"Why, yes, indeed, of course," fluttered a wan-faced little woman, plainly trying not to look surprised. "Sit down, Mr. Mike," she finished, drawing up a chair to the old stove.
"Thank you, but I—I—" The man looked about for a means of escape.
In the doorway stood the boy with the wheel chair.
"Here, Mr. Mike, mebbe youse wanted dis. Say, Kitty, ain't dis grand?" he ended admiringly, wheeling the chair to the middle of the room.
From the corner came the tap of crutches, and the man saw then what he had not seen before; a slip of a girl, perhaps twelve years old, with a helpless little foot hanging limp below the skirt-hem.
"Oh, oh!" she breathed, her eyes aflame with excitement. "It is—it is—a wheel one! Oh, sir, how glad and proud you must be—with that!"
The man sat down, though not in the wheel chair. He dropped a little helplessly into the one his hostess had brought forward.
"Perhaps you—you'd like to try it," he managed to stammer.
"Oh, can I? Thank you!" breathed a rapturous voice. And there, for the next five minutes, sat the Millionaire watching a slip of a girl wheeling herself back and forth in his chair—his chair, which he had never before suspected of being "fine" or "wonderful" or "grand"—as the girl declared it to be.
Shrinkingly he looked about him. Nowhere did his eyes fall upon anything that was whole. He had almost struggled to his feet to flee from it all when the boy's voice arrested him.
"Ye see, it's comin' 'bout noon—de grub is; an' it's goin' ter be all cooked so we can begin ter eat right off. Dere, how's dat?" he questioned, standing away to admire the propped-up table he and his mother were setting with a few broken dishes. "Now ain't ye glad youse ain't down dere a-waitin' fur a boat what don't come?"