head back on the pillow. She had talked herself
tired. How queer that was, too, when she had talked for hours to the
babies.

"Would you like me to read to you?" inquired Miss Armitage.

"Oh, yes, if it's verses. There's a curious music in verses that goes
all through you, keeping time to something in your brain. I just love
them."

The lady found "Songs of Seven" with its musical lilt and the child
listened wide-eyed as if it made pictures to her. Then the doctor came
in and was very much pleased over her improvement.

But the next day she was quite languid again. She took a few steps
when suddenly everything swam before her eyes and she would have
fallen but for Jane's strong arm.

"Oh, you don't suppose I can never walk any more?" she cried in
affright. "For there was a nurse at the Home who fell down that way
and she had been very well, too. But something happened to her hips. I
can't think what they called it, and she never could walk again. They
had to send her to the hospital and she could get about just a little
on crutches. Oh, dear" and Marilla began to cry.

"There don't think of such a thing. It was only weakness," comforted
Miss Armitage. "Once when I was ill I fainted a great many times for
just nothing at all. You have not had a chance to get strong yet."

Marilla recalled seeing the nurse brought down stairs on a stretcher,
they called it. And the doctor said she could never walk again. Oh,
how dreadful that would be. She turned her face over on the pillow and
let the tears drop silently, and she could not swallow any supper,
something lay so heavy on her breast. Miss Armitage kissed her, and
Marilla twined her arms around the soft white neck hardly hidden by
the lace. There had never been any one to love during the later years.
And her mother had been busy and away in a store.

"Don't worry, dear," said the soothing voice. "God takes care of us
all."

The sun was shining the next morning and the next door canary hanging
out on the back porch was singing with all his might and main. Such
long sweet warbles, such a merry staccato with little pauses, as if he
asked--"Now, what do you think of that?" and the child laughed with a
sense of glee. Oh, how nice it would be to be a bird. But she wouldn't
want to live in a cage _all_ the time.

Jane came and gave her a bath, rubbed her softly but thoroughly across
the hips and up and down the spine, holding her up with one strong
arm. Marilla took a f