"At first he--when he talked--seemed to be walkin' through the woods;
an' he'd tell all about what he saw; the 'purple sunsets,' an'
'dancin' leaves,' an' the merry little brooks hurryin' down the
hillside,' till you could jest SEE the place he was talkin' about. But
now--now he's comin' to full conscientiousness, the doctor says; an'
he don't talk of anything only--only the dark. An' pretty quick he'll
--know."

"An' yet you want that poor child to live, Susan Betts!"

"Of course I want him to live!"

"But what can he DO?"

"Do? There ain't nothin' he can't do. Why, Mis' McGuire, listen! I've
been readin' up. First, I felt as you do--a little. I--I didn't WANT
him to live. Then I heard of somebody who was blind, an' what he did.
He wrote a great book. I've forgotten its name, but it was somethin'
about Paradise. PARADISE--an' he was in prison, too. Think of writin'
about Paradise when you're shut up in jail--an' blind, at that! Well,
I made up my mind if that man could see Paradise through them prison
bars with his poor blind eyes, then Keith could. An' I was goin' to
have him do it, too. An' so I went down to the library an' asked Miss
Hemenway for a book about him. An' I read it. An' then she told me
about more an' more folks that was blind, an' what they had done. An'
I read about them, too."

"Well, gracious me, Susan Betts, if you ain't the limit!" commented
Mrs. McGuire, half admiringly, half disapprovingly.