Dawn | Page 5

relatives that it seemed sometimes almost as if she were as much of a Hinsdale girl as was Mazie herself.
To-day Mazie's blue eyes and Dorothy's brown ones were full of mischief.
"Well, why don't you say something? Why don't you apologize?" demanded Mazie.
'"Pol--pologize? What for?" In his embarrassed misery Keith resorted to bravado in voice and manner.
"Why, for passing us by in that impertinent fashion," returned Mazie loftily. "Do you think that is the way ladies should be treated?" (Mazie was thirteen and Dorothy fourteen.) "The idea!"
For a minute Keith stared helplessly, shifting from one foot to the other. Then, with an inarticulate grunt, he turned away.
But Mazie was not to be so easily thwarted. With a mere flit of her hand she tossed aside a score of years, and became instantly nothing more than a wheedling little girl coaxing a playmate.
"Aw, Keithie, don't get mad! I was only fooling. Say, tell me, HAVE you been up to Uncle Joe Harrington's?"
Because Mazie had caught his arm and now held it tightly, the boy perforce came to a stop.
"Well, what if I have?" he resorted to bravado again.
"And is he blind, honestly?" Mazie's voice became hushed and awestruck.
"Uh-huh." The boy nodded his head with elaborate unconcern, but he shifted his feet uneasily.
"And he can't see a thing--not a thing?" breathed Mazie.
"'Course he can't, if he's blind!" Keith showed irritation now, and pulled not too gently at the arm still held in Mazie's firm little fingers.
"Blind! Ugghh!" interposed Miss Dorothy, shuddering visibly. "Oh, how can you bear to look at him, Keith Burton? I couldn't!"
A sudden wave of red surged over the boy's face. The next instant it had receded, leaving only a white, strained terror.
"Well, he ain't to blame for it, if he is blind, is he?" chattered the boy, a bit incoherently. "If you're blind you're blind, and you can't help yourself." And with a jerk he freed himself from Mazie's grasp and hurried down the road toward home.
But when he reached the bend of the road he turned and looked back. The two girls had returned to their perch on the fence, and were deeply absorbed in something one of them held in her hand.
"And she said she couldn't bear--to look at 'em--if they were blind," he whispered. Then, wheeling about, he ran down the road as fast as he could. Nor did he stop till he had entered his own gate.
"Well, Keith Burton, I should like to know where you've been," cried the irate voice of Susan Betts from the doorway.
"Oh, just walking. Why?"
"Because I've been huntin' and huntin' for you.
But, oh, dear me, You're worse'n a flea, So what's the use of talkin'? You always say, As you did to-day, I've just been out a-walkin'!"
"But what did you want me for?"
"I didn't want you. Your pa wanted you. But, then, for that matter, he's always wantin' you. Any time, if you look at him real good an' hard enough to get his attention, he'll stare a minute, an' then say: 'Where's Keith?' An' when he gets to the other shore, I suppose he'll do it all the more."
"Oh, no, he won't--not if it's talking poetry. Father never talks poetry. What makes you talk it so much, Susan? Nobody else does."
Susan laughed good-humoredly.
"Lan' sakes, child, I don't know, only I jest can't help it. Why, everything inside of me jest swings along to a regular tune--kind of keeps time, like. It's always been so. Why, Keithie, boy, it's been my joy--There, you see--jest like that! I didn't know that was comin'. It jest--jest came. That's all. I can make a rhyme 'most any time. Oh, of course, most generally, when I write real poems, I have to sit down with a pencil an' paper, an' write 'em out. It's only the spontaneous combustion kind that comes all in a minute, without predisposed thinkin'. Now, run along to your pa, child. He wants you. He's been frettin' the last hour for you, jest because he didn't know exactly where you was. Goodness me! I only hope I'll never have to live with him if anything happens to you."
The boy had crossed the room; but with his hand on the door knob he turned sharply.
"W-what do you mean by that?"
Susan Betts gave a despairing gesture.
"Lan' sakes, child, how you do hold a body up! I meant what I said-- that I didn't want the job of livin' with your pa if anything happened to you. You know as well as I do that he thinks you're the very axle for the earth to whirl 'round on. But, there, I don't know as I wonder--jest you left, so!"
The boy abandoned his position at the door, and came close to Susan Betts's side.
"That's what I've always wanted to know. Other boys have brothers