Eleanor H. Porter

“ To Dorothy Mazie expressed her mind on the matter.
"I don't care! I'll never go there again—never!" she declared angrily; "nor speak to Mrs. McGuire, nor that precious son of hers, nor Keith Burton, either. So there!"
"Oh, Mazie, but poor Keith isn't to blame," remonstrated Dorothy earnestly, the color flaming into her face.
"He is, too. He's just as bad as John McGuire. He jumped up and looked just as cross as John McGuire did when I went out on to that porch. And he doesn't ever really want to see us. You know he doesn't. He just stands us because he thinks he's got to be polite." ”

“ I'm blind, Susan—blind!"
"Shucks! Everybody will want to see you, so's to see how splendid you are, even if you are blind. Now don't talk any more—please don't; there's a good boy. You're gettin' yourself all worked up, an' then, oh, my, how that nurse will scold!"
"I shan't be splendid," moaned the boy. "I shan't be anything, now. I shan't be Jerry or Ned or dad. I shall be just ME. And I'll be pointed at everywhere; and they'll whisper and look and stare, and say, 'He's blind—he's blind—he's blind.' I tell you, Susan, I can't stand it. ”

“ Why, Daniel Burton, I've actually heard her refuse—REFUSE to serve you with something to eat that you'd ordered."
"Oh, well, well, what if she has? Very likely there was something we had to eat up instead, to keep it from spoiling. Susan is very economical, Nettie."
"I dare say—at times, when it suits her to be so, especially if she can assert her authority over you. Why, Daniel, she's a perfect tyrant to you, and you know it. She not only tells you what to eat, but what to wear, and when to wear it—your socks, your underclothes. Why, Daniel, she actually bosses you!" ”

“ When at last the room was found, there were the furnishings to select, and the final plans to be made for the real work to be done. David Patch proved himself to be invaluable then. As if by magic a long table appeared, and the coils and the tape, and all the various paraphernalia of a properly equipped winding-room marched smoothly into place. Meanwhile three soldiers and one civilian stood ready and eager to be taught, needing only the word of command to begin.
"And now we'll tell Keith," said Daniel Burton.
"Yes; now you must tell Keith," said Miss Dorothy. ”

“ By and by the nurse came in, and Susan left the room. She went straight to the kitchen, and she did not so much as look toward Keith's father whom she met in the hall. In the kitchen Susan caught up a cloth and vigorously began to polish a brass faucet. The faucet was already a marvel of brightness; but perhaps Susan could not see that. One cannot always see clearly—through tears.
Keith was like this every day after that, when Susan came in to sit with him—silent, listless, seemingly devoid of life. Yet the doctor declared that physically the boy was practically well. ”

“ Keith showed irritation now, and pulled not too gently at the arm still held in Mazie's firm little fingers.
"Blind! Ugghh!" interposed Miss Dorothy, shuddering visibly. "Oh, how can you bear to look at him, Keith Burton? I couldn't!"
A sudden wave of red surged over the boy's face. The next instant it had receded, leaving only a white, strained terror.
"Well, he ain't to blame for it, if he is blind, is he?" chattered the boy, a bit incoherently. "If you're blind you're blind, and you can't help yourself." ”

“ Susan had given up trying to sell her "poems." She had become convinced at last that a cruel and unappreciative editorial wall was forever to bar her from what she still believed was an eagerly awaiting public. She still occasionally wrote jingles and talked in rhyme; but undeniably she had lost her courage and her enthusiasm. As she expressed it to Mrs. McGuire, she did not feel "a mite like a gushing siphon inside her now."
As the summer came and passed, Susan and Mrs. McGuire talked over the back-yard fence even more frequently. Perhaps because Susan was lonely without Keith. ”

“ I don't want to, anyhow," sighed the boy with impatient weariness. "Say, can't you let a fellow alone?"
Susan drew a long breath and held it suspended for a moment. She had the air of one about to make a dreaded plunge.
"No, I can't let you alone, Keith," she replied, voice and manner now coldly firm.
"Why not? What's the use when I don't want to get up?"
"How about thinkin' for once what somebody else wants, young man?" Susan caught her breath again, and glanced furtively at the half-averted face on the pillow. ”

