I can help being ugly about it. There's nothing at
all peaceful about me, I know. Grandma says she thinks I must be strung
on wires, for I _can't_ keep still. There's always a commotion when I'm
around. I've tried and tried to be sweet and quiet like Gail and Hope
and Allee, but it's no use. So now I just try to be happy and cheerful.
That doesn't _always_ work, either. Sometimes I get in an awful stew
about having to sit in a chair day after day, but then I 'member what my
Lilac Lady wrote, and I try to be good again."

"Your Lilac Lady?"

"She was lame like me," the child explained, and promptly regaled her
visitor with the history of the dear friend who had slipped out from
her prison house of pain not two years before, while the icy Mrs. Wood
sat listening with real interest in her heart.

When the tale was ended, the woman whispered, "And now you--"

"Yes," interrupted the child calmly. "I thought for a while I'd be like
her, but Dr. Dick says before many more weeks he thinks I may be strong
enough to try crutches. You see, my legs didn't use to have any life in
'em. I could stick 'em with pins and never feel it, but I can't do that
now. They feel just like they did before I was hurt, but they are too
weak yet to hold me up. I tried it one day just after Miss Wayne left,
and I slumped right flat on the floor. I was scared for fear I'd have to
call Miss Keith to help me onto the couch, and then she would scold; but
after I rested a bit, I lifted myself _easy_."

"What would the doctor say if he knew you did that?"

"O, he knows. I told him. _He_ never scolds. He just said that I mustn't
do it again until he let me himself, and I haven't. He's an awful nice
doctor. He's always playing jokes, ain't he? When I first woke up from
the _antiseptic_, I wanted a drink awfully bad, but Miss Wayne wouldn't
let me have a drop of cold water; so when he came in to see me, I asked
him for just a swallow, and what do you s'pose he did?"

"I don't know," murmured her companion, still interested in the small
patient's prattle in spite of herself.

"Well, he wrote in big letters on a card, 'When you want a drink,
remember there is a spring in your bed.' And then he hitched it to the
foot-rail where I couldn't help seeing it every time I looked that way.
Wasn't that hateful? Of course it made me laugh, and it _did_ help me
think of something else when I was so thirsty that it seemed as if I'd
dry up if they didn't give me a t