"SMILES'" GIFT: AND THE "WRITING"
"Now, my boy, let us hear an account of your trip. Did you enjoy it, and
find anything of especial interest in the mountains of the feud
country?"
The doctor's father lighted his after-dinner cigar, and leaned back with
the indolent satisfaction which a man ripe in useful years may feel when
surrounded by his family. Since the death of his wife, he and his
children had been more inseparably attached one to another than ever,
and each drew a full measure of happiness from these all-too-infrequent
reunions, when Donald could be with them. Even little Muriel was not
left out of the group, for she had been granted the exceptional
privilege of sitting up an extra hour, and listening to the wonderful
hunting tales told by her beloved Uncle Don, upon whose lap she was now
contentedly curled. Her mother and father sat near by.
"Yes, to both questions," responded Donald.
"Did you shoot any bears?" queried his little niece, expectantly.
"No bears this trip, although I almost scalded to death a bare-legged
little girl," was the reply. And with Rose thus made the central figure
of his recital at the very outset, Donald proceeded to tell of his
experiences and new friendships; but consciously refrained from
mentioning the unpleasant incident with which his trip ended, and
Smiles' parting embrace.
His faithful reproduction of the soft mountain dialect brought frequent
smiles from his listeners, and filled the child with delighted
amusement.
"I just love Smiles," she cried, as he finished his story.
"Indeed, so does every one who knows her. _You_ do, don't you, Mike?"
added Donald, and the dog beat a tattoo on the rug with his stumpy tail.
"Witchery," laughed his father. "Even your clumsy description has
strangely stirred my youthful blood, and 'I longs fer ter see this hyar
wonderful child dryad of ther primeval forest.' If you ever go back
there, you had better wear magic armor as protection against that
illusive smile which seems to have cast a spell of enchantment over your
civilized senses."
"Pshaw, you needn't be concerned about my feelings for her. She's no
siren, but a very real little person. I'll admit that she's amazingly
attractive; but she's merely a child."
"Children grow up," teased his sister.
"I'm aware of that natural phenomenon," answered Donald, somewhat
curtly. "But ... Great Scott, can't I describe a fifteen--no,
sixteen-year-old little savage, without all you people imagining that
I'm going to be such a fool as to fall in love with her?"
"Sometimes it isn't what one says, but the way he says it, that
incriminates," put in his brother-in-law, adding his voice to the
general baiting which had apparently disclosed a tender spot.
"Hang it all, I believe that I'll go back and ask Smiles to marry me, if
only to put an end to your teasing," cried Don with a laugh not entirely
natural. "At least I might perhaps succeed in frustrating _your_ obvious
designs, Ethel. Oh, I'm not blind!"
"I've almost concluded that you _are_--or hopeless," answered his
sister. "However, I'm perfectly willing to admit that I would like to
see you married to Marion Treville--she's my closest friend, and would
certainly make you a perfect wife."
"Too perfect, by far. Can you imagine me hitched with that proud and
classic beauty? I should go mad."
"But I want my pretty basket that little Smiles made for me," broke in
Muriel, to whom the present remarks held no interest, and who emphasized
her demand by seizing his cheeks.
"To be sure you do, and I want to see my present, too. I'll bring them
right down."
Not at all ill pleased at this opportunity to escape from his family's
jesting, which, for some indefinable reason, aroused his belligerency,
Donald jumped up hastily and departed for the sanctuary of his bedroom,
to get the bulky bundle with its mysterious enclosure. Minutes slipped
by, and he failed to return to the group downstairs.
At last his absorption was broken into by the arrival of Muriel, whose
entrance into the room, with the traces of tears on her cheeks, brought
him back to the present with a remorseful start.
"You didn't come down, an' you _didn't_ come down, Uncle Don, an' now
mother says it's bedtime, an' I want Smiles' basket to take with me."
"Why, I'm terribly sorry that I've been so long, sweetheart-mine. I
stopped to read the letter she wrote to me, and, I'm ashamed to say,
forgot that you were waiting for me. But see, here's your present.
Little Rose made it all herself for you. Isn't it pretty?"
