'Pretending you were a puppy dog!' roared the man. 'Well, if I hadn’t ditched my machine—! A puppy dog, indeed!'
Stanislaus was turned over to Miss Lyman for very severe chastisement. He shed bitter tears, and in the midst of them his instigator’s name came out.
'G-gwey said he al’us barked at aut’mobiles—dest barked an’ barked at 'em—dest whenever he got weady,' he sobbed.
'If you ever do such a dreadful thing again, I shall give you the very worst whipping you ever had,' Miss Lyman scolded. 'Little blind boys have got to learn to be careful where they walk.'
To which Stanislaus made the astonishing reply:—
'Gwey says he dest walked anywhere he got weady when he was little—'fore he got his eyes open.'
That was the first hint that Miss Lyman got of it. Afterwards she and Miss Cynthia—Stanislaus’s teacher—caught constant glimpses of a curious idea that dodged in and out of the little boy’s flow of talk. A queer, elusive, will-o'-the-wisp idea, caught one minute, gone the next, yet informing all the child’s dreams and happy castles of the future.
At first they compared notes on the subject.
'What do you suppose Stanny has got into his head?' Miss Lyman demanded of Miss Cynthia. 'When I told him that Kent Woodward had a little sister, he said, "Has s’e got her eyes open yet?"
'Yes,' agreed Miss Cynthia; 'and when I happened to say that Jimmie Nickle was the biggest blind boy in school, he said he must be awful stupid not to have got his eyes open yet.'