Chapter 5: Waiting

Not for some days after his return from Boston did Keith venture out upon the street. He knew then at once that the whole town had heard all about his trip to Boston and what the doctors had said. He tried not to see the curious glances cast in his direction. He tried not to care that the youngest McGuire children stood at their gate and whispered, with fingers plainly pointing toward himself.

He did not go near the schoolhouse, and he stayed at the post-office until he felt sure all the scholars must have reached home. Then, just at the corner of his own street, he met Mazie Sanborn and Dorothy Parkman face to face. He would have passed quickly, with the briefest sort of recognition, but Mazie stopped him short.

“Keith, oh, Keith, it isn’t true, is it?” she cried breathlessly. “You aren’t going to be blind?”

“Mazie, how could you!” cried Dorothy sharply. And because she shuddered and half turned away, Keith saw only the shudder and the turning away, and did not realize that it was rebuke and remonstrance, and not aversion, that Dorothy was expressing so forcibly.

Keith stiffened.

“Say, Keith, I’m awfully sorry, and so’s Dorothy. Why, she hasn’t talked about a thing, hardly, but that, since she heard of it.”

“Mazie, I have, too,” protested Dorothy sharply.

“Well, anyway, it was she who insisted on coming around this way to-day,” teased Mazie wickedly; “and when I——”

“I’m going home, whether you are or not,” cut in Miss Dorothy, with dignity. And with a low chuckle Mazie tossed a good-bye to Keith and followed her lead.

Keith, his chin aggressively high, strode in the opposite direction.

“I suppose she wanted to see how really bad I did look,” he was muttering fiercely, under his breath. “Well, she needn’t worry. If I do get blind, I’ll take good care she don’t have to look at me, nor Mazie, nor any of the rest of them.”

Keith went out on the street very little after that, and especially he kept away from it after school hours. They were not easy—those winter days. The snow lay deep in the woods, and it was too cold for long walks. He could not read, nor paint, nor draw, nor use his eyes about anything that tried them. But he was by no means idle. He had found now “the boy to do the reading”—his father. For hours every day they studied together, Keith memorizing, where it was necessary, what his father read, always discussing and working out the problems together. That he could not paint or draw was a great cross to his father, he knew.

Keith noticed, too, —and noticed it with a growing heartache, —that nothing was ever said now about his being Jerry and Ned and dad himself all in a bunch. And he understood, of course, that if he was going to be blind, he could not be Jerry and—