"I can see it, Susan—without the poem." Keith was not smiling now.
His face was turned away and his voice had grown a bit unsteady. "And
I'm glad you showed it to me. It's going to help me a whole lot if—if
I'll just keep remembering that key, I think."
Susan threw a quick look into Keith's averted face, then promptly she reached for the folded paper in her apron pocket.
There were times when Susan was wise beyond her station as to when the subject should be changed.
"An' now I'm goin' to read you the poem I did write," she announced briskly—"about every-day folks—diff'rent kinds of folks. Six of 'em. It shows that there ain't any one anywhere that's really satisfied with their lot, when you come right down to it, whether they've got eyes or not."
And she began to read:
THE WAY OF THE WORLD
A beggar girl on the curbstone sat,
All ragged an' hungry-eyed.
Across the street came Peggy McGee;
The beggar girl saw an' sighed.
"I wish'd I was rich—as rich as she,
For she has got things to eat;
An' clo's an' shoes, an' a place to live,
An' she don't beg in the street."
When Peggy McGee the corner turned,
SHE climbed to her garret high
From there she gazed through curtainless panes
At hangin's of lace near by.
"Ah, me!" sighed Peggy. "If I had those
An' rugs like hers on the floor,
It seems to me that I'd never ask
For nothin' at all no more."