She was glad, afterward, that this was all she did, for at the far end of the veranda Daniel Burton stepped out from a door, and stood for a moment watching them. But it was for only a moment. And when she begged mutely for him to come forward and speak, he shook his head fiercely, covered his eyes with his hand, and plunged back into the house.

"What was that, Susan? What was that?" demanded the boy.

"Nothin', child, nothin', only a door shuttin' somewhere, or a window."

At that moment a girl's voice caroled shrilly from the street.

"Hullo, Keith, how do you do? We're awfully glad to see you out again."

The boy started violently, but did not turn his head—except to Susan.

"Susan, I—I'm tired. I want to go in now," he begged a little wildly, under his breath.

"Keith, it's Mazie—Mazie and Dorothy," caroled the high-pitched voice again.

But Keith, with a tug so imperative that Susan had no choice but to obey, turned his head quite away as he groped for the door to go in.

In the hall he drew a choking breath.

"Susan, I don't want to go out there to walk any more—NOT ANY MORE! I don't want to go anywhere where anybody'll see me."

"Shucks!" Susan's voice was harshly unsteady again. "See you, indeed! Why, we're goin' to be so proud of you we'll want the whole world to see you.

You jest wait An' see the fate That I've cut out for you. We'll be so proud We'll laugh aloud, An' you'll be laughin', too!

I made that up last night when I laid awake thinkin' of all the fine things we was goin' to have you do."

But Keith only shook his head again and complained of feeling, oh, so tired. And Susan, looking at his pale, constrained face, did not quote any more poetry to him, or talk about the glorious future in store for him. She led him to the easiest chair in his room and made him as comfortable as she could. Then she went downstairs and shut herself in the pantry—until she could stop her "fool cryin' over nothin'."



CHAPTER VIII

AUNT NETTIE MEETS HER MATCH

Mrs. Nettie Colebrook came at half-past five. She was a small, nervous-looking woman with pale-blue eyes and pale-yellow hair. 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.

"But how CAN you stand it!—your only son—blind!" wailed Mrs. Colebrook, with a fresh burst of sobs.

"I notice some things have to be stood," observed Susan grimly. Susan, with Mrs. Colebrook's traveling-bag in her hand, was waiting with obvious impatience to escort her visitor upstairs to her room.

Susan's terse comment accomplished what Daniel Burton's admonition had been quite powerless to bring about. Mrs. Colebrook stopped sobbing at once, and drew herself somewhat haughtily erect.

"And, pray, who is this?" she demanded, looking from one to the other.

"Well, 'this' happens to be the hired girl, an' she's got some biscuits in the oven," explained Susan crisply. "If you'll be so good, ma'am, I'll show you upstairs to your room."

"Daniel!" appealed Mrs. Colebrook, plainly aghast.

But her brother, with a helpless gesture, had turned away, and Susan, bag in hand, was already halfway up the stairs. With heightened color and a muttered "Impertinence!" Mrs. Colebrook turned and followed Susan to the floor above.

A little way down the hall Susan threw open a door.

"I swept, but I didn't have no time to dust," she announced as she put down the bag. "There's a duster in that little bag there. Don't lock the door. Somethin' ails it. If you do you'll have to go out the window down a ladder. There's towels in the top drawer, an' you'll have to fill the pitcher every day, 'cause there's a crack an' it leaks, an' you can't put in the water only to where the crack is. Is there anything more you want?"

"Thank you. 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? Never to see again, never to see again! Oh, my poor boy, my poor blind boy!"

Susan, at the door, flung both hands above her head, then plunged down the stairs.

"Fool! FOOL! FOOL!" she snarled at the biscuits in the oven. "Don't you know ANYTHING?" Yet the biscuits in the oven were puffing up and browning beautifully, as the best of biscuits should.

When Susan's strident call for supper rang through the hall, Mrs. Colebrook was with her brother in the studio. She had been bemoaning and bewailing the cruel fate that had overtaken "that dear boy," and had just asked for the seventh time how he could stand it, when from the hall below came:

"Supper's ready, supper's ready, Hurry up or you'll be late. Then you'll sure be cross an' heady, If there's nothin' left to ate."

"Daniel, what in the world is the meaning of that?" she interrupted sharply.

"That? Oh, that is Susan's—er—supper bell," shrugged the man, with a little uneasy gesture.

"You mean that you've heard it before?—that that is her usual method of summoning you to your meals?"

"Y-yes, when she's good-natured," returned the man, with a still more uneasy shifting of his position. "Come, shall we go down?"

"DANIEL! And you stand it?"

"Oh, come, come! You don't understand—conditions here. Besides, I've tried to stop it."

"TRIED to stop it!"

"Yes. Oh, well, try yourself, if you think it's so easy. I give you my full and free permission. Try it."

"TRY it! I shan't TRY anything of the sort. I shall STOP it."

"Humph!" shrugged the man. "Oh, very well, then. Suppose we go down."

"But what does that poor little blind boy eat? How can he eat— anything?"

"Why, I—I don't know." The man gave an irritably helpless gesture. "The nurse—she used to—You'll have to ask Susan. She'll know."

"Susan! That impossible woman! Daniel, how DO you stand her?"

Daniel Burton shrugged his shoulders again. Then suddenly he gave a short, grim laugh.

"I notice there are some things that have to be stood," he observed, so exactly in imitation of Susan that it was a pity only Mrs. Nettie Colebrook's unappreciative ears got the benefit of it.

In the dining-room a disapproving Susan stood by the table.

"I thought you wasn't never comin'. The hash is gettin' cold."

Mrs. Colebrook gasped audibly.

"Yes, yes, I know," murmured Mr. Burton conciliatingly. "But we're here now, Susan."

"What will Master Keith have for his supper?" questioned Mrs. Colebrook, lifting her chin a little.

"He's already had his supper, ma'am. I took it up myself."

"What was it?" Mrs. Colebrook asked the question haughtily, imperiously.

Susan's eyes grew cold like steel.

"It was what he asked for, ma'am, an' he's ate it. Do you want your tea strong or weak, ma'am?"

Mrs. Colebrook bit her lip.

"I'll not take any tea at all," she said coldly. "And, Susan!"

"Yes, ma'am." Susan turned, her hand on the doorknob.

"Hereafter I will take up Master Keith's meals myself. He is in my charge now."

There was no reply—in words. But the dining-room door after Susan shut with a short, crisp snap.

After supper Mrs. Colebrook went out into the kitchen.

"You may prepare oatmeal and dry toast and a glass of milk for Master Keith to-morrow morning, Susan. I will take them up myself."

"He won't eat 'em. He don't like 'em—not none of them things."

"I think he will if I tell him to. At all events, they are what he should eat, and you may prepare them as I said."

"Very well, ma'am."

Susan's lips came together in a thin, white line, and Mrs. Colebrook left the kitchen.

Keith did not eat his toast and oatmeal the next morning, though his aunt sat on the edge of the bed, called him her poor, afflicted, darling boy, and attempted to feed him herself with a spoon.

Keith turned his face to the wall and said he didn't want any breakfast. Whereupon his aunt sighed, and stroked his head; and Keith hated to have his head stroked, as Susan could have told her.

"Of course, you don't want any breakfast, you poor, sightless lamb," she moaned. "And I don't blame you. Oh, Keithie, Keithie, when I see you lying there like that, with your poor useless eyes—! But you must eat, dear, you must eat. Now, come, just a weeny, teeny mouthful to please auntie!"

But Keith turned his face even more determinedly to the wall, and moved his limbs under the bed clothes in a motion very much like a kick. He would have nothing whatever to do with the "weeny, teeny mouthfuls," not even to please auntie. And after a vain attempt to remove his tortured head, entirely away from those gently stroking ringers, he said he guessed he would get up and be dressed.

"Oh, Keithie, are you well enough, dear? Are you sure you are strong enough? I'm sure you must be ill this morning. You haven't eaten a bit of breakfast. And if anything should happen to you when you were in MY care—"

"Of course I'm well enough," insisted the boy irritably.

"Then I'll get your clothes, dear, and help you dress, if you will be careful not to overdo."

"I don't want any help."

"Why, Keithie, you'll HAVE to have some one help you. How do you suppose your poor blind eyes are going to let you dress yourself all alone, when you can't see a thing? Why, dear child, you'll have to have help now about everything you do. Now I'll get your clothes. Where are they, dear? In this closet?"

"I don't know. I don't want 'em. I—I've decided I don't want to get up, after all."

"You ARE too tired, then?"

"Yes, I'm too tired." And Keith, with another spasmodic jerk under the bedclothes, turned his face to the wall again.

"All right, dear, you shan't. That's the better way, I think myself," sighed his aunt. "I wouldn't have you overtax yourself for the world. Now isn't there anything, ANYTHING I can do for you?"

And Keith said no, not a thing, not a single thing. And his face was still to the wall.

"Then if you're all right, absolutely all right, I'll go out to walk and get a little fresh air. Now don't move. Don't stir. TRY to go to sleep if you can. And if you want anything, just ring. I'll put this little bell right by your hand on the bed; and you must ring if you want anything, ANYTHING. Then Susan will come and get it for you. There, the bell's right here. See? Oh, no, no, you CAN'T see!" she broke off suddenly, with a wailing sob. "Why will I keep talking to you as if you could?"

"Well, I wish you WOULD talk to me as if I could see," stormed Keith passionately, sitting upright in bed and flinging out his arms. "I tell you I don't want to be different! It's because I AM different that I am so—-"

But his aunt, aghast, interrupted him, and pushed him back.

"Oh, Keithie, darling, lie down! 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."

"All right, ma'am." Susan kept right on with the dish she was drying.

"You are sure you can hear the bell?"

"Oh, yes, my hearin' ain't repaired in the least, ma'am." Susan turned her back and picked up another dish. Plainly, for Susan, the matter was closed.

