CHAPTER XXII
TOMMY had told Betty of a cross road which avoided Paulding and saved half a mile. As soon as the girls were out of the dirty village and facing home, Betty turned eagerly to Rose.
“How do you feel, Rose?” she asked anxiously.
“Slick!” returned the other promptly. “After I got over being scared and got used to it, I sort of liked it. It was kind of soothing. But my goodness! I was scared blue to take hold of those handles. I suppose I couldn’t have let go if I had tried until he shut off the electricity. And lightning is electricity, you know, and I kept remembering that was what I had my hands on. Could you hear my heart beat?”
“No, Rose, I was scared myself. And anyhow, mine was beating so loud I was ashamed. I was afraid Dr. Vandegrift would think I didn’t trust him. Couldn’t you hear it?”
“Nix.” And Rose laughed gaily.
“I kept thinking of Tommy,” observed Betty rather mournfully. “Wouldn’t it all have interested him—reversing the handles for the left eye, and all that?”
“Yes, and about taking so much liquid—fluid I mean—for me, and—O, Betty, I am so happy now that I shall probably justbustwhen I am cured, and what then?” Rose rattled on excitedly.
“It’s a good long time to wait. I feel now as if I should be just as excited and happy as I am now all thesix months, and as if I wanted to be just awfully good to everybody—even Aunt Sarah. But it’s harder for you to wait so long. I hope you can keep up your spirits, though,” Betty returned wistfully.
“O, Betty darling, don’t worry about my spirits. I don’t mind waiting one mite. It’s not so bad, you know, being blind. It’s really sort of fun when one has such a chum as you. And the thing I am most anxious to see is you in sailor-suits with your hair down your back. And yet, I can imagine even that, for yousoundso young and limber now—and so pretty!”
Betty laughed. And somehow Rose knew in her heart how prettily she flushed, too.
“It’s dear of you to say that, Rose,” she murmured, squeezing her arm. “Well, we must be just tremendously careful not to miss a single Wednesday, mustn’t we?”
“Sure. Only, Betty, howevercanwe be perfectly sure of coming every week if Mr. Appleton won’t let us off without an excuse? Would you dare ask mama to write one?”
“O no, not for the world!” cried Betty. “That would be breaking our word to Dr. Vandegrift, I’m afraid. But we’ve got to go every week and we just will. I don’t see just how we will manage at this minute: but there isn’t any question, of course, Rose, when it means getting back your sight. And we’ve got to be awfully careful not to do anything Dr. Vandegrift wouldn’t approve of or he’ll get mad and have nothing more to do with us. Geniuses are so very apt to be like that, you know.”
They turned into the highway that ran through SouthPaulding and were on familiar ground. But it seemed unfamiliar without Tommy.
“Don’t you think anything more about our getting there, Rose darling,” Betty admonished her. “You keep just as calm and happy as you can so as not to retard the cure, and I’ll think up a plan. Dear me! if only I could get Tommy to help. He’s so clever. I don’t know whether it was because he was so quick-witted that he took to magic, or whether it was that that made him so unusually clever; but he always knows just what to do. He’s really a wizard already. And he would be so interested, scientifically as well as other ways, and—well, when you think that he was the one that found out about Dr. Vandegrift, it certainly seems cruel.”
“Yes. And yet hasn’t he been dear about it?” Rose cried. “A girl would be miffed and wouldn’t ever slide on our cellar-door any more, but Tommy’s the same old trump.”
“There he is now, waiting for us!” cried Betty. And truly there he was, waiting to accompany them home as usual.