“But I’m not sick. I’m not sick one bit. I’m just as well as--as that parrot, yonder.”
“Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth!” shrieked Polly.
Mary Jane laid down the thirteenth doll and clapped her hands to her sides. “That bird is the absurdest thing. He makes me laugh till I ache.”
“That’s a story, that’s a story!” corrected Poll.
“No, it isn’t! No, it isn’t! No, it isn’t!” mocked Mary Jane, gaily.
“Mary Jane, you’re the very nicest girl I know!”
“Thank you. That’s a dear thing for you to say. But you’re partial, like mother. Besides, there isn’t any other girl here, just now.”
“But I mean it. There isn’t another girl in the world would come here and be shut up in the house, day after day, just to amuse me, ’cause my leg’s broken, except you.”
“Yes, there is,” said Mary Jane, confidently.
“Wouldn’t you? If you and I were each other--I mean changed places and I was the sick one, wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I never did like indoors and would never stay in if I could help it. Do you s’pose it will be very long now?”
“No, I guess not. Not if you’re good and lie still. Wait. I’ll bring all the playthings around to that other side the bed and that will rest you. You’ve been looking out this way a good while now.”
So Mary Jane industriously hopped around and transported the thirteen dolls, the bird cages, and the parrot stand to a new position, and leaning on her crutches gently helped the sick child to turn about as far as she was permitted to do. A trained nurse was still always in the room, and Mrs. McClure herself passed in and out very frequently; but it was Mary Jane who did most for her friend; Bonny-Gay declaring that, “Next to Mamma” there was nobody who understood her whims and desires without being told them, as the little cripple did.
“That’s because we’re just an age, I guess. Queer, wasn’t it? That you, up in this big house, and me down in my dear little one, should both be sent to our folks the very same day that ever was? ‘Sunday bairns’ should be the best ones in the world, my mother says. Only, I wasn’t in my Dingy street house when I came. I was in the country;” and for some unexplained reason Mary Jane’s sunny face clouded suddenly.
For weeks now, and because Bonny-Gay had “taken such an extreme fancy to her”--as Mrs. McClure had herself explained to Mrs. Bump, when she herself went to ask the favor of Mary Jane’s attendance in the sick room--the helpful child had spent the greater portion of each day there. It had become quite a matter of habit in Dingy street that a carriage should roll up to the door of 97 and that Mary Jane should go away in it; to be returned at six o’clock precisely, of the same afternoon. Dingy street felt itself proud of this state of things, and every householder held her head a bit higher because of it. Who’d ever have dreamed that their own small hunchback would get to be “carriage folks?” Well, there was no telling when such glory might not fall to their own lot, and she’d do them all credit wherever she went, she had such pretty, loving ways with her. That she had.