“O, Tommy, it’s really Rose, not me,” she protested earnestly. “It’s because we’re always together. Everybody was always wild about Rose at home, you know, she was so pretty and bright and lively. And she’s all that now, and is so wonderful besides and, O, so brave!”
“Well, it isn’t all on account of her that they like you,” persisted Tommy, “but that ain’t what we’re talking about this minute. What I want to know is why you go on so, thinking of her all the time and how perfectly awful it is to be blind? And you make it a lot worse by never saying a thing to anybody about it, just shutting it all up inside you so that only a magician like T. Finnyfish, Esquire, could ever make out what the matter was, or that there was any trouble. Now, Betty, let me tell you where you are foolish. You mind it a heap worse than Rose does herself—no end worse!”
Tommy spoke truly. As a matter of fact, Rose Harrow had never in her life been happier than during the autumn just past. Of course the contrast helped. After that wretched, dreary six months of enforced idleness and loneliness and inertia, the girl was back at her studies again, which must inevitably hold more intense interest. Always, as Betty had said, a favorite, she was the more so under the circumstances. She had her part in practically everything going on among the school children and took ingenuous satisfaction in surprising her teachers and companions by unexpected acts, circumventing her handicap in all sorts of curious and original ways. She played the piano for the opening exercises of the school in the morning and for the upper classes in gymnastics, and was herself the star performer among the girls in her class. And though Mr. Meadowcroft felt with secret dissatisfaction and sometimes with irritation that Rose took Betty’s devotion and constant self-sacrifice as a matter of course, in reality the girl valued Betty’s warm friendship as the best thing in her life and the basis of all her other happiness. Her high spirits never flagged and no one but Betty Pogany questioned her happiness at all. Her father and mother not only believed in it but shared it. Only Betty felt Rose’s gaiety to be forced and suffered vicariously for her as only a sensitive and reserved soul such as hers can suffer.
The fifteen-minute period was over, and five minutes extra, and still the brownish, opaque liquid was unchanged. Again the experiment was a failure. Betty rose regretfully. She had to go home to do her practising.
Tommy accompanied her. They did not speak until they were on the porch at the Poganys’ and Betty was dutifully cleaning her overshoes on the iron scraper.
“Betty, do you know what I believe? I believe that some day Rose’s sight will come back to her!” Tommy declared eagerly.
“O, Tommy!” cried the girl breathlessly. That possibility had never occurred to her.
“I am just about sure of it,” the boy went on, gaining credence in his own statement from her manner of receiving it.
Betty clasped her gloved hands.
“It stands to reason,” quoth the oracle. “Look at her eyes—just as good as yours or mine. Now all the blind people I ever saw had their eyes tight shut.”