Two Prisoners

ng and outgrow her lameness. Thus she had been brought up in the country, and knew every corner and cranny there. She knew where the robins and mocking-birds nested; the posts where the bluebirds made their homes and brought up their young, and the hollow locusts where the brown Jenny Wrens kept house, with doors so tiny that Mildred could not have gotten her hand in them. In town she felt constrained. There she had to be dressed up and taken to walk by her mammy. In the country she never thought of her lameness; but in town she could not help it. It was hard not to be able to run about and play games like the other children. Rough boys, too, would talk about the braces she had to wear, and sometimes would even laugh at her. So she was shy, and often thought herself very wretched. Her mother and her mammy used to tell her that she was better off than most little girls, but Mildred could not think so. At least, they did not have to wear braces, and could run about where they pleased and play games and slide do