Hide and Seek

t briefly and in low voices. Mrs. Joyce more than once raised her handkerchief to her eyes. Her husband murmured some cordial words of sympathy and thanks-in an unusually subdued manner, however. V

minutes. Then they all looked out with one accord, a

e fastening a garland of flowers round the child's neck, while she was playfully offering a nosegay for Leo to smell at. The sight was homely and simple enough; but it was full of the tenderest

how the poor little thing really met with the accident that caused her mi

te it ought to be put in the pillory. I never remember wanting to throw a rotten egg at any of

hardly considerate to Mrs. Peckover to expect her to comply with your request. She has already sacrificed herself once t

d, I'm sure I'm agreeable to tell her. People in our way of life, ma'am-as I've often heard Peggy Burke say-are obliged to dry the tear at their eyes long before it's gone from their hearts. But pray don't think, sir,

her life. She grew up so pretty that gentlefolks was always noticing her, and asking about her; and nearly in every place the circus went to they made her presents, which helped nicely in her keep and clothing. And our own people,

ot for his money, to do what he did at that time)-Jemmy comes to me, saying he's afraid he shall lose his place, if I don't give in about Mary. This staggered me a good deal; for I don't know what we should have done then, if my husband had lost his engagement. And, besides, there was

three horses under him-one foot, you know, sir, being on the outer horse's back, and one foot on the inner. Him and Jubber made it out together that he was to act a wild man, flying for his life across some desert, with his only child, and poor little Mary was to be the child. They darkened her face to look like his; and put an outlandish kind of white dress on her; and buckled a red belt round her waist, with a sort of h

e heart of a lion, and would grow up the finest woman-rider in the world. I was very unhappy about it, and lived a miserable life, always fearing some accident. But for some time nothing nea

as so sorely tempted and driven to it, God knows!-No, sir! no, ma'am; and many thanks for your kindness, I'll go on now I've begun. Don't mind me crying; I'll manage to t

place between the benches. I got knocked down by the horses in running to her-I was clean out of my senses, and didn't know where I was going-Yapp had fallen among them, and hurt himself badly, trying to catch her-they were running wild in the ring-the horses w

her. And people crowding round her. And a doctor feeling her head all over. And Yapp among them, held up by two men, with his face all over blood. I wasn't able to speak or move; I did

says the doctor. 'Her

hear ano

as on the landlady's bed, and Jemmy was standing over me with a bottle of salts. 'They've put her to bed,' he says to me, 'and the doct

night after night, I sat by her bedside, comforting her through her fever, and the pain of the splints on her arm, and never once suspecting-no more, I believe, than she did-the awful misfortune that had really happened. S

rolling her head about restlessly from one side of the pillow to the other; making a sort of muttering and humming now and then, but still never seeming to notice or to care for anything I said to her. One day,

aint, all at the same time; the strangest, shockingest voice to come from a child, who always used to speak so clearly and prettily before, that ever I heard. If I was only cleverer with my words, ma'am, and could tell you about it properly-bu

was as long saying these words, and bungled over them as much, as if she was only just learning to speak. I think I got the first suspicion then, of what had really happened. 'Mary!' I bawled out as loud as I could, 'Mary! can't

er hearing-.' 'Have you only just now suspected that?' says he; 'I've been afraid of it for some days past, but I thought it best to say nothing till I'd tried her; and she's hardly well enough yet, poor chi

s with such a shout at the top of his voice, that the landlady come up, thinking something had happened. I was looking over his shoulder, and saw that my dear child never started in the least. 'Poor little thing,' says the doctor, quite sorrowful, 'this is worse than I expected.' He stooped down and touched her, as he said this; and she turned round dir

over. 'Can she read writing?' says the doctor. 'Oh, yes, sir, says I; 'she can read and write beautiful for a child of her age; my husband taught her.' 'Get me paper and pen and ink directly,' says he to the landlady; who went at once and got him what he wanted. 'We must quiet her at all hazards,' says the doctor, 'or she'll excite herself into another a

