“Certainly, Blue Bonnet; but just now, I think your grandmother is waiting for you to sing for her.”
Blue Bonnet relinquished her pursuit of a one-volume Life that should look fairly tempting from the outside, most willingly. Singing hymns to Grandmother in the twilight, with a break now and then into the old Spanish Ave Maria learned from Benita, seemed a far pleasanter way of passing the time.
“Grandmother,” she asked, when the singing was over, and Aunt Lucinda had lighted the low reading-lamp on the center table, “did you like reading dull books when you were my age? Lives, you know, and—?”
“But they are not necessarily dull reading, Blue Bonnet. My mother used to read them with me of a Sunday evening; I got to think it one of the most enjoyable evenings of the whole week. It was she who gave me my fondness for reading about things that had really happened, and of people who had really lived and struggled.”
“The persons in the books one loves best do seem alive,” Blue Bonnet said.
“So they do,” Grandmother agreed. She got up and, going over to the bookcase, which to Blue Bonnet had seemed likely to yield very little in the way of fruit, came back presently with Helen Keller’s “The Story of My Life.”
“Suppose we begin this, Blue Bonnet. I shall be much mistaken if you find it ‘dull.’”
Blue Bonnet established herself in a big chair opposite; Solomon pressed close against her skirts,—Solomon meant to insinuate himself into the chair beside his mistress so soon as Grandmother’s attention had become sufficiently diverted. Solomon appeared to enjoy being read to quite as much as Blue Bonnet did.
Very far from dull the latter found the story of the deaf, dumb, and blind girl—as told by herself. “Shall we go on with it next Sunday evening, Blue Bonnet?” Grandmother asked, as she closed the book.
“Mayn’t we go on with it right now, Grandmother, please?”