The Humming Bird Comes Home

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This story must be told in terms of two dimensions — hearing and touch. For sight has no part in it. It is the story of “Ma” Adams and her son Ben and how he went straight. And Ma Adams was blind…

There were three of them in the front room of the big country house, one night about dusk. Ma Adams and Mary, who was her companion, and a man’s voice coming in over the radio from a big city several hundred miles away.

Ma Adams sat in her rocking chair, stroking a tortoiseshell cat on her lap. You could not tell she was blind by looking at her. The pupils of her eyes were not destroyed. Only a certain fixedness about them gave her away.

In every other possible way life seemed to have done its best to atone to her for its cruelty. She did not look the fifty-six years that were her age. Her face, under its halo of silvery hair, was that of a woman of thirty. Her back was as straight as a youngster’s. As long as she remained indoors, she found her way about unaided with astonishing dexterity. Pieces of furniture, of course, must not be moved out of their accustomed places. Mary saw to that.

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