It was my Mother cantering home across the wooden bridge.
It sounded glad.
My Father thought of a new way suddenly to escape from his wings! And ran to meet her!
THE BLINDED LADY
The Blinded Lady lived in a little white cottage by the Mill Dam.
She had twenty-seven cats! And a braided rug! And a Chinese cabinet all full of peacock-feather fans!
Our Father and Mother took us to see them.
It smelt furry.
Carol wore his blue suit. Rosalee wore an almost grown-up dress. I wore my new middy blouse.
We looked nice.
The Blinded Lady looked nice too.
She sat in a very little chair in the middle of a very large room. Her skirts were silk and very fat. They fluffed all around her like a pen-wiper. She had on a white lace cap. There were violets in the cap. Her eyes didn't look blinded.
We sat on the edge of our chairs. And stared at her. And stared. She didn't mind.
All the cats came and purred their sides against our legs. It felt soft and sort of bubbly.
The Blinded Lady recited poetry to us. She recited "Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard." She recited "The Charge of the Light Brigade." She recited "Bingen on the Rhine."
When she got all through reciting poetry she asked us if we knew any.
We did.
We knew "Onward Christian Soldiers," and "Hey Diddle, Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle." And Rosalee knew two verses about
It was many and many a year ago
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee.
We hoped the Blinded Lady would be pleased.
She wasn't!
The Blinded Lady said it wasn't nearly enough just to know the first two verses of anything! That you ought to know all the verses of everything! The Blinded Lady said that every baby just as soon as it was born ought to learn every poem that it possibly could so that if it ever grew up and was blinded it would have something to amuse itself with!
We promised we would!
We asked the Blinded Lady what made her blinded.
She said it was because she made all her father's shirts when she was six years old!
We promised we wouldn't!
"And now," said the Blinded Lady, "I'd like to have the Little Dumb Boy come forward and stand at my knee so I can touch his face!"
Carol didn't exactly like to be called the Little Dumb Boy, but he came forward very politely and stood at the Blinded Lady's knee. The Blinded Lady ran her fingers all up and down his face. It tickled his nose. He looked puckered.
"It's a pleasant face!" said the Blinded Lady.
"We like it!" said my Father.
"Oh very much!" said my Mother.
"Has he always been dumb?" said the Blinded Lady.
"Always," said my Mother. "But never deaf!"
"Oh Tush!" said the Blinded Lady. "Don't be stuffy! Afflictions were meant to talk about!"
"But Carol, you see," said my Mother, "can't talk about his! So we don't!"
"Oh-Tush!" said the Blinded Lady.
She pushed Carol away. She thumped her cane on the braided rug.
"There's one here, isn't there," she said, "that hasn't got anything to be sensitive about? Let the Young Lassie come forward," she said, "so I can touch her face!"
It made Rosalee very pink to have her face explored.
The Blinded Lady laughed as she explored it.
"Ha!" she said. "Age about seventeen? Gold hair? Sky-blue eyes? Complexion like peaches and cream?-Not much cause here," laughed the Blinded Lady, "for this Young Lassie ever to worry when she looks in the glass!"
"Oh but she does!" I cried. "She worries herself most to death every time she looks!-She's afraid her hair will turn gray before Derry comes!"
"S-s-h!" said everybody.
The Blinded Lady cocked her head. She ruffled herself. It looked like feathers.
"Derry?" said the Blinded Lady. "Who's Derry?-A beau?"
My Father gruffed his throat.
"Oh Derry's just a young friend of ours," he said.
"He lives in Cuba," said my Mother.
"Cuba's an island!" I said. "It floats in water! They eat bananas! They have fights! It's very hot! There's lots of moonlight! Derry's father says that when Rosalee's married he'll build a--."
"Hush, Ruthy!" said my Father. "You've talked quite enough already!"
The Blinded Lady patted her skirts. They billowed all around her like black silk waves. It looked funny.
"H-m-m-mmm!" she said. "Let the Child-Who's-Talked-Too-Much-Already come forward now so that I can feel her face!"
I went forward just as fast as I could.
The Blinded Lady touched my forehead.
She smoothed my nose,-my cheeks,-my chin.
"U-m-mmm," she said. "And 'Ruthy' you say is what you call her?"
My Father twinkled his eyes.
"We have to call her something!" he said politely.
"And is this bump on the forehead a natural one?" said the Blinded Lady. "Or an accidental one?"
"Both!" said my Father. "That is, it's pre-em-i-nently natural for our daughter Ruthy to have an accidental bump on her forehead."
"And there are, I infer," said the Blinded Lady, "one or two freckles on either side of the nose?"
"Your estimate," said my Father, "is conservative."
"And the hair?" said the Blinded Lady. "It hasn't exactly the texture of gold."
"'Penny-colored' we call it!" said my Mother.
"And not exactly a new penny at that, is it?" said the Blinded Lady.
"N-o," said my Mother. "But rather jolly all the same like a penny that's just bought two sticks of candy instead of one!"
"And the nose turns up a little?" said the Blinded Lady.
"Well maybe just a-trifle," admitted my Mother.
The Blinded Lady stroked my face all over again. "U-m-m-m," she said. "Well at least it's something to be thankful for that everything is perfectly normal!" She put her hands on my shoulders. She shook me a little. "Never, never, Ruthie," she said, "be so foolish as to complain because you're not pretty!"
"No'm!" I promised.
"Put all the Beauty you can inside your head!" said the Blinded Lady.
"Yes'm!" I promised. "And I've just thought of another one that I know! It's about
You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear,
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be--"
"Foolish!" said the Blinded Lady. "It wasn't sounds I was thinking of this time, but sights!" She pushed me away. She sighed and sighed. It puffed her all out. "O-h," she sighed. "O-h! Three pairs of Young Eyes and all the World waiting to be looked at!"
She rocked her chair. She rocked it very slowly. It was like a little pain.
"I never saw anything after I was seventeen!" she said. "And God himself knows that I hadn't seen anywheres near enough before that! Just the little grass road to the village now and then on a Saturday afternoon to buy the rice and the meat and the matches and the soap! Just the wood-lot beyond the hill-side where the Arbutus always blossomed so early! Just old Neighbor Nora's new patch-work quilt!-Just a young man's face that looked in once at the window to ask where the trout brook was! But even these pictures," said the Blinded Lady, "They're fading! Fading! Sometimes I can't remember at all whether old Nora's quilt was patterned in diamond shapes or squares. Sometimes I'm not so powerful sure whether the young man's eye were blue or brown! After all, it's more'n fifty years ago. It's new pictures that I need now," she said. "New pictures!"
She took a peppermint from a box. She didn't pass 'em. She rocked her chair. And rocked. And rocked. She smiled a little. It wasn't a real smile. It was just a smile to save her dress. It was just a little gutter to catch her tears.
"Oh dear me-Oh dear me-Oh dear me!" said my Mother.
"Stop your babbling!" said the Blinded Lady. She sniffed. And sniffed. "But I'll tell you what I'll do," she said. "These children can come back here next Saturday afternoon and--."