“Who is it?” asked Betty, reaching out a wondering little hand, “Eugenia’s father?”

“Lloyd calls me Cousin Carl,” answered Mr. Forbes, taking the groping fingers in his, “and I think that the little Betty that everybody is so fond of might call me that, too.”

“I’ll be glad to—­Cousin Carl,” said the child, bashfully, and that was the beginning of a warm and steadfast friendship.

Eugenia waited until later, when her father and Mrs. Sherman had left the room, before she opened her packages.

“Hold fast all I give you!” she exclaimed, gaily, tossing a tiny white box into Joyce’s lap and another into Lloyd’s.  But the third one she opened, and, taking out the ring it held, slipped it on Betty’s finger.

“They are all like the one papa gave me,” she said, “and have Tusitala’s name inside to help me remember the Memory roads that Betty told us about.”

“It will remind me of more than that,” said Betty gratefully, when she and the girls had expressed their thanks in a chorus of delighted exclamations.  “It will remind me of the happiest day in my life.  This is the first ring I ever owned,” she added, turning it proudly on her finger.  “I wish I could see it.”  Then, with a gladness in her voice that thrilled her listeners,—­“But I shall see it some day!  Oh, girls, you couldn’t know, you couldn’t possibly imagine how much that means to me, unless you’d been shut up as I have in this awful darkness.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Eugenia stooped over and gave her a quick, impulsive kiss.  “Well, your blindness did some good, Betty,” she said, speaking hurriedly and with very red cheeks.  “It made me see how hateful and selfish I’ve always been, and I’m never going to be so mean again to anybody as I was to you.  I’m trying to dig a road like Tusitala’s and I never would have thought of it, if it hadn’t been for you.”

With that she turned hastily, and, running across the hall to her own room, shut the door behind her with a bang.

CHAPTER XVI.

A FEAST OF LANTERNS.

The first week of July had come to an end, and with it came the end of the house party.

“Oh, deah,” croaked the Little Colonel like a dismal raven, as she waited at the head of the stairs for the girls to finish dressing.  “This is the la-st mawnin’ well all go racin’ down to breakfast togethah!  I’m glad that Betty isn’t goin’ away for a while longah.  If you all had to leave at the same time, it would be so lonesome that I couldn’t stand it.”

“I am glad, too,” said Betty, groping her way slowly out of her room with a green shade over her eyes.  Her long night was nearly over now, although it would be several months before she would be allowed to read.  Her godmother had written to Mrs. Appleton, saying that she wanted to keep Betty with her until her eyes were stronger, and the child had clapped her hands with delight when she received permission to stay, never dreaming how long it would be before she ever saw the Cuckoo’s Nest again.