"Yes, but I want to see grandpa and Uncle Horace now, please; they just kissed me in the car, and that was all."
They came in at once, full of tender sympathy for the crippled, suffering child.
"They're so kind," sobbed Molly, as they left the room.
"Yes, you can appreciate everybody's kindness but your mother's," remarked Enna in a piqued tone, "and everybody can be sorry for you, but my feelings are lost sight of entirely."
"Oh, mother, don't!" sighed Molly. "I'm sure I've enough to bear without your reproaches. I'd appreciate you fast enough, if you were such a mother as Cousin Elsie."
"Or as Aunt Louise, why don't you say?" said Mrs. Conly, coming in, going up to the couch, and kissing her. "How d'ye do, Enna?"
"Yes, even you are sorrier for me than mother is, I do believe!" returned Molly, bursting into tears; "and if it was Isa or Virgy you'd be ever so good to her, and not scold her as mother does me."
"Why, I'm just worn out and worried half to death about that girl," said Enna, in answer to her sister's query. "She'll never walk a step again—all the doctors say that." At these words Molly was almost convulsed with sobs, but Enna went on relentlessly. "And when they asked her how it happened, she up and told them her high-heeled shoes threw her down, and that she didn't want to wear them, but I made her do it."
"And so you did, and I only told it because one of the doctors asked if I didn't know they were dangerous; and when I said yes, he wanted to know how I came to be so foolish as to wear them."
"And then he lectured me," Enna went on, "as if it was all my fault, when of course it was her own carelessness; for if it wasn't, why haven't some of the rest of us fallen down. Accidents happen when nobody's to blame."