Mrs. Colebrook, after a vexed biting of her lip and a frowning glance toward Susan's substantial back, shrugged her shoulders and left the kitchen. A minute later, still hatless, she crossed the yard and entered the McGuires' side door.

"Take the air, indeed!" muttered Susan, watching from the kitchen window. "A whole lot of fresh air she'll get in Mis' McGuire's kitchen!"

With another glance to make sure that Mrs. 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.

"Here's your breakfast, boy," she announced cheerily.

"I didn't want any breakfast," came crossly from the bed.

"Of course you didn't want THAT breakfast," scoffed Susan airily; "but you just look an' see what I'VE brought you!"

Look and see! Susan's dismayed face showed that she fully realized what she had said, and that she dreaded beyond words its effect on the blind boy in the bed.

She hesitated, and almost dropped the tray in her consternation. But the boy turned with a sudden eagerness that put to rout her dismay, and sent a glow of dazed wonder to her face instead.

"What HAVE you got? Let me see." He was sitting up now. "Hash—and— johnny-cake!" he crowed, as she set the tray before him, and he dropped his fingers lightly on the contents of the tray. "And don't they smell good! I don't know—I guess I am hungry, after all."

"Of course you're hungry!" Susan's voice was harsh, and she was fiercely brushing back the tears. "Now, eat it quick, or I'll be sick! Jest think what'll happen to Susan if that blessed aunt of yours comes an' finds me feedin' you red-flannel hash an' johnny-cake! Now I'll be up in ten minutes for the tray. See that you eat it up—every scrap," she admonished him, as she left the room.

Susan had found by experience that Keith ate much better when alone. She was not surprised, therefore, though she was very much pleased—at sight of the empty plates awaiting her when she went up for the tray at the end of the ten minutes.

"An' now what do you say to gettin' up?" she suggested cheerily, picking up the tray from the bed and setting it on the table.

"Can I dress myself?"

"Of course you can! What'll you bet you won't do it five minutes quicker this time, too? I'll get your clothes."

Halfway back across the room, clothes in hand, she was brought to a sudden halt by a peremptory: "What in the world is the meaning of this?" It was Mrs. Nettie Colebrook in the doorway.

"I'm gettin' Keith's clothes. He's goin' to get up."

"But MASTER Keith said he did not wish to get up."

"Changed his mind, maybe." The terseness of Susan's reply and the expression on her face showed that the emphasis on the "Master" was not lost upon her.

"Very well, then, that will do. You may go. I will help him dress."

"I don't want any help," declared Keith.

"Why, Keithie, darling, of course you want help! You forget, dear, you can't see now, and—"

"Oh, no, I don't forget," cut in Keith bitterly. "You don't let me forget a minute—not a minute. I don't want to get up now, anyhow. What's the use of gettin' up? I can't DO anything!" And he fell back to his old position, with his face to the wall.

"There, there, dear, you are ill and overwrought," cried Mrs. Colebrook, hastening to the bedside. "It is just as I said, you are not fit to get up." Then, to Susan, sharply: "You may put Master Keith's clothes back in the closet. He will not need them to-day."

"No, ma'am, I don't think he will need them—now." Susan's eyes flashed ominously. But she hung the clothes back in the closet, picked up the tray, and left the room.

Susan's eyes flashed ominously, indeed, all the rest of the morning, while she was about her work; and at noon, when she gave the call to dinner, there was a curious metallic incisiveness in her voice, which made the call more strident than usual.

It was when Mrs. Colebrook went into the kitchen after dinner for Keith's tray that she said coldly to Susan:

"Susan, I don't like that absurd doggerel of yours."

"Doggerel?" Plainly Susan was genuinely ignorant of what she meant.

"Yes, that extraordinary dinner call of yours. As I said before, I don't like it."

There was a moment's dead silence. The first angry flash in Susan's eyes was followed by a demure smile.

"Don't you? Why, I thought it was real cute, now."

"Well, I don't. You'll kindly not use it any more, Susan," replied Mrs. Colebrook, with dignity.

Once again there was the briefest of silences, then quietly came Susan's answer:

"Oh, no, of course not, ma'am. I won't—when I work for you. There, Mis' Colebrook, here's your tray all ready."

And Mrs. Colebrook, without knowing exactly how it happened, found herself out in the hall with the tray in her hands.



CHAPTER IX

SUSAN SPEAKS HER MIND

"How's Keith?"

It was Monday morning, and as usual Mrs. McGuire, seeing Susan in the clothes-yard, had come out, ostensibly to hang out her own clothes, in reality to visit with Susan while she was hanging out hers.

"About as usual." Susan snapped out the words and a pillow-case with equal vehemence.

"Is he up an' dressed?"

"I don't know. I hain't seen him this mornin'—but it's safe to say he ain't."

"But I thought he was well enough to be up an' dressed right along now."

"He is WELL ENOUGH—or, rather he WAS." Susan snapped open another pillow-case and hung it on the line with spiteful jabs of two clothespins.

"Why, Susan, is he worse? You didn't say he was any worse. You said he was about as usual."

"Well, so he is. That's about as usual. Look a-here, Mis' McGuire," flared Susan, turning with fierce suddenness, "wouldn't YOU be worse if you wasn't allowed to do as much as lift your own hand to your own head?"

"Why, Susan, what do you mean? What are you talkin' about?"

"I'm talkin' about Keith Burton an' Mis' Nettie Colebrook. I've GOT to talk about 'em to somebody. I'm that full I shall sunburst if I don't. She won't let him do a thing for himself—not a thing, that woman won't!"

"But how can he do anything for himself, with his poor sightless eyes?" demanded Mrs. McGuire. "I don't think I should complain, Susan Betts, because that poor boy's got somebody at last to take proper care of him."

"But it AIN'T takin' proper care of him, not to let him do things for himself," stormed Susan hotly. "How's he ever goin' to 'mount to anything—that's what I want to know—if he don't get a chance to begin to 'mount? All them fellers—them fellers that was blind an' wrote books an' give lecturin's an' made things—perfectly wonderful things with their hands—how much do you s'pose they would have done if they'd had a woman 'round who said, 'Here, let me do it; oh, you mustn't do that, Keithie, dear!' every time they lifted a hand to brush away a hair that was ticklin' their nose?"

"Oh, Susan!"

"Well, it's so. Look a-here, listen!" Susan dropped all pretense of work now, and came close to the fence. She was obviously very much in earnest. "That boy hain't been dressed but twice since that woman came a week ago. She won't let him dress himself alone an' now he don't want to be dressed. Says he's too tired. An' she says, 'Of course, you're too tired, Keithie, dear!' An' there he lies, day in an' day out, with his poor sightless eyes turned to the wall. He won't eat a thing hardly, except what I snuggle up when she's out airin' herself. He ain't keen on bein' fed with a spoon like a baby. No boy with any spunk would be."

"But can he feed himself?"

"Of course he can—if he gets a chance! But that ain't all. He don't want to be told all the time that he's different from other folks. He can't forget that he's blind, of course, but he wants you to act as if you forgot it. I know. I've seen him. But she don't forget it a minute—not a minute. She's always cryin' an' wringin' her hands, an' sighin', 'Oh, Keithie, Keithie, my poor boy, my poor blind boy!' till it's enough to make a saint say, 'Gosh!'"

"Well, that's only showin' sympathy, Susan," defended Mrs. McGuire. "I'm sure she ought not to be blamed for that."

"He don't want sympathy—or, if he does, he hadn't ought to have it."

"Why, Susan Betts, I'm ashamed of you—grudgin' that poor blind boy the comfort of a little sympathy! My John said yesterday—"

"'T ain't sympathy he needs. Sympathy's a nice, soft little paw that pats him to sleep. What he needs is a good sharp scratch that will make him get up an' do somethin'."

"Susan, how can you talk like that?"

"'Cause somebody's got to." Susan's voice was shaking now. Her hands were clenched so tightly on the fence pickets that the knuckles showed white with the strain. "Mis' McGuire, there's a chance, maybe, that that boy can see. There's somethin' they can do to his eyes, if he gets strong enough to have it done."

"Really? To see again?"

"Maybe. There's a chance. They ain't sure. But they can't even TRY till he gets well an' strong. An' how's he goin' to get well an' strong lyin' on that bed, face to the wall? That's what I want to know!"

"Hm-m, I see," nodded Mrs. McGuire soberly. Then, with a sidewise glance into Susan's face, she added: "But ain't that likely to cost— some money?"

"Yes, 't is." Susan went back to her work abruptly. With stern efficiency she shook out a heavy sheet and hung it up. Stooping, she picked up another one. But she did not shake out this. With the same curious abruptness that had characterized her movements a few moments before, she dropped the sheet back into the basket and came close to the fence again. "Mis' McGuire, won't you please let me take a copy of them two women's magazines that you take? That is, they—they do print poetry, don't they?"

"Why, y-yes, Susan, I guess they do. Thinkin' of sendin' 'em some of yours?" The question was asked in a derision that was entirely lost on Susan.

"Yes, to get some money." It was the breathless, palpitating Susan that Daniel Burton had seen a week ago, and like Daniel Burton on that occasion, Mrs. McGuire went down now in defeat before it.

"To—to get some money?" she stammered.

"Yes—for Keith's eyes, you know," panted Susan. "An' when I sell these, I'm goin' to write more—lots more. Only I've got to find a place, first, of course, to sell 'em. An' I did send 'em off last week. But they was jest cheap magazines; an' they sent a letter all printed sayin' as how they regretted very much they couldn't accept 'em. Like enough they didn't have money enough to pay much for 'em, anyway; but of course they didn't say that right out in so many words. But, as I said, they wasn't anything but cheap magazines, anyway. That's why I want yours, jest to get the addressin's of, I mean. THEY'RE first-class magazines, an' they'll pay me a good price, I'm sure. They'll have to, to get 'em! Why, Mis' McGuire, I've got to have the money. There ain't nobody but me TO get it. An' you don't s'pose we're goin' to let that boy stay blind all his life, do you, jest for the want of a little money?"

