Amid the endless babble of suggestions made to her for Brum's cure,
one--repeated several times by different persons--hooked itself to her
distracted brain. Germany! There was a great eye-doctor in Germany,
who could do anything and everything. Yes, she would go to Germany.
This resolution, at which Jossel shrugged his shoulders in despairing
scepticism, was received with rapture by Brum. How he had longed to
see foreign countries, to pass over that shining sea which whispered
and beckoned so, at Brighton and Ramsgate! He almost forgot he would
not _see_ Germany, unless the eye-doctor were a miracle-monger indeed.
But he was doomed to a double disappointment; for instead of his going
to Germany, Germany came to him, so to speak, in the shape of the
specialist's annual visit to London; and the great man had nothing
soothing to say, only a compassionate head to shake, with ominous
warnings to make the best of a bad job and fatten up the poor boy.
Nor did Zillah's attempts to read take her out of the infant primers,
despite long hours of knitted brow and puckered lips, and laborious
triumphs over the childish sentences, by patient addition of syllable
to syllable. She also tried to write, but got no further than her own
name, imitated from the envelopes.
To occupy Brum's days, Jossel, gaining enlightenment in the ways of
darkness, procured Braille books. But the boy had read most of the
stock works thus printed for the blind, and his impatient brain
fretted at the tardiness of finger-reading. Jossel's one consolation
was that the boy would not have to earn his living. The thought,
however, of how his blind heir would be cheated by agents and
rent-collectors was a touch of bitter even in this solitary sweet.