“Slang, Gladys?” hinted Gwen, for they had pledged themselves never to use slang—or, as everybody said in the ancient days of Pinafore: “Hardly ever!” She had hard work not to rejoice over her sister’s admission, and found it quite impossible not to smile.
“I know a great deal more than I did,” continued Gladys. “Those girls are really a dreadful warning to me. I can see plainly now how different a real lady is from an imitation one. It’s funny how blind I was.” She stopped short, frightened by having used a word that never was to be mentioned before Gwen.
But Gwen met the allusion quietly. “You were blind first, Glad, and got well. Maybe I’ll get well, too. I feel stronger, and sometimes I hope a little. If I don’t get well, I’m going to try not to be a failure, and be brave,” she said.
Gladys went over to her and kissed her with a sweet gravity that was pretty to see in the little girl who had been so shallow and vain. “My kind of blindness was worse than yours, Gwen,” she said. “You’d be nicer than I ever could be if you lost all your eyes.”
“Gwen isn’t a spider, and Gwen is going to get well,” cried Jan, laughing to keep from crying.
Gladys left the room hastily and Jan perched on the bedside, holding Tommy Traddles’s paw in one hand and Gwen’s fingers in the other. “I’ve been wanting to tell you something Aunt Tina said yesterday, and I haven’t had a chance,” she said. “Something just for yourself to hear—right in your own ear.”
“This is my own ear, Jan; it was given to me fifteen years ago,” said Gwen, inclining that organ toward her cousin.
Jan leaned forward to whisper into it. “She said that you were making such a peaceful, happy little spot of your room, and were so brave and cheerful, and all the children were getting so loving and gentle with you that she half dreaded to have you get well and break up the little oasis in the midst of a selfish world. Isn’t that nice for your mother to have said?” And Gwen could not help feeling that it was.