Bonny-Gay stated it and explained:
“I heard that Jimmy boy call you. How old did you say?”
“I didn’t say, but I’m eight, going on nine.”
“Why, so am I. I’m a ‘Sunday’s bairn’.”
“And I!” cried Mary Jane, breathlessly.
After that confidences were swift; and, presently, each little girl knew all about the other; till, in one pause for breath, the cripple suddenly remembered the baby. Then she caught up her crutches, swung herself upon them, and started off in pursuit of him.
Bonny-Gay watched her disappear in the midst of the crowd of children, who had all shyly held aloof from herself, saw how they clung about her and how some of the tiniest ones held up their faces to be kissed. She saw her stoop to tie the ragged shoe of one and button the frock of another; saw her pause to listen to the complaint of a sobbing lad and smartly box the ears of his tormentor. Then another glimmering of the Gray Gentleman’s meaning, when he called these two “sisters,” came into Bonny-Gay’s mind.
“She has to take care of the children down here just as I do in our park. I suppose we two are the only ones have time to bother, but how can she do it! Her face is so pretty—prettier, even, than Nettie’s, but I dare not look at the rest of her. I just dare not. Poor little girl, how she must ache! Supposing I was that way. My arms stretched way down there, and my feet shortened way up here, and my back all scrouged up so! Oh! poor, poor Mary Jane! It hurts me just to make believe and she has it all the time. But here she comes back and I mustn’t let her see I notice her looks. I mustn’t, for anything. It’s bad enough to have her body hurt, I mustn’t hurt her feelings, too.”
However, there was no sign of suffering about the little cripple as she returned to the side of her guest, dragging the soap-box wagon behind her and recklessly rolling the baby about in it, so eager was her advance. There were tears in Bonny-Gay’s eyes for a moment, though, till she caught sight of the baby and heard Mary Jane exclaim:
“Did you ever see such a sight? What do you s’pose mother will say? The teacher set him in the sand-box and somebody gave him a stick of ’lasses candy, and he’s messed from head to foot. But isn’t he a dear?” and dropping to the ground she caught the little one to her breast and covered his sandy, bedaubed countenance with adoring kisses.