“‘He talked of “Dora.” Is that you, and may I call you so?’ Robin said, in reply to my direct interrogation as to what Richard had talked about; and so after that I was Dora to the child, who would scarcely let another wait upon him. ‘You seem like mother. You’ll stay,’ he kept repeating, when Mattie came at nightfall after me. “I thought of Anna in my dream; thought of the little golden harp, and stayed, while people talked, as people will, wondering what kept me at that child’s sick-bed, and associating me at last with Richard, for whose sake they said I had turned nurse to Robin. This piece of gossip proved the resurrection of the old story, which was told and retold in a thousand different forms, until madcap Jessie Verner threatened to box the first one’s ears who should say Anna West to her again. This she told me herself, watching with me by Robin, and that was all that passed between us on the subject. It seemed to be tacitly understood that neither Mattie, Bell, nor herself were to speak of the story to me, and they did not. Somehow it would have been a great relief to know just what they thought, but I would not ask, and on this point surrounded myself with so strong a barrier of reserve, that they never tried to break it down. “Jessie had come to Mrs. West’s unsolicited, and it was strange how the quiet, sad woman opened her heart at once to receive the wild young creature, while Robin turned to her trustingly, and whispered when she was gone: “‘I don’t mind—her seeing my feet. She laughs at most everything, but she wouldn’t at my poor, twisted toes.’ “Precious Robin! I would he could have seen the gush of tears with which Jessie baptized those twisted toes when first the shrivelled things met her view; but he was then where the halt and maimed are made whole, and the feet which here had never stepped a step were treading the golden streets. It was strange that one so young should be so sensitive about his deformity, but he had been so from the time he first learned that he was lame, and when, sitting in his chair upon the lawn, he would often ask his grandmother if she supposed the passers-by guessed that he was not like them. “It is frequently the case that a deformity of the body manifests itself in the expression of the face, but it was not so with him. A more beautiful face I never saw, and I loved to watch it as he lay sleeping upon his pillow, wondering if the mother could have been as beautiful as the child, and then speculating bitterly upon the father, wherever he might be. I had said in my heart that I exonerated Richard, but at times I experienced a feeling which I called hatred for the man whom Mrs. West was almost hourly expecting, and who, when he came, found me with Robin on my lap, his head nestled upon my bosom, while I sang to him of the Heavenly City, where his mother waited for him.