She strains forward. Now—now really the sound of wheels is here. It is echoing through the village street, and now.... Now a shout has gone up from the denizens on the top of the garden wall, and now a carriage has turned the corner. It has stopped. Mr. Crosby springs out of it; he looks at Susan, but Susan, after one swift glance, does not look at him; her eyes have gone farther, to a small, slim, beautiful boy who gets out of the carriage by himself, and slowly, but without a crutch, goes to Susan, and precipitates himself upon her with a little loving cry. ‘Susan! Susan!’ says he. ‘Oh, Bonnie! Oh, Bonnie!’ Her arms are round him. They seem to hold him as though she could never let him go again. ‘Oh, Bonnie! you can walk by yourself!’ Suddenly she bursts into a storm of tears, and the child clinging to her cries too. ‘You can walk—you can walk alone!’ She repeats this between her sobs, her face buried in the boy’s pretty locks. It seems, indeed, as if she has nothing else to say—as if everything else is forgotten by her. The injury she had done him has been wiped out. He can walk without the aid of those terrible sticks. The child, thin still, and now very pale through his emotion, yet wonderfully healthy in comparison with what he had been, pats her with his little hands; and presently he laughs—a laugh so free from pain, and so unlike the old laugh that was more sad than many others’ tears, that Susan looks up. ‘It is true, then,’ says she; ‘but walk for me again, Bonnie! Walk!’ Again Bonnie’s laugh rings clear—how sweet the music of it is!—and stepping back from her, he goes to his father, who had followed him out of the carriage, and from him to Crosby, and from him back again to Susan, slowly, carefully, yet with a certain vigour that speaks of perfect health in the near future. Susan, who has looked as if on the point of fainting during this little trial, catches him in her slender arms. She is trembling visibly. Crosby goes to her quickly. ‘I should have given you a hint,’ says he remorsefully. ‘I thought of only giving you a glad surprise; but it has been too much for you. I should have said a word or two.’ ‘There is nothing, nothing you have left undone,’ says Susan, looking at him over Bonnie’s head, and speaking with a gratitude that is almost fierce. ‘Nothing!’ The others have all got down off their wall by this time, and are kissing and hugging Bonnie. After all, if they had had the first view of the carriage, still Susan has certainly had the best of the whole affair. Mr. Barry, with his handsome, gaunt face, radiant now, is endeavouring to hold them back. ‘You will come in?’ says Susan to Crosby. ‘Auntie is waiting for you, to thank you—as if’—her eyes slowly filling again—‘anyone could thank you.’