"Certainly, all I have said is true," answered the old beggar. "I have seen little Jack sitting at the church door as blind as a post, and now he sees as bright and clear as anybody who has always had two good, sound eyes in his head."
Molly ran directly to her father with this joyful news. But her father shook his head, and said earnestly to her,—
"Do not suffer this sweet hope to take such entire possession of you, my kind child! Above all, say nothing about it to Kitty; for the poor little blind girl would suffer tenfold more if she should nourish such a hope, and be doomed to meet with a bitter disappointment. Yet it is possible it may succeed! Kitty was not born blind; she was more than a year old when she lost her sight."
When he saw how deeply Molly was distressed by his want of faith in the possibility of Kitty's restoration to sight, he tried to calm her anxiety, and continued,—
"If it should succeed, Molly, who would be happier, who would be more grateful to the good God above, than myself? I would joyfully give up the half of my property, nay, the whole of it, Molly, to open again the sightless eyes of our poor little Kitty! We will set out to-morrow, at the earliest dawn of day, to seek the physician who has given sight to the blind!"
The sun had not yet entirely risen, when Molly, after a sleepless night, was already stirring through the house, making the necessary preparations for their contemplated journey. She hurried on everything with as much eagerness as if her life depended upon the loss of a single hour, and succeeded in stimulating the slow coachman to an extraordinary rapid gait in comparison with his usually slow pace. The carriage rolled down the hill upon which the house was built just as the first glittering rays of the sun filled the valley with their rosy light. Molly held her little sister in her arms. Sometimes she pressed her wildly, as if in fear, to her breast; sometimes she looked long and deeply into her large, sad eyes, as if it would be possible to read in them the success or failure of the contemplated experiment. Tortured by the most restless impatience, she asked the old beggar (who had taken his seat by the coachman to show him the way) every five minutes if they were not almost there.
"We soon will be! We soon will be!" was his dry answer; but to the excited Molly, so full of hope and fear, this word "soon" seemed to cover an eternity. Always so merciful, both to man and beast, she would not spare a single moment to the poor horses to rest.
"Only drive on!—drive on!" she begged; "the poor, tired horses shall have a good rest and plenty of food after we are once there!"
In vain Kitty asked where they were going, what was the aim of their journey, and what made Molly so impatient. "You will soon know all about it," was the only answer she received. At last—at last—the travellers stopped before the house pointed out by the beggar!
They found the physician to be a young and amiable man, who, after a short examination of the sightless eyes, said he felt certain the operation would succeed, and that it would prove neither difficult nor dangerous. But he said he would not like to undertake it until Kitty had been for a few days under his care.