“I never saw any use in it—­ unless ye had something perticular to smile for,” admitted Mr. Potter.

“Then it won’t spoil your smile if I tell you that you’ll have to find me canes somewhere if I’m to help myself at all,” she said.

He gravely brought two rough staffs, measured them off at just the right height for her, and spent the bulk of the evening in smoothing the rough sticks and tacking on bits of leather at the small ends of the canes in lieu of ferrules.

The east bedroom was at the end of the passage leading from the kitchen.  It was right next to Uncle Jabez’s own room.  They all sat in the east room that evening, for its windows opened upon the wide, honeysuckle-shaded porch, and the breeze was cool.  It was the beginning of many such evenings, for although Uncle Jabez sometimes retired to his bedroom where a lamp burned, and made up his cash-book and counted his money (or so Ruth supposed) not an evening went by that the miller was not, for a time at least, in the cripple’s room.

He did not talk much.  Indeed, if he talked to anyone more than to another it was to Ruth; but he seemed to take a quizzical interest in watching Mercy’s wry faces when she was in one of her ugly moods, and in listening to her sharp speeches.

The outdoor air and sun, and the plentiful supply of fresh milk and vegetables and farm cooking, began to make another girl of Mercy before a week went over her head.  She had actually some natural color, her hands became less like bird-claws, and her hollow cheeks began to fill out.

On Sunday Mr. and Mrs. Curtis drove out to see her.  The Red Mill had not been so lively a place since Ruth came to it, she knew, and, she could imagine; for many a long year before.  Doctor Davison was there every day.  Other neighbors were continually running in to see Mercy, or to bring something for the invalid.  At first, in her old, snappy, snarly way, Mercy would say: 

“Old cat! just wanted to see how humpy and mean I look.  Thought I was as ugly as a bullfrog, I s’pose.  I know what they’re after!”

But as she really began to feel better, and slept long and sweetly at night, and altogether to gain in health, she dropped such sharp speeches and had a smile when visitors came and when they left.  Everybody who drove by and saw her sitting on the porch, or wheeling herself, or being wheeled by Ruth, about the paths, had something to say to her, or waved a hand at her, and Mercy Curtis began to be pleasant mannered.

She hobbled around her room more on the “two-sticks” Uncle Jabez had made for her; but she never liked to have even Ruth see her at these exercises.  She certainly did get about in a very queer manner—­ “just like a crab with the St. Vitus dance,” so she herself said.