Charles Augustus espied their approach afar off and hobbled down the meadow path to meet them with joyous outcry. “Hello, you came to see me, didn’t you?”
“Of course. You are my sweetheart,” the brazen Helen told him.
“My!” he sighed, shaking his head after the manner of an elderly philosopher. “It’s been a long time since I saw you. I expected you every day. Mother said that she guessed you were busy people.”
Mrs. Curtis came to the door at the sound of voices. Her face lighted when she recognized them. “Charles has been watching for you each day,” she told them. “I tried to persuade him that you might have interests besides visiting small boys; but I wasn’t very successful.”
Charles Augustus balked in the pathway, pulling at the hand of Helen. “Don’t let’s go in. It’s much nicer out here. Let’s play as we did the other day.”
Mrs. Curtis nodded understandingly when Helen bowed to her admirer’s wishes, and led Virginia into the house. “It is nice of you to come and see me again so soon,” she told the girl when they were seated in the front room; “especially after the way I must have tired you with my troubles and drowned you with my tears.” Her forced gaiety could not deceive one to whom she had opened her heart. The marks of trouble and anxiety showed too plainly in her face.
Virginia saw the opportunity to transmit the good tidings she had brought. Its very bigness embarrassed her. “I have some good news for you,” she cried, and abruptly thrust the letter towards the older woman, her eyes big and tender with the joy of her message. “There!” she stammered. “Read–read that, please.”
Mrs. Curtis took the letter from Mrs. Henderson and began to peruse it.
It seemed to Virginia that she would never finish.
At last Mrs. Curtis turned towards the girl. Her face was pale and the stress of her emotion weakened her. “I can’t thank you,” she whispered in a queer strained voice. Suddenly her strength swept back to her. Under the force of the joy which enveloped her she spoke in a dead monotone, staring ahead of her with unseeing eyes. “My Charles will walk and play like other boys. In a few weeks–perhaps before Thanksgiving Day–he can throw aside his crutch.”