person, who seemed to be listening to the
music, while her hands were busy over some crocheting or some similar
work. She would have been taken for a guest who was fashioning some
pretty article whilst being entertained with music. The expression of
her face was bright and interested; and one watching her satisfied look
would have been slow to believe that she did not hear. The green shade
over her eyes indicated that she was one of the blind. She had on a
brown dress, a blue ribbon at the neck, a gold ring and chain, and a
watch or locket in her belt--a neatly attired, genteel, lady-like
person, looking about thirty-five (though her age is not far from
forty-four), with soft, brown hair, smooth and fine, a well shaped head,
fair complexion, and handsome features. That was Laura. As soon as she
learned that she had a visitor who knew people in the town where her
nearest kindred live, she came swiftly across the room, leaving her work
on the centre table as she passed it, and grasped my hand, laughing with
the eagerness of a child. Then she sat down face to face with the lady
who has charge of her, and commenced an animated conversation, by the
manual alphabet, easily understood by one who has practised it; but the
slight-of-hand by which the fingers of the friendly hostess,
manipulating on Laura's slender wrists, communicated with that living
consciousness shut in there without one perfect sense except of taste
and touch, was something mysterious, inscrutable to my duller sense. Yet
that the communication was definite, quick, missive, so to speak,
manifest enough, for Laura's face beamed, and she was all alert. Partly
by the letters and partly by signs she said a great deal to me. She
"ought to be at home to be company for mother," she said; and, once or
twice, she fashioned the word "Mamma" very distinctly with her lips. She
asked if I knew a member of her family now dead, and said "that was a
long year after Carl died." She seemed brimming over once with things to
tell me, and wanted me to know about her teaching some of the blind
girls to sew, which she takes great pride in, threading the needle, and
making her pupils pick out their work if it is not done nicely. She is a
good seamstress herself, does fancy work, and can run a sewing machine.
Next, she caught hold of my hand and led me up two flights of stairs to
her room to shew me her things; but the first movement was to take me to
the window, where she patted on th