“God help you, ma’am,” said nurse fervently. Then Alice went away into the next room, sat down beside her husband, and laid her hand in his. “You may be wrong about one thing, dearest,” he said softly. “Harrison was talking to me to-day about a new kind of treatment he wants to try for Freddy. It won’t cure him, that is impossible; but it may help him very materially. Harrison hopes more from it than I do; but if he is even able to get about with crutches, that will be something.” “Will it be painful?” she asked, mother-like. “A little, perhaps; but you can bear even to see him suffer, can you not, if it will add to his happiness in the end?” “_If_, yes; but hush, what is nurse telling them?” “Sure, ye don’t think the blessed Saviour came on earth just to cure sick people, do ye?” asked the mellow Irish voice. “He did heal the lepers, of course, and He raised the dead; but what He come for, you childer, was to make people good. It was just last Sunday our praste was tellin’ us that pain is nothing at all at all, and no more is death, compared with sin. You childer can’t understand that yet; but ye know the blessed Jesus died, don’t ye? and in such pain—why, look here!” and she pulled a crucifix out of her bosom, and showed it to the children, explaining and painting so vividly the pain of such a death that Freddy was ready to cry again, and Pinkie to do battle with His murderers. “So ye see,” continued nurse, “that He suffered pain and death too, but not sin. Nobody ever heard of His doing wrong; and, as Father McClosky said, that shows which He thought the worst of. So, though you childer can’t expect to do miracles like He did, you can help each other to be good, and that’s what He likes much better.” “If I was dare,” said Pinkie, “I’d made yose bad mens yun avay fasht, an’ pull yose nails out and say, ‘Tum down, dear Saviour!’” “Sure, there was onct a little bird thought that same,” said nurse, availing herself of the opening to change the subject of conversation; and she proceeded to tell them the legend of the Redbreast, to their great delight. “But he didn’t get the nail out,” said Louis rather mournfully, as the story ended. “No; but, sure, he got the Saviour’s blood on his breast, and wears it there to this day, and that was honor enough for him.” “Want to shee blood on his bweast,” said Pinkie; so nurse put down her sewing, and looked for a picture of a robin, and, by the time she had succeeded, the children were eager for play again, and Freddy’s wheeled chair became the Ark of the Covenant, with Pinkie dancing before it as King David, while Louis and his mouth-harp represented all the priests and Levites.