"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.