CHAPTER XIX.
DRIVEN FROM HIS LAST DEFENCE.
Susie was Mrs. Todd before I recovered from the effects of my involuntary soap-bath.
"Smart trick!" cried my father when he fished me out of the barrel.
I thought it was smart, sure enough, by the sensation in my eyes. But I have drawn a veil over that bit of my history. I know my eyesight was injured for all that summer. I could not tell a piece of silk from a piece of calico, except by the feeling; so I was excused from clerking in the store, and sat round the house with green goggles on, and wished I were different from what I was. By fall my eyesight got better. One day father came in the parlor where I was sitting moping, having just seen Tom Todd drive by in a new buggy with his bride, and said to me:
"John, I am disappointed in you."
"I know it," I answered him meekly.
"You look well enough, and you have talent enough," he went on; "but you are too ridiculously bashful for an ostrich."
"I know it," I again replied. "Oh, father, father, why did they take that caul from my face?"