Joslyn Gray

“ He felt constrained to defend himself. But how could he do that? It came to the man coldly that he couldn’t explain that it was owing to his sensitiveness because of his crippled condition. He wouldn’t even have had the girl know that not for the world would he have crossed the room on his crutches before her. Frowning still, he sat silent.
Betty stifled a sigh and rose. Coming to his chair, she towered above him, a baby giant, indeed, but with a light in her soft-brown eyes that hurt and almost shamed him. ”

“ Harrow opened the door, Betty’s eyes shone so deeply and her cheeks glowed so rosily, that in other circumstances that lady must have wondered. But she hadn’t seen the girl since the preceding Saturday, and there was something far more striking and startling to discover about her than shining eyes and glowing cheeks. She stared at her in utter amazement, her face, which, since Rose’s illness, had taken on a seemingly permanent expression of half-fretful, half-despairing anxiety, becoming void for the nonce of all save sheer wonderment. ”

“ Rose is daring; but she hasn’t that slow, enduring, patient sort of courage that would enable her to bluff in a matter of this sort. I don’t say that Rose is shallow; but she isn’t as yet deep. She’s young and she is extremely immature. Certainly, she doesn’t hide her feelings. If she says she doesn’t mind and acts accordingly, you can rest assured that she doesn’t. She is truly sadly afflicted, but really, Betty, I cannot see how such a deprivation could possibly be felt less than Rose has felt it since that day last spring when you rescued her from unalleviated wretchedness. ”

“ Tommy delivered the message immediately. Betty heard it indifferently. Indeed, it failed to penetrate her wretchedness sufficiently to make any impression. Terrible as the experience of that morning had been, it already seemed to the girl far, far in the past. Her one thought was of Rose and of the weekly visits to Dr. Vandegrift. If the latter were over, if Rose was condemned to perpetual blindness, what did anything matter?
All day, the girl’s heart had been like a stone. Never in her life had she known such wretchedness. She had proposed to Rose that they should take the train home. ”

“ Betty colored in happy confusion. That was a singular way of looking at things! She proceeded in perfect confidence.
“Tommy said he told you all about Rose,” she began, “and how Rose wants to go to high school with the rest of us. But without knowing Rose, you could never, never guess, Mr. Meadowcroft, how very, very much she wants to go. She would almost rather—well, not be alive at all, if she has to stay at home—and she could do it easily—I mean she could study and catch up. But her mother won’t let her. She won’t listen when Rose tries to talk to her about it. She’s scared to death. ”

“ And now as he sat alone musing, Humphrey Meadowcroft told himself that the man’s life was truly ideal. To know boys and girls so well—particularly, these genuine, unsophisticated country boys and girls—to love them so simply and frankly, to be such a power among them, to be so happy in imparting the knowledge dear to himself as to be insensible of the toil and drudgery involved, to lead them on and on and higher and higher in his endeavor to prepare them for whatever was to come after they should have passed from his mild sway—what satisfaction could compare with a life like that? ”

“ As a matter of fact, lack of experience made Meadowcroft more critical and exacting always as a teacher than Mr. Appleton; and when he made special effort to be thorough and to take nothing for granted, as he did in this instance, he was truly to be feared. Those fifteen lessons proved something never to be forgotten.
“Wasn’t it fierce!” cried Rose as they sank into their seats in the half-past four train. “Isn’t that man the limit when he’s really mad? Goodness me, do you suppose it will be as bad as this every day, Betty?” ”

“ I should call him a cripple, just as everybody would if he didn’t live in the finest house in the country with that stuck-up Mrs. Phillips,” declared Miss Pogany severely.
Betty knew that it wasn’t a brougham but a victoria Mr. Meadowcroft drove in, and as Tommy had told her about the crutches, she believed the word lame admissible. But she said nothing. It was almost second nature to the girl to repress her thoughts and feelings. Perhaps it was long experience of repression that had molded her countenance to that impassive, Indian-like type which only Humphrey Meadowcroft had noticed. ”

“ Meadowcroft. “I suppose you played they were stilts when you were a boy?”
“No, Tommy. I didn’t. I wish I had,” returned Meadowcroft with a sigh. “I am sorry to say I hardly knew there were such things as stilts.”
“Well, I suppose even now you could pretend they were,” Tommy remarked. “I can pretend things now as well as ever. But it may be my magic, of course. There’s something about magic that keeps a fellow young. Perhaps it’s because you have to have so much faith.” And he sighed.
Meadowcroft laughed.
“How about Betty?” he asked. ”

