The nurse was sitting sewing by the window. Roddy lay, happily, thinking that now at last that jolly bad pain really did seem to have been left behind. He was immensely, wonderfully better; it would not be long, surely, before he was quite fit again, before he....
Then down it swung, swung like an iron door shutting all the world away from him, inexorable—"Always on your back ... never get up again!"
His hand gripped the bed-clothes.
"Nurse."
"Yes?"
"Tell me—am I dreaming or did someone say something the other day about—about my never being able, well, to toddle again, you know?"
"I'm afraid——"
"Thanks."
He closed his eyes and then summoned all the grit and determination that there was in him to face this fact. He could not face it. It was as though he were struggling up the side of a high slippery rock—up he would struggle, up and up, now he was at the top, down he would slip again—it could not, oh! it could not be true!
It was true. As the days passed grimly in silence, he accepted it. It had always been his creed that in this world there was no place for the maimed and the halt. He was sorry for them, of course, but it was better that they should go; they only occupied room that was intended for lustier creatures.