"You bet," gloomily, "I got one." "Oh!--oh, I didn't know. Then," rather timidly, "perhaps--I wish you'd tell me what they're like." "Like nothin'! Nobody likes 'em," came with more gloom yet from the boy with legs. "Oh!" It was almost a cry from the boy without. This was terrible. This was a great deal terribler than he had expected. "Would one be angry if--if your legs wouldn't go? Would it make her _very_, do you think?" Still thinking of empty things that ought to have been filled, Jolly nodded emphatically. "Oh!" The terror grew. "Then one--then she--wouldn't be--be glad to see anybody, I suppose, whose legs had _never_ been?--wouldn't want to shake hands or anything, I suppose?--nor be in the same room?" "Nope." One's legs may be kind even to the verge of agony, but how unkind one's tongue may be! Jolly's mind was busy with his own anticipated woes; he did not know he was unkind. "That's all,--thank you, I mean," came wearily, hopelessly, from the pillows. But Morry called the other back before he got over the threshold. There was another thing upon which he craved enlightenment. It might possibly help out. "Are they pretty, Jolly?" he asked, wistfully. "Are who what?" repeated the boy on the threshold, puzzled. Guilt and apprehension dull one's wits. "Step-ones,--mothers." _Pretty?_ When they were lean and sharp and shabby! When they kept switches on two nails behind the door,--when they wore ugly clothes pinned together! But Jolly's eye caught the wistfulness on Morry's little, peaked, white face, and a lie was born within him at the sight. In a flash he understood things. Pity came to the front and braced itself stalwartly. "You bet they're pretty!" Jolly exclaimed, with splendid enthusiasm. "Prettier'n anythin'! You'd oughter see mine!" (Recording Angel, make a note of it, when you jot this down, that the little face across the room was intense with wistfulness, and Jolly was looking straight that way. And remember legs.) When Ellen came in to put Morry to bed she found wet spots on his cushions, but she did not mention them. Ellens can be wise. She only handled the limp little figure rather more gently than usual, and said rather more cheery things, perhaps. Perhaps that was why the small fellow under her hands decided to appeal in his desperation to her. It was possible--things were always possible--that Ellen might know something of--of step-ones. For Morry was battling with the pitifully unsatisfactory information Jolly had given him before understanding had conceived the kind little lie. It was, of course,--Morry put it that way because "of course" sometimes comforts you,--of course just possible that Jolly's step-one might be different. Ellen might know of there being another kind. So, under the skilful, gentle hands, the boy looked up and chanced it. "Ellen," he said--"Ellen, are they all that kind,--_all_ of 'em? Jolly's kind, I mean? I thought poss'bly you might know one"--