“ Because you are, and perhaps always have been, large for your age, you have never gone in for the things other children take up naturally all along the path of the years. You’re grown up now when you ought to be a little girl—a romping little girl!”
She looked at him so understandingly, so ruefully, so deprecatingly, and she was so big, so truly bouncing, that Meadowcroft couldn’t himself help thinking of the baby giant. ”

“ The school-master would not have excused any other pupils in those circumstances. But he had so much sympathy for Rose and such confidence in Betty, who was as remarkable, as nearly perfect, in her conduct as in her lessons, that he yielded at once. He had no doubt whatever that the occasion was important and concerned Rose’s welfare.
“But it is not usual, you know, Miss Pogany,” he added, smiling. “As a matter of fact it is against the rules to be excused from school when it involves missing a lesson unless the pupil brings a written request from parent or guardian. ”

“ Quite apart from his particular affection for Betty, Humphrey Meadowcroft felt that he must have been shocked and pained to see such a change in any young girl as had come over her. It was appalling to see any girl growing more unruly and stubborn from day to day and to be powerless to arrest the process. ”

“ And when June came, and Rose was like other girls again, and they should tell him what they had done and why, Mr. Appleton would say they had done just right and that he wouldn’t for all the world have had them risk Rose’s losing the wonderful chance. Why, a much less kind-hearted man, a man that would hardly be called good at all, wouldn’t hinder a blind girl from getting back her sight; and Mr. Appleton was almost the kindest soul living. There was no man Betty so respected and looked up to except her father and Mr. Meadowcroft. ”

“ And when Meadowcroft, glancing out the window five minutes before the close of school, caught sight of a tuft of scarlet at the top of a long, awkward figure loping along like a kangaroo, he couldn’t do otherwise than recognize him. He was taking his turn at breaking rules, it would appear.
To avoid any chance of error, he went into the classroom to make sure Tommy wasn’t there. He discovered more—or less—than he had expected. For not only was Tommy a truant, but neither Rose nor Betty, who had left the main room with the others forty minutes [159] earlier, was anywhere to be seen. ”

“ Vandegrift would give us a later hour.”
“How about the money?” Rose asked.
“O, we’ll get the money all right,” Betty assured her.
Rose sighed. “Well, it would be an awful bother, and there’d be a row about our getting home late. And anyhow, Betty, I don’t care much,” she confessed. “I don’t really mind being blind at all. I have such good times right along and you and I are always together. Everybody is lots nicer to me than if I could see and it’s exciting doing everything—the most common, ordinary things. ”

“ The famous trick of making an omelet in a gentleman’s silk hat was heartily applauded. A successful magician mixes the eggs with a flourish and presently brings out, not an omelet but a garland of flowers. The flash of red fire which was supposed to cook the ingredients was a great surprise, and Tommy drew forth a handsome wreath of flowers with an impressive gesture. ”

“ Betty glanced deprecatingly at Mrs. Harrow.
“I have got on a short skirt and low-heeled shoes and don’t wear corsets any more,” she said in a low voice. “And I’ve got my hair down my back, too.”
Rose reached out and skilfully caught the thick bright braid and gave it a playful yank.
“O, Betty, I wish I——” she began, but stopped herself. She looked towards her mother.
“There’s no use in picking on Betty, mama,” she remarked. “I am going to walk. I haven’t been out of the house for six months except to be lifted into that old buggy like a sack of meal and to ride behind that pokey old horse. ”

“ Betty breathed a deep sigh of relief. “You are certainly a wizard, Tommy,” she declared.
Tommy’s usual boastfulness was not forthcoming. As he stood within the little porch made by the storm door while Betty took off her overshoes, he remarked casually that Mr. Appleton had looked pretty seedy that day.
“O, I didn’t notice!” cried Betty contritely. “I am so sorry! Do you mean his cold seems worse?”
“I don’t know as it’s so much worse, but the poor old duffer seemed so sort of played out and discouraged. Those hollow-chested beggars always seem—well, prone to melancholy, somehow. ”

“ They were to be kept at school until quarter-past four every day, and Dr. Vandegrift left Millville ten minutes earlier on Wednesday. Everything had been wasted! All the doctor’s kindness and skill had been thrown away, and Rose was far worse off than if they had never begun the treatment. She would never get over the terrible disappointment of knowing that she might have been cured.
As for herself, Betty felt that it would kill her. She would have gone down on her knees to beg Dr. Vandegrift to allow her to say one word of explanation to Mr. Meadowcroft, but she knew that to be hopeless. ”

