“That was a pretty way to speak to her, I should think,” said Dotty; “but can’t you just please to hush while auntie is talking?”

“As near as I can tell the story,” said Mrs. Brooks, rattling the poor old coal-stove,—­for she always had to be moving something else, as well as her nose, when she talked,—­“she lost her sight by studying too hard, and then getting cold in her eyes.”

“She was always a master hand to study,” put in Mr. Brooks.

Maria looked as if she wanted to run and hide.  She did not like to have her father praise her before people.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Brooks, setting a chair straight; “and by and by the leds began to draw together, and she couldn’t keep ’em open; and there was such a pain in her eyes, too, that I had to be up nights, bathing ’em in all kinds of messes.”

“Don’t her nose jiggle?” whispered Fly to Horace.

“Of course you took her to a good physician?”

“Well, yes; we thought he was good.  We went to three, off and on, but she kept growing worse and worse.  It was about the time her father was hurt, and we spent an awful sight on her, till we couldn’t spend any more.”

“And it was all a cheat and a swindle,” exclaimed Mr. Brooks, indignantly.  “We’d better have spent the money for a horsewhip, and whipped them doctors with it!”

“Don’t, pa, don’t!  You see, Mrs. Allen, he gets so excited about it he don’t know what he says.”

“I wonder you did not take her to the City Hospital, Mrs. Brooks.  There she could be treated free of expense.”

“The fact is, we didn’t dare to,” replied Mrs. Brooks, taking up an old shoe of Bennie’s, and beginning to brush it; “there are folks that have told us it ain’t safe; they try experiments on poor folks.”

“O, I don’t believe you need fear the City Hospital,” said Mrs. Allen; “the physicians there are honest men, and among the most skillful in the country.”

“But that’s our feeling on the subject, ma’am, you see,” spoke up Mr. Brooks, so decidedly, that Aunt Madge saw it was of no use to say any more about it.  “We don’t want her eyes put out; there are times when she can just see a little glimmer, and we want to save all there is left.”

“There are times when she can see?  Then there must be hope, Mr. Brooks!  Let me take her to Dr. Blank; he can help her if any one can.”

“Well, now, I take it you’re joking, Mrs. Allen.  That is the very doctor I wanted her to see in the first place; but they do say he’d ask six hundred dollars for looking into her eyes while you’d wink twice.”

“You have been misinformed, Mr. Brooks; he never asks anything of people who are unable to pay him.  But even if he should in Maria’s case, I promise to take the matter into my own hands, and settle the bill myself.”

“Mother, do you hear what she says!” cried Mr. Brooks, forgetting himself, and trying to sit up in bed.