It was dreadful to me that I couldn't be lame just by myself, but I had to mix up you and mother in it." "We were glad, Ellen, to be mixed up in it if it made things easier for you." "I know ...

times I felt that way about it too, but that was when I was older ...

as if it sort of held us all together; like somebody who had belonged to us all and had died.

Only it was me that died, the me that would have been if I hadn't been lame....

Well, I hadn't thought it out so far that first summer; I just hated it because it kept us from doing things like other people.