"Well, come to see us, won't you?" urged Susan anxiously. "That'll help some—it'll help a lot."
But Miss Dorothy did not seem to have heard. At least she did not answer. Yet not twenty-four hours later she was ringing the Burtons' doorbell.
"No, no—not there! I want to see YOU," she panted a little breathlessly, when Susan would have led the way to the living-room.
"But Keith would be so glad—" begged Susan.
"No, no! I particularly don't want him to know I am here," insisted
Dorothy.
And without further ado, but with rebellious lips and eyes, Susan led the way to the kitchen.
"Susan, I have a scheme, I think, that may help out Mr. Keith," began the young girl abruptly. "I'll have to begin by telling you something of what I've seen during these last two or three months, while I've been away. A Mr. Wilson, an old college friend of my father's, has been taking a lot of interest in the blind—especially since the war. He got to thinking of the blinded soldiers and wishing he could help them. He had seen some of them in Canada, and talked with them. What he thought of first for them was brooms, and basket-weaving and chair-caning, same as everybody does. But he found they had a perfect horror of those things. They said nobody bought such things except out of pity—they'd rather have the machine-made kind. And these men didn't want things bought of them out of pity. You see, they were big, well, strong, young fellows, like John McGuire here; and they were groping around, trying to find a way to live all those long years of darkness that they knew were ahead of them. They didn't have any especial talent. But they wanted to work,—do something that was necessary—not be charity folks, as they called it."
"I know," responded Susan sympathetically.
"Well, this Mr. Wilson is at the head of a big electrical machinery manufacturing company near Chicago, like Mr. Sanborn's here, you know. And suddenly one day it came to him that he had the very thing right in his own shop—a necessary kind of work that the blind could be taught to do."
"My lan', what was it? Think of blind folks goin' to work in a big shop like Tom Sanborn's!"