sunshine; "but you do manage to get interest out of life, that's
certain."

"Interest! Good Lord!" exclaimed Tucker. "If a man can't find
something to interest him in a world like this, he must be a dull
fellow or else have a serious trouble of the liver. So long as I
have my eyes, and there's a different sky over my head each day,
and earth, and trees, and flowers all around me, I don't reckon
I'll begin to whistle to boredom. If I were like Lucy, now, I
sometimes think things would be up with me, and yet Lucy is one
of the very happiest women I've ever known. Her brain is so
filled with pleasant memories that it's never empty for an
instant."

Christopher's face softened, as it always did at an allusion to
his mother's blindness.

"You're right," he said; "she is happy."

"To be sure, she's had her life," pursued Tucker, without
noticing him. "She's been a beauty, a belle, a sweetheart, a
wife, and a mother--to say nothing of a very spoiled old woman;
but all the same, I don't think I have her magnificent patience.
Oh, I couldn't sit in the midst of all this and not have eyes to
see."

With a careless smile Christopher glanced about him--at the
bright blue sky seen through the bare trees, at the dried carrot
flowers in the old field across the road, at the great pine
growing on the little knoll.