They don't
dare remove the bandages, and whether or not he can see cannot be
decided for a week or more. He has to stay in a dark room and be very
quiet, and it is like trying to prove that impossible is possible to
persuade him into lying in his bed in Roxanne's room, while we exert
ourselves to the point of desperation to keep him happy and amused.

Since the accident Roxanne and I have just ignored the Byrd ancestors,
and I bring whatever I choose across the garden into the cottage to
Lovelace Peyton. In the first place, he wouldn't eat without me, and
kept asking for things I had given him to eat; so I had to tell
Roxanne about my dishonesty in feeding him like I had been doing, and
she was so glad that he was fat and in good condition to stand the
strain of his accident that she forgave me with her arms around my
neck.

I wish I could put down in black and white between your brown covers,
leather Louise, how happy it makes me to sit by that squirming,
bandaged little boy, and feed him out of one of his thin ancestral
spoons. Not one thing will he eat without me. I believe he knows how
happy it makes me, and frets for me just for that special reason. That
and the fact that he expects things of me made me think up the idea
that has helped us through the awfulness of the days that we had to
keep him quiet.

Lovelace Peyton is not like the little boy to whom you can tell
stories about bears and Little Red Ridinghood and Goldilocks in
ordinary form. He'll listen to it a few minutes, and then when you
come to the point where the grandmother is ill for Little Red
Ridinghood to go and visit, he stops and wants to know exactly what
was the matter with her; and if you say you don't know, he turns over
on his pillow and won't listen to the rest of it.

"Why don't folks write in books what diseases other folks have got,
Phyllie?" he asked fretfully when I told him about Tiny Tim and the
"Christmas Carol." "Do you reckon that little boy had rheumatiz and
didn't know any plaster for it?"

I am really reverently thankful for the idea that popped into my
sorely troubled head at that moment. Roxanne had gone out to walk in
the garden for a little rest, for she has had to talk to him most of
the night and describe over and over what the burn on his arm looked
like when the doctor dressed it. I was with him by myself for a few
minutes when I found the treasure of an idea.

"Lovelace Peyton," I said, with excitement in my voi