With a cry of delight the child gathered the simple basket into her
chubby arms and bent her head over it. "Oh, don't it smell sweet, Uncle
Don. Does Smiles smell like that?"
"Perhaps not exactly," he replied, chuckling.
"Now please show me what she sent to you. Was it a basket, too?"
"No, not a basket. It's a very great secret; but, if you'll promise not
to tell a soul, no matter how they tease, I'll show it to you."
"Cross my heart, an' hope to die," said the child earnestly, making
across her pinafore the mystic sign, so potent to the childish mind.
Donald opened a drawer in the chiffonier and took out a small and
obviously cheap glazed blue-and-white vase. The child took it
wonderingly and, removing the cover, sniffed audibly and deeply.
"My. _This_ smells like Rose," she said with conviction.
"You're right, it does, indeed, because it _is_ roses--dried wild rose
petals which she gathered and preserved herself. I saw it in her little
cabin, and know that it was her most precious possession, yet she gave
it to 'Uncle Don' as a keepsake, so that he might remember her whenever
he smells of it."
"Wasn't she just _too_ sweet to do that. My, how I would like to see
her, Uncle Don."
"Well, perhaps you may, some day."
The sentence echoed out of the past, carrying his recollection back to
the night when he had heedlessly spoken the identical words to Smiles,
and there entered his mind the sudden realization of what amazing
potentialities for good or evil often lie hidden in the simplest
utterances.
The sound of his sister's light tread in the hallway caused Donald to
return his homely gift to its hiding place hurriedly, and little Muriel,
with roguishly twinkling eyes, imitated his action as he laid his finger
on his lips as a seal of secrecy.
"Well, you _two_ kids," laughed Ethel, as she caught sight of the
picture framed by the doorway.
"I'm glad that I haven't wholly forgotten how to be one," answered her
brother, as he kissed first his little niece, and then the basket which
she held up with the demand that it be paid similar homage, and bade
them good-night.
Rejoining the diminished group in the living-room, Donald was
preoccupiedly silent, until his father asked,
"Well, have you read your little friend's 'writing'? I confess to a mild
curiosity as to what sort of a letter a girl like her would write, and
what sort of a request she would be likely to make of you."
Don drew from his pocket the letter, painfully scrawled on cheap, and
not overclean paper, and handed it over. Adjusting his eye-glasses the
older man read aloud:--
Dear Dr. Mac,
Truly I want to be a nurse like you told me about some day.
"Well," commented the reader, "at least she starts right off with the
business in hand, without any palavering.
And I reckon that even a little mountain girl like me can be one
if she wishes hard enough and works hard, too.
"Why," he interpolated again, "there doesn't seem to be any evidence of
your weirdly wonderful spelling and grammar here."
"Go on," answered Donald, smiling slightly.
I reckon it will take me a long, long time to get education and
earn all that money, but I can do it, Dr. Mac. I am sure I can do
it. I told my grandfather all that I mean to do, and he won't try
to stop me none. Of course he does not want for me to go away from
him, but I explained that I _had_ to, and of course that made it
all right.
When you was telling us what those nurses done, something seemed
like it went jump inside my heart, and straightways I know that the
dear Lord meant for me to do it, too. I read a story once about a
girl in france named Jone of Ark and I reckon I felt like she done
when she see the angel.
I know I can do it, Dr. Mac, if you will help me a little bit like
you promised. Most of all I figures I need a heap of book learning,
and it is books I wants for you to get me. You know the books I
need to have, Dr. Mac, and in this letter I am going to put $10.
It is an awful lot of money; but I reckon books cost a good deal,
and you can bring me the change next summer, for I have not got no
use for money here. Don't be afeared. It is my own money. It was in
my father's pocket among the camp things granddaddy found, and
there was some more. Grandfather, he kept it for me until I was a
big girl and now I am keeping it for a rainy day, like the copy
book says, although I don't think money would be much use to keep
off the rain.
Their is a preacher man who lives on our mountain winters, when he
can not travel about none, and I know I can get him to help me
learn if I help his wife with her work, and I can read pretty well
now and write pretty well when I have a spelling book to study the
words out of, although I have to go sorter slow, for they do not
allus spell words like they sound, and sometimes I cannot find them
at all. I guess my book is not a very good one.
