hen 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