She looked first at one, and then at the other—plainly incapable (with only her eyes to help her) of answering the question.
"I put you out—don't I?" said Grosse. "You can't shut your eyes, my lofely Feench, while I am looking—can you?"
She turned red—then pale again. I began to be afraid she would burst out crying. Grosse managed her to perfection. The tact of this rough, ugly, eccentric old man was the most perfect tact I have ever met with.
"Shut your eyes," he said soothingly. "It is the right ways to learn. Shut your eyes, and take them in your hands, and tell me which is round and which is square in that way first."
She told him directly.
"Goot! now open your eyes, and see for yourself it is the saucers you have got in your right hand, and the books you have got in your left. You see? Goot again! Put them back on the table now. What shall we do next?"
"May I try if I can write?" she asked eagerly. "I do so want to see if I can write with my eyes instead of my finger."
"No! Ten thausand times no! I forbid reading; I forbid writing, yet. Come with me to the window. How do these most troublesome eyes of yours do at a distance?"
While we had been trying our experiment with Lucilla, the weather had brightened again. The clouds were parting; the sun was coming out; the bright gaps of blue in the sky were widening every moment; the shadows were traveling grandly over the windy slopes of the hills. Lucilla lifted her hands in speechless admiration as the German threw open the window, and placed her face to face with the view.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, "don't speak to me! don't touch me!—let me enjoy it! There is no disappointment here. I have never thought, I have never dreamed, of anything half so beautiful as this!"