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Page 61
Betty stretched out one trembling hand for the paper, and involuntarily
the other went up to her eyes to push away the bandages. "Let me see
it," she cried, eagerly, but the thrill of gladness in her voice died in
a pitiful little note of despair as she whispered, brokenly, "Oh, I
forgot! I can't see!"
But the next instant her hand was groping for the paper again. "Where
is it?" she asked. "Let me feel it, anyway. Oh, to think that something
I have written has really been published! Where is it, Lloyd? Put my
hand on the spot, please. You don't know how glad I am, how glad and
thankful. I have always wanted to write--always hoped that some day,
after I had tried years and years, I might be able to do something good
enough to be published, but to have it come now while I am a little
girl,"--her voice sunk almost to a whisper,--"oh, Lloyd you don't know
how wonderful it seems to me!"
She was trembling so that the paper shook in her hands. "Where is it?"
she asked again, feeling blindly over the page.
"There," said Lloyd, placing the little groping finger on a spot at the
head of a column. "There is the word _NIGHT_, and heah," guiding her
fingers down the page, "heah is yo' name. If I were you I'd be so stuck
up I wouldn't speak to common people that can't have verses published in
the papah."
"But--oh--if you couldn't--_see_--it!" Betty's words came in choking
little gasps. She paused a moment and turned her face away, swallowing
hard. Then she went on more calmly.
"Wasn't it queer that I should have written about Night, just before
mine begun? That the only thing I shall ever have published should be
called that? My long, long night! But there are no stars in this night.
Lloyd, it's awful to think you'll always be in the dark!"
Lloyd turned with a startled glance to the other girls.
"I--I don't know what you mean," she stammered.
"Yes, you do," insisted Betty. "What you've been trying to keep from me,
all of you, that I am always going to be--_blind_!"
She ended the sentence with a little shiver, and, choking with sobs,
turned her face to the wall. At a sign from the nurse, Lloyd slipped
away and ran to her mother's room. She found Eugenia already there, with
her head buried in Mrs. Sherman's lap.
"Oh, it almost broke my heart!" she was saying. "To see those poor
little fingers groping over the paper feeling for the poem that she
couldn't see. And she said so pitifully, 'My long, long night! There are
no stars in this night!' And to think it's all my fault! Oh, it is just
killing me! I could hardly sleep last night for thinking of it, and when
I did I had a dreadful nightmare.
"I dreamed that I was in a great market-place going from stall to stall,
trying to buy something, but I had forgotten what it was I wanted. A
horrid grinning little dwarf, with great fangs in his jaw, like a boar's
tusks, followed me everywhere, carrying my purse. I'd stand awhile in
front of every stall, trying to remember what it was I'd come for, and
when I'd thought awhile I'd cry out, 'Now I know what I want, give me my
own way. It is my own way that I want.' Everybody in the market would
stop to listen, and the man behind the counter would say, 'Not unless
you can pay the price.'
"Then that horrible dwarf would step up, grinning, his old tusks showing
all hideous and yellow, and say, 'Here is the price! Give her her own
way. Here is the price. Let the whole world see the price that she has
paid for her own way,--Betty's eyes is the price. Betty's beautiful
brown eyes!' And then he would hold them out in his ugly knotted hand,
and they would look up at me so reproachfully, that I would scream and
tear my hair. I don't know how many times I had to go through that scene
in my sleep, but when I got up this morning I was as tired as if I had
been running all night, and every place I turn I can see that hideous
old hand thrust out at me with Betty's brown eyes in it. I'll never
insist on having my own way again."
There was no time for Mrs. Sherman to comfort Eugenia then, for Betty
needed her, and in answer to the nurse's summons she hurried away to
soothe the child, sorely distressed by this turn that the house party
had taken.
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