u don't need to be too sorry for yourself,
any way you look at it. And you could just as well have lost _both_
legs while you were at it, you know." She paused reflectively. "Let's
see: I've got chicken-broth and fresh rolls to-day--I'll send you over
some, after awhile." She nodded, and went back to her housework.

Laurence went on to High School, Madame had her house to oversee, I
had many overdue calls; so we left Pitache and John Flint together,
out in the birdhaunted, sweet-scented, sun-dappled garden, in the
golden morning hours. No one can be quite heartless in a green garden,
quite hopeless in the spring, or quite desolate when there's a dog's
friendly nose to be thrust into one's hand.

I am afraid that at first he missed all this; for he could think of
nothing but himself and that which had befallen him, coming upon him
as a bolt from the blue. He had had, heretofore, nothing but his
body--and now his body had betrayed him! It had become, not the
splendid engine which obeyed his slightest wish, but a drag upon him.
Realizing this acutely, untrained, undisciplined, he was savagely
sullen, impenetrably morose. He tired of Laurence's reading--I think
the boy's free quickness of movement, his well-knit, handsome body,
the fact that he could run and jump as pleased him, irked and chafed
the man new and unused to his own physical infirmity.

He seemed to want none of us; I have seen him savagely repulse the
dog, who, shocked and outraged at this exhibition of depravity,
withdrew, casting backward glances of horrified and indignant
reproach.

But as the lovely, peaceful, healing days passed, that bitter and
contracted heart had to expand somewhat. Gradually the ferocity faded,
leaving in its room an anxious and brooding wonder. God knows what
thoughts passed through that somber mind in those long hours, when,
concentrated upon himself, he must have faced the problem of his
future and, like one before an impassable stone wall, had to fall
back, baffled. He could be sure of only one thing: that never again
could he be what he had been once--"the slickest cracksman in
America." This in itself tortured him. Heretofore, life had been
exactly what he chose to make it: he had put himself to the test, and
he had proven himself the most daring, the coolest, shrewdest, most
cunning, in that sinister world in which he had shone with so evil a
light. _He had been Slippy McGee_. Sure of himself, his had been that
curious inv