Chapter 18: “Miss Stewart”

It was just after Christmas that another letter came from Keith. It was addressed as usual to Susan. Keith had explained in his second letter that he was always going to write to Susan, so that she might read it to his father, thus saving him the disagreeableness of seeing how crooked and uneven some of his lines were. His father had remonstrated—feebly; but Keith still wrote to Susan.

Keith had been improving in his writing very rapidly, however, since those earliest letters, and most of his letters now were models of even lines and carefully formed characters. But this letter Susan saw at once was very different. It bore unmistakable marks of haste, agitation, and lack of care. It began abruptly, after the briefest of salutations:

Why didn’t you tell me you knew Miss Stewart? She says she knows you real well, and father, too, and that she’s been to the house lots of times, and that she’s going back to Hinsdale next week, and that she is going to school there this year, and will graduate in June.

Oh, she didn’t tell me all this at once, you bet your sweet life. I had to worm it out of her little by little. But what I want to know is, why you folks didn’t tell me anything about it—that you knew her, and all that? But you never said a word—not a word. Neither you nor dad. But she says she knows dad real well. Funny dad never mentioned it!

Miss Stewart sure is a peach of a girl all right and the best ever to me. She’s always hunting up new games for me to play. She’s taught me two this time, and she’s read two books to me. There’s a new fellow here named Henty, and we play a lot together. I am well, and getting along all right. Guess that’s all for this time. Love to all. KEITH P.S. Now don’t forget to tell me why you never said a thing that you knew Miss Stewart. K.

“Well, now I guess the kettle is in the fire, all right!” ejaculated
Susan, folding the letter with hands that shook a little.
“What do you mean?” asked Daniel Burton.

“Why, about that girl, of course. He’ll find out now she’s Dorothy Parkman. He can’t help findin’ it out!” “Well, what if he does?” demanded the man, a bit impatiently.

“‘What if he does?’” repeated Susan, with lofty scorn. “I guess you’ll find what ‘tis when that boy does find out she’s Dorothy Parkman, an’ then won’t have nothin’ more to do with her, nor her father, nor her father’s new doctor, nor anything that is hers.”

“Nonsense, Susan, don’t be silly,” snapped the man, still more irritably. “‘Nor her father, nor her father’s new doctor, nor anything that is hers,’ indeed! You sound for all the world as if you were chanting a catechism! What’s the matter? Doesn’t the boy like Miss Dorothy?”

“Why, Daniel Burton, you know he don’t! I told you long ago all about it, when I explained how we’d got to give her father a resumed name, so Keith wouldn’t know, an’—”

“Oh, THAT! What she said about not wanting to see blind people?
Nonsense, Susan, that was years ago, when they were children! Why,
Keith’s a man, nearly. You’re forgetting—he’ll be eighteen next June,
Susan.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Burton.” Susan’s lips snapped together grimly and her chin assumed its most defiant tilt. “I ain’t sayin’ he ain’t. But there’s some cases where age don’t make a mite of difference, an’ you’ll find this is one of ‘em. You mark my words, Daniel Burton. I have seen jest as big fools at eighteen, an’ eighty, for that matter, as I have at eight. ‘T ain’t a matter of decree at all. Keith Burton got it into his head when he was first goin’ blind that Dorothy Parkman would hate to look at him if ever he did get blind; an’ he just vowed an’ determined that if ever he did get that way, she shouldn’t see him. Well, now he’s blind. An’ if you think he’s forgot what Dorothy Parkman said, you’d oughter been with me when she came to see him with Mazie Sanborn one day, or even when they just called up to him on the piazza one mornin’.”