"Because you are so beautiful, and do so much good to others."
Nurse Marion's cheeks flushed, and her head bent lower over her work.
"Do you know," and she lifted her eyes to her companion's face, "that I have often thought the same thing about you?"
"About me! Oh, nurse, what could make you think such a thing?"
"You are pretty, happy, and you have done much."
"I never knew that I was pretty until Dick told me, and I am glad that I am—for his sake. But what have I done in life? I have had no chance like you."
"If I am not mistaken, Nance, you have done very much for a lonely man. Did you ever think how strange it is that your father—I can't help calling him that—should have left the ways of civilisation to bury himself here in the wilderness?"
"I have thought about it at times, and I once spoke of it to daddy."
"And what did he say?"
"He did not answer me, but such a sorrowful expression came into his eyes that I never had the heart to ask him again."