"On wheels!" said Rose. "I often think of my dear old chair, and wonder if it misses me. Hildegarde dear!"
"My lamb!" replied Hildegarde, sitting down by her friend and giving her a little hug.
"I wish you could know how wonderful it all is! I wish—no, I don't wish you could be lame even for half an hour; but I wish you could just dream that you were lame, and then wake up and find everything right again. Having always walked, you cannot know the wonder of it. To think that I can stand up—so! and walk—so! actually one foot before the other, just like other people. Oh! and I used to wonder how they did it. I don't now understand how 'four-leggers,' as Bubble calls them, move so many things without getting mixed up."
"Dear Rose! you are happy, aren't you?" exclaimed Hildegarde, with delight.
"Happy!" echoed Rose, her sweet face glowing like her own name-flower. "But I was always happy, you know, dear. Now it is happiness, with fairyland thrown in. I am some wonderful creature, walking through miracles; a kind of—Who was the fairy-knight you were telling me about?"
"Lohengrin?" said Hildegarde. "No, you are more like Una, in the 'Faerie Queene.' In fact, I think you are Una."
"And then," continued Rose, "there is another thing! At least, there are a thousand other things, but one that I was thinking of specially just now, when you named the trees. That was only play to you; but, Hilda, it used to be almost quite real for me,—that sort of thing. Sitting there as I used, day after day, year after year, mostly alone,—for mother and Bubble were always at work, you know,—you cannot imagine how real all the garden-people, as I called them, were to me. Why, my Eglantine—I never told you about Eglantine, Hilda!"
"No, heartless thing! you never did," said Hildegarde; "and you may tell me this instant. A pretty friend you are, keeping things from me in that way!"
"She was a fair maiden," said Rose. "She stood against the wall, just by my window. She was very lovely and graceful, with long, slender arms. Some people called her a sweetbrier-bush. She was my most intimate friend, and was always peeping in at the window and calling me to come out. When I came and sat close beside her in my chair, she would bend over me, and tell me all about her love-affairs, which gave her a great deal of trouble."
"Poor thing!" said Hildegarde, sympathetically.