'I won’t,' Miss Lyman declared. 'All his dreams and hopes are centred on that idea.'
'If you don’t tell him, the other boys will find it out soon and laugh at him, and that will be worse.'
'Well, why have I got to tell him? Why don’t you?'
'He loves you best,' Miss Cynthia evaded.
'I don’t believe any one will have to tell him,' Miss Lyman took her up, hopefully. 'I believe it will just drop out of his mind as he gets older. He’ll just cease to believe it without any shock, without ever really knowing when he found out it wasn’t so.'
But she reckoned without Mr. Grey. He, it appeared, had fixed a date for the great event.
'Gwey says,' Stanislaus announced, 'vat he got his eyes open ve day he was five, an’ he dest bets I’ll get mine open ven too.'
Thereafter, all his dreams and plays were inspired by the magic words, 'When I’m five an’ can see.' The sentence served as a mental spring-board to jump his imagination off into a world of wonder where he could see, 'dest—dest as good as big folks' or 'dest as good as Gwey.'
Every day his fifth birthday drew nearer, and Miss Cynthia’s eyes said, You’ve got to tell; and everyday Miss Lyman avoided them.
At last it was the day before his birthday. He waked with the words, 'To-mowwow is my birfday,' on his tongue, and scrambled out of bed, a little night-shirted figure of ecstasy. His dressing that morning—the putting on of his shoes, the scrubbing of his fingers, the rather uncertain brushing of his hair—all went off to the happy refrain of—