"It seems very wonderful," the cool, interested voice said, a
little more interested, if anything.
"It seems glorious!" broke in the mother-voice; and the throb in it
beat upon Judith's heart through the waves of air between them.
Judith's heart was throbbing, too.
"You can't think how it 'seems,'--you don't know anything about it!"
the earnest, tremulous voice went on. "How can anyone know who never
had a little daughter?"
"I had one once." The other voice now was soft and earnest.
"But 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 across, Uncle Jem--I
mean Blossom. But I don't know how."
"No, deary, no; I do' know's I much wonder. It would be consid'able
great of a job fur ye. An' I allow it would take a mint o' money."
Strange Judith had not thought of the money! Money was so very hard
indeed to get, and a _mint_ of it--
"Not a mint--don't say a mint, Uncle Jem!" she pleaded. She went up
close to the bed and took one of the gnarled old hands in hers and
beat it with soft impatience up and down on the quilt.
"Not a _mint!_" she repeated.
"Wal, deary, wal, we'll see," comforted the old man. "You set down in
that cheer there an' out with it, the hull story! Mind ye don't leave
out none o' the fixin's! Ye can't rightly see things without ye have
all the fixin's by ye. Now, then, deary--"
Judith told the thrilling little story with all the details at her
command. At its end Uncle Jem's eyes were shining as hers had shone.
"Judy!" he cried, "Judy, it's got to be did! Ye've got to do it!"
"Of course," Judy answered, with rapt little brown face. "I'm _going_
to, Uncle Jem. But you must help me find a way."
"Wal,"--slowly, as Uncle Jem thought with wrinkled brows--"Wal, I guess
about the fust thing to do is to go an' ask that hotel child's ma how
much it cost her to go acrost. Then we'll have that to go by. We
ain't got nothin' to go by now, deary."
"No," Judith answered, dreamily. She was looking out of the little,
many-paned window across the distant water. It looked like a very
great way.
"I suppose it's--pretty far," she murmured wistfully.
"Oh, consid'able--consid'able," the old man agreed vaguely. "But ye
won't mind that. It won't be fur _comin' home!_"
The faith of the old child and the young was good that this beautiful
miracle could be brought about. Judith went home with elastic step
and lifted, trustful face.
Jem Three, scuffing barefoot through the sandy soil, met this radiant
dream-maiden with the exalted mien. Jem Three was not of exalted
mien, and he never dreamed. He was brown up to the red rim of his
hair, and big and homely. But the freckles in line across the
brownness of his face spelled h-o-n-e-s-t-y. At least, they always
had before to Judith Lynn and all the world. To-night Judith was to
read them differently.
"Hullo, Jude!"
It is hard to come out of a beautiful dream, plump upon a prosaic boy
who says, "Hullo!" It is apt to jolt one. It jolted Judith.
"Oh! Oh, it's you!" she came out enough to say, and then went back.
The prosaic boy regarded her in puzzled wonder. Head up, shoulders
back, eyes looking right through you--what kind of a Jude was this!
Was she walking in her sleep?
"Hullo, I _said_," he repeated. "If you've left your manners to
home--"
"Oh!--oh, hello, Jem! I guess I was busy thinking."
"Looked like it. Bad habit to get into. Better look out! I never
indulge, myself. Well, how's luck?"
"Luck? Oh, you mean lobsters?" Judith had not been busy thinking of
lobsters, but now her grievance came back to her. "Oh, Jem! I never
got but three! All my pains for three lobsters! And two of those just
long enough not to be short. It means--I suppose it means a bad
season, doesn't it?"
Jem Three pursed his lips into a whistle. Afterward, when Judith's
evil thoughts had invaded her mind, she remembered that Jem Three had
avoided looking at her; yes, certainly he had shifted his bare toes
about in the sand. And when he spoke, his voice had certainly sounded
muttery.
"Guess somethin' ails your traps," he had said. "Warn't nothin' the
matter with mine."
"Did you get more than three?"
"Got a-plenty."
"Jemmy Three, how many's a-plenty?"
"'Bout twenty-four."
Jemmy Three had got twenty-four! Judith turned away in bitterness and
envy, and afterwards suspicion.
There was nothing the matter with her traps. If Jem Three got
twenty-four lobsters in his, why did she get only three in hers?
Twenty-four and three. What kind of fairness was that! She could set
lobster-traps as well as any Jem Three--or Jem Four--or Five--or Six.
There had always been good-natured rivalry between the fisher-boy and
the fisher-girl, and Judith had usually held her own jubilantly.
There had never been any such difference as this.
Suddenly was born the evil thought in Judith's brain. It crept in
slinkingly, after the way of evil things. "How do you know but he
helped himself out o' your traps?" That was the whisper it whispered
to Judith. Then, well started, how it ran on! "When you and he
quarreled a while ago, didn't he say, 'I'll pay you back'?--didn't he?
You think if he didn't."
"Oh, he did," groaned Judith.
"Well, isn't helping himself to your lobsters paying you back?"
"Yes--oh, yes, if he _did_. But Jemmy Three never--"
"How do you know he never? Is twenty-four to three a fair average? Is
it? Is it?"
"No, oh, no! But I don't believe--"
"Oh, you needn't believe! _Don't_ believe. Go right on finding your
traps empty and believing Jemmy Three'd never! I thought you were
going to save your lobster-money for Blossom."
"Oh, I was--I am going to! I'm going to save it to take her across the
ocean to that doctor. It was going to be a little wheel-chair, but
now it's going to be _legs_."
"But supposing there isn't any lobster-money? You can't do much with
three lobsters a day. If somebody helps himself--"
"Stop!" cried Judith angrily, and the evil thought slunk away. But it
came again--it kept coming. One by one, little trivial circumstances
built themselves into suspicions, until the little brown freckles on
Jemmy Three's face came to spell "Dishonesty" to Judith Lynn. If it
had not been for the terrible need of lobster-money--Judith would have
fought harder against the evil thing if it had not been for that.
"I've got to have it! There's got to be lobsters in the traps!" she
cried to herself. "The doctor over there might die! If he died before
I could carry Blossom to him, do you think I'd ever forgive Jemmy
Three?"--which showed that the Evil Thing had done its work. It might
slink away now and stay.
It was a hard night for Judith. Joyful thoughts and evil ones
conflicted with each other, and among them all she could not sleep.
It was nearly morning before she snuggled up against Blossom's little
warm body and shut her eyes. Her plans were made, as far as she could
make them. To-morrow she would go down and question the hotel mother,
as Uncle Jem said. To-morrow--she must not wait. And after that--after
that, heaven and earth and the waters of the sea must help her. There
must be no faithlessness or turning back.
"You shall walk, little Blossom," Judith whispered softly.
How could she know how soon the sea would help?