she walked. Your little daughter walked. How can anyone know whose little daughter always walk—”

“She never walked.” It was very soft now, and the throb had crept into it that was in the mother-voice and in Judith’s heart. “I only had her a year.”

They were both mother-voices! Judith could not see, but she felt sure the two sat up a little nearer to each other and their hands touched.

“Oh!—then you can know,” the first voice said, after a tiny silence. “I will tell you all about it—there have only been a few I have wanted to tell. It has seemed almost too precious and—and—sacred.”

“I know,” the other said.

“But you must begin right at the beginning, with me—at the time when my little daughter was a year old, when the time came for her to learn to walk. That is where my story begins.”

“And mine ends. Go on.”

“Well, you can see how I must have watched and waited and planned.”

“Oh, yes, and planned—I planned.”

“You poor dear!” Another tiny silence-space, while hand crept to hand again, Judith was sure. Then the story went on.

“You say I ought to have known. Everybody says I ought to have. They knew, they say, and I was the baby’s mother. The baby’s mother ought to have known. But that was just why. I was her mother—I wouldn’t know. I kept putting it off. ‘Wait,’ I kept saying to myself. ‘She isn’t old enough to walk yet; when she is old enough, she will walk. Can’t you wait?’ And I waited. When they did not any of them know, I kept trying to stand her on her poor little legs—I wouldn’t stop trying. When she was fifteen months—sixteen months—seventeen, eighteen—when she was two years old, I tried. I would not let them talk to me. ‘Some children are so late in walking,’ I said. ‘Her legs are such little ones!’ I would catch her up from the floor and hug her fiercely. ‘They sha’n’t hurry you, my darling. You shall take all the time you want. Then, some day, you’ll surprise mother, won’t you? You’ll get up on your two little legs and walk! And we’ll take hold of hands and walk out there to all those bad people that try to say things to us. We’ll show them!’ But we never did. When she was two and a half I began to believe it—perhaps I had believed all along—and when she was three, I gave it up. ‘She will never walk,’ I told them, and they let me alone. There was no more need of talking then.”

Judith was leaning forward, straining her ears to hear. She had forgotten Mrs. Ben’s tarts—she had forgotten everything but the story that was going on out there, out of her sight. It was so much—oh, how much it was like Blossom’s story! When Blossom was three, Judith had given up, too. But not till then. She had kept on and on trying to teach the helpless little legs to walk. Father and mother and the boys had given up, but Judith had kept on. “She shall walk!” she had said.

Sometimes she had taken Blossom down to the beach, tugging her all the way in her own childish arms, and selected the hardest, smoothest stretch of sand. “Now we’ll walk!” she had laughed, and Blossom had laughed, too. “Stand up all nice and straight, darling, and walk all beautiful to Judith!” But Blossom had never stood up all nice and straight; she had never walked all beautiful to Judith. And when she was three, Judith had given up.

The story out there was going on: “After that I never tried to make her walk again, poor little sweet! We carried her round in our arms till we got her a little wheel-chair that she could wheel a little herself. She liked that so much—she called it ‘walking.’ It would have broken your heart to hear her say, ‘See me walk, mamma!’”

“Oh, yes—yes, it would have,” the other voice responded gently. It had grown a very gentle voice indeed. Judith wondered in the little flash of thought she could spare from Blossom, if the other mother were not thinking there might be harder things even than laying a little daughter away in a little white casket.

“But when she was five”—sudden animation, joy and a thrill of laughter had taken possession of the voice that was telling the story—“a little more than five—she’s just six now—when she was a little more than five, they told us she could walk! There was a way! It was not a very hard way, they said. A splendid doctor, with a heart big enough to hold all the little crippled children in the universe, would make her walk. And so—this is the end of the story—we took her across the sea to him. Look at her now! Where is she? Oh, there! Marie! Marie! Come here to mother!”

Judith slipped away. She was never quite definite how she got there, but she found herself presently in the old black dory that was drawn up on the beach. It was the best place to think, and Judith wanted to think. She wanted air enough and room enough to think in—this Wonderful Thing took up so much room! It was so big—so wonderful!

She sat a long time with her brown chin in her brown palms, her eyes on the splendid expanse of shining, undulating sea before her. It reached ’way across to him—to that tender doctor who made little children walk! If one were to cross it—she and Blossom in the old black dory—and to find him somewhere over across there and say to him—if one were to hold out little Blossom and say—“Here’s Blossom; oh, please teach her little legs to walk!”—if one were to do that—

Judith sunk her brown chin deeper into the little scoop of her brown, hard palms. Her eyes were beginning to shine. She began to rock herself back and forth and to hum a little song of joy, as if already it had happened. The fancy took her that it had happened—that when she went up the beach, home, she would come on Blossom walking to meet her! “See me!” Blossom would call out gayly.

The fancy faded by and by, as did all Judith’s dreams. And Judith went plodding home alone—no one came walking to meet her. But there was hope in her heart. How it could ever be, she did not know—she had not had time to get to that yet—but somehow it would be. It should be!

“I won’t tell mother—I’ll tell Uncle Jem,” she decided. “Mother must not be worried—she must be surprised!” Judith had decided that. Some day, some way, Blossom must walk in on the worn, weary little mother and surprise her.

“I’ll ask Uncle Jem how,” Judith nodded, as she went. Uncle Jem was the old bed-ridden fisherman that Judith loved and trusted and consulted. She had always consulted Uncle Jem. He lived with Jem Three in a tiny, weather-worn cabin near the Lynns. Jem Three was Judith’s age—Jem Two was dead.

“I’ll go over to-night after supper,” Judith said.

Uncle Jem lay in the cool, salt twilight, listening, as he always did, to the sound of the waves. It was his great comfort. He wouldn’t swop his “pa’r o’ ears,” he said, for a mint o’ money—no, sir! Give him them ears—Uncle Jem had never been to school—an’ he’d make out without legs nor arms nor head! That was Uncle Jem’s favorite joke.

“Judy! I hear ye stompin’ round out there. I’m layin’ low fur ye!” the cheerful voice called, as Judith entered the little cabin.

“Is Jem Three here?” demanded Judith.

“Here?—Jemmy Three! I guess you’re failin’ in your mind, honey.”

“Well, I’m glad he isn’t. I don’t want anybody but you—Uncle Jem, how can I get Blossom across the sea?” Judith’s eager face followed up this rather astonishing speech. Uncle Jem turned to meet them both.

“Wal, there’s the old dory—or ye mought swim,” he answered gravely. He was used to Judy’s speeches.

“Because there’s a great man over there that makes lame little children walk—he can make Blossom. There’s a little child down at the hotel that he made walk. I’ve got to take her