Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/117

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WORK
101

made all the difference in the world. Kirk labored for her as he had never done for Miss Bolton, who had been wont to say, "If only he would work—" The unfinished sentence always implied untold possibilities for Kirk.

But Felicia was not content that Kirk could read the hardest lessons now. They plunged into oral arithmetic and geography and history, to which last he would listen indefinitely while Phil read aloud. And Felicia, whose ambition was unbounded,—as, fortunately, his own was,—turned her attention to the question of writing. He could write Braille, with a punch and a Braille slate,—yes, indeed!—but who of the seeing world could read it when he had done? And he had no conception of our printed letters; they might as well have been Chinese symbols. He would some day have a typewriter, of course, but that was impossible now. Phil, nothing daunted by statements that the blind never could write satisfactorily, sent for the simplest of the appliances which make it possible for them to write ordinary characters, and she and Kirk set to work with a will.

On the whole, those were very happy mornings. For the schoolroom was in the orchard