“Oh,” says the doctor, “we’d better take another day for that.”
“All right,” says Abe; “if your hands are tired of cuttin’, you can make another job of it. My face ain’t tired of bein’ cut, I can tell you.”
“Well, if you’re game, I am.”
So, if you’ll believe me, they just set to work and operated on the other eye, Abe holding his own head, as he said he would, and the squire holding the spreader. And when it was all done, the doctor was for putting a bandage on to keep things quiet till the wounds all healed up, but Abe just begged for one sight of himself, and he stood up and walked over to the clock and looked in the glass, and says he:
“So that’s the way I look, is it? Shouldn’t have known my own face—never saw it before. How long must I keep the bandage on, doctor?”
“Oh, if the eyes ain’t very sore when you wake up in the morning, you can take it off, if you’ll be careful.”
“Wake up! Do you s’pose I can sleep when such a blessing has fallen on me? I’ll lay still, but if I forget it, or you, for one minute this night, I’ll be so ashamed of myself that it’ll wake me right up!”
Then the doctor bound up his eyes and the poor boy said “Thank God!” two or three times, and they could see the tears running down his cheeks from under the cloth. Lord! It was just as pitiful as a broken-winged bird!
How about the girl? Well; it was all right for Abe—and all wrong for Ephe—all wrong for Ephe! But that’s all past and gone—past and gone. Folks come for miles and miles to see cross-eyed Abe with his eyes as straight as a loon’s leg. Doctor Brainard was a great man forever after in those parts. Everywhere else, too, by what I heard.
When the doctor and the squire come to go, Abe spoke up, blindfolded as he was, and says he: