Dawn

Well, if it had got to be, it had got to be, she supposed--the marriage. But they might at least be decent about it. As for keeping that poor blind boy harrowed up all the time...

So imperative was the knock at the kitchen door at six o'clock that July morning that Susan almost fell down the back stairs in her haste to obey the summons.

It was when the nurse was resting and Susan was with Keith that the boy came to a full, realizing sense of himself, on his lips the time-worn question asked by countless other m...

"They say he utterly refuses to see any one outside the family; an' that he'd rather not see even his own folks--that he's always askin' 'em to let him alone."

It came to be the accepted thing almost at once, then, that Keith Burton and John McGuire should spend their mornings together on the McGuires' back porch. In less than a fortni...

"Didn't I?" Miss Dorothy smiled brightly. "Well, perhaps I didn't. But you didn't need me, anyway. I've heard all about it--the splendid work Mr. Burton and his son have done fo...

That evening Daniel Burton told Susan. "Keith is to go home with Dr. Stewart next week. The doctor will operate as soon as possible. Keith will live at the sanatorium connected...

Dorothy had not seen Keith, except on the street, since her visit with Mazie in October. Two or three times the girls had gone to the house with flowers or fruit, but Keith had...

Keith's chin was still high and his gaze still straight ahead when he reached the foot of Harrington Hill. Perhaps that explained why he did not see the two young misses on the...

"Now, Keith Burton, this beatin' the bush like this don't do one mite of good. You might jest as well out with it first as last. Now, what is it you want?"

"I notice some things have to be stood," observed Susan grimly. Susan, with Mrs. Colebrook's traveling-bag in her hand, was waiting with obvious impatience to escort her visitor...

It was on his fourteenth birthday that Keith Burton discovered the Great Terror, though he did not know it by that name until some days afterward. He knew only, to his surprise...

As Miss Dorothy herself had said, it could not, of course, continue. She came once, and once again to see Keith; and in spite of her efforts to make her position clear to him, h...

"Nonsense, Nettie, don't be a fool," frowned the man. "You know very well that we need both you and Susan. Susan's a trial, I'll admit, in a good many ways; but I'll wager you'd...

There was apparently no limit to Daniel Burton's enthusiastic cooperation with Dorothy Parkman on the matter of establishing a workroom for the blind. He set to work with her at...

There was a letter from the doctor when the bandages were removed. Daniel Burton began to read the letter, but his eyes blurred and his hand shook, so that Susan had to take it...

It was just after Christmas that another letter came from Keith. It was addressed as usual to Susan. Keith had explained in his second letter that he was always going to write t...

Keith was still looking for "the way," when October came, bringing crisp days and chilly winds. When not too cold, the boys still sat out of doors. When it was too cold, John Mc...

Dorothy came at ten, or, to be strictly accurate, at five minutes past ten. The additional five minutes had been consumed by her going out of her way around the block so that sh...

And so Keith waited, through the summer and into another winter. And April came. Keith was not listening to Susan's rhymes and jingles now, nor was he tramping through the woods...

And so inch by inch Susan fought her way, and inch by inch she gained ground. Sometimes it was by coaxing, sometimes by scolding; perhaps most often by taunts and dares, and shr...

Dr. Stewart's second operation on Keith's eyes took place late in November. It was not a success. Far from increasing his vision, it lessened it. Only dimly now could he discern...

Women brought him jelly and fruit, and men clapped him on the shoulder and said, "How are you, my boy?" in voices that were not quite steady. Young girls brought him flowers, an...

"Humph! Well, I should help along somethin' 'sides spring, I guess, if I did it. Besides, it strikes me rubbers ain't the only thing you're leavin' off." Susan's disapproving ey...

The town, aware now of the stupendous change that had come to the fortunes of the Burton family, stared, gossiped, shook wise heads of prophecy, then passed on to the next sensa...

Not for some days after his return from Boston did Keith venture out upon the street. He knew then at once that the whole town had heard all about his trip to Boston and what th...

Mrs. Colebrook went home the next day. She wore the air of an injured martyr at breakfast. She told her brother that, of course, if he preferred to have an ignorant servant girl...

There was no work at the winding-room Saturday afternoons, and it was on Saturday afternoon that Susan found Keith sitting idle-handed in his chair by the window in the living-r...

It was the town talk, of course--the home-coming of John McGuire. Men gathered on street corners and women clustered about back-yard fences and church doorways. Children besiege...

"An' him with his nose always in a book before," as she said one day to Mrs. McGuire. "An' he don't act natural, somehow, neither, ter my way of thinkin'. Have YOU noticed anyth...

At the sanatorium Keith was waiting for spring and the new doctor; and that the waiting was proving to be a little nerve-racking was proved by the infrequency of his letters hom...

It was Monday morning, and as usual Mrs. McGuire, seeing Susan in the clothes-yard, had come out, ostensibly to hang out her own clothes, in reality to visit with Susan while sh...

And persistently, systematically Susan did, indeed, keep "peggin' away." No sooner had she roused Keith to the point of accomplishing one task than she set for him another. No s...