. 'She's too young,' says the doctor, 'to know what the extent of her calamity really is. You stop here and keep her quiet till I come back, for I trust the case is not hopeless yet.' 'But whatever has made her deaf, sir?' says the landlady, op

eches; and still it was no use. 'I'm afraid it is a hopeless case,' says he; 'but there's a doctor who's had more practice than I've h

and I'm sorry to say I don't think there's much hope.' Then he goes to the bed and looks at her. 'Ah,' says he, 'there's just the same expression in her face that I remember seeing in a mason's boy-a patient of mine-who fell off a ladder, and lost his hearing altogether by the shock. You don't hear what I

his watch. 'Write on a piece of paper,' says he to the other doctor: 'Do you know that the watch is ticking?' When this was done, he makes signs to little Mary to open her mouth, and puts as much of his watch in as would go between her teeth, while the other doctor holds up the paper befor

's boy,' he says, turning to the other doctor. 'The shock of that fall has, I believe, paralyzed the auditory nerve in her, as it did in him.' I remember those words exactly, sir, though I didn't quite understand them at the time. But he explained himself to me very kindly; telling me over again, in a plain way, what he'd just told the doctor. He reminded me, too, that the remedies which had been already tried had

e voice it used to be. I said 'Yes,' to that; and asked him whether the fall had had anything to do with it. He said, taking me up very short, it had everything to do with it, because the fall had made her, what they call, stone deaf, which prevented her from hearing the sound of her own voice. So it was changed, he told me, becaus

and more unwilling to speak every day, just for the shocking reason that she couldn't hear a single word she said, or a single tone of her own voice. He warned me that she was already losing the wish and the want to speak; and that it would very soon be little short of absolute pain to her to be made to say even a few words; but he begged and prayed me not to let my good nature get the better of my prudence on that account, and not to humor her, however I might feel tempted to do so-for if I did, she would be dumb as well as deaf most certai

th, she kept up her reading and writing quite cleverly with my husband and me; and all her nice natural cheerful ways come back to her just the same as ever. I've read or heard somewhere, sir, about God's goodness in tempering the wind to the shorn lamb. I don't know who said that first; but it might well have been spoken on account of

umoring them you love! I never see the tear in her eye, except when we forced her to speak to us; and then she always cried, and was fretful and out of sorts for the whole day. It seemed such a dreadful difficulty and pain to her to say only two or three words; and the shocking husky moaning voice that sounded somehow as if it didn't belong to her, never changed. My husband first gave up worrying her to spea

and was as proud of it as could be. Jemmy, being neat-handed at such things, did the frame over for her prettily with red morocco, and got our pro

down on her slate that I wouldn't worry her about speaking any more! She jumped up on my knees-being always as nimble as a squirrel-and kissed me over and over again with all her heart. For the rest of the day she run about the room, and all over the house, like a mad thing, and when Jemmy came home a

e felt sure-though he couldn't explain it to me-that people afflicted with such stone deafness as hers didn't feel the loss of speech, because they never had the want to use their speech; and that they took to making signs, and writing, and such like, quite kindly as a sort of second nature to them. This comforted me, and settled my mind a good

doing that, I know-and yet I'd have given almost everything I have, not to let her be shown about as she is. But I was threatened

pronounced the last words, the hall clock of the Re

hat two o'clock?" she asked, s

ebted to you for so much that has deeply interested and affected us, we c

ma'am, we must go directly. I told this gentleman here, Mr. Blyth, when I come in, that I'd stolen to you unawares, under pretense of taking little Mary out for a walk. If we are not back to th

I should go mad, and murder him!-Let me alone, doctor! I beg Mrs. Joyce's pardon for behaving like this; I'll never do it again. Be quiet, all of you! I must take the child home with me-oh, Mrs. Peckover, don't, don't say no! I'll make her as happy as the day is long. I've no child of my own: I'll watch over her, and love her, and teach her all my life. I've got a poor, suffering, bedridden wife at home, who would think such a companion a

, and made straight for the spot where the little girls were sti