“Did you have a good time in the country?” asked the nurse sympathetically.
“I’ll say so!” cried Mamie. “I just lived out doors four solid weeks, sitting on the piazza or walking in the garden, like a lady. They made me lie down to rest after dinner. Rest! Well; the chief thing I had to do to tire me was eat! And such eats! Um! Eggs and milk between meals, too. Say, the girls at the store will sure think I’m kidding when I tell them about it.”
“You’ll be sure to come back here, as the Doctor said?” charged the nurse. “You know, you will have to be careful still.”
“You bet I’ll be careful!” said Mamie earnestly. “I am not going to take any chances. The Doctor made it plain enough what I’ve got to do. I’ll keep my eyes, thanks, now I’ve got ’em back.”
The trouble that Stephanie and Paolo and Mamie had cannot certainly be cured, once for all. It is likely to recur, if care is relaxed; and each time it makes a worse scar on the eye, with increased handicaps. The hardest part of the follow-up work of the Infirmary is to make the parents understand this, and to watch patiently.
Three weeks in a country home, at a cost of five dollars a week, following three weeks’ treatment at the Eye and Ear Infirmary, had stood between Mamie and blindness. The Infirmary has an emergency fund, all too inadequate, for such cases.
“What is the Country?” asked Stephanie, when Mamie had gone. “Is it My Country-Tiz?” She had an idea that it might have something to do with a relative of the Star Spangled Banner. “Shall I have to salute it?”
“Bless you!” cried the nurse. “I guess you will want to salute it, when you see it for the first time!”
On the last Sunday of her stay Stephanie had a surprise. The Doctor had pronounced her eyes so much better that she could leave the following week. Plump, and rosy, and bright-eyed, Stephanie was as pretty a little girl as one could wish to see. To be sure there was a fly in her ointment. The Doctor had not succeeded in turning her eyes into big brown ones like Mamie’s, as Stephanie had suggested. But nurse assured her that blue eyes would probably wear better in the long run.
Stephanie was playing peacefully by herself, while the other children visited with their parents, during the one hour allowed for this every Sunday.