“Oh, what is the matter, Dicky?” Maida asked.

Dicky jumped.  He raised his head and looked at her.  His face was swollen with crying, his eyes red and heavy.  For a moment he could not speak.  Maida could see that he was ashamed of being caught in tears, that he was trying hard to control himself.

“It’s something I heard,” he replied at last.

“What?” Maida asked.

“Last night after I got to bed, Doc O’Brien came here to get his bill paid.  Mother thought I was asleep and asked him a whole lot of questions.  He told her that I wasn’t any better and I never would be any better.  He said that I’d be a cripple for the rest of my life.”

In spite of all his efforts, Dicky’s voice broke into a sob.

“Oh Dicky, Dicky,” Maida said.  Better than anybody else in the world, Maida felt that she could understand, could sympathize.  “Oh, Dicky, how sorry I am!”

“I can’t bear it,” Dicky said.

He put his head down on the table and began to sob.  “I can’t bear it,” he said.  “Why, I thought when I grew up to be a man, I was going to take care of mother and Delia.  Instead of that, they’ll be taking care of me.  What can a cripple do?  Once I read about a crippled newsboy.  Do you suppose I could sell papers?” he asked with a gleam of hope.

“I’m sure you could,” Maida said heartily, “and a great many other things.  But it may not be as bad as you think, Dicky.  Dr. O’Brien may be mistaken.  You know something was wrong with me when I was born and I did not begin to walk until a year ago.  My father has taken me to so many doctors that I’m sure he could not remember half their names.  But they all said the same thing—­that I never would walk like other children.  Then a very great physician—­Dr. Greinschmidt—­came from away across the sea, from Germany.  He said he could cure me and he did.  I had to be operated on and—­oh—­I suffered dreadfully.  But you see that I’m all well now.  I’m even losing my limp.  Now, I believe that Doctor Greinschmidt can cure you.  The next time my father comes home I’m going to ask him.”

Dicky had stopped crying.  He was drinking down everything that she said.  “Is he still here—­that doctor?” he asked.

“No,” Maida admitted sorrowfully.  “But there must be doctors as good as he somewhere.  But don’t you worry about it at all, Dicky.  You wait until my father sees you—­he always gets everything made right.”

“When’s your father coming home?”

“I don’t quite know—­but I look for him any time now.”

Dicky started to set the table.  “I guess I wouldn’t have cried,” he said after a while, “if I could have cried last night when I first heard it.  But of course I couldn’t let mother or Doc O’Brien know that I’d heard them—­it would make them feel bad.  I don’t want my mother ever to know that I know it.”

After that, Maida redoubled her efforts to be nice to Dicky.  She cudgeled her brains too for new decorative schemes for his paper-work.  She asked Billy Potter to bring a whole bag of her books from the Beacon Street house and she lent them to Dicky, a half dozen at a time.