“ Tommy explained. “But anyhow, it’s funny, for she ain’t really any thinner or any shorter—the heels of her new shoes don’t let her down hardly enough to count—but I don’t mind walking with Betty now. I like to. I’ve made up my mind it wasn’t her size before, hardly at all; but it was her looking so grown-up with long dresses and her hair pugged like a lady’s. Walking beside her was like walking with a teacher. And, gee! how a fellow feels to walk with a female teacher after he gets out of the primary!” ”

“ Everyone in the village liked the odd, lazy, careless lad; but though he cherished no dislike for anyone, nearly everybody bored him, his schoolmates as well as older people, and especially his parents. Wherefore when he spoke in glowing terms of the stranger in the Phillips house, it meant much to one who knew Tommy as Betty Pogany knew him, and who regarded him not only as a scientific experimenter and observer but also as something of a philosopher. And Tommy took occasion to mention Mr. Meadowcroft every time he saw Betty. ”

“ Betty’s heart sank. He was through and he hadn’t even tried the eye-cup. Rose’s blindness was inveterate!
Dr. Vandegrift met her appealing gaze calmly.
“Well, young ladies, I make no promises,” he said in a large way. “The deeper one delves into science, the more one learns from nature, the more modest a man becomes, and the less inclined to boast. Now this is all I am willing to say. Of the four cases of blindness which I have treated and cured with my recently invented Galvano Eye-Cup, every one was much more serious than this young lady’s appears to be. ”

“ Tommy says you have only a fortnight more of school,” he reminded her. “Begin right away, anyhow, but the summer holidays will give you a capital chance to get wholly limbered up before you enter the high school. And there you can make a perfectly fresh start. Paulding’s a large town. The school will therefore be large, and your class may be three-quarters strangers. It will be easy to start in with them as a girl among girls and boys. Don’t think of your size. Just go in for everything as if you’d always been in the habit of doing so. You’re not stiff in your mind, you know, Miss Betty. ”

“ You’re—you’re just killing yourself because of Rose. You’re so blooming sorry for her you don’t have her off your mind one single minute, and you don’t take one mite of comfort for yourself. And, gee! you might have such a high time always. All the fellows say you’re the most popular girl in our class—among everybody, boys and girls and teachers—and you don’t make anything out of it at all. Gee whiz! I’d like your chance! If I could be a spell-binder as easy as you could, you’d see a thing or two happen!”
Betty had colored charmingly. What Tommy had said of her popularity was quite true. ”

“ As Betty climbed the stair, it came to her that it would be a pleasanter world if people would choose their words in speaking to overgrown girls—to fat people, in short—just as they did for the lame and blind. ”

“ She encountered the center table with some force, but laughed gaily. That gave her the direction and she went thence unerringly into the passage, caught the balustrade, and ran excitedly up the stair and into her own chamber. When Betty reached the room, Rose sat on the bed, half-laughing, half-crying.
“Come,” said Betty, who paused at the dresser. “We must get your hair done and your dress changed.” Rose slipped out of her dressing-gown, followed Betty’s voice to the dresser and released her long, abundant dark brown hair from the tight plait. ”

“ Chatter about wasting time meant little to Betty’s broken heart.
“I wasn’t studying,” she replied with quiet dignity.
Even Tommy was surprised that Meadowcroft, with no inkling of understanding, kept his patience in the face of what must have looked like extreme stubbornness. [181] He merely warned her that it mustn’t happen again. Thereafter he would expect her to be prepared without exception for every lesson. And he would hear her recite this at noon to-morrow. ”

“ It seems more than I can bear. Just listen—everything is right. Aunt Sarah is going over to Greenmeadow to-morrow to spend the day. All I shall have to do will be to get father’s dinner. Then I’ll just ask him if I may spend the afternoon with Rose, and we’ll take her over.”
[106] Tommy sprang suddenly from the sofa as if he had sat on a pin. And his expression was in accord.
“O, Betty! O me! O my!” he cried dolefully, “I can’t go! There’s no way possible. I’ve got to work all day right under dad’s eye. He’s going to clean the shed upstairs and down and the loft in the barn. ”

“ CHAPTER X TOMMY passed on Mr. Meadowcroft’s word to Betty and the girl went in the next day after school. Prepared as he had been to see a transformation, Meadowcroft was nevertheless almost startled to see the change in the girl’s face that had been brought about within ten days. How was it possible that that mature, “settled” expression could have been displaced by the eager, almost adventurous look that is the very quintessence of youth? Even the “bee in the bonnet” theory couldn’t wholly account for the marvel. The potentiality of it must have been latent for many a day. ”