He laughed merrily. "So do I," he rejoined. "For some years failure to do so has kept me with at least one skinned shin. But just think of the cost of stockings had I been blind as a boy!"
Suddenly she had a vivid picture of him as a ragged, little fellow, stumbling about through his unfathomable darkness, bumping into things and leaving jagged holes in his child's black stockings. Whether she wanted to laugh or cry she did not know, but a great, warm surge of motherliness came over her for the child she imaged, and she said aloud, "Poor little urchin!"
Philip turned and looked at her, smiling. "It would have been a picture indeed," he said.
"I had enough troubles during my rebellious childhood at the orphanage without adding imaginary woes," Lawrence went on, amusedly retrospective. "I remember one day when I was at the awkward stage. I was all dressed for church and happened to stumble over another boy lying in the grass. I fell against a bench, my trousers caught on a projecting nail, and ripped dreadfully. The matron gave me a scolding and sent me to bed for the day."
"Brought up in an orphanage!" thought Claire. "No wonder he is pessimistic."
"I didn't mind missing church," Lawrence continued; "but it struck me as a piece of gross injustice that I should be punished for a boy's lack of muscular coordination. I've experienced the same fate over my blindness. It seems to be a special trick people have, and they play it incessantly. I should think it would get as tiresome to them by and by as it did to me some years ago."
Claire felt as if she were included in his casual criticism of mankind, and wondered just how she had been addicted to the practise. A dozen different instances came to her, and she felt very penitent.
"It's because we're all so thoughtless," she said.
"Perhaps. I rather choose to state it differently. It's for the same reason that I do thousands of things, because I'm more interested in myself than I am in any one else. I'm selfish, and so is the rest of humanity."
"But we aren't deliberately so," Philip protested. "Isn't it rather that we are short-sighted and unimaginative?"