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 you hear me?' She shook her head, and
stared up at me with the frightened, bewildered look again: then seemed
to get pettish and impatient all of a sudden--the first time I ever saw
her so--and hid her face from me on the pillow.

"Just then the doctor come in. 'Oh, sir!' says I, whispering to
him--just as if I hadn't found out a minute ago that she couldn't hear
me at the top of my voice--'I'm afraid there's something gone wrong with
her 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
child, to be worried with experiments on her ears.' 'She's much better,'
says I; 'indeed, she's much better to-day, sir! Oh, do try her now, for
it's so dreadful to be in doubt a moment longer than we can help.'

"He went up to the bedside, and I followed him. She was lying with her
face hidden away from us on the pillow, just as it was when I left her.
The doctor says to me, 'Don't disturb her, don't let her look round, so
that she can see us--I'm going to call to her.' And he called 'Mary' out
loud, twice; and she never moved. The third time he tried her, it was
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
directly, and put out her hand to have her pulse felt as usual. I tried
to get out of her sight, for I was crying, and didn't wish her to see
it; but she was too sharp for me. She looked hard in my face and the
landlady's, then in the doctor's, which was downcast enough; for he had
got very fond of her, just as everybody else did who saw much of little
Mary.

"'What's the matter?' she says, in the same sort of strange unnatural
voice again. We tried to pacify her, but only made her worse. 'Why do
you keep on whispering?' she asks. 'Why don't you speak out loud, so
that I can--,' and then she stopped, seemingly in a sort of helpless
fright and bewilderment. She tried to get up in bed, and her face turned
red all over. 'Can she read w