Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/48

34 “Oh, come now, Amy, I would n’t call it the very best poetry in the world,” said Fritz. “There’s Macaulay, and some of Longfellow,—the ‘Sagas of King Olaf,’—well, there are ever so many things that seem to me to be  more amusing; yes, and some things by Saxe,—

You see I feel something like those blind men, that’s why the poem suits me.”

“You’re not blind, are you?” asked Brenda, sympathetically. Remembering things that her mother had frequently said about the novels of “The Countess,” she  was willing for the present to let the talk slip a little  farther away from a discussion of the merits of different  authors.

“No, I’m not blind, though I might as well be,” replied the boy. “I had a beastly cut on the eye by a baseball; it’s got to be tied up for ten days longer,—did n’t the doctor say ten days, Amy?”

“Yes, he did, but you ’ll be as well as ever by the Fourth of July; that’s one good thing.”

“Yes,” responded the boy; “but I don’t know what I could have done without you, Amy; you ’ve been a regular brick.”

“I have n’t done any more than I ought to.”

“Oh, yes, you have.” Then looking up, and realizing that Brenda was decidedly an outsider in this conversation between him and Amy, he turned to her politely. “You