I reckon it will take me a long while to earn more than $300; but I
am going to work awful hard, making baskets and other things, and I
am going to get Judd Amos, our naybor, to sell them for me at the
village store, for he goes down their trading every week, and he
will do anything I ask him, like I told you.
This is a pretty long letter and it has taken me all the evening to
right. I hope that you can read it. Well, I guess that is all now
from your loveing little friend.
I most forgot to say please give my love to Mike.
ROSE WEBB.
"Well, I've got to admit that I have seen many a letter, written by a
grown-up, that fell a long ways short of that one in clarity of thought
and in accomplishment of a definite object," said Mr. MacDonald, as he
handed it back. "Do you suppose that her eagerness to become a nurse is
just a passing childish whim, or has she really got sand enough to put
her almost impossible plan through?"
"Clairvoyancy was not included either in the Harvard or Medical School
curriculum," responded Donald, with a shrug.
"Meaning that the things of the future are in the laps of the gods. Of
course, but I was merely asking for your personal opinion. I'm not
jesting now; that letter really aroused my interest in the child."
"Well, then, I believe that Smiles really possesses the strength of
purpose to go through with even so difficult a task as she has set for
herself. Remember, she comes of city stock, and hasn't the blood of
those unprogressive mountaineers in her veins."
"And you? Are you going to help her as she asks? What about your promise
to Big Jerry?"
"I lived up to both the spirit and letter of that, when I tried to
explain to the child the almost unsurmountable difficulties which lay
between her and the accomplishment of her dream. Besides, I know that
she has told the truth in her letter, and has somehow managed actually
to win over the old man. I can't help feeling mighty sorry for him, if
the foster birdling is really going to fly away from his nest after he
has reared and loved her so tenderly, but, after all, it is only the
history of the human race. Still, I can't blame him if he looks on me as
a serpent who stole into his simple Eden, carrying the apple of
discontent."
"There have been, of course, plenty of cases similar to this, where the
adventurer's spirit was really big enough and the vision strong enough
to carry him or her through to victory," mused Donald's father. "Such a
one was the immortal Abe Lincoln, who came from just such surroundings.
But the task is doubly hard for a young girl, and the experiment of thus
breaking away from the ties and traditions of many years, and seeking a
place in a wholly new, wholly dissimilar life, cannot but be fraught
with dangers. There, in that simple environment she naturally appealed
to you as not only an attractive child, but as a somewhat unusual
personality. Tell me, lad, how will, or would, she measure up, if
transplanted a few years hence into city life, where the standards of
comparison are so utterly different; so much more exacting?"
"Frankly, I don't know," responded Donald. "Since I read her letter I
have been asking myself that question, and the answer worries me, since
I feel in a way responsible for having opened the gates before her
untrained feet. Somehow I cannot disassociate little Rose from her
present environment, and, although she certainly _has_ an unusual charm
for such a child, I must admit that, in part, at least, it was the
result of--no, not that, but made more obvious by--her surroundings."
"Well, she has apparently decided to take the moulding of her life into
her own hands and, without knowing the quotation, determined to be 'the
master of her fate and captain of her soul.' However, a little more
education can scarcely hurt her, and, if she succeeds in saving up some
money, it will come in handy enough as a 'dot,' in case she marries your
friend, Judd Amos, and raises a family of mountain brats."
Donald's reply was unnecessarily positive.
"I'll wager that she'll never do that." And with that the conversation,
as far as it concerned Smiles, ended.
* * * * *
During purloined hours in the next few days the eminently successful
young physician might have been seen engaged in strange errands, which
took him into such places as a dressmaker's establishment, and several
stores which sold textbooks. It was also a noteworthy fact that the
decidedly soiled and crumpled ten-dollar bill, with which he had been
commissioned to purchase the means through which education might be
acquired, was never taken from the special compartment in his bill
folder.
Then the flood of fall practice engulfed him, and gradually the memory
of little Smiles faded from his busy mind, although it never quite
vanished, and from time to time fresh breezes from the distant
Cumberlands fanned it to life like a glowing ember.