Billy Potter jumped out and helped Maida to the ground. The three
men watched her limp to the sea-wall.

She was a child whom you would have noticed anywhere because of her
luminous, strangely-quiet, gray eyes and because of the ethereal
look given to her face by a floating mass of hair, pale-gold and
tendrilly. And yet I think you would have known that she was a sick
little girl at the first glance. When she moved, it was with a great
slowness as if everything tired her. She was so thin that her hands
were like claws and her cheeks scooped in instead of out. She was
pale, too, and somehow her eyes looked too big. Perhaps this was
because her little heart-shaped face seemed too small.

"You've got to find something that will take up her mind, Jerome,"
Dr. Pierce said, lowering his voice, "and you've got to be quick
about it. Just what Greinschmidt feared has come--that languor--that
lack of interest in everything. You've got to find something for her
to _do_."

Dr. Pierce spoke seriously. He was a round, short man, just exactly
as long any one way as any other. He had springy gray curls all over
his head and a nose like a button. Maida thought that he looked like
a very old but a very jolly and lovable baby. When he laughed--and he
was always laughing with Maida--he shook all over like jelly that has
been turned out of a jar. His very curls bobbed. But it seemed to
Maida that no matter how hard he chuckled, his eyes were always
serious when they rested on her.

Maida was very fond of Dr. Pierce. She had known him all her life.
He had gone to college with her father. He had taken care of her
health ever since Dr. Greinschmidt left. Dr. Greinschmidt was the
great physician who had come all the way across the ocean from
Germany to make Maida well. Before the operation Maida could not
walk. Now she could walk easily. Ever since she could remember she
had always added to her prayers at night a special request that she
might some day be like other little girls. Now she was like other
little girls, except that she limped. And yet now that she could do
all the things that other little girls did, she no longer cared to
do them--not even hopping and skipping, which she had always expected
would be the greatest fun in the world. Maida herself thought this
very strange.

"But what can I find for her to do?" "Buffalo" Westabrook said.

You could tell from the way he asked this question that he was not
accustomed to take adv