
The Gracious Step-one knew his name!
“Then Jolly didn’t know this kind,—we never s’posed there was a kind like this! Real Ones must be like this.”
And while he lay in the warm shawl, in the soft haze of the night-lamp, he seemed to fall asleep, and, before he knew, it was morning. Ellen had come.