Susie was the orphan niece of Deacon Solomon Grant, in whose store a place was awaiting George. She knew that she had a modest little fortune of her own, but it was all in her uncle’s hands, and without his consent she could not dispose even of her slender income. But would he not be persuaded to let her have enough of her own money to accomplish her desire? She asked him, using her utmost power of persuasion to touch his heart, but he refused with peremptory decision. He wouldn’t mind contributing moderately to a fund for young Graham’s help—he would not even mind letting her have five or ten dollars of her own for that purpose—but beyond that the duty of one neighbor did not go. And Deacon Solomon shut his lips together as tightly as he buttoned up his pocket.
Susie had in the world one treasure,—a diamond ring which had been her mother’s, with a stone white and clear as a dew-drop. This must, she knew, be worth three or four hundred dollars. It was her very own. She had meant to keep it all her life for her mother’s sake, but surely this great need of George Graham’s justified her in parting with it.
She had one friend in Boston,—an old teacher,—in whose good faith and judicious management she felt implicit confidence, and to him she sent her mother’s ring, with a request that he would sell it as speedily and on as good terms as possible, and remit her the price of it in bank-notes, not in a check, and keep for ever the secret that she had disposed of it.
It was a week after George Graham had given up hope, when a most unexpected hope came to him. A neighbor, going by from the post-office, handed in at the door a letter addressed to him. Mrs. Graham opened it, for George’s vision had failed with every day, and his eyes were utterly useless now.
“George,” she cried, after a moment, in an eager, trembling voice, “here are three one-hundred dollar bills, and this is the letter that comes with them:—
“‘This money is from a true friend of George Graham’s, and is to be applied to taking him to an oculist, in the hope that his sight may be restored. The giver withholds his name, both because he desires no thanks, and because he wishes to make the return of the money impossible.’
“It is from Heaven, itself!” the mother cried. “George, we will start for Boston to-morrow. I feel in my soul that you are to be cured.”
The next day a mother and her blind son sought rooms at a quiet boarding-house, of which they had found the number in the advertisement column of a city paper, and the day after that they were among the earliest patients of Doctor Annesley. The first examination of George’s eyes was unpromising enough. They would be worse before they were better; an operation might or might not restore sight to them, but the time for it had not yet come. Meanwhile the doctor wanted to see him daily.
Those were weary days and weeks that followed, both before the operation and afterward, when the poor eyes were carefully bandaged from the light, and mother and son sat day after day in the dark together, wondering, wondering, wondering what the result would be. It was curious that the mother was always hopeful, and the son always despairing. At last it almost irritated him to hear her speak of hope to him; and one day he turned on her with the first burst of passionate impatience she had ever experienced from him.
“Mother,” he said, “for the love of Heaven do not talk to me as if it was a sure thing that I am going to see again. I want to think it doubtful, almost impossible. If you should make me expect a sure cure, and then it shouldn’t come, don’t you see that I should go mad? I think I should dash my head against the wall. I can only live by expecting nothing.”