Chapter 26: Mazie Again

It came to be the accepted thing almost at once, then, that Keith Burton and John McGuire should spend their mornings together on the McGuires’ back porch. In less than a fortnight young McGuire even crossed the yard arm in arm with Keith to the Burtons’ back porch and sat there one morning. After that it was only a question as to which porch it should be. That it would be one of them was a foregone conclusion.

Sometimes the two boys talked together. Sometimes they worked on one of Keith’s raised picture puzzles. Sometimes Keith read aloud from one of his books. Whatever they did, their doing it was the source of great interest to the entire neighborhood. Not only did Mrs. McGuire and Susan breathlessly watch from their respective kitchens, but friends and neighbors fabricated excuses to come to the two houses in order to see for themselves; and children gathered along the divisional fence and gazed with round eyes of wonder. But they gazed silently. Everybody gazed silently. Even the children seemed to understand that the one unpardonable sin was to let the blind boys on the porch know that they were the objects of any sort of interest.

One day Mazie Sanborn came. She brought a new book for Mrs. McGuire to read—an attention she certainly had never before bestowed on John McGuire’s mother. She talked one half-minute about the book—and five minutes about the beautiful new friendship between the two blind young men. She insisted on going into the kitchen where she could see the two boys on the porch. Then, before Mrs. McGuire could divine her purpose and stop her, she had slipped through the door and out on to the porch itself.

“How do you do, gentlemen,” she began blithely. “I just—”

But the terrified Mrs. McGuire had her by the arm and was pulling her back into the kitchen before she could finish her sentence.

On the porch the two boys had leaped to their feet, John McGuire, in particular, looking distressed and angry.

“Who was that? Is anybody—there?” he demanded.

“No, dear, not now.” In the doorway Mrs. McGuire was trying to nod assurance to the boys and frown banishment to Mazie Sanborn at one and the same moment.

“But there was—some one,” insisted her son sharply.

“Just some one that brought a book to me, dearie, an’ she’s gone now.” Frantically Mrs. McGuire was motioning Mazie to make her assertion the truth.

John McGuire sat down then. So, too, did Keith. But all the rest of the morning John was nervously alert for all sounds. And his ears were frequently turned toward the kitchen door. He began to talk again, too, bitterly, of the little tin cup for the pennies and the sign “Pity the Poor Blind.” He lost all interest in Keith’s books and puzzles, and when he was not railing at the tragedy of his fate, he was sitting in gloomy silence.

Keith told Susan that afternoon that if Mrs. McGuire did not keep people away from that porch when he was out there with John, he would not answer for the consequences. Susan told Mrs. McGuire, and Mrs. McGuire told Mazie Sanborn, at the same time returning the loaned book—all of which did not tend to smooth Miss Mazie’s already ruffled feelings.

To Dorothy Mazie expressed her mind on the matter.

“I don’t care! I’ll never go there again—never!” she declared angrily; “nor speak to Mrs. McGuire, nor that precious son of hers, nor Keith Burton, either. So there!”

“Oh, Mazie, but poor Keith isn’t to blame,” remonstrated Dorothy earnestly, the color flaming into her face.

“He is, too. He’s just as bad as John McGuire. He jumped up and looked just as cross as John McGuire did when I went out on to that porch. And he doesn’t ever really want to see us. You know he doesn’t. He just stands us because he thinks he’s got to be polite.”

“But, Mazie, dear, he’s so sensitive, and he feels his affliction keenly, and—”

“Oh, yes, that’s right—stand up for him! I knew you would,” snapped Mazie crossly. “And everybody knows it, too—running after him the way you do.”

“RUNNING AFTER HIM!” Dorothy’s face was scarlet now.

“Yes, running after him,” reiterated the other incisively; “and you always have—trotting over there all the time with books and puzzles and candy and flowers. And—”

“For shame, Mazie!” interrupted Dorothy, with hot indignation. “As if trying to help that poor blind boy to while away a few hours of his time were RUNNING AFTER HIM.”

“But he doesn’t WANT you to while away an hour or two of his time. And I should think you’d see he didn’t. You could if you weren’t so dead in love with him, and—”

“Mazie!” gasped Dorothy, aghast.

“Well, it’s so. Anybody can see that—the way you color up every time his name is mentioned, and the way you look at him, with your heart in your eyes, and—”