'"A little money'! It'll cost a lot of money, an' you know it, Susan Betts," cried Mrs. McGuire, stirred into sudden speech. "An' the idea of you tryin' to EARN it writin' poetry. For that matter, the idea of your earnin' it, anyway, even if you took your wages."

"Oh, I'd take my wages in a minute, if—" Susan stopped short. Her face had grown suddenly red. "That is, I—I think I'd rather take the poetry money, anyway," she finished lamely.

But Mrs. McGuire was not to be so easily deceived.

"Poetry money, indeed!" she scoffed sternly. "Susan Betts, do you know what I believe? I believe you don't GET any wages. I don't believe that man pays you a red cent from one week's end to the other. Now does he? You don't dare to answer!"

Susan drew herself up haughtily. But her face was still very red.

"Certainly I dare to answer, Mis' McGuire, but I don't care to. What Mr. Burton pays me discerns him an' me an' I don't care to discourse it in public. If you'll kindly lend me them magazines I asked you for a minute ago, I'll be very much obliged, an' I'll try to retaliate in the same way for you some time, if I have anything you want."

"Oh, good lan', Susan Betts, if you ain't the beat of 'em!" ejaculated Mrs. McGuire. "I'd like to shake you—though you don't deserve a shakin', I'll admit. You deserve—well, never mind. I'll get the magazines right away. That's the most I CAN do for you, I s'pose," she flung over her shoulder, as she hurried into the house.



CHAPTER X

AND NETTIE COLEBROOK SPEAKS HERS

Mrs. Colebrook had been a member of the Burton household a day less than two weeks when she confronted her brother in the studio with this terse statement:

"Daniel, either Susan or I leave this house tomorrow morning. You can choose between us."

"Nonsense, Nettie, don't be a fool," frowned the man. "You know very well that we need both you and Susan. Susan's a trial, I'll admit, in a good many ways; but I'll wager you'd find it more of a trial to get along without her, and try to do her work and yours, too."

"Nobody thought of getting along without SOMEBODY," returned Mrs. Colebrook, with some dignity. "I merely am asking you to dismiss Susan and hire somebody else—that is, of course, if you wish me to stay. Change maids, that's all."

The man made an impatient gesture.

"All, indeed! Very simple, the way you put it. But—see here, Nettie, this thing you ask is utterly out of the question. You don't understand matters at all."

"You mean that you don't intend to dismiss Susan?"

"Yes, if you will have it put that way—just that."

"Very well. Since that is your decision I shall have to govern myself accordingly, of course. I will see you in the morning to say good- bye." And she turned coldly away.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Why, that I am going home, of course—since you think more of having that impossible, outrageously impertinent servant girl here than you do me." Mrs. Colebrook was nearing the door how.

"Shucks! You know better than that! Come, come, if you're having any trouble with Susan, settle it with the girl herself, won't you? Don't come to me with it. You KNOW how I dislike anything like this."

At the door Mrs. Colebrook turned back suddenly with aggressive determination.

"Yes, I do know. You dislike anything that's disagreeable. You always have, from the time when you used to run upstairs to the attic and let us make all the explanations to pa and ma when something got lost or broken. But, see here, Daniel Burton, you've GOT to pay attention to this. It's your son, and your house, and your maid. And you shall listen to me."

"Well, well, all right, go ahead," sighed the man despairingly, throwing himself back in his chair. "What is the trouble? What is it that Susan does that annoys you so?"

"What does she do? What doesn't she do?" retorted Mrs. Colebrook, dropping herself wearily into a chair facing her brother. "In the first place, she's the most wretchedly impertinent creature I ever dreamed of. It's always 'Keith' instead of 'Master Keith,' and I expect every day it'll be 'Daniel' and 'Nettie' for you and me. She shows no sort of respect or deference in her manner or language, and— well, what are you looking like that for?" she interrupted herself aggrievedly.

"I was only thinking—or rather I was TRYING to think of Susan—and deference," murmured the man dryly.

"Yes, that's exactly it," Mrs. Colebrook reproved him severely. "You're laughing. You've always laughed, I suspect, at her outrageous behavior, and that's why she's so impossible in every way. 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!"

"Yes, yes; well, never mind," shrugged the man, a bit irritably. "We're talking about how she annoys YOU, not me, remember."

"Well, don't you suppose it annoys me to see my own brother so completely under the sway of this serving-maid? And such a maid! Daniel, will you tell me where she gets those long words of hers that she mixes up so absurdly?"

Daniel Burton laughed.

"Susan lived with Professor Hinkley for ten years before she came to me. The Hinkleys never used words of one or two syllables when they could find one of five or six that would do just as well. Susan loves long words."

"So I should judge. And those ridiculous rhymes of hers—did she learn those, also, from Professor Hinkley?" queried Mrs. Colebrook. "And as for that atrocious dinner-call of hers, it's a disgrace to any family —a positive disgrace!"

"Well, well, why don't you stop her doing it, then?" demanded Daniel Burton, still more irritably. "Go to HER, not me. Tell her not to."

"I have."

The tone of her voice was so fraught with meaning that the man looked up sharply.

"Well?"

"She said she wouldn't do it—when she worked for me."

Daniel Burton gave a sudden chuckle.

"I can imagine just how she'd say that," he murmured appreciatively.

"Daniel Burton, are you actually going to abet that girl in her wretched impertinence?" demanded Mrs. Colebrook angrily. "I tell you I will not stand it! Something has got to be done. Why, she even tries to interfere with the way I take care of your son—presumes to give me counsel and advice on the subject, if you please. Dares to criticize me—ME! Daniel Burton, I tell you I will not stand it. You MUST give that woman her walking papers. Why, Daniel, I shall begin to think she has hypnotized you—that you're actually afraid of her!"

Was it the scorn in her voice? Or was it that Daniel Burton's endurance had snapped at this last straw? Whatever it was, the man leaped to his feet, threw back his shoulders, and thrust his hands into his pockets.

"Nettie, look here. Once for all let us settle this matter. I tell you I cannot dismiss Susan; and I mean what I say when I use the words 'can not.' I literally CAN NOT. To begin with, she's the kindest- hearted creature in the world, and she's been devotion itself all these years since—since Keith and I have been alone. But even if I could set that aside, there's something else I can't overlook. I—I owe Susan considerable money."

"You owe her—MONEY?"

"Yes, her wages. She has not had them for some time. I must owe her something like fifty or sixty dollars. You see, we—we have had some very unusual and very heavy expenses, and I have overdrawn my annuity —borrowed on it. Susan knew this and insisted on my letting her wages go on, for the present. More than that, she has refused a better position with higher wages—I know that. The pictures I had hoped to sell—"He stopped, tried to go on, failed obviously to control his voice; then turned away with a gesture more eloquent than any words could have been.

Mrs. Colebrook stared, frowned, and bit her lip. Nervously she tapped her foot on the floor as she watched with annoyed eyes her brother tramping up and down, up and down, the long, narrow room. Then suddenly her face cleared.

"Oh, well, that's easily remedied, after all." She sprang to her feet and hurried from the room. Almost immediately she was back—a roll of bills in her hand. "There, I thought I had enough money to do it," she announced briskly as she came in. "Now, Daniel, I'LL pay Susan her back wages."

"Indeed you will not!" The man wheeled sharply, an angry red staining his cheeks.

"Oh, but Daniel, don't you see?—that'll simplify everything. She'll be working for ME, then, and I—"

"But I tell you I won't have—" interrupted the man, then stopped short. Susan herself stood in the doorway.

"I guess likely you was talkin' so loud you didn't hear me call you to dinner," she was saying. "I've called you two times already. If you want anything fit to eat you'd better come quick. It ain't gettin' any fitter, waitin'."

"Susan!" Before Susan could turn away, Mrs. Colebrook detained her peremptorily." Mr. Burton tells me that he owes you for past wages. Now—"

"NETTIE!" warned the man sharply.

But with a blithe "Nonsense, Daniel, let me manage this!" Mrs. Colebrook turned again to Susan. The man, not unlike the little Daniel of long ago who fled to the attic, shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of utter irresponsibility, turned his back and walked to the farther side of the room.

"Susan," began Mrs. Colebrook again, still blithely, but with just a shade of haughtiness, "my brother tells me your wages are past due; that he owes you at least fifty dollars. Now I'm going to pay them for him, Susan. In fact, I'm going to pay you sixty dollars, so as to be sure to cover it. Will that be quite satisfactory?"

Susan stared frankly.

"You mean ME—take money from you, ma'am,—to pay my back wages?" she asked.

"Yes."

"But—" Susan paused and threw a quick glance toward the broad back of the man at the end of the room. Then she turned resolutely to Mrs. Colebrook, her chin a little higher than usual. "Oh, no, thank you. I ain't needin' the money, Mis' Colebrook, an' I'd ruther wait for Mr. Burton, anyway," she finished cheerfully, as she turned to go.

"Nonsense, Susan, of COURSE you need the money. Everybody can make use of a little money, I guess. Surely, there's SOMETHING you want."

With her hand almost on the doorknob Susan suddenly whisked about, her face alight.

"Oh, yes, yes, I forgot, Mis' Colebrook," she cried eagerly. "There is somethin' I want; an' I'll take it, please, an' thank you kindly."

"There, that's better," nodded Mrs. Colebrook. "And I've got it right here, so you see you don't have to wait, even a minute," she smiled, holding out the roll of bills.

Still with the eager light on her face, Susan reached for the money.

"Thank you, oh, thank you! An' it will go quite a ways, won't it?—for Keith, I mean. The—" But with sudden sharpness Mrs. Colebrook interrupted her.

