Front matter (continued 3)
Reading edition
"No," said Hannah, the sullen look coming back; "he ain't got nothing only a hard bed, and a chair with a cushion in, that mother made out of our old quilt."
"Then I have found the 'other one' already," said Helen joyfully.
"What?" said Hannah.
And Helen laughed.
"You don't know what I mean. Why, you see long ago, when papa and mamma began to get me so many things to help me bear my trouble, we planned it that there should always be two bought, and the other one should be given to somebody who needed it, and couldn't spare the money to get it. So I know there is another one of these lovely chairs, and your poor little brother shall be in it before night."
Sure enough, the widow Bancroft received, just at noon, the strangest-looking parcel! It could only by great coaxing be gotten up her narrow stairs. All the rest—what the pale little fellow who had not walked a step in five years thought, and felt, and said, when he found himself actually going across the room on wheels, and what the mother thought as the tears rolled down her cheeks, and what Hannah thought as she looked on and remembered her cross sentence: "Some folks has everything, and some folks has nothing,"—I will leave you to imagine.
But then, you must remember that in the morning she had not heard anything about "the other one."
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