“What is the matter with him?” asked her mother.
“Have you not seen him? He is often in the back-yard when Biddy comes to wash in the kitchen. I’ve watched him often. I think it was before he came to this country—but I’m not sure—that a large stone, falling from a wall, so mangled his poor limbs that one of them had to be cut off. I never see him limping about on his crutches while Biddy is washing without thanking God for my happier fate.”
“Why, Annie, it is not probable that he suffers one-half as much as you do.”
“As much pain, do you mean, mamma?”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that. They are very poor; and if he lives to be a man, how can he earn the comforts of life? I need have no care on that account.”
“I daresay he has none. There are several trades that he might learn which require a sitting posture; he might be a shoemaker, for instance. Do not fret on his account, Annie.”
“It seems to me, mamma,” replied Annie, with a thoughtful air, “that his only prospect for the future is to be pushed about here and there in the crowd, until at last he finds a refuge in the grave.”
“What foolish fancies!” said Mrs. Lee, rising, as a noise in the yard below attracted her to the window. “We know nothing about the future, and it is not quite right to make ourselves sad about it. It is hardly like your usual trust in God, to be thus imagining trouble. There’s a little lame boy in the yard, who, I suppose, is Phelim; he seems happy enough. Hark! don’t you hear him sing? He is sitting on the bench behind the clothes-frame, and his mother is hanging out the clothes to dry. Don’t you hear her laugh at what he is singing?”
“What is it, mamma? Can you hear the words?” asked Annie, brightening up, and raising herself on her elbow as she lay on her low couch.