When I'd done, she says in the same strange way, 'Speak out, mother; I can't hear you when you whisper like that.' She was as long saying these words, and bungled over them as much, as if she was only just learning to speak.

I think I got the first suspicion then, of what had really happened.

'Mary!' I bawled out as loud as I could, 'Mary! can't you hear me ?' She shook her head, and stared up at me with the frightened, bewildered look again: then seemed to get pettish and impatient all of a sudden--the first time I ever saw her so--and hid her face from me on the pillow.
"Just then the doctor come in.

'Oh, sir!' says I, whispering to him--just as if I hadn't found out a minute ago that she couldn't hear me at the top of my voice--'I'm afraid there's something gone wrong with her hearing--.' 'Have you only just now suspected that ?' says he; 'I've been afraid of it for some days past, but I thought it best to say nothing till I'd tried her; and she's hardly well enough yet, poor child, to be worried with experiments on her ears.' 'She's much better,' says I; 'indeed, she's much better to-day, sir! Oh, do try her now, for it's so dreadful to be in doubt a moment longer than we can help.' "He went up to the bedside, and I followed him.

She was lying with her face hidden away from us on the pillow, just as it was when I left her.
The doctor says to me, 'Don't disturb her, don't let her look round, so that she can see us--I'm going to call to her.' And he called 'Mary' out loud, twice; and she never moved.