'll--I'll--"

"There, there, never mind it," said soft-hearted Mr. Garland, moved by
the boy's distress, "if you really mean to do better--Why, look out,
child, you'd have fallen over that stump if I hadn't pulled you back.
Where in the world were your eyes?"

"I was looking at that big woman across the street," stammered Preston;
"how funny she walks!"

"Woman? What woman? Why, that's a boy with a wheelbarrow," exclaimed
Mr. Garland, in great surprise.

Preston blushed with all his might and dropped his chin.

"Please, don't tell anybody I took a wheelbarrow for a woman! They'd
laugh at me. Of course I knew better as soon as I came to think."

Mr. Garland stopped suddenly and stared at Preston.

"Look up here into my face, my boy."

Preston raised his beautiful brown eyes,--those _good_ eyes, which won
everybody's love and trust; and his teacher gazed at them earnestly.

But Mr. Garland was not admiring their beauty or their gentle
expression. He saw something else in Preston's eyes which startled him
and gave him a pang. Not tears, for those had been dashed away, but a
sort of thin mist lay over them, like that which veils the sun in cloudy
weather.

"Can it be possible? Why, Preston, why, Preston, my boy," said Mr.
Garland, taking the young face gently between his hands, "when did
things begin to blur so and look dim to you?"

Preston did not answer.

"Tell me; don't be afraid."

"It's been," replied Preston, choking, "it's been a long while. The sun
isn't so bright somehow as it was; and oh, Mr. Garland, the print in my
books isn't so black as it used to be! But I didn't want to make a fuss
about it, and have father know it."

"Why not?"

"Oh, he'd give me medicine, I suppose."

"My boy, my poor boy, you ought to have told him."

"Do you think so? Well, I hoped I'd get better, you know."

"Preston, is this the reason you don't learn your lessons any better?"

"I don't know. Yes, sir, I think so. I can't read the words in my books
very well."

"You poor, blessed child! Growing blind," thought Mr. Garland; but did
not say the words aloud.

"And I have to sit in the sun to see."

"I wish I had known this before, and I wouldn't have complained when you
had bad lessons. Why didn't you tell me, you patient soul!"

"Oh, I don't know, sir; you didn't ask me."

"Good night," said Mr. Garland, in an unsteady voice. "And don't you
study to-morrow one word. You may sit and draw pictures all day lo