Alice turned round so suddenly, and following the sound of his voice, fixed upon him so eagerly those blue eyes, the effect was startling. "Will you do so?" she cried, "can you do so? oh! do not say it, unless you mean it. But I know it is impossible," she added in a subdued tone, "for I was _born blind_. God made me so, and He has made me very happy too. I sometimes think it would be beautiful to see, but it is beautiful to feel. As brother says, there is an inner-light which keeps us from being _all_ dark." Louis regretted the impulse which urged him to utter his secret wishes. He resolved to be more guarded in future, but he was already in imagination a student in Germany, under some celebrated optician, making discoveries so amazing that he would undoubtedly give a new name to the age in which he lived. When night came on they gathered round Miss Thusa, entreating her for a farewell legend, not a gloomy one, not one which would give Alice a sad, dark impression, but something that would come to her memory like a ray of light. "You must let me have my own way," said she, putting her spectacles on the top of her head, and looking around her with remarkable benignity. "If the spirit moves me one way, I cannot go another. But I will try my best, for may-be it's the last time some of you will ever listen to old Thusa's tales. She's never felt just right since they tangled up her heart-strings with that whitened thread. Oh! that was a vile, mean trick!" "Forget and forgive, Miss Thusa," cried Louis; "I dare say Mittie has repented of it in dust and ashes." "I have forgiven, long ago," resumed Miss Thusa, "but as for _forgetting_, that is out of the question. Ever since then, when the bleaching time comes, it keeps me perfectly miserable till it is over. I've never had any thread equal to it, for I'm afraid to let it stay long enough to be as powerful white as it used to be. Well, well, let it rest. You want me to tell you a story, do you?" Miss Thusa had an auditory assembled round her that might have animated a spirit less open to inspiration than hers. There was Mr. and Mrs. Gleason, the latter a fine, dignified-looking lady, and the young doctor, with his countenance of grave sweetness, and Louis, with an expression of resolute credulity, and Helen and Alice, with their arms interlaced, and the locks of their hair mingling like the tendrils of two forest vines. And what perhaps gave a glow to her spirit, deeper than the presence of all these, Mittie, her arch enemy, was _not there_, to mock her with her deriding black eyes.