And Annie, patient as ever, read the words over to her. The keen senses of Mary Gage recorded them.
"I can say them now!" said she, as much to herself as to her friend. And she did say them, over and over again.
"Annie," she cried, as she sat up suddenly. "I can't stand it any more! I can see! I can see!"
She was tearing at the bandages about her head when Annie entered and put down her hands, terrified at this disobedience of orders.
"Annie, I know I can see! It was light—at the door there! I can see. I can see!" She began to weep, trembling.
"Hush!" said Annie, frightened. "It ain't possible! It can't be true! What did you see?"
"Nothing!" said Mary Gage, half sobbing. "Just the light. Don't tell him. Put back the bandage. But, oh, Annie, Annie, I can see!"
"You're talking foolish, Sis," said Annie, pinning the bandages all the tighter about the piled brown hair of Mary Gage's head.
"But say now," she added after that was done, "if I was a girl and a fellow felt that way about me—couldn't remember nobody but me that way—why, me for him! Mushy—but times comes when a girl falls strong for the mushy, huh?
"Now you lay down again and cover up your eyes and rest, or you'll never be seeing things again, sure enough. I ain't going to read no more of that strong-arm writing at all."