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 a ballet dancer; then creeping to and fro across the room in a silly series of bowings and scrapings and salutings that threw Dick into irrepressible laughter. Caught shamefacedly in the very midst of these absurdities, John confessed to the two of them what he would at the moment have confessed to no other living being—last of all to Bessie.

"I am taking lessons," he said, "from an actor. He is going to make me easy and graceful, so people won't call me awkward any more—nor homely," and he looked significantly at Tayna.

"Oh," the children both gasped respectfully, and repeated with a kind of awe in their voices: "From an actor!"

"Yes. Every evening the doctor lets me go for a walk. On every other one of these walks I go to the actor's hotel, and he teaches me."

"Awh! An actor-r-r!" breathed Dick again, his features depicting profoundness both of impression and speculation.

"Say!" he proposed presently. "I would rather you would be an actor than a president, anyway."

John laughed. "I am not going to be an actor," he said, "I am only going to be polished till I shine like a human diamond." And then he devoted himself to the entertainment of his callers.

"Remember! Never again the typewriter!" the physician adjured sternly, when the fortnight of John's captivity was done. For although conveying this verdict immediately to Mitchell, the doctor had postponed its announcement to his patient till his discharge from the hospital. John was stunned. The typewriter was his bread. At first he rebelled, but with a rush like the swirl of waters over his head, the memory of that night when he was blind for an hour came to him and humbled him.