"Susan, how many times have I told you to speak of my nephew as 'Master Keith'? Furthermore, I shall have to remind you once more that you are trying to interfere altogether too much in his care. In fact, Susan, I may as well speak plainly. For some time past you have failed to give satisfaction. You are paid in full now, I believe, with some to spare, perhaps. You may work the week out. After that we shall no longer require your services."

The man at the end of the room wheeled sharply and half started to come forward. Then, with his habitual helpless gesture, he turned back to his old position.

Susan, her face eloquent with amazed unbelief, turned from one to the other.

"You mean—you don't mean—Mis' Colebrook, be you tryin' to—dismissal me?"

Mrs. Colebrook flushed and bit her lip.

"I am dismissing you—yes."

Once more Susan, in dazed unbelief, looked from one to the other. Her eyes dwelt longest on the figure of the man at the end of the room.

"Mr. Burton, do you want me to go?" she asked at last.

The man turned irritably, with a shrug, and a swift outflinging of his hands.

"Of course, I don't want you to go, Susan. But what can I do? I have no money to pay you, as you know very well. I have no right to keep you—of course—I should advise you to go." And he turned away again.

Susan's face cleared.

"Pooh! Oh, that's all right then," she answered pleasantly. "Mis' Colebrook, I'm sorry to be troublin' you, but I shall have to give back that 'ere notice. I ain't goin'."

Once again Mrs. Colebrook flushed and bit her lip.

"That will do, Susan. You forget. You're not working for Mr. Burton now. You're working for me."

"For YOU?"

"Certainly. Didn't I just pay you your wages for some weeks past?"

Susan's tight clutch on the roll of bills loosened so abruptly that the money fell to the floor. But at once Susan stooped and picked it up. The next moment she had crossed the room and thrust the money into Mrs. Colebrook's astonished fingers.

"I don't want your money, Mis' Colebrook—not on them terms, even for Keith. I know I hain't earned any the other way, yet, but I hain't tried all the magazines. There's more—lots more." Her voice faltered, and almost broke. "I'll do it yet some way, you see if I don't. But I won't take this. Why, Mis' Colebrook, do you think I'd leave NOW, with that poor boy blind, an' his father so wrought up he don't have even his extraordinary common sense about his flannels an' socks an' what to eat, an' no money to pay the bills with, either? An' him bein' pestered the life out of him with them intermittent, dunnin' grocers an' milkmen? Well, I guess not! You couldn't hire me to go, Mis' Colebrook."

"Daniel, are you going to stand there and permit me to be talked to like this?" appealed Mrs. Colebrook.

"What can I do?" (Was there a ghost of a twinkle in Daniel Burton's eyes as he turned with a shrug and a lift of his eyebrows?) "If YOU haven't the money to hire her—" But Mrs. Colebrook, with an indignant toss of her head, had left the room.

"Mr. Burton!" Before the man could speak Susan had the floor again. "Can't you do somethin', sir? Can't you?"

"Do something, Susan?" frowned the man.

"Yes, with your sister," urged Susan. "I don't mean because she's so haughty an' impious. I can stand that. It's about Keith I'm talkin' about. Mr. Burton, Keith won't never get well, never, so's he can have that operator on his eyes, unless he takes some exercise an' gets his strength back. The nurse an' the doctor—they both said he wouldn't."

"Yes, yes, I know, Susan," fumed the man impatiently, beginning to pace up and down the room. "And that's just what we're trying to do— get his strength back."

"But he ain't—he won't—he can't," choked Susan feverishly. "Mr. Burton, I KNOW you don't want to talk about it, but you've got to. I'm all Keith's got to look out for him." The father of Keith gave an inarticulate gasp, but Susan plunged on unheeding. "An' he'll never get well if he ain't let to get up an' stand an' walk an' eat an' sit down himself. But Mis' Colebrook won't let him. She won't let him do anything. She keeps sayin', 'Don't do it, oh, don't do it,' all the time,—when she ought to say, 'Do it, do it, do it!' Mr. Burton, cryin' an' wringin' your hands an' moanin', 'Oh, Keithie, darling!' won't make a boy grow red blood an' make you feel so fine you want to knock a man down! Mr. Burton, I want you to tell that woman to let me take care of that boy for jest one week—ONE WEEK, an' her not to come near him with her snivelin' an'—"

But Daniel Burton, with two hands upflung, and a head that ducked as if before an oncoming blow, had rushed from the room. For the second time that day Daniel Burton had fled—to the attic.



CHAPTER XI

NOT PATS BUT SCRATCHES

Mrs. Colebrook went home the next day. She wore the air of an injured martyr at breakfast. She told her brother that, of course, if he preferred to have an ignorant servant girl take care of his poor afflicted son, she had nothing to say; but that certainly he could not expect HER to stay, too, especially after being insulted as she had been.

Daniel Burton had remonstrated feebly, shrugged his shoulders and flung his arms about in his usual gestures of impotent annoyance.

Susan, in the kitchen, went doggedly about her work, singing, meanwhile, what Keith called her "mad" song. When Susan was particularly "worked up" over something, "jest b'ilin' inside" as she expressed it, she always sang this song—her own composition, to the tune of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home":

"I've taken my worries, an' taken my woes, I have, I have, An' shut 'em up where nobody knows, I have, I have. I chucked 'em down, that's what I did, An' now I'm sittin' upon the lid, An' we'll all feel gay when Johnny comes marchin' home. I'm sittin' upon the lid, I am, Hurrah! Hurrah!

I'm tryin' to be a little lamb, Hurrah! Hurrah! But I'm feelin' more like a great big slam Than a nice little peaceful woolly lamb, But we'll all feel gay when Johnny comes marchin' home."

When Daniel Burton, this morning, therefore, heard Susan singing this song, he was in no doubt as to Susan's state of mind—a fact which certainly did not add to his own serenity.

Upstairs, Keith, wearily indifferent as to everything that was taking place about him, lay motionless as usual, his face turned toward the wall.

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. He simply won't eat that oatmeal stuff, an'—"

"No, no, I don't mean the hash," interrupted the man irritably. "Keith is all right—that is, he is just as he has been. It's my sister, Mrs. Colebrook. She's gone."

"Gone—for good?"

"Yes, she's gone home."

"Glory be!" The color came back to Susan's face in a flood, and frank delight chased the terror from her eyes. "Now we can do somethin' worthwhile."

"I reckon you'll find you have to do something, Susan. You know very well I can't afford to hire a nurse—now."

"I don't want one."

"But there's all the other work, too."

"Work! Why, Mr. Burton, I won't mind a little work if I can have that blessed boy all to myself with no one to feed him oatmeal mush with a spoon, an' snivel over him. You jest wait. The first elemental thing is to learn him self-defiance, so he can do things for himself. Then he'll begin to get his health an' strength for the operator."

"You're forgetting the money, Susan. It costs money for that."

Susan's face fell.

"Yes, sir, I know." She hesitated, then went on, her color deepening. "An' I hain't sold—none o' them poems yet. But there's other magazines, a whole lot of 'em, that I hain't tried. Somebody's sure to take 'em some time."

"I'm glad your courage is still good, Susan; but I'm afraid the dear public is going to appreciate your poems about the way it does—my pictures," shrugged the man bitterly, as he turned and left the room.

Not waiting to finish setting her kitchen in order, Susan ran up the back stairs to Keith's room.

"Well, your aunt is gone, an' I'm on, An' here we are together. We'll chuck our worries into pawn, An' how do you like the weather?"

she greeted him gayly. "How about gettin' up? Come on! Such a lazy boy! Here it is away in the middle of the forenoon, an' you abed like this!"

But it was not to be so easy this time. Keith was not to be cajoled into getting up and dressing himself even to beat Susan's record. Steadfastly he resisted all efforts to stir him into interest or action; and a dismayed, disappointed Susan had to go downstairs in acknowledged defeat.

"But, land's sake, what could you expect?" she muttered to herself, after a sorrowful meditation before the kitchen fire. "You can't put a backbone into a jellyfish by jest showin' him the bone—an' that's what his aunt has made him—a flappy, transparallel jellyfish. Drat her! But I ain't goin' to give up. Not much I ain't!" And Susan attacked the little kitchen stove with a vigor that would have brought terror to the clinkers of a furnace fire pot.

Susan did not attempt again that day to get Keith up and dressed; and she gave him his favorite "pop-overs" for supper with a running fire of merry talk and jingles that contained never a reference to the unpleasant habit of putting on clothes, But the next morning, after she had given Keith his breakfast (not of toast and oatmeal) she suggested blithely that he get up and be dressed. When he refused she tried coaxing, mildly, then more strenuously. When this failed she tried to sting his pride by telling him she did not believe he could get up now, anyhow, and dress himself.

"All right, Susan, let it go that I can't. 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. Then doggedly she went on. "Maybe you think I hain't got anything to do but trespass up an' down them stairs all day waitin' on you, when you are perfectly capacious of waitin' on yourself SOME."

"Why, SUSAN!" There was incredulous, hurt amazement in the boy's voice; but Susan was visibly steeling herself against it.

"What do you think?—that I'm loafin' all day, an' your aunt gone now, an' me with it all on my hands?" she demanded, her stony gaze carefully turned away from the white face on the pillow. "An' to have to keep runnin' up here all the mornin' when I've got to do the dishes, an' bake bread, an' make soap, an'—"

"If you'll get my clothes, Susan, I'll get up," said Keith very quietly from the bed.

And Susan, not daring to unclose her lips, wrested the garments from the hooks, dropped them on to the chair by the bed, and fled from the room. But she had not reached the hall below when the sobs shook her frame.

"An' me talkin' like that when I'd be willin' to walk all day on my hands an' knees, if't would help him one little minute," she choked.

