Rose went back to her seat, her eyes filled with a burning light, her hands strained together. This great man from Madison had believed in her. O, if he would only come home and see her father!
She painfully penciled a note and handed it to him as she came past to the blackboard. He was putting on his coat to go, but he looked down at the crumpled note, with its Spencerian handwriting.
"Please, sir, won't you come down and see pappa and ask him if I can't go to Madison?"
He looked at the girl, whose eyes, big and sombre and full of wistful timidity, were fixed upon him. Obeying a sudden impulse, he stepped to her side and said: "Yes, I'll help you; don't be troubled."
He stayed until school was out and the winter sun was setting behind the hills. Rose sat and looked at him with more than admiration. She trusted him. He had said he would help her, and his position was one of power in her fancy, and something in his face and dress impressed her more deeply than any man she had ever seen save "William De Lisle," her dim and shadowy yet kingly figure.
On his part he was surprised at himself. He was waiting a final hour in this school-room out of interest and curiosity in a country school girl. His was a childless marriage, and this girl stirred the parental in him. He wished he had such a child to educate, to develop.
The school was out at last, and, as she put on her things and came timidly towards him, he turned from the teacher.
"So you are John Dutcher's daughter? I knew your father when I was a lad here. I am stopping at the Wallace farm, but I'll come over a little later and see your father."
Rose rushed away homeward, full of deep excitement. She burst into the barn where John was rubbing the wet fetlocks of the horses he had been driving. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks were a beautiful pink.
"O, pappa, he said I ought to go to Madison to school. He said he'd help me go."