“ Nettie Colebrook was safely behind the McGuires' closed door, Susan crossed the kitchen and lifted the napkin of the breakfast tray.
"Humph!" she grunted angrily, surveying the almost untouched breakfast. "I thought as much! But I was ready for you, my lady. Toast an' oatmeal, indeed!" With another glance over her shoulder at the McGuire side door Susan strode to the stove and took from the oven a plate of crisply browned hash and a hot corn muffin. Two minutes later, with a wonderfully appetizing-looking tray, she tapped at Keith's door and entered the room. ”

“ And there were her wages—dad was always behind on those. And when the bills came in at the first of the month, it was always awful then: dad worried and frowning and unhappy and apologetic and explaining; Susan cross and half-crying. Strange men, not overpleasant-looking, ringing the doorbell peremptorily. And never a place at all where a boy might feel comfortable to stay. Dad was always talking then, especially, how he was sure he was going to sell THIS picture. But he never sold it. At least, Keith never knew him to. ”

“ Worry never led a horse to water.
Worry never cooked a meal,
Worry never darned a heel,
Worry never did a thing you'd think it oughter!"
"Yes, yes, I know, I know," sighed Mrs. McGuire again. "But John is so—well, you don't know my John. Nobody knows John as I do. He'd have made a big man if he'd lived—John would."
"'If he'd lived'!" repeated Susan severely. "Well, I never, Mis' McGuire, if you ain't talkin' already as if he was dead! You don't have to begin to write his obliquity notice yet, do you?" ”

“ And at ten o'clock Mrs. Colebrook went. Five minutes later Daniel Burton entered the kitchen—a proceeding so extraordinary that Susan broke off her song in the middle of a "Hurrah" and grew actually pale.
"What is it?—KEITH? Is anything the matter with Keith?" she faltered.
Ignoring her question the man strode into the room.
"Well, Susan, this time you've done it," he ejaculated tersely.
"Done it—to Keith—ME? Why, Mr. Burton, what do you mean? Is Keith—worse?" chattered Susan, with dry lips. "It was only a little hash I took up. ”

“ If you are hurt, you have two alternatives: either you are slightly hurt or badly. If slightly, you have nothing to worry about.
If badly, you have two alternatives: either you recover or you don't. If you recover, you have nothing to worry about. If you don't, and have followed my advice clear through, you have done with worry forever.
Mrs. McGuire was in a gale of laughter by the time she had finished reading this; so, too, was Susan. Keith also was laughing, but his laughter did not have the really genuine ring to it—which fact did not escape Susan. ”

“ If it were possible to think of Susan Betts as crying, he should think she was going to cry now.
"Need books? Why, child, there ain't nobody but what needs books. An' I guess I know! What do you suppose I wouldn't give now if I could 'a' had books an' book-learnin' when I was young? I could 'a' writ real poetry then that would sell. I could 'a' spoke out an' said things that are in my soul, an' that I CAN'T say now, 'cause I don't know the words that—that will impress what I mean. Now, look a-here, Keith Burton, you're young. You've got a chance. Do you see to it that you make good. ”

“ Susan, however, was a host in herself. Susan was never cross now, and almost always she had a cooky or a jam tart for him. She told lots of funny stories, and there were always her rhymes and jingles. She had a new one every day, sometimes two or three a day.
There was no subject too big or too little for Susan to put into rhyme. Susan said that something inside of her was a gushing siphon of poems, anyway, and she just had to get them out of her system. And she told Keith that spring always made the siphon gush worse than ever, for some reason. She didn't know why. ”

“ More slowly Keith's father rose from his chair.
"How impossible Susan is," he sighed. "I believe she grows worse every day. Still I suppose I ought to be thankful she's good-natured—which that absurd doggerel of hers proves that she is. ”