Barely had Susan whipped herself into presentable shape again when Keith's voice at the kitchen door caused her to face about with a startled cry.

"I'm downstairs, Susan." The boy's voice challenged hers for coldness now. "I'll take my meals down here, after this."

"Why, Keith, however in the world did you—" Then Susan pulled herself up. "Good boy, Keith! That WILL make it lots easier," she said cheerfully, impersonally, turning away and making a great clatter of pans in the sink.

But later, at least once every half-hour through that long forenoon, Susan crept softly through the side hall to the half-open living-room door, where she could watch Keith. She watched him get up and move slowly along the side of the room, picking his way. She watched him pause and move hesitating fingers down the backs of the chairs that he encountered. But when she saw him stop and finger the books on the little table by the window, she crept back to her kitchen—and rattled still more loudly the pots and pans in the sink.

Just before the noon meal Keith appeared once more at the kitchen door.

"Susan, would it bother you very much if I ate out here—with you?" he asked.

"With me? Nonsense! You'll eat in the dinin'-room with your dad, of course. Why, what would he say to your eatin' out here with me?"

"That's just it. It's dad. He'd like it, I'm sure," insisted the boy feverishly. "You know sometimes I—I don't get any food on my fork, when I eat, an' I have to—to feel for things, an' it—it must be disagreeable to see me. An' you know he never liked disagreeable—"

"Now, Keith Burton, you stop right where you are," interrupted Susan harshly. "You're goin' to eat with your father where you belong. An' do you now run back to the settin'-room. I've got my dinner to get."

Keith had not disappeared down the hall, however, before Susan was halfway up the back stairs. A moment later she was in the studio.

"Daniel Burton, you're goin' to have company to dinner," she panted.

"Company?"

"Yes. Your son." "KEITH?" The man drew back perceptibly.

"There, now, Daniel Burton, don't you go to scowlin' an' lookin' for a place to run, just because you hate to see him feel 'round for what he eats."

"But, Susan, it breaks my heart," moaned the man, turning quite away.

"What if it does? Ain't his broke, too? Can't you think of him a little? Let me tell you this, Daniel Burton—that boy has more consolation for your feelin's than you have for his, every time. Didn't he jest come to me an' beg to eat with me, 'cause his dad didn't like to see disagreeable things, an'—"

The man wheeled sharply.

"Did Keith—do that?"

"He did, jest now, sir."

"All right, Susan. I—I don't think you'll have to say—any more."

And Susan, after a sharp glance into the man's half-averted face, said no more. A moment later she had left the room.

At dinner that day, with red eyes but a vivacious manner, she waited on a man who incessantly talked of nothing in particular, and a boy who sat white-faced and silent, eating almost nothing.



CHAPTER XII

CALLERS FOR "KEITHIE"

And so inch by inch Susan fought her way, and inch by inch she gained ground. Sometimes it was by coaxing, sometimes by scolding; perhaps most often by taunts and dares, and shrewd appeals to Keith's pride. But by whatever it was, each day saw some stride forward, some new victory that Keith had won over his blindness, until by the end of the week the boy could move about the house and wait upon himself with a facility almost unbelievable when one remembered his listless helplessness of a week before.

Then one day there entered into the case a brand-new element, a dainty element in white muslin and fluttering blue ribbons—Mazie Sanborn and Dorothy Parkman.

"We heard Keithie was lots better and up and dressed now," chirped Mazie, when Susan answered her ring; "and so we've brought him some flowers. Please can't we see him?"

Susan hesitated. Susan had not forgotten Keith's feverish retreat from Mazie's greeting called up to the veranda the month before. But then, for that matter, had he not retreated from everything until she determinedly took him in hand? And he must some time begin to mingle with the world outside the four walls of his house!

Why not now? What better chance could she hope to have for him to begin than this? Where could she find two more charmingly alluring ambassadors of that outside world than right here on the door-step now?

Susan's lips snapped together with a little defiant nod of her head, then parted in a cordial smile.

"Sure, you may see him," she cried, "an' it's glad that I am to have you come! It'll do him good. Come in, come in!" And with only a heightened color to show her trepidation as to the reception that might be accorded her charges, she threw open the sitting-room door. "Well, Keith, here's company come on purpose to see you. An' they've brought you some flowers," she announced gayly.

"No, no, Susan, I—I don't want to see them," stammered the boy. He had leaped to his feet, a painful red flooding his face.

"Well, I like that!" bridled Mazie, with playful indignation; "and when Dorothy and I have taken all this trouble to come and—"

"Is Dorothy here, too?" interrupted the boy sharply.

"Yes, Keith I am—here." Dorothy was almost crying, and her voice sounded harsh and unnatural.

"And we brought you these," interposed Mazie brightly, crossing the room to his side and holding out the flowers. Then, with a little embarrassed laugh, as he did not take them, she thrust them into his fingers. "Oh, I forgot. You can't see them, can you?"

"Mazie!" remonstrated the half-smothered voice of Dorothy.

But it was Susan who came promptly to the rescue.

"Yes, an' ain't they pretty?" she cried, taking them from Keith's unresisting fingers. "Here, let me put 'em in water, an' you two sit down. I always did love coronation pinks," she declared briskly, as she left the room.

She was not gone long. Very quickly she came back, with the flowers in a vase. Keith had dropped back into his chair; but he was plainly so unwilling a host that Susan evidently thought best to assist him. She set the vase on a little stand near Keith's chair, then dropped herself on to the huge haircloth sofa near by.

"My, but I don't mind settin' myself awhile," she smiled. "Guess I'm tired."

"I should think you would be." Mazie, grown suddenly a bit stiff and stilted, was obviously trying to be very polite and "grown up." "There must be an awful lot to do here. Mother says she don't see how you stand it."

"Pooh! 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."

"Yes, so do I," chimed in Mazie. "And I always wanted to see the inside of this house, too."

"What for?" Keith's curiosity got the better of his vexed reticence, and forced the question from his lips.

"Oh, just 'cause I've heard folks say 'twas so wonderful—old, you know, and full of rare old things, and there wasn't another for miles around like it. But I don't see—That is," she corrected herself, stumbling a little, "you probably don't keep them in this room, anyway."

"Why, they do, too," interfered Dorothy, with suddenly pink cheeks. "This room is just full of the loveliest kind of old things, just like the things father is always getting—only nicer. Now that, right there in the corner, all full of drawers—We've got one almost just exactly like that out home, and father just dotes on it. That IS a—a highboy, isn't it?" she appealed to Susan. "And it is very old, isn't it?"

"A highboy? Old? Lan' sakes, child," laughed Susan. "Maybe 'tis. I ain't sayin' 'tisn't, though I'm free to confess I never heard it called that. But it's old enough, if that's all it needs; it's old enough to be a highMAN by this time, I reckon," chuckled Susan. "Mr. Burton was tellin' me one day how it belonged to his great-grand- mother."

"Kind of funny-looking, though, isn't it?" commented Mazie.

"Father'd love it, so'd Aunt Hattie," avowed Dorothy, evidently not slow to detect the lack of appreciation in Mazie's voice. "And I do, too," she finished, with a tinge of defiance.

Mazie laughed.

"Well, all right, you may, for all I care," she retorted. Then to Keith she turned with sudden disconcerting abruptness: "Say, Keith, what do you do all day?"

It was Susan who answered this. Indeed, it was Susan who answered a good many of the questions during the next fifteen minutes. Some she answered because she did not want Keith to answer them. More she answered because Keith would not answer them. To tell the truth, Keith was anything but a polite, gracious host. He let it be plainly understood that he was neither pleased at the call nor interested in the conversation. And the only semblance of eagerness in his demeanor that afternoon was when his young visitors rose to go.

In spite of Keith's worse than indifference, however, Susan was convinced that this call, and others like it, were exactly what was needed for Keith's best welfare and development. With all her skill and artifice, therefore, she exerted herself to make up for Keith's negligence. She told stories, rattled off absurd jingles, and laughed and talked with each young miss in turn, determined to make the call so great a success that the girls would wish to come again.

When she had bowed them out and closed the door behind them, she came back to Keith, intending to remonstrate with him for his very ungracious behavior. But before she could open her lips Keith himself had the floor.

"Susan Betts," he began passionately, as soon as she entered the room, "don't you ever let those girls in again. I won't have them. I WON'T HAVE THEM, I tell you!

"Oh, for shame, Keith!—and when they were so kind and thoughtful, too!"

"It wasn't kindness and thoughtfulness," resented the boy. "It was spying out. They came to see how I took it. I know 'em. And that Dorothy Parkman—I don't know WHY she came. She said long ago that she couldn't bear—to look at 'em."

"Look at them?"

"Yes—blind folks. Her father is a big oculist—doctors eyes, you know. She told me once. And she said she couldn't bear to look at them; that—"

"An eye doctor?—a big one?" Susan was suddenly excited, alert.

"Yes, yes. And—"

"Where's he live?"

"I don't know. Where she does, I s'pose. I don't know where that is. She's here most of the time, and—"

"Is he a real big one?—a really, truly big one?"

"Yes, yes, I guess so." Keith had fallen wearily back in his chair, his strength spent. "Dad said he was one of the biggest in the country. And of course lots of—of blind people go there, and she sees them. Only she says she can't bear to see them, that she won't look at them. And—and she shan't come here—she shan't, Susan, to look at me, and—"

But Susan was not listening now. With chin up-tilted and a new fire in her eyes, she had turned toward the kitchen door.

Two days later, on her way to the store, Susan spied Dorothy Parkman across the street. Without hesitation or ceremony she went straight across and spoke to her.

"Is it true that your father is a big occultist, one of the biggest there is?" she demanded.

"A—what?" Dorothy frowned slightly.

"Occultist—doctors folks' eyes, you know. Is he? I heard he was."

