“And you have a father and mother both, haven’t you?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Kitty.
“Oh, I’ve only mother, but she is good as two. Must you go now? And I wonder if I shall ever see you again?”
“Yes, you will see me again,” answered Kitty cheerily; and then, moved by a sudden impulse of her kind, frank young heart, she bent over and touched her lips to the bright, bonny face of the poor girl who must sit prisoner there for ever, and yet who kept this bright cheerfulness all the time.
“Oh mamma, I’ve had a lesson,” cried Kitty, bursting into her mother’s room like a fresh wind, “and Tom has taught it to me; and he isn’t he at all—she’s a girl just my age, and she can’t walk—not a step since she was six years old.”
And then Kitty told all the sad, tender little story, and got to crying over it herself, and made her mother cry, too, before she was through.
After dinner she sat half the evening in a brown study. Finally she came out of it, and began talking in her usual impulsive manner.
“Can’t we have them here to Thanksgiving, mamma? There’s not a single pretty thing in that house except Tom herself, and the rose-bush; and every thing did look so bare and clean and poverty-stricken; and I know they’ll never afford a good dinner in the world. Oh, say yes, mamma, dear! I know you’ll say yes, because you’re such a dear, and you love to make every one happy.”