No more groping in the dark, with hand outstretched to guide her! Nor did she skuff her feet on the platform as so many deaf and mute people are apt to do when they walk. Her tread was as light and springy as that of any child. Her eyes never had appeared blind, but now there was a light in them that they had not held before.
She hesitated just a moment when she saw Janice and Miss ’Rill; but she knew them both, and with a happy little cry flew lightly to them. She hugged them both; and she clung to Janice’s hand after the first greeting was over.
“Janice! Janice! I love you,” she whispered. “If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t see at all, and, maybe, I’d fall down the cellar opening again.”
The school had wonderfully improved Lottie. She chattered volubly, and although she watched the movements of her friends’ lips alertly, she really heard very well, indeed. The tones of her voice had become modulated—were sweeter and less shrill.
When they came in the swift-moving car to the path that led down to the abandoned old wharf at Pine Cove, which had been Lottie’s favorite haunt, she begged to run down and hear if “her echo” was there. Janice went with her and Lottie made her way out upon the wharf rather gingerly. In her blindness she had run over the shaking timbers without the least fear; now she could see the black tide swirling among the piles beneath her feet.
“He-a! he-a! he-a!” she shrieked, and the echo answered promptly her cry: “’E-a! ’e-a! ’e-a!”
Lottie turned to Janice, pale with delight. “I heard it! it’s there!” she gasped. “I know you writed me it was, but I couldn’t hardly expect it to wait so long for me. What a nice, nice echo it is; isn’t it, Janice?”
Lottie was delighted, of course, with the motor-car; and when they swung up to the wide stoop before the grocery store, she was only sorry the ride had been so short. When she saw Hopewell standing in the doorway, with his arms outstretched and the tears running down his cheeks, Lottie flung herself at him with a cry of delight and forgot all about the automobile, and everything else.
The reunion was a touching one. Janice and Miss ’Rill left at once in the car, and Miss ’Rill only went back at supper time to prepare the meal for the father and his little daughter. Hopewell could play nothing but lively tunes that night on his old fiddle, and “Jingle Bells” and “Aunt Dinah’s Quilting Party” were scarcely lively enough to express his exuberance of spirit.
Now Miss ’Rill was willing to set the time for her wedding. Little Lottie was delighted at the idea of having her for a “new mamma.” She confided to Janice one day soon after her return: