Susy was still more delighted than Prudy.  It was so comforting, too, to know that she was doing Percy “a great favor,” by accepting his beautiful present.  She wondered in her own mind how he could be tired of such an interesting pet, and asked her to take it, just to get rid of it!

About this time, Mr. Parlin bought for Prudy a little armed-chair, which rolled about the floor on wheels.  This Prudy herself could propel with only the outlay of a very little strength; but there were days when she did not care to sit in it at all.  Prudy seemed to grow worse.  The doctor was hopeful, very hopeful; but Mrs. Parlin was not.

Prudy’s dimpled hands had grown so thin, that you could trace the winding path of every blue vein quite distinctly.  Her eyes were large and mournful, and seemed to be always asking for pity.  She grew quiet and patient—­“painfully patient,” her father said.  Indeed, Mr. Parlin, as well as his wife, feared the little sufferer was ripening for heaven.

“Mamma,” said she, one day, “mamma, you never snip my fingers any nowadays do you?  When I’m just as naughty, you never snip my fingers!”

Mrs. Parlin turned her face away.  There were tears in her eyes, and she did not like to look at those little white fingers, which she was almost afraid would never have the natural, childish naughtiness in them any more.

“I think sick and patient little girls don’t need punishing,” said she, after a while.  “Do you remember how you used to think I snipped your hands to ‘get the naughty out?’ You thought the naughty was all in your little hands!”

“But it wasn’t, mamma,” said Prudy, slowly and solemnly.  “I know where it was:  it was in my heart.”

“Who can take the naughty out of our hearts, dear?  Do you ever think?”

“Our Father in heaven.  No one else can. He knows how to snip our hearts, and get the naughty out.  Sometimes he sends the earache and the toothache to Susy, and the—­the—­lameness to me.  O, he has a great many ways of snipping!”

Prudy was showing the angel-side of her nature now.  Suffering was “making her perfect.”  She had a firm belief that God knew all about it, and that somehow or other it was “all right.”  Her mother took a great deal of pains to teach her this.  She knew that no one can bear affliction with real cheerfulness who does not trust in God.

But there was now and then a bright day when Prudy felt quite buoyant, and wanted to play.  Susy left everything then, and tried to amuse her.  If this lameness was refining little Prudy, it was also making Susy more patient.  She could not look at her little sister’s pale face, and not be touched with pity.

One afternoon, Flossy Eastman and Ruthie Turner came to see Susy; and, as it was one of Prudy’s best days, Mrs. Parlin said they might play in Prudy’s sitting-room.  Ruthie was what Susy called an “old-fashioned little girl.”  She lived with a widowed mother, and had no brothers and sisters, so that she appeared much older than she really was.  She liked to talk with grown people upon wise subjects, as if she were at least twenty-five years old.  Susy knew that this was not good manners, and she longed to say so to Ruthie.