Hush! The night-gowned, barefooted small figure crept down the wide staircase. Outside, the garden covered with snow glittered under the light of the big, beautiful full moon; it was so bright that it put out all the stars except those in far-away corners. There was a colored window on that staircase. As Kitty crept past it a bar of pink light, a square of lovely blue, a patch of orange shaped like a dragon fell upon her white night-gown. The trees outside were still, as if they were fast asleep under their eider-down covering of snow.

Hush! There was not a sound or a stir through the house, except the flap, flap of Kitty’s bare feet on the stairs. Suddenly a mouse ran across; Kitty saw its long tail quite distinctly. 20She was very much afraid of mice; the sight of one would give her a creepy feeling. But to-night she did not care for this mouse, nor for an army of mice. She was going to see Johnnie. She had no fear, except that of not being able to reach him.

Hush! Suddenly a stair creaked, and the creak sounded like a scream through the silence. Kitty huddled herself up, her shoulders to her ears, her elbows and hands pressed close against her sides and chest. She stood a moment or two staring, and thump, thump went her heart; but everything remained silent as before, and the bare toes resumed their march—cautiously—down—down. Now she sees Johnnie’s door. It is not quite shut. Something is standing before it. What is it? Something white and small. Is it Johnnie’s spirit?

Flutter—flutter—thump—thump went her heart. She stood trembling with terror; but alive or dead she must see Johnnie. Her love is greater than her fear. Down—down she goes, keeping her eyes fixed on that white 21thing before the door. Then she almost laughs out, for she sees it is no spirit, but a white apron hanging just inside the door.

Hush! Just as Kitty reaches the last step a door opens below. It is the kitchen door. She hears the servant talking. Nurse’s voice reaches her quite plainly. Is she coming up? Beat—beat—beat goes Kitty’s heart, and she peers over the balusters.

The next moment the door is shut again, and once more there is not a stir or a sound through the house.

Hush! Cautiously—cautiously Kitty pushes Johnnie’s door wide enough open to let her pass in.

She stands now in the dear familiar room. A fire burning in the grate fills every corner with a ruddy glow. She sees the pictures on the walls, on the table the medicine bottles and a spoon, in its accustomed place the low red-cushioned chair and tiny crutch beside it. A little bed with white curtains stands in a corner.

Softly—softly Kitty makes her way toward the bed, and pauses when she approaches it.

22Johnnie’s face is on the pillow, white as the snow in the garden; all around it a cloud of golden hair. His eyes are closed, and the long lashes look very dark against the pale cheeks.

Kitty remained quite quiet a moment looking at him; then she came closer within the curtains and laid her hand—a very warm brown plump one—on the wee white hand lying outside the red coverlid.

“Johnnie!” she whispered, and the name came as if the little heart would burst if it was not spoken.

Johnnie opened his eyes, looked blankly and queerly at her, then at once closed them again.

“Johnnie, speak to me!” urged Kitty with a sob.

Thus appealed to, Johnnie once more opened his eyes wider and wider, till the white wasted face seemed to become all blue eyes. Still he gazed blankly at his visitor in the night-gown; gradually his look brightened, he began to smile, the smile broadened into a laugh.

“Kitty!” he exclaimed in a glad feeble whisper.

23“I ought not to have waked you,” said Kitty, in a quivering voice; “but they have not let me near you for nine days. I have counted them—nine [a great sob]. I have sat outside your door—but they would not let me in [sob, sob, sob].”

“Poor old Kitsy!” whispered Johnnie; and up went the tiny hot hand in an effort to stroke Kitty’s cheek.

“They will send me away now if they find me,” continued Kitty, shaking with a burst of tears. “Mother is lying down. I heard nurse go downstairs—and so—and so—” Here the heaving of the little bosom, and the quick motion of the chin up and down, checked further speech.

Johnnie panted a moment on his pillow before he said:

“I have sometimes fancied you were in the room, Kitsy. I saw you quite plain—your freckles and your dear little cocked nose.”

At this description of herself Kitty knelt in a delighted heap by Johnnie’s bed, and rubbed her face round and round on his red flannel sleeve, very much like an affectionate pussy.

24“I have cried so much since you were ill,” she went on after awhile. “One day I wetted seven pocket handkerchiefs with my tears. I hung them up to dry. I counted them—there were seven.”

Johnnie’s eyes glistened with sympathy, and he repeated in his feeble voice:

“Poor old Kitsy!”

