You know what times we've been having-how I shocked the poor
lady?"
She was looking at me, but her eyes were not seeing me. "Yes, Mary,"
she said, in the same dead tone.
"Well, that was a game we made for you. It was very funny!"
"Funny?"
"Yes! Because I really did shock her-though we started out just to
give you something else to think about!"
And then suddenly I saw the healing tears begin to come. She could
not weep for her own grief-but she could weep because of what she
knew we two had had to suffer for her!
21. I went out and told the others what I had done; and Mrs. Tuis
rushed in to her niece and they wept in each other's arms, and Mrs.
Tuis explained all the mysteries of life by her formula, "the will
of the Lord."
Later on came Dr. Perrin, and it was touching to see how Sylvia
treated him. She had, it appeared, conceived the idea that the
calamity must be due to some blunder on his part, and then she had
reflected that he was young, and that chance had thrown upon him a
responsibility for which he had not bargained. He must be
reproaching himself bitterly, so she had to persuade him that it was
really not so bad as we were making it-that a blind child was a
great joy to a mother's soul-in some ways even a greater joy than a
perfectly sound child, because it appealed so to her protective
instinct! I had called Sylvia a shameless payer of compliments, and
now I went away by myself and wept.
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