"Tell me. I'll help you."
His eyes glowed with a kindly smile, and she warmed under it.
"I want to write—stories—and books," she half whispered guiltily. The secret was out and she wanted to run away. The Doctor's crucial time had come. If he laughed!—but he did not laugh. He looked thoughtful, almost sad.
"You are starting on a long, long road, Rose," he said at last. "Where it will lead to I cannot tell—nobody can. What put that into your head?"
Rose handed him a newspaper clipping containing a brief account of "how a Wisconsin poetess achieved fame and fortune."
"Why, my dear girl," he began, "don't you know that out of ten thousand—" He stopped. She was looking up at him in expectation, her great luminous grey-brown eyes burning with an inward hungry fire which thrilled him.
"She may be the one in ten thousand, and I'll help her," he said to himself.
The bell ringing brought the boys clattering back into their seats, puffing, gasping, as if at last extremity. For a couple of minutes nothing could be done, so great was the noise.
While they were getting settled he said to her:
"If you want to go to the university you will have to go to a preparatory school. Here is my card—write to me when you get done here, and I'll see what can be done."