Part 16 (2/2)

Mrs. Gray and grandma did not know this exhibition was called for on purpose to amuse them, but they laughed heartily, and felt the better for it; and so did Flaxie and Milly. Wasn't it much better than sitting in silence and thinking about Preston, when they couldn't help him at all?

You may know it was a very sad day for the poor boy. When he found himself in the ”awful chair,” his heart failed him and he sprang out of it.

”No, no, he never could have his eyes cut with little daggers. Even if they did give him ether, he couldn't; Papa must take him right home again. It was of no use!”

It was pitiful to see Preston's struggles with himself, and the still greater struggles of the father, who tried to hide his feelings for his boy's sake.

”Wait till to-morrow,” said Preston; ”just wait, and I _will_!”

So they waited.

All the afternoon Preston's heart kept sinking down, down, like a plummet let into the sea, and his father's heart sank with it, for a child cannot feel a sorrow that does not touch his parent too.

But it chanced in the night, as Preston lay awake, that he fell to thinking how his father loved him.

”He would do anything in this world for me. He'd take his eyes right out and give them to me if he could.”

And then Preston wondered if it were really true that G.o.d loved him better yet?

Oh, yes, loved him so that he would never, never let anything really bad happen to his little boy.

”So this isn't really bad,” thought he, clapping his hands softly under the coverlet; ”it seems awful, but it isn't. G.o.d sent it, and I can bear it--yes, for his sake and father's sake!”

”Surely what He wills is best, Happy in His will I rest,”

repeated Preston, and went quietly to sleep ”like closing flowers at night.”

Dr. Gray was joyfully surprised at his bright looks next morning.

”Smile up your face, Dr. Papa,” said he, playfully. This was what Flaxie used to say in her baby days, when they didn't call her Flaxie Frizzle, but Pinky Pearly. ”Smile up your face, Dr. Papa, and see what Preston Gray can do.”

The horror was over then for Dr. Gray; his son was going to behave like a man.

He did not know when he saw Preston take his seat so calmly in that ”awful chair,” that he was strong because he felt G.o.d's arms about him.

But when Preston left that chair, the trouble was not all over. He could not bear any light yet, so he had to go home a few days afterwards with a bandage over his eyes, and stay in a dark room for many weeks.

But didn't they make the room pleasant for him? Didn't they treat him like a prince? Didn't Bert Abbott and the other boys go up and down on that stair-carpet till they nearly wore it out?

Of course Julia was good to the young prisoner; you would have expected that. Flaxie was good too. She seemed at this time to have forgotten all her little fretful, troublesome ways, and was always willing to stay in Preston's chamber, and tell him everything that happened in the house or out of it; just how the pony looked and acted, and how he coughed a little dot of a mouse out of his nose, supposed to have run up his nostril when he was eating his ”granary.” Flaxie could be very interesting when she chose, and Preston's face began to light up at the sound of her little feet on the stairs.

She had never loved her brother so well as she did now that she had become useful to him, and it made her very happy to hear Preston tell his mother that ”Flaxie grew better and better; she was almost as good now as Julia.”

Milly had gone home, but she came back again in June. You see that the twin cousins were not very particular about taking turns in their visits, but went and came just as their two mothers found it most convenient.

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