"It is, indeed—wonderful," murmured Susan. But Susan's eyes were out the window on Keith's face—Keith and his father were coming up the walk talking; and on Keith's face was a light Susan had never seen there before.
CHAPTER XXVI
MAZIE AGAIN
It came to be the accepted thing almost at once, then, that Keith Burton and John McGuire should spend their mornings together on the McGuires' back porch. In less than a fortnight young McGuire even crossed the yard arm in arm with Keith to the Burtons' back porch and sat there one morning. After that it was only a question as to which porch it should be. That it would be one of them was a foregone conclusion.
Sometimes the two boys talked together. Sometimes they worked on one of Keith's raised picture puzzles. Sometimes Keith read aloud from one of his books. Whatever they did, their doing it was the source of great interest to the entire neighborhood. Not only did Mrs. McGuire and Susan breathlessly watch from their respective kitchens, but friends and neighbors fabricated excuses to come to the two houses in order to see for themselves; and children gathered along the divisional fence and gazed with round eyes of wonder. But they gazed silently. Everybody gazed silently. Even the children seemed to understand that the one unpardonable sin was to let the blind boys on the porch know that they were the objects of any sort of interest.
One day Mazie Sanborn came. She brought a new book for Mrs. McGuire to read—an attention she certainly had never before bestowed on John McGuire's mother. She talked one half-minute about the book—and five minutes about the beautiful new friendship between the two blind young men. She insisted on going into the kitchen where she could see the two boys on the porch. Then, before Mrs. McGuire could divine her purpose and stop her, she had slipped through the door and out on to the porch itself.
"How do you do, gentlemen," she began blithely. "I just—"
But the terrified Mrs. McGuire had her by the arm and was pulling her back into the kitchen before she could finish her sentence.
On the porch the two boys had leaped to their feet, John McGuire, in particular, looking distressed and angry.
"Who was that? Is anybody—there?" he demanded.