s a bitter cold day, and Jack Frost had decorated the
windowpanes with silver pictures of forests and castles.

"What wakened you so early, Patty, dear?" asked her mother, coming over
to sit on the edge of the bed. To her surprise the young face was
wreathed in bright smiles.

"I had such a strange, sweet dream," said Patty, her eyes shining. "I
think it must have been my dream that waked me."

"What was it, love?" But Patty was silent. "You don't want to tell me
your dream, little daughter?"

"I think I'd rather not, mother, if you don't mind."

"No, I don't mind."

"Well, then, I won't tell it."

Patty's mother had no dream of her own to tell, for she had hardly
slept a single one of the many hours between dark and dawn. Many of them
she had spent on her knees beside her bed, pouring out her heart in
prayer for her darling who was, with the returning day, to undergo a
painful and dangerous surgical operation.

For days Patty herself had been in a sad state of nervousness and
depression; it had been necessary, for certain reasons, that she should
know what was before her, and though she bore up bravely for her years,
it could not but be to her like entering a dark cloud.

And yet there was the smile on her lips and the light in her eye, though
the hour of trial had come!

The weeks slipped away, each one leaving little Patty stronger than it
found her, and nearer to the end of her prison-life behind window panes.
For the great trial was safely passed, and the surgeon said one reason
that the little girl came so safely through it, without fever or
inflammation of any sort, was that she was so quiet and brave, and
didn't excite or fret herself.

When Patty heard these praises she only smiled and said, "That's my
secret." Though she did not ask, Patty's mother sometimes wondered what
she meant and why she would not tell her secret.

But one day Patty overheard a visitor speaking of another child who was
to undergo an operation. This visitor was one of the managers of St.
Luke's Hospital, and the child she spoke of was a charity patient, a
poor, little deformed girl in the public ward. She was an orphan, and
had no friends except the kind people at the orphanage where she had
been put when only a few months old.

Patty was very quiet until the visitor left; but when her mother turned
to her sofa, she found her little daughter eager to tell her something.

"Oh, mother!" she cried, "I must see that little gi