"Up to?" frowned Susan.
"Yes, yes! Don't you see? He did it on purpose—stayed away three whole days, so John would miss him an' WANT him. An' John DID miss him. Why, he listened for him all the time. I could just SEE he was listenin'. An' that's what made me so angry, because Keith didn't come. The idea!—My boy wantin' somebody, an' that somebody not there!
"But I know now. I understand. An' I love him for it. He did it to make him want him. An' it worked. Why, if he'd come before, every day, just as usual, John wouldn't have talked with him. I know he wouldn't. But now—oh, Susan, it was wonderful, wonderful! I watched 'em from the window. I HAD to watch. I was afraid—still. An' of course I heard some things. An', oh, Susan, it was wonderful, the way that boy understood."
"You mean—Keith?"
"Yes. You see, first John began to talk just as he talks to us—ravin' because he's so strong an' well, an' likely to live to be a hundred; an' of how he'll look, one of these days, with his little tin cup held out for pennies an' his sign, 'Please Help the Blind,' an' of what he's got to look forward to all his life. Oh, Susan, it—it's enough to break the heart of a stone, when he talks like that."
Susan drew in her breath.
"Don't you s'pose I know? Well, I guess I do! But what did Keith say to him?"
"Nothin'. An' that was the first wonderful thing. You see, we—we always talk an' try to comfort him when he talks like that. But Keith didn't. He just let him talk, with nothin' but just a sympathetic word now an' then. But it wasn't long before I noticed a wonderful thing was happenin'. Keith was beginnin' to talk—not about that awful tin cup an' the pennies an' the sign, but about other things; first about the rose in his hand. An' pretty quick John was talkin' about it, too. He had the rose an' was smellin' of it. Then Keith had a new knife, an' he passed that over, an' pretty quick I saw that John had that little link puzzle of Keith's, an' was havin' a great time tryin' to straighten it out. That's the first time I heard him laugh.
"I began to realize then what Keith was doin'. He was fillin' John's mind full of somethin' else beside himself, for just a minute, an' was showin' him that there were things he could call by name, like the rose an' the knife an' the puzzle, even if he couldn't SEE 'em. Oh, Keith didn't SAY anything like that to him—trust him for that. But before John knew it, he was DOIN' it—callin' things by name, I mean.
"An' Keith is comin' again to-morrow. John TOLD me so. An' if you could have seen his face when he said it! Oh, Susan, isn't it wonderful?" she finished fervently, as she turned to go.