He said the last word with a sort of gasp. Susie Hale shivered. She drew closer to him. She looked into his poor, tortured face, with her dark and tender eyes, and said very quietly,—
“You believe in God, George Graham, and you will not defy Him. If He means you to bear this you will bear it like a man, and not try to get rid of the burden. But I do not believe He does mean you to bear it; and I will not believe it till every means has been tried for your cure. Just now, it seems to me, you ought to go home. Would you like your mother to hear this first from some one else?”
He rose slowly.
“You are right,” he said, “and you are a good girl. Good-by, Susie.”
She did not try to go with him; she followed him only with her eyes. She was contented if she could but send him home in safety to his mother.
His mother met him at the gate. When she took his hand in hers the poor fellow felt that she knew all. She was very quiet and self-controlled.
“Your teacher has been here,” she said, “and he has told me. My darling, why have you sat in the darkness, and shut your mother out from any share in your trouble?”
“Oh, I couldn’t tell you, mother!” he sobbed, with his head upon her breast, at last,—“I couldn’t, I thought it would break your heart.”
“Ah! that was because you did not know. If you should die and leave me alone in the world, that, indeed, would break my heart; but while I have you beside me, nothing can make me altogether miserable, and nothing must make you so. There is help somewhere, and we will find it, please God; or, if not, we will bear what others have borne, and find a way to lighten the darkness.”
Meantime, Susie Hale had gone home full of an absorbing purpose. Somehow money must and should be raised to try what a skilful oculist could do for George Graham.