And Katy Kegan kept her word. She didn't get over her faults right off. She had a hard fight with them; but for the first time in her life she tried hard to get rid of them, and soon showed she had great strength to do what she had made up her mind to do.
But Miss Kennedy was right. All Katy had needed was to be needed. This was her "weight."
She was the very best thing that could have been brought into Jenny Raynor's sad and shut-up life. Jenny was a good little girl, but no little child can be easily content and cheerful who can not go out into the sunlight, and enjoy the sweet full life of the birds and flowers, and the merry games with other little girls and boys. It is very hard for a child to lie always in bed, and be shut out from all other children's lives. Now Katy Kegan was so wild, so merry, so constantly full and running over with bright ideas of how to get fun out of everything and anything, that she was a whole play-ground in her one little self; and she brought all this life into the room where Jenny lay, and made a new world for Jenny there. Katy was as good as a theatre, for she imitated people, and did it quite wonderfully, so that Jenny could tell just whom she meant; that is, if she had ever seen the person Katy was taking off. And Katy would show her all that she had seen or noticed on the street, in just this way by imitating, so that Jenny seemed almost to make new acquaintances with people whom she had never really seen, by means of Katy's droll mimicry. When Katy saw how all her pranks and fun made Jenny laugh and look so pleased, she took good care to find out some fresh thing to amuse her with whenever she went out.
When Jenny Raynor gave the flowers to poor Biddy in the hospital so long ago, she could not know that the little kindness would come back to her a thousandfold through another little girl whom she had then never seen at all.
Least of all would you imagine that an old broken-armed doll fished out of an ash-can could be the means of doing so much good, and leading to so much happiness in so many lives. For the good that began in these little things goes on, and may reach into countless lives in time to come. Nothing stops, and nothing stands quite apart by itself from other things. You will find this out, and think of it more and more, as you grow older. As for Biddy O'Dolan, she is quite a young woman now. Of course she does not play with her doll any more. But she keeps it. No money could buy it, with that little wooden arm on it which Charley made. She calls it her first friend, and I think it was a very good friend, don't you?
the end.
