"Did you say anything to my mother?" Margery asked at last.
"No, I gave her mamma's note, and that will tell her," said Trix. "I didn't want her to know I knew, because they were trying to keep it a secret from me."
"It's awful!" shuddered Margery. "You'd better come home with me, Trix, and we'll try to do something to forget it."
"Forget it!" cried Trix, turning on her indignantly, as they began to walk onward. "Do you think you could forget it if you knew those horrid doctors were cutting off your mother's leg, and she had to go on crutches forever? Perhaps they're coming with their knives this minute."
Margery looked faint, Amy began to sob, and Trix quivered from head to foot.
"We shall all go crazy if we think of it," said Margery, bracing herself. "It may not be that at all."
"I tell you I know it is," asserted Trix, so confidently that Margery yielded the point.
"Well, come home, and don't let us talk of it," she said. "I know some people walk very nicely with crutches, and it doesn't hurt to have a leg taken off, because they use ether."
But there was no consoling Trix, and the task of entertaining her proved a heavy one. Jack came, and heard the story with so much excitement that the others were wrought to a higher pitch than ever.
"I'm going to be a doctor myself when I grow up," he announced. Jack would have had more lives than a cat to follow half the callings that at different times he thought that he should like to follow. "I'd like to cut off legs. Now, don't you fret, Trix; your mother'll be all right in a few days, and crutches would only be fun. Think how fast I can go on stilts, and that must be about a million times harder, for you don't have even one foot on the ground. I've thought of a good play. We'll pretend this house is a castle besieged by the enemy, and I'll be a scout. I'll go around by Trix's house every half hour, and come back to let you know how it looks."