"Come and dress me." Gregory knelt on the
floor before her, and tried to draw on one stocking, but the little swollen
foot refused to be covered.
"It is very funny that I should have grown so fat since I have been so
ill," she said, peering down curiously. "Perhaps it is want of exercise."
She looked troubled and said again, "Perhaps it is want of exercise." She
wanted Gregory to say so too. But he only found a larger pair; and then
tried to force the shoes, oh, so tenderly, on to her little feet.
"There," she said, looking down at them when they were on, with the delight
of a small child over its first shoes, "I could walk far now. How nice it
looks!"
"No," she said, seeing the soft gown he had prepared for her, "I will not
put that on. Get one of my white dresses--the one with the pink bows. I
do not even want to think I have been ill. It is thinking and thinking of
things that makes them real," she said. "When you draw your mind together,
and resolve that a thing shall not be, it gives way before you; it is not.
Everything is possible if one is resolved," she said. She drew in her
little lips together, and Gregory obeyed her; she was so small and slight
now it was like dressing a small doll. He would have lifted her down from
the bed when he had finished, but she pushed him from her, laughing very
softly.
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