"Oh! goody! goody! goody!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands and hopping about in a kind of ecstasy. "How lovely! how splendid! how—how—superfluous!" Maggie had been trying to find the longest "grown-up" word she could think of, and as she had that morning heard her father say that something was "altogether superfluous," she now used the word without a proper idea of its meaning.
But the colonel was quite content to take the word as she meant it, and thanked her for her joyous sympathy. He knew that Bessie felt none the less because she was more quiet. She walked round and round him, looking at him as if she could not believe it, and then going up to him, took his hand in both hers, and laid her smooth, soft cheek upon it in a pretty, tender way which said more than words.
"Do let's see you walk a little more," said Maggie. "It's so nice; it's just like a fairy tale, when a good fairy comes and mends all the people that have been chopped to pieces, and makes them just as good as ever; only this is true and that is not."
"Who put it on?" asked Bessie, meaning the new leg.
"Starr put it on," answered the colonel.
"And did you make it, too, Starr?" asked Bessie.
"No, indeed, miss;" said Starr, who still stood at the door with his hat in his hand, and his head on one side, looking at his master much as a proud nurse might look at her baby who was trying its first steps,—"no, indeed, miss; that was beyond me."
"Starr would have given me one of his own, if he could have done so, I believe," said the colonel, smiling.
"So would I," said Maggie, "if mine would have fitted. I think I could do very well with one foot; I hop a good deal, any way. See, I could do this way;" and she began hopping round the table again.
"And you run and skip a good deal," said Mrs. Rush, "and how could you do all that on one foot?"