"Oh, I hear 'em!" said Willie, eagerly, "and soon I'll see 'em. Will it be next week, father?" and he clasped tightly the hand he held.
"I don't know about next week, sonny. I believe your eyes have to be bandaged for a while, lest the light would be too bright for them, while they're still weak, but you will have patience for that; won't you, Willie?"
Willie promised, for it seemed to him that he could have patience and courage for anything now.
"Oh!" said Jennie, as they reached Mr. Bradford's house, and went up the steps, "don't I wish I lived in a house like this!"
"Don't be wishing that," said her father. "You'll see a good many things here such as you never saw before, but you mustn't go to wishing for them or fretting after the same. We've too much to be thankful for, my lassie, to be hankering for things which are not likely ever to be ours."
"'Tis no harm to wish for them; is it, father?" asked Jennie, as they waited for the door to be opened.
"It's not best even to wish for what's beyond our reach," said her father, "lest we should get to covet our neighbors' goods, or to be discontented with our own lot; and certainly we have no call to do that."
Richards asked for Mrs. Bradford, and she presently came down, bringing Maggie and Bessie with her. Jennie felt a little strange and frightened at first when her father left her. Making acquaintance with Maggie and Bessie in her own home was a different thing from coming to visit them in their large, handsome house, and they scarcely seemed to her like the same little girls. But when Maggie took her up-stairs, and showed her the baby-house and dolls, she forgot everything else, and looked at them, quite lost in admiration.
Willie was not asked to look at anything. The little sisters had thought of what he had said the day they went to see him, and agreed that Bessie was to take care of him while Maggie entertained Jennie. He asked after Flossy, and the dog was called, and behaved quite as well as he had done when he saw Willie before, lying quiet in his arms as long as the blind boy chose to hold him, and putting his cold nose against his face in an affectionate way which delighted Willie highly.