"Oh! Y-yes—yes, he is." Miss Dorothy was giggling a bit now.

"Then, listen!" In her eagerness Susan had caught the girl's sleeve and held it. "Can't you get him to come on an' see you, right away, quick? Don't he want to take you home, or—or something?"

Dorothy laughed merrily.

"Why, Susan, are you in such a hurry as all that to get rid of me? Did I act so bad the other day that—"A sudden change crossed her face. Her eyes grew soft and luminous. "Was it for—Keith that you wanted father, Susan?"

"Yes." Susan's eyes blurred, and her voice choked.

"Well, then I'm glad to tell you he is coming by and by. He's coming to take me home for Christmas. But—he isn't going to stay long."

"That's all right—that's all right," retorted Susan, a little breathlessly. "If he'd jest look at the boy's eyes an' tell if—if he could fix 'em later. You see, we—we couldn't have it done now, 'cause there ain't any money to pay. But we'll have it later. We'll sure have it later, an' then—"

"Of course he'll look at them," interrupted Dorothy eagerly. "He'll love to, I know. He's always so interested in eyes, and new cases. And—and don't worry about the other part—the money, you know," nodded Dorothy, hurrying away then before Susan could protest.

As it happened Keith was more "difficult" than usual that afternoon, and Susan, thinking to rouse him from his lassitude, suddenly determined to tell him all about the wonderful piece of good fortune in store for him.

"How'd you like to have that little Miss Dorothy's daddy see your eyes, honey," she began eagerly, "an' tell—"

"I wouldn't let him see them." Keith spoke coldly, decisively.

"Oh, but he's one of the biggest occultists there is, an'—"

"I suppose you mean 'oculist,' Susan," interrupted Keith, still more coldly; "but that doesn't make any difference. I don't want him."

"But, Keith, if he—"

"I tell you I won't have him," snapped Keith irritably.

"But you've got to have somebody, an' if he's the biggest!" All the eager light had died out of Susan's face.

"I don't care if he is the biggest, he's Dorothy Parkman's father, and that's enough. I WON'T HAVE HIM!"

"No, no; well, all right!" And Susan, terrified and dismayed, hurried from the room.

But though Susan was dismayed and terrified, she was far from being subdued. In the kitchen she lifted her chin defiantly.

"All right, Master Keith," she muttered to herself. "You can say what you want to, but you'll have him jest the same—only you won't know he's HIM. I'll jest tell him to call hisself another name for you. An' some time I'll find out what there is behind that Dorothy Parkman business. But 'tain't till Christmas, an' that's 'most two months off yet. Time enough for trouble when trouble knocks at the door; an' till it does knock, jest keep peggin' away."



CHAPTER XIII

FREE VERSE—A LA SUSAN

And persistently, systematically Susan did, indeed, keep "peggin' away." No sooner had she roused Keith to the point of accomplishing one task than she set for him another. No sooner could he pilot himself about one room than she inveigled him into another. And when he could go everywhere about the house she coaxed him out into the yard. It was harder here, for Keith had a morbid fear of being stared at. And only semi-occasionally would he consent at all to going out.

It was then that with stern determination Susan sought Daniel Burton.

"Look a-here, Daniel Burton," she accosted him abruptly, "I've done all I can now, an' it's up to you."

The man looked up, plainly startled.

"Why, Susan, you don't mean—you aren't—GOING, are you?"

"Goin' nothin'—shucks!" tossed Susan to one side disdainfully. "I mean that Keith ain't goin' to get that good red blood he's needin' sittin' 'round the house here. He's got to go off in the woods an' walk an' tramp an' run an' scuff leaves. An' you've got to go with him. I can't, can I?"

The man shifted his position irritably.

"Do you think that boy will let me lead him through the streets, Susan? Well, I know he won't."

"I didn't say 'lead him.' I said go WITH him. There's an awful lot of difference between leadin' an' accommodatin'. We don't none of us like to be led, but we don't mind goin' WITH folks 'most anywheres. Put your arm into his an' walk together. He'll walk that way. I've tried it. An' to see him you wouldn't know he was blind at all. Oh, yes, I know you're hangin' back an' don't want to. I know you hate to see him or be with him, 'cause it makes you KNOW what a terrible thing it is that's come to you an' him. But you've got to, Daniel Burton. You an' me is all he's got to stand between him an' utter misery. I can feed his stomach an' make him do the metaphysical things, but it's you that's got to feed his soul an' make him do the menial things."

"Oh, Susan, Susan!" half groaned the man. There was a smile on his lips, but there were tears in his eyes.

"Well, it's so," argued Susan earnestly. "Oh, I read to him, of course. I read him everything I can get hold of, especially about men an' women that have become great an' famous an' extinguished, even if they was blind or deaf an' dumb, or lame—especially blind. But I can't learn him books, Mr. Burton. You've got to do that. You've got to be eyes for him, an' he's got to go to school to you. Mr. Burton," —Susan's voice grew husky and unsteady,—"you've got a chance now to paint bigger an' grander pictures than you ever did before, only you won't be paintin' 'em on canvas backs. You'll be paintin' 'em on that boy's soul, an' you'll be usin' words instead of them little brushes."

"You've put that—very well, Susan." It was the man who spoke unsteadily, huskily, now.

"I don't know about that, but I do know that them pictures you're goin' to paint for him is goin' to be the makin' of him. Why, Mr. Burton, we can't have him lazin' behind, 'cause when he does get back his eyes we don't want him to be too far behind his class."

"But what—if he doesn't ever get his eyes", Susan?"

"Then he'll need it all the more. But he's goin' to get 'em, Mr. Burton. Don't you remember? The nurse said if he got well an' strong he could have somethin' done. I've got the doctor, an' all I need now is the money. An'—an' that makes me think." She hesitated, growing suddenly pink and embarrassed. Then resolutely she put her hand into the pocket of her apron and pulled out two folded papers.

"I was goin' to tell you about these, anyhow, so I might as well do it now," she explained. "You know, them—them other poems didn't sell much—there was only one went, an' the man wouldn't take that till he'd made me promise he could print my letter, too, that I'd wrote with it—jest as if that was worth anything!—but he only paid a measly dollar anyhow. "Susan's voice faltered a little, though her chin was at a brave tilt. "An' I guess now I know the reason. Them kind of poems ain't stylish no longer. Rhymes has gone out. Everything's 'free verse' now. I've been readin' up about it. So I've wrote some of 'em. They're real easy to do—jest lines chopped off free an' easy, anywheres that it happens, only have some long, an' some short, for notoriety, you know, like this." And she read:

"A great big cloud That was black Came up Out of the West. An' I knew Then For sure That a storm was brewin'. An' it brewed."

"Now that was dead easy—anybody could see that. But it's kind of pretty, I think, too, jest the same. Them denatured poems are always pretty, I think—about trees an' grass an' flowers an' the sky, you know. Don't you?"

"Why, er—y-yes, of course," murmured the man faintly.

"I tried a love poem next. I don't write them very often. They're so common. You see 'em everywhere, you know. But I thought I would try it—'twould be different, anyhow, in this new kind of verses. So I wrote this:

Oh, love of mine, I love Thee. Thy hair is yellow like the Golden squash. Thy neck so soft An' slender like a goose, Is encompassed in filtered lace So rich an' Rare. Thy eyes in thy pallid face like Blueberries in a Saucer of milk. Oh, love of mine, I love Thee."

"Have you sent—any of these away yet, Susan?" Daniel Burton was on his feet now, his back carefully turned.

"No, not yet; but I'm goin' to pretty quick, an' I guess them will sell." Susan nodded happily, and smiled. But almost instantly her face grew gravely earnest again. "But all the money in the world ain't goin' to do no good Mr. Burton, unless we do our part, an' our part is to get him well an' strong for that operator. Now I'm goin' to send Keith in to you. I ain't goin' to TELL him he's goin' to walk with you, 'cause if I did he wouldn't come. But I'm expectin' you to take him, jest the same," she finished severely, as she left the room.

Keith and his father went to walk. It was the first of many such walks. Almost every one of these crisp November days found the two off on a tramp somewhere. And because Daniel Burton was careful always to accompany, never to lead, the boy's step gained day by day in confidence and his face in something very like interest. And always, for cold and stormy days, there were the books at home.

Daniel Burton was not painting pictures—pigment pictures—these days. His easel was empty. "The Woodland Path," long since finished, had been sent away "to be sold." Most of Daniel Burton's paintings were "sent away to be sold," so that was nothing new. What was new, however, was the fact that no fresh canvas was placed on the easel to take the place of the picture sent away. Daniel Burton had begun no new picture. The easel, indeed, was turned face to the wall. And yet Daniel Burton was painting pictures, wonderful pictures. His brushes were words, his colors were the blue and gold and brown and crimson of the wide autumn landscape, his inspiration was the hungry light on a boy's face, and his canvas was the soul of the boy behind it. Most assuredly Daniel Burton was giving himself now, heart and mind and body, to his son. Even the lynx-eyed, alert Susan had no fault to find. Daniel Burton, most emphatically, was "doing his part."



CHAPTER XIV

A SURPRISE ALL AROUND

The week before Christmas Dorothy Parkman brought a tall, dignified- looking man to the Burtons' shabby, but still beautiful, colonial doorway.

Dorothy had not seen Keith, except on the street, since her visit with Mazie in October. Two or three times the girls had gone to the house with flowers or fruit, but Keith had stubbornly refused to see them, in spite of Susan's urgings. To-day Dorothy, with this evidently in mind, refused Susan's somewhat dubious invitation to come in.

"Oh, no, thank you, I'll not come in," she smiled. "I only brought father, that's all. And—oh, I do hope he can do something," she faltered unsteadily. And Susan saw that her eyes were glistening with tears as she turned away.

In the hall Susan caught the doctor's arm nervously.

