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Page 60
"Was the doctor sure, Lloyd? Can't something be done?"
"Of co'se he wasn't _suah_. I heard him tell mothah that he wouldn't
give up fighting for her sight as long as there was a shadow of a chance
to save it, but he advised her to send for an oculist to consult with
him, and she's just now telephoned to the city for one."
"Does Betty know it?"
"She knows that there is dangah of her losing her sight, and is tryin'
so hahd to be quiet and patient."
Eugenia laid down her book, feeling faint and sick. For a long time
after Lloyd and Joyce had left her she sat idly playing with the curtain
cord, thinking over what they had told her. Presently she tiptoed
up-stairs to her room. She stood a moment outside Betty's door,
listening, for Betty was talking to Eliot, and she wanted to hear what a
person with such a prospect staring her in the face would have to say.
"There are lots of beautiful things in the world to think about, Eliot,"
Betty was saying bravely, in her sweet, cheery little voice.
"'Specially when you've lived in the country and have all the big
outdoors to remember. Now while I'm so hot I love to count up all the
cool things I can remember. I like to pretend that I'm down in the
orchard, way early in the morning, with a fresh breeze blowing through
the apple-blossoms and the dewdrops shining on every blade of grass. Oh,
it smells so fresh and sweet and delicious! Now I'm in the corn-fields
and the tall green corn is rustling in the wind, and the morning-glories
climb up every stalk and shake the dew out of their purple bells. Now I
can hear the bucket splash down in the well, and come up cold and
dripping. And now I'm dabbling my fingers in the spring down in the old
stone spring house, and standing on the cold, wet rocks in my bare feet.
And there's the winter mornings, Eliot, when the trees are covered with
sleet till every twig twinkles like a diamond. And the frost on the
window-panes--oh, if I could only lay my face against the cold glass
now, how good it would feel!"
Eugenia could bear no more. She turned away from the door, and, meeting
Mrs. Sherman on the threshold of her room, threw herself into her arms,
sobbing: "Oh, Cousin Elizabeth, I can't stand it. If Betty goes blind
it will be all my fault! She never would have had the measles if it
hadn't been for me. But I would go, and I made the others go, too. And
when Betty refused I was so mean and hateful to her! Oh, Cousin
Elizabeth, what can I do?"
Mrs. Sherman drew Eugenia into her room and comforted her the best she
could, but her own heart was heavy. She knew that Doctor Fuller had
little hope of saving Betty's sight.
That knowledge threw a shadow over the entire household. The great
oculist came, and gravely shook his head over the case. "There is one
chance that she may see again," he said, "one in a hundred. That is all.
Now if she could have a trained nurse who could watch her eyes
constantly and follow directions to the letter--"
"She shall have anything!" interrupted Mrs. Sherman. "Everything that
would help in the smallest degree."
"And it would be best not to let the child know," he continued. "It
would probably excite her, and, above all things, that must be guarded
against."
But Betty, lying with bandaged eyes, caught a whisper, felt the
suppressed sympathy in the atmosphere, as one feels the tingle of
electricity in the air before a storm, and began to guess the truth.
When the trained nurse came and gave such careful attention to the
treatment of her eyes, she was sure of it. But she said nothing of her
suspicions, and they thought she had none.
One day Lloyd came into the room with a newspaper in her hand. Eugenia
and Joyce followed softly. Lloyd tried to speak calmly, but there was a
suppressed excitement in her voice as she exclaimed, "Betty, I've got
the loveliest thing to show you. Mothah said I might be the one to tell,
'cause I'm so glad and proud, I don't know what to do. You know that
little poem that you gave to mothah, called 'Night?' Well, she sent it
away to an editah, and he has published it in this papah with yo' name
at the bottom,--Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis! Now aren't you stuck up? We are
all so proud of you we don't know what to do."
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