"He was so much pleased!" she reported on her return. "He seemed quite surprised to get so much. And he said, 'God bless you, miss!' I wish you'd been there, Regie. I said, 'It's not all from me.' He was so much pleased!"
"How did he know you were a miss, I wonder?" said I.
"I suppose it was my voice," said Polly, after a pause.
As soon as I could go out, I went to see the blind man. As I drew near, he was—as Polly told me—reading aloud. The regularity and rapidity with which his fingers ran over line after line, as if he were rubbing out something on a slate, were most striking; and as I stood beside him I distinctly heard him read the verse, "Now Barabbas was a robber." It was a startling coincidence to find him still reading the words which Polly overheard, especially as they were not in any way remarkably adapted for the subject of a prolonged meditation.
Much living alone with grown-up people had, I think, helped towards my acquiring a habit I had of "brown studying," turning things over, brewing them, so to speak, in my mind. I stood pondering the peculiarities of the object of our charity for some moments, during which he was elaborately occupied in turning over a leaf of his book. Presently I said—
"What makes you say it out loud when you read?"
He turned his head towards me, blinking and rolling his eyes, and replied in impressive tones—
"It's the pleasure I takes in it, sir."
Now as he blinked I watched his eyes with mingled terror, pity, and curiosity. At this moment a stout and charitable-looking old gentleman was passing, between whom and my blind friend I was standing. And as he passed he threw the blind man some coppers. But in the moment before he did so, and when there seemed a possibility of his passing without what I suspect was a customary dole, such a sharp expression came into the scarcely visible pupils of the blind man's half-shut eyes that (never suspecting that his blindness was feigned, but for the moment convinced that he had seen the old gentleman) I exclaimed, without thinking of the absurdity of my inquiry—
"Was it at the Blind School you learnt to see so well with your blind eyes?"