nurse sprang up instantly, rushed forward, and blew out the light. Mary screamed, the screen fell with a clatter, the blind old man awoke and shrieked nervously--it was a terrible moment. After that Mary went through agonies of apprehension and remorse. Fortunately the end of the operation was very near now. In a day or two the great specialist came to remove the bandage, while the nurse carefully admitted a feeble illumination. If the patient could see now, the rest was a mere matter of time, of cautious gradation of light in the sick chamber, so that there might be no relapse. Mary dared not remain in the room at the instant of supreme crisis; she lingered outside, overwrought. Slowly, with infinite solicitude, the bandage was raised. "Can you see anything?" burst from Robert's lips. "Yes, but what makes the window look red?" grumbled the old man. "I congratulate you," said the great specialist in loud, hearty accents. "Thank God!" sobbed Mary's voice outside. When her child was born it was blind. _Flutter-Duck._ _A GHETTO GROTESQUE._ CHAPTER I. FLUTTER-DUCK IN FEATHER. "So sitting, served by man and maid, She felt her heart grow prouder." --TENNYSON: _The Goose_. Although everybody calls her "Flutter-Duck" now, there was a time when the inventor had exclusive rights in the nickname, and used it only in the privacy of his own apartment. That time did not last long, for the inventor was Flutter-Duck's husband, and his apartment was a public work-room among other things. He gave her the name in Yiddish--_Flatterkatchki_--a descriptive music in syllables, full of the flutter and quack of the farm-yard. It expressed his dissatisfaction with her airy, flighty propensities, her love of gaiety and gadding. She was a butterfly, irresponsible, off to balls and parties almost once a month, and he, a self-conscious ant, resented her. From the point of view of piety she was also sadly to seek, rejecting wigs in favour of the fringe. In the weak moments of early love her husband had acquiesced in the profanity, but later all the gain to her soft prettiness did not compensate for the twinges of his conscience.