"Mamma, what is it? Why are you in the dark?"
By the firelight she could see her mother sitting with her eyes shut, and
her hands folded in her lap.
"I can't use my eyes. I think there must be something the matter with
them."
"Your eyes? ... Do they hurt?"
(You might have known--you might have known that something would happen.
While you were upstairs, writing, not thinking of her. You might have
known.)
"_Something_ hurts. Just there. When I try to read. I must be going
blind."
"Are you sure it isn't your glasses?"
"How can it be my glasses? They never hurt me before."
But the oculist in Durlingham said it _was_ her glasses. She wasn't going
blind. It wasn't likely that she ever would go blind.
For a week before the new glasses came Mamma sat, patient and gentle, in
her chair, with her eyes shut and her hands folded in her lap. And you
read aloud to her: the Bible and _The Times_ in the morning, and Dickens
in the afternoon. And in the evening you played draughts and Mamma beat
you.