"Dr. Parkman, there's somethin'—"

"My name is Stewart," interrupted the doctor.

"What's that? What's that?" cried Susan, unconsciously tightening her clasp on his arm. "Ain't you Dorothy Parkman's father?"

"I'm her stepfather. She was nine when I married Mrs. Parkman, her mother."

"Then your name ain't Parkman, at all! Oh, glory be!" ejaculated Susan ecstatically. "Well, if that ain't the luckiest thing ever!"

"Lucky?" frowned the doctor, looking thoroughly mystified, and not altogether pleased.

Susan gave an embarrassed laugh.

"There, now, if that ain't jest like me, to fly off on a tandem like that, without a word of exploitation. It's jest that I'm so glad I won't have to ask you to come under a resumed name."

"Under a what, madam?" The doctor was looking positively angry now. Moreover, with no uncertain determination, he was trying to draw himself away from Susan's detaining fingers.

"Oh, please, doctor, please, don't be mad!" Susan had both hands hold of his arm now. "'Twas for Keith, an' I knew you'd be willin' to do anything for him, when you understood, jest as I am. You see, I didn't want him to know you was Dorothy's father," she plunged on breathlessly, "an' so I was goin' to ask you to let me call you somethin' else—not Parkman. An' then, when I found that you didn't have to have a resumed name, that you was already somebody else—that is, that you was really you, only Keith wouldn't know you was you, I was so glad."

"Oh, I see." The doctor was still frowning, though his lips were twitching a little. "But—er—do you mind telling me why I can't be I? What's the matter with Dorothy's father?"

"Nothin' sir. It's jest a notion. Keith won't see Dorothy, nor Mazie, nor none of 'em. He thinks they come jest to spy out how he looks an' acts; an' he got it into his head that if you was Dorothy's father, he wouldn't see you. He hates to be pitied an' stared at."

"Oh, I see." A sympathetic understanding came into the doctor's eyes. The anger was all gone now. "Very well. As it happens I'm really Dr. Stewart. So you may call me that with all honesty, and we'll be very careful not to let the boy know I ever heard of Dorothy Parkman. How about the boy's father? Does he—know?"

"Yes, sir. I told him who you was, an' that you was comin'; an' I told him we wasn't goin' to let Keith know. An' he said 'twas absurd, an' we couldn't help lettin' him know. But I told him I knew better an' 'twas all right."

"Oh, you did!" The doctor was regarding Susan with a new interest in his eyes.

"Yes, an' 'tis, you see."

"Where is Mr. Burton?"

"In his studio—shut up. He'll see you afterwards. I told him he'd GOT to do that."

"Eh? What?" The doctor's eyes flew wide open.

"See you afterwards. I told him he'd ought to be in the room with you, when you was examplin' Keith's eyes. But I knew he wouldn't do that. He never will do such-like things—makes him feel too bad. An' he wanted ME to find out what you said. But I told him HE'D got to do that. But, oh, doctor, I do hope—oh, please, please say somethin' good if you can. An' now I'll take you in. It's right this way through the sittin'-room."

"By Jove, what a beauty!" Halfway across the living-room the doctor had come to a pause before the mahogany highboy.

"THAT?"

"Yes, 'that'!" The whimsical smile in the doctor's eyes showed that he was not unappreciative of the scorn in Susan's voice. "By George, it IS a beauty! I've got one myself, but it doesn't compare with that, for a minute. H-m! And that's not the only treasure you have here, I see," he finished, his admiring gaze roving about the room. "We've got some newer, better stuff in the parlor. These are awful old things in here," apologized Susan.

"Yes, I see they are—old things." The whimsical smile had come back to the doctor's eyes as he followed Susan through the doorway.

"Keith's upstairs in his room, an' I'm takin' you up the back way so's Mr. Burton won't hear. He asked me to. He didn't want to know jest exactly when you was here."

"Mr. Burton must be a brave man," commented the doctor dryly.

"He ain't—not when it comes to seein' disagreeable things, or folks hurt," answered the literal Susan cheerfully. "But he'll see you all right, when it's over." Her lips came together with a sudden grimness.

The next moment, throwing open Keith's door, her whole expression changed. She had eyes and thoughts but for the blind boy over by the window.

The doctor, too, obviously, by the keen, professional alertness that transfigured his face at that moment, had eyes and thoughts but for that same blind boy over by the window.

"Well, Keith, here's Dr. Stewart to see you boy."

"Dr.—Stewart?" Keith was on his feet, startled, uncertain.

"Yes, Dr. Stewart.'" Susan repeated the name with clear emphasis. "He was in town an' jest came up to look at you. He's a big, kind doctor, dear, an' you'll like him, I know." At the door Susan turned to the doctor. "An' when—when you're done, sir, if you'll jest come down them stairs to the kitchen, please—TO THE KITCHEN," she repeated, hurrying out before Keith could remonstrate.

Down in the kitchen Susan took a pan of potatoes to peel—and when, long hours later, after the doctor had come downstairs, had talked with Mr. Burton, and had gone, Susan went to get those potatoes to boil for dinner, she found that all but two of them had been peeled and peeled and peeled, until there was nothing left but—peelings.

Susan was peeling the next to the last potato when the doctor came down to the kitchen.

"Well?" She was on her feet instantly.

The doctor's face was grave, yet his eyes were curiously alight. They seemed to be looking through and beyond Susan.

"I don't know. I THINK I have good news, but I'm not—sure."

"But there's a chance?"

"Yes; but-" There was a moment's silence; then, with an indrawing of his breath, the doctor's soul seemed to come back from a long journey. "I think I know what is the matter." The doctor was looking at Susan, now, not through her. "If it's what I think it is, it's a very rare disease, one we do not often find."

"But could you—can you—is it possible to—to cure it?"

"We can operate—yes; but it's six to half a dozen whether it's successful or not. They've just about broken even so far—the cases I've known about. But they've been interesting, most interesting." The doctor was far away again.

"But there's a chance; and if there is a chance I'd want to take it," cried Susan. "Wouldn't you?"

There was no answer.

Susan hesitated, threw a hurried glance into the doctor's preoccupied face, then hurried on again feverishly.

"Doctor, there's somethin' I've got to—to speak to you about before you see Mr. Burton. It—it—it'll cost an awful lot, I s'pose."

There was no answer.

Susan cleared her throat.

"It—it'll cost an awful lot, won't it, doctor?" she asked in a louder voice.

"Eh? What? Cost? Oh, yes, yes; it is an expensive operation." The doctor spoke unconcernedly. He merely glanced at Susan, then resumed his fixed gaze into space.

"Well, doctor." Susan cleared her throat again. This time she caught hold of the doctor's sleeve as if to pull him bodily back to a realizing sense of her presence. "About the money—we haven't got it. An' that's what I wanted to speak to you about. Mr. Burton hain't got any. He's already spent more'n he's got—part of next year's annual, I mean. Some day he'll have more—a whole lot more—when Mis' Holworthy, his third cousin, dies. 'Twas her husband that gave him the annual, you understand, an' when she dies it'll come to him in a plump sum. But 'tain't his now, an' 'course it won't be till she goes; an' 'course 'tain't for us to dodge her footsteps hopin' she'll jest naturally stop walkin' some day—though I'm free to confess she has lost most all her facilities, bein' deaf an' lame an' some blind; an' I can't exactly see the harm in wishin' she had got 'em all back—in Heaven, I mean. But 'course I don't say so to him. An' as I said before, we hain't got money now—not any.

"An'—an' his last pictures didn't sell any better than the others," she went on a little breathlessly. "Then there was me—that is, I WAS goin' to get some money; but—but, well MY pictures didn't sell, either." She paused to wet her lips. "But I've thought it all out, an' there's a way.

You—you'd have to have Keith with you, somewheres, wouldn't you?"

"To operate? Oh, yes, yes."

"A long time?"

"Eh? What? Oh, yes, we would have to have him a long time, probably. In fact, time is one of the very biggest factors in such cases—for the after-treatment, you know. And we must have him where we can watch him, of course."

"Oh! Then that's all right, then. I can manage it fine," sighed Susan, showing by the way her whole self relaxed how great had been the strain. "Then I'll come right away to work for you."

"To what?" The doctor suddenly came back to earth.

"To work for you—in your kitchen, I mean," nodded Susan. "I'll send Mr. Burton to his sister's, then I'll come to you, an' I'll come impaired to stay till I've paid it up—every cent."

"Good Heavens, woman!" ejaculated the man. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, please, please don't say that I can't," besought Susan, her fearful eyes on his perturbed face. "I'll work real well—truly I will. An' I'm a real good cook, honest I am, when I have a super- abundance to do it with—butter, an' eggs, an' nice roasts. An' I won't bother you a mite with my poetry. I don't make it much now, anyhow. An'—oh, doctor, you've GOT to let me do it; it's the only way there is to p-pay." Her voice choked into silence. Susan turned her back abruptly. Not even for Keith could Susan let any one see her cry.

"Pay! And do you think you'd live long—" Just in time the doctor pulled himself up short. Thrusting his hands into his pockets he took a nervous turn about the kitchen; then sharply he wheeled about. "My dear woman, let us talk no more about the money question. See here, I shall be glad to take that boy into my charge and take care of him for the sheer love of it—indeed, I shall!"

"Do you mean without ANY pay?" Susan had drawn herself up haughtily.

"Yes. So far as money goes—it is of no consequence, anyway. I'm glad—"

"Thank you, but we ain't charitable folks, Dr. Stewart," cut in Susan coldly. "Maybe it is infinitesimal to you whether we pay or not, but't ain't to us. We don't want—"

"But I tell you it's pay enough just to do it," interrupted the doctor impatiently. "It's a very rare case, and I'm glad—"

A door banged open.

"Susan, hasn't that doctor—" a new voice cut in, then stopped short.

