d walk down to the corner with
the aid of a crutch. But the limbs grew flexible at last, and he went
bounding off to his labors, thanking God that He had not made him a
cripple. The poor old man who hobbles about Broadway upon one leg, owed
many a penny to Pat's rheumatic siege, and Pat acknowledged it to
himself as he lifted his free steps and took the way to the store.

CHAPTER XXII.

Mrs. Bates was very lonely after Nannie went to nurse Dora, but she
could not decline so good an offer, and hardly thought of herself as she
felt what a nice home it would make for the child. Mrs. Minturn
permitted Nannie to go often to see her mother, for she felt a parent's
sympathy for the forlorn woman who was bereft of all her children, and
she would herself go and sit beside Dora's little crib, when the babe
was wakeful, rather than deprive Nannie of her visit to her home. She
knew how bitter a thing it was to be separated from the little ones that
shed such a halo over the house, and she could easily spare the girl one
hour an evening to cheer the lonely and widowed. Dora would object, and
cling to the young nurse that she had so soon learned to love; but the
clasp would grow weaker and weaker, until the non-resisting form could
be placed upon the bed, and Nannie always hastened back before there was
any real need. It was a happy hour for her mother and Pat--the one
Nannie spent with them. The table was drawn out and the books were upon
it, and the low voice read or chatted, and a merry ringing laugh was
often heard in the attic--and then Pat would go back with the child to
see that she was safe, and woe betide the boy that dared an insulting
word or look.

"Wasn't he a brave lad, though?" said Nannie, as she told Biddy about
the water, and the beating Pat gave the impudent troop of boys.

Biddy didn't dispute it, but she always went off into some rhapsody
about a "bonnie lad she had left in ould Ireland, jist the boy that
would be afther breaking the heart of ye, Nannie!"

Nannie had not reached that point yet, though, and was quite as
contented watching the sleeping babe, as if there were no such trysting
places as sidewalks, and no enamored boys and girls talking over the
black railings about an Erin of their own yet to be established in the
new country. She knew what it was to love her mother and the dead child,
whose memory would never die out of her warm heart, and good Mr. Bond,
who had always seemed to her so