“Shall we call it an engagement?” said the doctor, looking quickly in Creepy’s face again.
“What did you come here for?” cried Creepy, suddenly, with eyes and voice. “Why do you ask me such things? You never saw me before!”
The doctor rose up and stood before his chair, stretching himself to his full height.
“Yes I have seen you before, and you have seen me. You have seen how strong I am, how light and quick my step is, how full of life all my veins are, and how that makes it a pleasant thing for me to live. And I have seen how weak and tired you are, and how your life is only to sit here and bear pain, as no child ought to do. And that is why I came, to see what can be done about it all! Don’t you know that sick people get well, and weak people strong, and crooked limbs are made straight, sometimes?”
The burning eyes were dropped now, and Creepy only smiled and shook his head.
“Don’t you know that, my little man?”
“All but me.”
The doctor stooped and lifting the lame child gently from his chair, gathered him up in his arms and held him, looking down into his face.
“Do you know you are mistaken? I do not think we can make things altogether straight with you, that is true; but I think we can send that pain where it will never find its way back again, and put strength into those limbs, so that you shall go and come with the rest, and find out what it really is to live and move in God’s world; that is what I want to see about. I do not feel any doubt we shall succeed. Shall we try?”
The doctor could not see under the great drooping eyelids and the quivering lashes, but Creepy scarcely seemed to breathe. Not with the thought of what the doctor had said, for his words only seemed a sound passing out into the sunshine; their meaning did not touch him as even a possibility. But he was speaking, was here, was holding him tenderly in his arms—that by itself was bewildering enough—he could only hold his breath and lie still.