"Please sit down," she added. "I am so _very_ glad to see you. I have wanted again and again to thank you for all your kindness to my Bubble, but I didn't know when I should have a chance. Did Bubble show you the way?" Hildegarde was so astonished, so troubled, so dismayed that she hardly knew what she was saying or doing. She took the slender fingers in her own for an instant, and then sat down, saying hastily: "Oh, no! I--I found my way alone. I was not sure of its being your cottage, though I thought it must be from what Bubble told me." She paused; and then, unable to keep back longer the words which sprang to her lips, she said: "I fear you have been ill, you are so pale. I hope it has not been serious. Bubble did not tell me--" Pink Chirk looked up with her bright, sweet smile. "Oh, no! I have not been ill," she said. "I am always like this. I cannot walk, you know, but I am very well indeed." "You cannot walk?" stammered Hilda. The girl saw her look of horror, and a faint color stole into her wan cheek. "Did not Bubble tell you?" she asked, gently; and then, as Hilda shook her head, "It is such a matter of course to him," she said; "he never thinks about it, I suppose, dear little fellow. I was run over when I was three years old, and I have never been able to walk since." Hildegarde could not speak. The thought of anything so dreadful, so overwhelming as this, coming so suddenly, too, upon her, seemed to take away her usually ready speech, and she was dumb, gazing at the cheerful face before her with wide eyes of pity and wonderment. But Pink Chirk did not like to be pitied, as a rule; and she almost laughed at her visitor's horror-stricken face. "You mustn't look so!" she cried. "It's very kind of you to be sorry, but it isn't as if I were really _ill_, you know. I can _almost_ stand on one foot,--that is, I can bear enough weight on it to get from my bed to my chair without help. That is a _great_ thing! And then when I am once in my chair, why I can go almost anywhere. Farmer Hartley gave me this chair," she added, looking down at it, and patting the arm tenderly, as if it were a living friend; "isn't it a beauty?" It was a pretty chair, made of cherry wood, with cushions of gay-flowered chintz; and Hilda, finding her voice again, praised it warmly. "This is its summer dress," said Pink, her eyes sparkling with pleasure. "Underneath, the cushions are covered with soft crimson cloth, oh, so pretty, and so warm-looking! I am always glad when it's time to take the chintz covers off. And yet I am always glad to put them on again," she added, "for the chintz is pretty too, I think: and besides, I know then that summer is really come." "You like summer best?" asked Hilda.