“Oh, Dr. Hume,” she began, “I hadn’t thought of that. Indeed, I couldn’t connect anything of the sort with Phoebe and her father. They are not a bit like that.”
“You never can tell. The people who have given way to some wild impulse that will cause them everlasting regret are not always bad people by any means. His reasons for hiding himself and his wife in a cabin in these mountains of course may have been entirely innocent; or he may have hoped to find oblivion and forgetfulness up here out of the world. If I give him back his memory, providing of course I can do it, I may give him the very thing he is running away from.”
“Don’t you think he has been punished enough and that Phoebe ought to have a chance?” argued Billie.
“Is there anything to prevent Phoebe’s having a chance without knowing her father’s past?” asked the doctor.
“Nothing, except there would always be that mystery hanging over her. Don’t you think it would be very unpleasant not to know who you were or even your father’s name?”
“I am a living example to the contrary,” said the doctor with a laugh. “My father and mother were really my adopted parents. They took me out of an orphan asylum when I was a little lad about five years old. I remember it vividly. Afterwards they had other children, but they always treated me like a beloved eldest son. I never knew any difference and I never bothered my head about my real parents. Whoever they were, they had died or shuffled me off on an institution. My adopted mother was the finest woman I have ever known and if Hume isn’t my real name, it doesn’t matter. I shall do everything I can to make it an honored one.”
“You are a wonderful man, doctor,” exclaimed Billie, quite overcome by this bit of confidence about his past. “It was because you were so fine that they were good to you. Perhaps God picked you out from all the other orphans to have a good home because he saw what fine material there was in you.”
“No indeed, my dear young lady,” laughed the doctor. “It was just a matter of chance. The little orphans were like the two women sitting in the market place. The one was taken and the other left. If they chose me for anything, it was solely and entirely because I had brown eyes.”
“You may say what you please,” protested Billie. “They looked deeper than that, I am certain.”
“Simply luck, Miss Billie. I have always been lucky. The fellows at college called me ‘Lucky Bill.’ But to return to the original subject of the discussion: I don’t want to disappoint an unselfish, fine young woman like you,—you see I can pay compliments, too,——” he added, watching the flush of pleasure mount to Billie’s face; “I don’t want to make any promises about this man I can’t carry out, but I promise this much: I will do what I can.”