He walked leaning on his crutches for a considerable distance and over a good deal of rough ground, and then came to another smooth spot.
Here a desire seized him to try his staff again. But why should he want to do this? In the first place, he had forgotten in that short space of time the falls it had before given him. Then it seemed as if the staff would be lighter and more easily handled than the crutches. But perhaps the chief reason was that he would not appear so great a cripple with the staff as with the crutches; for above all things else the cripple desires to appear not a cripple, and to seem to walk as if nothing were the matter with him.
So he tried his staff again, and for a time got along quite well.
While he was walking at his best, hardly limping, as he thought, a man came to him saying: