“ROSE, I’ve got something to tell you!” cried Betty eagerly. “It’s
something splendid, but I can’t do it here. Come out and take a walk,
won’t you? You see I want to be sure to get it all over without your
mother’s hearing. You can tell her afterwards.”
Rose’s eyes filled with tears.
“O, Betty, I couldn’t,” she protested, her voice dropping its
listlessness. “I haven’t been out since--you know, except when papa
takes me in the buggy.”
“Well, what of that?” demanded Betty. “All the more fun, if it’s the
first time. It’s lovely to-day. Everything looks and smells so sweet.
We won’t go far.”
“O, but I couldn’t! People would--_see me_!” cried Rose shrinkingly.
“Well, let ’em. Rose. And anyhow, they’d just love to, everybody would.
And why shouldn’t they? You look just the same as you always did except
that you’re awfully pale and your hair isn’t done so prettily. People
that didn’t know would never dream you couldn’t see. Listen! wouldn’t
it be fun to go along as if nothing had happened and when I see anyone
coming I’ll tell you and you can say ‘hullo’ like you always did?”
Rose Harrow sat erect in her chair, clasping her hands almost wildly.
“Betty, is that true? Do you mean that, or are you just saying it like
mama says things, because you pity me?” she demanded. “Do I look the
same? You don’t mean--you _can’t_ mean that my eyes look--all right?”
“I do mean it,” asseverated Betty.
“Honest and true?” demanded Rose. Betty’s reputation for truthfulness
was established, but Mrs. Harrow’s conduct indicated that another sort
of ethics prevailed with the blind. Moreover this statement was too
wonderful to be conceivable.
“Cross my heart and hope to die, they look exactly the same,” Betty
declared solemnly. “Your eyes haven’t changed the least mite except
that they look a little darker and sort of sober instead of sparkling.
Tommy could hardly believe it, nor father, but it’s true. If you
wouldn’t hang your head and would turn towards people when they spoke,
why, nobody----”
Betty stopped, appalled. For Rose was sobbing wildly.
“Rose! darling Rose!” she cried, running to her and throwing her arms
about her.
“O, Betty, why didn’t you say so before? Why didn’t somebody tell me?”
the girl wailed. “I have suffered so. And everyone sounded as if---- O,
I thought I looked frightful, so that----”
On a sudden she raised her head. As she smiled through her tears, Rose
was almost her old self. She dried her eyes quickly.
“Sure, Betty, I’d love to go to walk!” she declared happily. “We’ll go
as soon as mama gets home to put on my shoes and get my hat, and----”
“We can do that ourselves,” suggested Betty. “I know where your shoes
are.” And she fetched them from a clothespress.
Rose shook off one slipper and held out her foot.
“Why don’t you try putting them on?” suggested Betty diplomatically.
“But I shouldn’t know which was which,” Rose faltered rather pitifully.
“Try one, and if that isn’t right, then the other,” Betty advised.
“There’s only two chances, you know. It isn’t like you were a
centipede.” And she put one shoe into Rose’s hand and the other on
the floor. Rose had them on her feet and tied in a twinkling, but the
curious sense of satisfaction following the simple act lingered.
“Now we’ll go up to your room and do your hair like you used to wear
it.” Betty went on in a manner she strove hard to make matter-of-fact,
though secretly she was wildly excited. “I’ll part it for you if you
don’t get it straight. Do you know who you look just like now with it
so slick and prim? Little Huldy Christiansen!”
Rose laughed out--for the first time since Christmas. She rose. Her
face eager, her eyes sparkling, she stood perfectly still holding out
her hand, ready to be guided. But Betty had not been thinking and
planning for naught all through that week.
“Rose, don’t you remember how when I used to stay all night with you,
you would come downstairs in the pitch-dark to get apples and things to
eat in bed?” she asked. “I couldn’t come, too, you know, because I was
so big the stairs would have creaked.”
“Sure I remember,” said Rose, and laughed again. But she did not make
the application expected.
“You didn’t need anyone to lead you then,” Betty reminded her. “Why
can’t you find your way to your own room just as well now as you could
then?”
Rose’s face lighted up.
“Of course!” she cried. “I never thought. Perhaps I can.” And suddenly
she started boldly.
She encountered the center table with some force, but laughed gaily.
That gave her the direction and she went thence unerringly into the
passage, caught the balustrade, and ran excitedly up the stair and into
her own chamber. When Betty reached the room, Rose sat on the bed,
half-laughing, half-crying.
“Come,” said Betty, who paused at the dresser. “We must get your hair
done and your dress changed.” Rose slipped out of her dressing-gown,
followed Betty’s voice to the dresser and released her long, abundant
dark brown hair from the tight plait. When she had brushed it out, she
tried parting it, and when the parting was pronounced straight, both
girls laughed as if it were a game. And when it was braided and tied,
there was so much of the old color in Rose’s cheeks that Betty cried
out.
“O, Rose, you look so pretty and so natural!” she exclaimed, kissing
her. “You look just like old times.”
Rose drew a long, sobbing breath.
“What dress do you want?” Betty asked quickly.
“My blue skirt and middy!” cried Rose eagerly.
“Help yourself!” said Betty in a funny voice, and they laughed again.
Rose found the skirt in the clothespress and the blouse in a drawer
of the chest. When she was dressed, Betty declared the transformation
was complete. Rose was feeling in the top drawer of the dresser for
a scarlet tie when the girls were startled by an agonized wail from
below.
“Rose! Rose! Rosy darling!” cried Mrs. Harrow beseechingly; and before
the startled girls could find voice, “Betty Pogany! what has happened?
Where is Rose?”
“Hoo-hoo! here we are, mama, up here in my chamber!” Rose sang out in a
gay voice Mrs. Harrow had not heard in six months and never expected to
hear again. Flying upstairs, she stood on the threshold of the chamber
white and breathless.
She stared at that familiar, beloved figure standing adjusting a tie
before the mirror as if she believed she was in a dream--her expression
made it a nightmare. Then she turned questioningly to Betty. She
couldn’t speak; but she looked as one might who has entrusted an infant
to another and found him standing it on its feet and urging it to walk.
“Betty’s going to take me out for a little walk, mama,” said Rose
demurely. She looked so sparkling and lively, so like the girl she had
been before that terrible illness, that her mother felt as if her heart
were breaking.
“My darling, I couldn’t let you do that,” she gasped. “And O, Rosy, do
sit down.”
Going to the girl, she forced her gently into a padded rocker she had
placed in her chamber since her illness.
“You’re not strong enough to walk,” she added, “and, O, something might
happen! I should worry every second. Your papa’ll be here very soon
now, and if you’ll both promise to be very quiet, I’ll get him to take
Betty along, too.”
“But Betty doesn’t want to ride, and neither do I,” Rose rejoined. “I’m
dead sick of it, so there!”
“It might help Rose to get stronger to walk a little, Mrs. Harrow,”
Betty urged very gently. “We wouldn’t go but just a teeny way, and I’d
be awfully careful. And what can happen now any more than when Rose
used to be out with the girls?”
Mrs. Harrow almost glared at the girl. The poor woman was nearly
distraught.
“It’s very different,” she retorted. “I should be frightened to death
and Rose sha’n’t go one step. And I don’t know what you mean, anyhow,
Betty Pogany, coming here looking like an overgrown Tomboy and putting
crazy notions into Rosy’s head. I wish I hadn’t let you in. Something
seemed to warn me not to. But I thought a great girl like you, a woman
grown, might be trusted.”
Rose was leaning forward on the padded arm of the chair.
“What does she mean by your looking like a Tomboy, Betty?” she asked
wonderingly.
Betty glanced deprecatingly at Mrs. Harrow.
“I have got on a short skirt and low-heeled shoes and don’t wear
corsets any more,” she said in a low voice. “And I’ve got my hair down
my back, too.”
Rose reached out and skilfully caught the thick bright braid and gave
it a playful yank.
“O, Betty, I wish I----” she began, but stopped herself. She looked
towards her mother.
“There’s no use in picking on Betty, mama,” she remarked. “I am going
to walk. I haven’t been out of the house for six months except to be
lifted into that old buggy like a sack of meal and to ride behind that
pokey old horse. And I’m sick to death of sitting in the house from
morning till night hearing reading, reading, reading, with all the
parts I’d care anything about skipped. And I’m tired of being pitied.
And you never told me that--that I don’t look hideous nor even blind,
and----”
As the tears filled her eyes, she pressed her pocket handkerchief to
them and would have risen. But her mother, who had ousted Betty from
her place beside the chair, put out a gentle hand to restrain her. Mrs.
Harrow began to feel that her daughter was in a fever and delirious.
Rose fixed her great, dark, hollow eyes upon her.
“If you don’t let me go out with Betty, this is what I shall do. Mama
Harrow,” she threatened vehemently. “I shall lie on that bed and cry
until I am sick, and then I’ll cry till I die. I might as well die,
anyhow, if I’ve got to go back to--everything!”
“O, Rosy darling, you’ll break my heart!” protested her mother.
“I mean it,” said Rose firmly. Then suddenly she reached out and seized
her mother’s hand.
“O, mama, I want to go just awfully! I _want_ to, just as I used to
want things, and--it will make me happy as I used to be happy,” she
pleaded.
Mrs. Harrow yielded perforce. She fetched Rose’s hat and spring jacket,
though with manifest reluctance, looking daggers at the naughty girl
who had incited the mischief. Rose suffered her to put on the wraps as
if she had been an invalid, but she broke free and, finding the stair,
slid down the bannister.
At the door, she turned, hugged and kissed her mother and bade her
cheer up. Mrs. Harrow patted her shoulder but frowned darkly at Betty.
As the girls went down the flagged walk, however, arm-in-arm, the
mother relented. For it seemed like a happy dream of Rose. Her hand
loosely resting on Betty’s arm, the girl walked lightly and fearlessly
beside her, only her pallor and a slight weakness differentiating her
from the girl who had gone through that gate in just that manner so
many times in that past which Mrs. Harrow had believed forever past.
Rose was chattering, too, quite in the old way, and just as they turned
the corner into the avenue, her laugh rang out,--the sweetest music in
the world to the woman on the porch. As she entered the house, tears
streamed down her face, but her heart was lighter than it had been in
many a day. And presently she was trying to decide what Betty would
like best for tea. For she meant to keep the girl and have a real feast
to celebrate the wonderful occasion.