“It was the day,” went on Kitty, wishing to be exact, “that mother said I was to say in my prayers, ‘Pray God, leave us little Johnnie; but thy will be done.’ I prayed all day, I kept going down on my knees, and every time I 25waked up in the night I said ‘Leave us little Johnnie.’ I did not say ‘Thy will be done.’ I said ‘Leave us little Johnnie, leave us little Johnnie.’”

There was a silence; then Johnnie said in an odd sort of a way:

“I know what day that was. It was the day I saw my guardian child.”

“Your guardian child!” repeated Kitty curiously.

Johnnie nodded.

“What was he like?” asked Kitty, pressing nearer up against the bed.

“He was just like me,” answered Johnnie, looking straight before him, as if he were seeing there what he described; “only his two legs were both the same size—so he had no crutch, and he had a rosy face.”

“How was he dressed?” asked Kitty, growing more curious.

“He had a rainbow sort of a coat on,” replied Johnnie, “and he had two little pink wings. I thought he had come, perhaps, because I was going to die—and he wanted to show me that 26in heaven I was to have two legs the same size, and no crutch.”

“Oh—o-oh!” cried Kitty, her tears gushing out anew.

“Don’t cry, Kitsy,” the little panting voice resumed. “When I die I want you to have my cake of gamboge, my rose-pink, my India-ink, and my two sable brushes.”

“But you are not going to die,” cried Kitty, giving the bed a shake as she plumped against it. “To-morrow is Christmas Day, and you are to be much better to-morrow. Oh, Johnnie!” she added, wiping away her tears, “I have such a present for you: something you wanted ever, ever so much!”

“Is it another go-cart to take fancy drives in?” asked Johnnie eagerly.

“A go-cart! No!” answered Kitty scornfully.

“Is it a musical box with more than one tune?” asked Johnnie, a patch of red forming on one cheek.

“It is something ever so much more splendid,” cried Kitty; “but you are not to know 27till to-morrow. It is a secret. I’ll only just tell you”—and she nodded several times impressively—“that it sings and is alive.”

“Sings and is alive! Is it”—and now a red patch came on both Johnnie’s cheeks—“is it—no, it can’t be—is it—a bu—ull—finch?”

“Ye—es,” cried Kitty, jumping up and beginning to skip about, first on one bare foot and then on the other. “But you are to forget till to-morrow,” she went on, stopping her dance. “You must forget it, for it is a secret till Christmas Day.”

“Has it a tune?” whispered Johnnie, taking no notice of this order to forget.

“A lovely tune,” answered Kitty, her eyes sparkling. “‘Home, sweet home.’ He sings it with his tail up and his head on one side.”

As Johnnie laughed with joy, Kitty gave a sob of delight.

“I ran off to the shop by myself, the bird-fancier’s, you know; ever so far. Nurse scolded me dreadfully when I came back; she was so frightened, not finding me anywhere at home.”

28“Oh, I did so long for a bullfinch, dear, good old Kitsy!” murmured Johnnie, looking very wide awake.

“I am not good. I am very naughty,” said Kitty slowly. “Oh, Johnnie, I am miserable when I have been naughty to you! It gives me a pain here,” and she thumped her chest.

“You are never naughty. You are a good, GOOD, GOOD Kitsy,” panted Johnnie with emphasis.

“I am not good to you. I tease you so often, and I am greedy. I take the largest half of things—when you—you—ought to have them all,” cried Kitty, too shaken by repentant sobs to particularize the speech. “I let you fall one day last summer.”

“Good Kitsy, good old Kitsy all the same,” insisted Johnnie, thumping the coverlid with his tiny fist.

Still Kitty’s sobs did not subside: they grew bitterer and bitterer. Then came the confession:

“I made you ill, Johnnie. I took you—out—in the snow.”

29“I made you take me,” said Johnnie sturdily.

“Mother had said I was not to take you out in the sn—now,” went on Kitty, shaking with sobs. “You did not know she had said so. Oh, Johnnie, forgive me! Say you forgive me!”

“I made you take me out,” repeated Johnnie. Then, as Kitty’s sobs continued, he put his wee hand on her head, and said in a voice weak as the pipe of a wounded bird, “Don’t cry, Kitsy. I forgive you!”

There was a silence. Then Kitty dried her tears.

“I wonder what makes me so naughty!” she said.

