“Oh, why did it have to be?” she demanded again of fate.  “It is too cruel that everything the dear boy wanted most should be denied him.”

With her thoughts centred gloomily on his injuries, it seemed almost an insult for the sun to shine or for any one to be happy, and she was in no mood to meet any one in a different humour from her own.  Added to her dull misery on Jack’s account, was a baffled, disappointed feeling that she had not been the comfort to him she had hoped to be.  True, she was learning to give him the massage he needed with almost as skilful a touch as the nurse, but she could not see that she had eased his burden mentally, in the least, although she had tried faithfully to carry out the good friar’s suggestion.  It seemed so hard, when she was ready to make any sacrifice for him, no matter how great, even to exchanging her strength for his helplessness, that the means should be denied her.

While she sat there, longing for some great Angel of Opportunity to open the way for her to help him, a little one was coming in at the back gate, so disguised that she did not recognize it as such.  She was even impatient at the interruption.  Norman, followed by a half grown Mexican boy trundling a wheel-barrow, came up from the barn, with a whole train of smaller boys running along-side, to support the chicken coop he was wheeling.  Norman’s face shone with importance, and he called excitedly as he fumbled at the gate latch, “Look, Mary!  You can’t guess what we’ve got in this box!  A young wild-cat!  Lupe wants to sell him.”

“For mercy’s sake, Norman Ware,” she answered, impatiently, “haven’t we enough trouble now without your bringing home a wild-cat to add to them?  And now, of all times!”

The tone carried even more disapproval than her words.  It seemed to insinuate that if he had the proper sympathy for Jack he would not be thinking of anything else but his affliction.  Instantly the bright face clouded, and in an injured tone he began to explain: 

“I thought brother would like to see it, and he could make the trade for me.  He talks Mexican, and I only know a few words, I couldn’t make the boys understand more than that they were to bring it along.  I don’t see why Jack’s being sick should keep me from having a nice pet like a wild-cat.  He isn’t a bit mean, and I haven’t had a single thing since the puppy was poisoned.”

The procession had paused, and the piercingly bright eyes of each one of the little Mexicans seemed also to be asking why.  Mary suddenly had to acknowledge to herself that there wasn’t any good reason to prevent.  Because one brother was desperately unhappy was no reason why she should cloud the enjoyment of the other one by refusing him something on which he had set his heart.

Norman could not understand the lightning change in her, but he followed joyfully when she answered with a brief, “Well, come on,” and led the way around to the south door of Jack’s room, and called his attention to the embryo menagerie outside.