“Nurse, have I any eyes?”
“How do you mean? No, I am afraid they were both taken out, they had to be.”
It had been a dull operation, and they were now in spirits on the mantelpiece of her room at home in the hospital. When she got back she was going to put them just where she could see them first thing every morning, with the toes and the kidney. She had had an awful trouble to get the eyes.
Oh, so his eyes were gone. Now that was irritating, a personal loss. Dore had been furious because his appendix had been removed the term before last, he said it was a blemish on his personal beauty, but eyes were much more personal. Why hadn’t they taken the eyes of one of the “muddied oafs”? While he, he was blind. How had it happened? He had never asked; must have been some accident or something. He would ask.
“Nurse, how did it happen?”
“Do you think you can bear to talk about it?”
“Why not?”
“Well, a small boy threw a stone at the train, and it broke your window as you were looking out. It was very careless of him. But what I can’t understand is your being unconscious immediately like that, and not remembering. But doctor said you could be told, and . . .”
A small boy. Damn him.
“And what happened to the small boy?”