“O Bobby, you are right!” she said. “I ought not to cry and be a coward, and I _am_ ashamed of it; but something has happened that has disappointed me so dreadfully. However, I’ll try to be brave about it, and remember the lessons I have tried to teach to you. I wish I could help you--poor little Bob! It _is_ awful, _awful_, to have to suffer all the time as you do; but, at least, you don’t suffer in your mind--do you? You know I always take care of you and make you as comfortable as I can. Tell me that, Bobby, for it comforts me more than anything in the world to think of that.” “Of course, I know you will take care of me,” said the child; “but is nobody ever going to do anything to make me any better? Am I going to lie and suffer all my life, and never be strong and well like other boys?” “O Bobby, I don’t know! I don’t know!” said the poor girl, remembering, with a pang, the failure of the only effort it had been in her power to make. “I want to take you to the city to see that great doctor, for I think he might be able to help you. I will do it, if I ever can, but poor sister can do so little to make money, and it takes money to do a thing like that.” “Yes, I know,” said the boy, with a certain change in his tone. “When I was little, I used to think I’d make money for you. I used to say you were too pretty to work, and that I would work for you. When Mother died and the pension stopped, I thought if you’d work for me a little while, I’d soon be able to work for you, and I would have done it, if I had not had that fall. Oh, why didn’t it kill me at once! I wish it had!” “No, my Bobby, no!” said Ethel, bending over him and drawing his arm around her neck. “If you had died, poor sister would have had no one in the world to love; and that would be the worst thing that could happen to anybody.” “It’s not so bad as being lame,” said the boy. “O Bobby, I think it’s worse!” said Ethel, half involuntarily. “Then it shows how much you know about it!” said Bobby; and Ethel made haste to soothe and reassure him, and tell him how much she sympathized with his trouble, and stifled back the wish that he, or somebody, could sympathize with hers.