But Kit pushed it pettishly away.

"Don't, Ma'am, you've been and gone and spoiled Jemima's ball dress, and she is going to wear it to-night," and Kit held up a modicum of blue gauze which certainly did not bear the slightest resemblance to a garment, and regarded it anxiously.

Jemima herself, a mere battered hulk of a doll, lay in a grimy chemise staring with lack-lustre eyes at the ceiling.
"I suppose Kit is not able to walk ?" asked Anna, looking rather timidly at the formidable Mrs.Martin; but to her surprise the rugged, forbidding features softened and grew womanly in a moment.
"Law bless you, miss, the poor lamb has never stood on her feet in her life, and never will as long as she lives.

The doctors at the hospital yonder say that when she gets older and stronger she will be able to use crutches; but she is as weakly as a baby now, for all she has turned eight." "Kit's a slight stronger than she was last year," interposed Caleb, laying down the boots he was cobbling; but Ma'am was down on him in a moment.
"You may as well shut your mouth, Caleb, if you have got nothing better to say than that, and if you have not eyes to see the dear lamb is dwindling more and more every day in this cellar of a place.

'Plenty of fresh air and light,' says the doctor, 'and as much nourishment as you can get her to swallow,' and all the winter we have to burn gas or sit in darkness through the livelong day, and the fog choking the breath out of one." "It is our misfortune, sir, as Kezia knows," began Caleb feebly; but his pale blue eyes grew watery as he spoke; "it is not much of an 'ome when one has seen better days, but to my thinking Solomon was in the right when he talked of that dinner of herbs.