If that were “he,” he had a very singular voice for a man.
“I guess mamma was right after all,” thought wilful Kitty. “It’s rather curious how often mamma is right, when I come to think of it.”
She opened the door, and saw, not Mrs. Graham’s husband, nor yet her son, but a girl, whose face looked as if she might be about Kitty’s own age, whose shoulders and waist told the same story; but whose lower limbs seemed curiously misshapen and shrunken—no larger, in fact, than those of a mere child. The face was a pretty, winning face, not at all sad. Short, thick brown hair curled round it, and big brown eyes, full of good-humor, met Kitty’s curious glance.
“I am Tom,” the same musical voice—which made Kitty think of a bird’s warble—said, in a tone of explanation. “I can’t get up to open the door because, don’t you see, I can’t walk.”
“And why—what—Tom”—
Kitty struggled desperately with the question she had begun to ask, and Tom kindly helped her out.
“Why am I Tom, do you mean, when it’s a boy’s name; or why can’t I walk? I’m Tom because my father called me Tomasina, after his mother, and we can’t afford such long names in this house; and I can’t walk because I pulled a kettle of boiling water over on myself when I was six years old, and the only wonder is that I’m alive at all. I was left, you see, in a room by myself, while mother was busy somewhere else, and when she heard me scream, and came to me, she pulled me out from under the kettle, and saved the upper half of me all right.”
“Oh, how dreadful!” Kitty cried, with the quick tears rushing to her eyes. “It must have almost killed your mother.”
“Yes; that’s what makes her so still and sober. She never laughs, but she never frets either; and oh, how good she is to me!”