Katherine bent down, took the small mittened hand that was extended to her and smiled into the grave, searching eyes that were earnestly studying her face.
"And I also have been wishing to see Dorothy," she said, with a note of tenderness in her tone that caused the slender fingers inside the mitten to close more firmly over her own. "I am very fond of little people."
"I should not be so 'little' if I were well," Dorothy returned, with a faint sigh. Then, glancing up at her attendant, she added: "This is my nurse, Alice, and she has to wheel me about because I cannot walk."
Katherine bestowed a friendly look and nod upon Alice; then a great wave of compassion for the little cripple swept over her heart and softened her earnest brown eyes as she turned back to her and remarked, in a cheery tone:
"You have a lovely chair. These rubber tires must cause it to roll very smoothly and make it easy for Alice to wheel you about."
"Yes, I like my chair very much—my Uncle Phillip brought it to me from Germany—and Alice is very nice about taking me everywhere I want to go; but it would be so much nicer if I could walk and run about like other girls," and Dorothy's yearning tone smote painfully upon every listening ear.
"It certainly would, dear," Katherine returned, giving the small hand that still clung to hers a loving pressure, adding, softly: "And sometime you will, I hope."
The child's face glowed at the term of endearment; but her pale lips quivered slightly at the hopeful assurance.
"Oh! no," she said, shaking her head slowly; "I have a double curvature of the spine, and all the doctors say I never can. I—I- -think I could bear that—not being able to walk—but the dreadful pain sometimes makes me wish I wasn't here at all."
Katherine did not make any reply to this pathetic information. For a moment or two she seemed to be oblivious to everything, even to the presence of her companions, and stood looking off towards the western sky, as if communing with some unseen presence there.