a and her father
reached the house. Mrs. Sherman told them so, from the head of the
stairs and called them to come on up and join in it.

It was a very quiet jubilee. The doctor had insisted on that; but the
unspoken joy of the little face on the pillow made happiness in every
heart. It was the first time that Mr. Forbes had seen Betty. She was
lying with her brown curls tossed back on the pillows, her eyes still
bandaged; but the smile on the little mouth was one of the sweetest,
gladdest things he had ever seen. Involuntarily he stooped and kissed
her softly on the forehead.

"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