As Kitty and Doris advanced to the bedside, Etta stared at them in astonishment. Shut up in one room for nearly twenty years she had never seen any one her own age. Only Azalea and Iris had ever visited her and so she had come to think of a world peopled only by adults. Her parents, Henry and Cora Sully, had never taken the trouble to educate her and the only lessons she had ever received were taken from the Bible passages which the Misses Gates read aloud. Though in actual age she was older than either Doris or Kitty, mentally she remained a child. Now, as she viewed the girls and noticed their white dresses, it seemed to her that surely she must be gazing upon two angels. Too moved for words, an expression of awe and rapture came over her face; she stretched out her thin hand toward Doris. The two girls took a step nearer toward the bed. The coverlet of the quaint patch-work pattern was faded from many washings and the muslin was yellowed. A twisted, knotted handkerchief had dropped carelessly on a narrow strip of well-worn rag carpet. The whole picture was a far cry from anything that the two girls from boarding school had ever seen or expected to find at Locked Gates. The poor, unfortunate girl was gowned in an old-fashioned, high-necked night-dress. A bit of yellowed crocheting finished the neck-line, no doubt the work of her grandmother, the dressmaker, who had been the seamstress for the Gates family. “How do you do?” said Doris, smiling sweetly in an effort to be friendly at once. “We are visiting here,” added Kitty, also making an effort to be cheerful and to put the cripple at ease with her most charming manner. “It is a lovely sunny day, my dear. Let me raise the shade so that the light can come in and cheer up the room.” Doris raised the curtain which crinkled and creaked as the sunlight streamed into the bedroom in the attic. “Now you can see the fleecy clouds,” chirped Doris, “and pretend you are floating and resting, honey, on one of those billowy boats up there in that deep, blue sea.” Kitty laughed in a silvery, tinkling tone. “I believe we could almost see Barry Manor today, the air is so clear and there is no sign of haze or fog to obstruct one’s view. I should have brought my field-glasses with me, Dory, and then we could see our Alma Mater, maybe!” Doris could not restrain a laugh, so impossible did it appear to her that one could see miles and miles, even though the air were clear as crystal. A smile, a bit wavering and uncertain, flickered about the crippled girl’s mouth, as she listened to these two young girls, dressed in white, smiling happily, and the sunlight touching their hair with gold. “Won’t you talk to us, dear?” asked Kitty, moving closer toward the bedside. “Yes, dearie,” urged Doris. “Tell us about yourself. We want to be your friends, and we want to make you happy.” “You must be an angel,” she whispered in a tense voice. “Can you make me well? Can you give me new limbs?”