He listened thoughtfully as she told him of her new plans which still had not changed her vision of being a teacher.
“I will come back, even though it be after four or five years. I will come,” she said, and she rose to go.
Then the doctor turned to his desk and took from it the picture of a girl.
“That was my little girl,” he said. “She, too, wanted to be a teacher and she was in this very school when sickness and death came. When you came to me that first morning and said, ‘I just must be a teacher,’ I could hear her say to me, ‘Help her.’ So I did what you asked 88 me to do—got you a place to work for nothing though I knew you were to be paid. I have watched you work, I have watched you suffer because of the red dress; I have watched you try to do your duty at the sacrifice of yourself. And now that you have done all that you can, I am ready to do the rest. Send the money that you have earned to your mother to help to buy the cow. Come to live here and be my office girl. The money that you earn can go to your mother for I will do for you what I would have done for her and I will do it for her sake and because you have shown me that you are worth while. You shall be a teacher.”
So Janie lived in the home of her new friend. There was help on her lessons, the old red dress went back to the little home in the hills to be worn by some one whom it would fit and in her new, pretty things she could see more plainly—Janie, the teacher.
SELF-MADE MEN
The banqueting hall of Hotel Northland was crowded to its limit. There were noted men and women from all walks of life. There were many from humble homes. There were those whose beautiful dresses showed that money meant little to them; there were others to whom the price of the banquet ticket had meant sacrifice. It was a merry company that awaited the coming of the guests of the evening.
Cheer after cheer arose when the tall, fine-looking young man took his seat near the center of the guest’s table. He was the newly elected mayor of the city—the youngest mayor they had ever had. He had risen from the ranks and many of the humbler folk knew him well as a boy. Oh, how proud they were of him!