Mr. Seyton was so much delighted that he wrote Kitty a letter about it, and told her he should consider four times the money he had given her well-spent, since his little son had so greatly improved under her example and influence.
Before this letter, Kitty and all her family had been very fond of Maurice, and you may be sure they were not less so when they learned what a patient child he had become.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
JIMMY BARNARD'S SIN.
THE next summer, when Maurice, having been in F— only half an hour, gaily ran over the hill to the cottage, with a present for Kitty under his arm, he found her not lying prostrate as before, but sitting nearly erect, her fingers busy with her ribbons.
There was a kind of frame attached to the bed, which her physician had sent her from the hospital, and which raised her to any position she wished. Her fingers were not straight, to be sure; but she was able to use them without much pain, for which she was so thankful she could scarcely speak of it without tears.
When Maurice, with rosy checks and sparkling eyes, unfolded his bundle and laid before her half-a-dozen numbers of a popular magazine, and showed her that each number contained patterns of various kinds of fancy work, such as she could easily imitate, she gave a scream of joy.
"Just the very thing I want," she said, over and over again. "It will be such pleasure to make something new, and lay aside these old patterns, which people only buy to lay in their drawers out of sight."
"I sent money to the Editor," said Maurice, entering with all his heart into her joy, "and every month, one number will come till the year is through. There's nice reading in them about birds and beasts. Mamma read some of it to me."