The doctor turned to see a pallid-faced, blond-bearded man with rumpled hair standing in the doorway.

"Mr. Burton?" hazarded the doctor crisply.

"Yes. And you-"

"Dr. Stewart. And I'd like a little talk with you, please—if you can talk sense. "This last was added under his breath; but Daniel Burton was not listening, in any case. He was leading the way to the studio.

In the studio the doctor did not wait for questions, but plunged at once into his story.

"Without going into technical terms, Mr. Burton, I will say that your son has a very rare trouble. There is only one known relief, and that is a certain very delicate operation. Even with that, the chances are about fifty-fifty that he regains his sight."

"But there's a chance?"

"Yes, there's a chance. And, anyway, it won't do any harm to try. It is the only thing possible, and, if it fails—well, he'll only be blind, as he is now. It must be done right away, however. Even now it may be too late. And I may as well tell you, if it DOESN'T fail—there is a strong probability of another long period of treatment and a second operation, before there's a chance of ultimate success!"

"Could—could that time be spent here?" Daniel Burton's lips had grown a little white.

"No. I should want the boy where I could see him frequently—with me, in fact. And that brings me to what I was going to propose. With your permission I will take the boy back with me next week to Chicago, and operate at once. And let me say that from sheer interest in the case I shall be glad to do this entirely without cost to you."

"Thank you; but of course you must understand that I could not allow that for a moment." A painful color had flamed into Daniel Burton's face.

"Nonsense! Don't be foolish, man. I tell you I'm glad to do it. It'll be worth it to me—the rarity of the case—"

"How much—would it cost?" interposed Daniel Burton peremptorily, with an unsteadiness of voice that the doctor did not fail to read aright.

"Why, man, alive, it would cost—" With his eyes on Daniel Burton's sternly controlled face, the doctor came to an abrupt pause. Then, turning, he began to tramp up and down the room angrily. "Oh, hang it all, man, why can't you be sensible? I tell you I don't want any—" Once again his tongue stopped. His feet, also, had come to an abrupt pause. He was standing before an old colonial mirror. Then suddenly he wheeled about. "By Jove, there IS something I want. If you'll sell me two or three of these treasures of yours here, you will be more than cancelling your debt, and—"

"Thank you," interrupted the other coldly, but with a still deeper red staining his face. "As I happen to know of the unsalability of these pictures, however, I cannot accept your generosity there, either."

"Pictures!" The doctor, turning puzzled eyes back to the mirror, saw now that a large oil painting hung beside it on the wall. "I wasn't talking about your pictures, man," he scoffed then. "I was looking at that mirror there, and I'd like the highboy downstairs, if I could persuade you to part with them, and—WOULD you be willing to part with them?"

"What do you think!" (So marvelous was the change, and so great was the shining glory in Daniel Burton's face, that the doctor caught himself actually blinking.) "Do you think there's anything, ANYTHING that I wouldn't part with, if I thought I could give that boy a chance? Make your own selection, doctor. I only hope you'll want— really WANT—enough of them to amount to something."

The doctor threw a keen glance into his face.

"Amount to something! Don't you know the value of these things here?"

Daniel Burton laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, I suppose they are—valuable. But I shall have to confess I DON'T know very much about it. They're very old, I can vouch for that."

"Old! Humph!" The doctor was close to the mirror now, examining it with the appreciative eyes of the real lover of the antique. "I should say they were. Jove, that's a beauty! And I've got just the place that's hungering for it."

"Good! Suppose we look about the house, then, a little," suggested Daniel Burton. "Perhaps we'll find some more things—er—good for a hungry stomach, eh?" And with a light on his face such as had not been there for long months past, Daniel Burton led the way from the studio.



CHAPTER XV

AGAIN SUSAN TAKES A HAND

That evening Daniel Burton told Susan. "Keith is to go home with Dr. Stewart next week. The doctor will operate as soon as possible. Keith will live at the sanatorium connected with the doctor's home and be under his constant supervision."

Susan tried to speak, but instead of speaking she burst into tears.

"Why, Susan!" exclaimed the man.

"I know, I know," she choked, angrily dashing the drops from her eyes. "An' me cryin' like this when I'm gettin' jest what I want, too!"

"But there's no certainty, Susan, that it'll be successful; remember that," warned the man, his face clouding a little. "We can only— hope."

"An' there's the—the pay." Susan looked up, her voice vibrating with fearful doubts.

"Oh, that's all right." The man lifted his head with the air of one who at last has reached firm ground after a dangerous crossing on thin ice. "The doctor's going to buy the highboy and that mirror in the studio, and—oh, several other things."

"You mean that old chest of drawers in the settin'-room?" scorned Susan openly.

"Yes." Daniel Burton's lips twitched a little.

"But will he PAY anything for 'em? Mr. Burton, you can't get nothin', hardly, for second-hand furniture. My mother had a stove an' a real nice bedstead, an' a red-plush parlor set, an' she sold 'em. But she didn't get anything—not hardly anything, for 'em; an' they was 'most new, some of 'em, too."

"That's the trouble, Susan—they were too new, probably," laughed the man. "It's because these are old, very old, that he wants them, I suspect.

"An' he'll really pay MONEY for 'em?" Plainly Susan still had her doubts.

"He certainly will. I'd be almost ashamed to tell you HOW much he'll pay, Susan," smiled the man. "It seemed to me sheer robbery on my part. But he assures me they are very valuable, and that he's more than delighted to have them even at that price."

"Lan' sakes! An' when I'd been worryin' an' worryin' so about the money," sighed Susan; "an' now to have it fall plump into your lap like that. It jest shows you not to hunt for bridges till you get your feet wet, don't it? An' he's goin' jest next week?"

"Yes. The doctor and his daughter start Tuesday."

"You don't mean that girl Dorothy's goin' too?" Susan had almost bounced out of her chair.

"Why, yes, Dr. Stewart SAID she was. What's the matter?"

"Matter? Matter enough! Why, if she goes—Say, why IS she taggin' along, anyhow?" demanded Susan wrathfully.

"Well, I shouldn't exactly call it 'taggin' along' to go home with her father for the Christmas vacation," shrugged the man. "As I understand it, Dorothy's mother died several years ago. That's why the girl is here in the East so much with her relatives, going to school. The doctor's home has become practically a sanatorium—not the most desirable place in the world to bring up a young daughter in, I should say. Let's see, how old is Miss Dorothy?"

"Sixteen, Keith says. I asked him one day. She's about his age."

"Hm-m; well, however that may be, Susan, I don't see how we can help ourselves very well. I fancy Miss Dorothy'll still—tag along," he finished whimsically.

"Maybe, an' then maybe not," mumbled Susan darkly, as she turned away.

For two days after this Susan's kitchen, and even Keith himself, showed almost neglect; persistently and systematically Susan was running "down street" every hour or two—ostensibly on errands, yet she bought little. She spent most of her time tramping through the streets and stores, scrutinizing especially the face of every young girl she met.

On the afternoon of the second day she met Dorothy Parkman coming out of the post-office.

"Well, I've got you at last," she sighed, "though I'm free to confess I was beginnin' to think I never would see you."

"Oh, yes, about Keith," cried the girl joyously. "Isn't it splendid! I'm so glad! And he's going home with us right away, you know."

"Yes, I know. An' that's what—that is, I wanted—" stammered Susan, growing red in her misery. "Oh, Miss Dorothy, you WOULD do anything for that poor blind boy, wouldn't you?"

"Why, y-yes, of course," faltered Dorothy, stammering in her turn.

"I knew you would. Then please don't go home with your father this time."

"Don't go home—with—my father!" exclaimed the girl, in puzzled wonder.

"No. Because if you do—That is—Oh, I know it's awful for me to say this, but I've got to do it for Keith. You see, if you go,—Keith won't."

"If I go, he—I don't think—I quite understand." The girl drew back a little haughtily. Her face showed a painful flush.

"No, no, of course you don't! An' please, PLEASE don't look like that," begged Susan. "It's jest this. I found out. I wormed it out of him the other day—why he won't let you come to see him. He says that once, long ago, you said how you couldn't bear to look at blind people, an'—"

"Oh, I never, never could have said such a cruel thing to—to a blind boy," interposed the girl.

"He wasn't blind then. He said he wasn't. But, it was when he was 'fraid he was goin' to be blind; an' he see you an' Mazie Sanborn at the foot of Harrington Hill, one day. It was just after the old man had got blind, an' Keith had been up to see him. It seems that Keith was worryin' then for fear HE was goin' to be blind."

"He WAS?"

"Yes—things blurred, an' all that. Well, at the foot of the hill he see you an' Mazie, an' you shuddered at his goin' up to see Mr. Harrington, an' said how could he bear to look at folks that was blind. That YOU couldn't. An' he never forgot it. Bein' worried for fear he himself was goin' blind, you see, he was especially acceptable to anything like that."

"Oh, but I—I—At home I always did hate to see all the poor blind people that came to see father," she stammered. "But it—it was only because I felt so bad—for them. And that's one reason why father doesn't keep me at home any more. He says—But, about Keith—I—I didn't mean to—" Dorothy came to a helpless pause.

"Yes, I know. You didn't mean to hurt him," nodded Susan. "But it did hurt him. An' now he always thinks of it, if he knows you're 'round. You see, worse'n anything else, he hates to be stared at or to have folks think he's different. There ain't anything I can ever say to him that makes him half so happy as to act as if he wa'n't blind."

"Yes, I—see," breathed Dorothy, her eyes brimming.

"An' so now you won't go, will you? Because if you go, he won't."

Miss Dorothy frowned in deep thought for a moment.

"I shall have to go," she said at last, slowly. "Father is just counting on my being there Christmas, and he is so lonely—I couldn't disappoint him. But, Keith—I won't have to see much of him, anyway. I'll explain it to father. 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.