“ If you'll kindly take me to Master Keith's room, that will be all that I require," answered Mrs. Colebrook frigidly, as she unpinned her hat and laid that on top of her coat on the bed.
"All right, ma'am. He's a whole lot better. He's been up an' dressed to-day, but he's gone back to bed now. His room is right down here, jest across the hall," finished Susan, throwing wide the door.
There was a choking cry, a swift rush of feet, then Mrs. Colebrook, on her knees, was sobbing at the bedside.
"Oh, Keithie, Keithie, my poor blind boy! What will you do? How will you ever live? ”

“ These men, lots of them, are but little more than boys—big, strong, strapping fellows with the whole of life before them. And they are—blind. Whichever way they turn a big black curtain shuts them in. ”

“ She greeted her brother with a burst of tears.
"Oh, Daniel, Daniel, how can you stand it—how can you stand it!" she cried, throwing herself upon the man's somewhat unresponsive shoulder.
"There, there, Nettie, control yourself, do!" besought the man uncomfortably, trying to withdraw himself from the clinging arms. ”

“ Not so very much!" scoffed Susan, instantly on her guard. "Keith here's gettin' so smart he won't let me do anything hardly for him now."
"Oh, but there must be a lot of things," began Mazie, "that he can't do, and—"
"Er—what a lovely big, sunny room," interrupted Dorothy hastily, so hastily that Susan threw a sharp glance into her face to see if she were really interrupting Mazie for a purpose. "I love big rooms." ”

“ There's some times when it's frank impertinence to tell folks not to worry," she muttered severely to herself, attacking the piled-up dishes before her.
Daniel Burton went to work in McGuire's grocery store the next morning, after a particularly appetizing breakfast served to him by a silent, red-eyed, but very attentive Susan.
"An' 'twas for all the world like a lamb to the slaughter-house," Susan moaned to the law-student lodger when she met him on the stairs at eight o'clock that morning. ”

“ You mustn't thrash yourself around like that," she remonstrated. "Why, you'll make yourself ill. There, that's better. Now go to sleep. I'm going out before you can talk any more, and get yourself all worked up again," she finished, hurrying out of the room with the breakfast tray.
A little later in the kitchen she faced Susan a bit haughtily.
"Master Keith is going to sleep," she said, putting down the breakfast tray. "I have left a bell within reach of his hand, and he will call you if he wants anything. I am going out to get a little air." ”

“ When folks has set one foot in the cemetery, an' a lame one at that, an' can't see nor hear nor think straight, I don't think it's no hilarious offense to wish they'd hurry up an' get to where they could have all them handy facilities back again, an' leave their money to folks what has got their full complaint of senses, ready to enjoy life, if they get a chance. Oh, yes, I know you don't know what I'm talkin' about, an' perhaps it's jest as well you don't, Miss Dorothy. I hadn't oughter said it, anyhow. Well, I s'pose I've got to go write that letter to Keith now. ”

“ Almost a man. Poor boy, poor boy—an' him with all these years of black darkness ahead of him! I tell you, Susan, I never appreciated my eyes as I have since Keith lost his. Seems as though anybody that's got their eyes hadn't ought to complain of—anything. I was thinkin' this mornin', comin' over, how good it was just to SEE the blue sky an' the sunshine an' the little buds breakin' through their brown jackets. Why, Susan, I never realized how good just seein' was—till I thought of Keith, who can't never see again. ”

“ He won't mind. He's used to his patients taking notions. It'll be all right. Don't worry," she nodded, her face clearing.
"But you'll have to be with Keith—some."
"Oh, yes, a little. But he won't know who I am. I'm just Dr. Stewart's daughter. Don't you see?"
"But—he'll know your voice."
"I shan't talk much. Besides, he never did hear me talk much. It was always Mazie that talked most. And he hasn't heard me any for a year or more, except that little bit that day at the house."
"But your name, Dorothy," still argued Susan dubiously.
"Father never calls me that. I'm always 'Puss' to him. ”