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Then, one day, a sad accident happened. Mrs. Richmond was upstairs, getting Joe’s bed ready for him. Though it was not yet night, he said he felt so tired he thought he would go to bed. On the shelf over his head was the Nodding Donkey.

Suddenly, in through a kitchen window that had been left open came Frisky, the Chattering Squirrel. Over the floor scampered the lively little chap, and he gave a sort of whistle at Joe.

“Oh, hello, Frisky!” said the lame boy, opening his eyes. “I’m glad you came in!”

Of course Frisky could not say so in boy language, but he, too, was glad to see Joe.

“Come here, Frisky!” called Joe, and he held out his hand.

“I guess he has some nuts for me,” thought the squirrel, and he was right. In one pocket Joe had some nuts, and now he held these out to his little live pet.

Frisky took a nut in his paw, which was almost like a hand, and then, as squirrels often do, he looked for a high place on which he might perch himself to eat. Frisky saw the shelf over Joe’s couch, the same shelf on which stood the Nodding Donkey.

“I’ll go up there to eat the nut,” said Frisky to himself.

Up he scrambled, but he was such a lively little chap that in swinging his tail from side to side he brushed it against the Nodding Donkey.

With a crash that toy fell to the floor near Joe’s couch!

“Oh, Frisky! Look what you did!” cried Joe. But the squirrel was so busy eating the nut that he paid no attention to the Donkey.

Joe picked up his plaything. One of the Donkey’s varnished legs was dangling by a few splinters.

“Oh! Oh, dear!” cried Joe. “My Donkey’s leg is broken! Now he will have to go on crutches as I do! Mother! Come quick!” cried Joe. “Something terrible has happened to my Nodding Donkey!”

CHAPTER IX

A LONESOME DONKEY

“What is the matter, Joe? What has happened?” asked Mrs. Richmond, hurrying downstairs, leaving her son’s bed half made.

Mrs. Richmond, hurrying into the room where she had left Joe lying on the couch, saw him sitting up and holding his Nodding Donkey in his hands.

“Oh, look, Mother!” and Joe’s voice sounded as if he might be going to cry. “Look what Frisky did to my Donkey! Knocked him off the shelf, and his left hind leg is broken.”

“That is too bad,” said Mrs. Richmond, but her face showed that she was glad it was not Joe who was hurt. “Yes, the Donkey’s leg is broken,” she went on, as she took the toy from her son. “Frisky, you are a bad squirrel to break Joe’s Donkey!” and she shook her finger at the chattering little animal, who, perched on the shelf, was eating the nut the boy had given him.

“Oh, Mother! Frisky didn’t mean to do it,” said Joe. “It wasn’t his fault. I guess the Nodding Donkey was too close to the edge of the shelf. But now his leg is broken, and I guess he’ll have to go on crutches, the same as I do; won’t he, Mother?”

The Nodding Donkey did not hear any of this. The pain in his leg was so great that he had fainted, though Joe and his mother did not know this. But the Donkey really had fainted.

“No, Joe,” said Mrs. Richmond, after a while, “your Donkey will not have to go on crutches, and I hope the day will soon come when you can lay them aside.”

“What do you mean, Mother?” Joe asked eagerly. “Do you think I will ever get better?”

“We hope so,” she answered softly. “In a few days you are going to a nice place, called a hospital, where you will go to sleep in a little white bed. Then the doctors will come and, when you wake up again, your legs may be nice and straight so, after a while, you can walk on them again without leaning on crutches.”