“It is not naughtiness; it is having two legs the same size,” answered Johnnie comfortingly.

“But if you had two legs the same size, do you think you would be naughty, Johnnie?”

Johnnie thought awhile; his eyes glistened, and he shook his downy head.

“I would run all day long and nobody could stop me,” he said.

30“Do you think you would run about and forget things, and often jump about at lesson time?” questioned Kitty.

“I think I should,” said Johnnie regretfully.

“Do you think you would slide down the balusters?” still cross-questioned Kitty.

“I might,” answered Johnnie very humbly.

31“Johnnie, I wish I could give you my two legs. I wish I could. I would not give one just only to be good; but I would give you the two. I lo-o-ove you so much, Johnnie!” and Kitty shook the bed with her sobs as she took his hand in hers.

Johnnie looked wistfully before him: his face was crimson; his eyes shone like two tiny lamps; the little hand in Kitty’s seemed to burn. Then he said cheerily:

“It would not do for every one to have two legs. There would not be any one to sit down, and look on, and clap hands, and say hurrah! when the others were running matches, you know.”

“As you did when Cousin Charlie and I played in the hay that day last summer,” cried Kitty.

“Yes,” said Johnnie, and he began to mutter something Kitty did not understand.

“We’ll play again next summer, and you’ll look on,” said Kitty.

“Yes. How sweet the hay smells!” said Johnnie in a strange far-away voice.

32“Miss Kitty!” said some one behind.

Turning round Kitty saw nurse standing with her two hands raised and her eyes round with alarm and trouble. “Oh, Miss Kitty, what have you done? what have you done?”

“I am not going!” cried Kitty, stamping one bare foot. “I won’t go. Every one comes to Johnnie but me.”

“What is the matter?” asked another anxious voice. It was the children’s mother. “Kitty here!” she added, very much amazed.

“Yes, ma’am. Johnnie was sleeping like a lamb, he was. I slipped down just for a bit of supper. When I came up, there’s Miss Kitty, and there’s Johnnie, all awake and in a fever.”

“Oh, Kitty! what have you done? what have you done?” said the poor mother as she knelt down by the bedside and with straining eyes gazed at the little boy muttering and talking to himself.

A fear came over Kitty at her mother’s words and at the look in her eyes. She began to cry, but nurse in a moment had taken her in her 33arms, carried her upstairs, and put her into bed. She did not say a word, but she looked very grim.

“Oh, nurse, have I done Johnnie any harm?” cried Kitty, springing out of bed and clutching at nurse’s skirt as she was leaving the room.

“Harm!” repeated nurse, twitching her dress out of Kitty’s grasp. “The doctor said Johnnie might get well if he slept to-night and was kept quiet, and you went and waked him. It is the second time you—”

Nurse paused. Then she jerked out, “That is the harm you have done,” and left the room.

At those dreadful words Kitty felt cold: she stole back to bed, and turned her face to the wall. “Might Johnnie have got well if she had not waked him? Would he die now?” She did not sob, but she kept moaning to herself in the dark; and her heart sent up a prayer like a cry: “Pray God, do not let Johnnie die! Do not let Johnnie die!”

“Hush, Kitty!” said her mother’s gentle voice. “Johnnie seems to be going to sleep; 34he is quieter now. Perhaps he will be better to-morrow.”

“Oh, mamma! mamma!” cried Kitty, throwing herself into her mother’s arms. “I had so longed to see him! I had so longed to see him!”

Her mother made Kitty lie down: she sat down by her bedside, and taking her two hands she spoke soothingly to her little girl. When Kitty’s sobs were quieter she told her how easy it is to get naughtier and naughtier unless we resist temptation. In every little heart are the seeds of naughtiness that will grow and grow.

“But I was not so very naughty,” said Kitty with a big sob.

“You were naughty. I should not love you if I did not say you were naughty,” the sweet voice continued, talking in Kitty’s ear. She sometimes lost what it said, but she heard the sound like a lullaby.

“Punishment always follows naughtiness. It comes like the shadow that follows you in the sunshine. It may not be in pain to your body that it will come. It may come in grief for 35seeing another suffer for your fault; but punishment must follow wrong-doing.”

Then again the tender voice spoke:

“Your little heart tempted you to wake Johnnie. You ought to have resisted, to have said ‘No; what will comfort me may make Johnnie suffer.’” Then again the voice said: “We must resist temptation ... to win a blessing.”