ight when he had heedlessly spoken the identical words to Smiles,
and there entered his mind the sudden realization of what amazing
potentialities for good or evil often lie hidden in the simplest
utterances.

The sound of his sister's light tread in the hallway caused Donald to
return his homely gift to its hiding place hurriedly, and little Muriel,
with roguishly twinkling eyes, imitated his action as he laid his finger
on his lips as a seal of secrecy.

"Well, you _two_ kids," laughed Ethel, as she caught sight of the
picture framed by the doorway.

"I'm glad that I haven't wholly forgotten how to be one," answered her
brother, as he kissed first his little niece, and then the basket which
she held up with the demand that it be paid similar homage, and bade
them good-night.

Rejoining the diminished group in the living-room, Donald was
preoccupiedly silent, until his father asked,

"Well, have you read your little friend's 'writing'? I confess to a mild
curiosity as to what sort of a letter a girl like her would write, and
what sort of a request she would be likely to make of you."

Don drew from his pocket the letter, painfully scrawled on cheap, and
not overclean paper, and handed it over. Adjusting his eye-glasses the
older man read aloud:--

Dear Dr. Mac,

Truly I want to be a nurse like you told me about some day.

"Well," commented the reader, "at least she starts right off with the
business in hand, without any palavering.

And I reckon that even a little mountain girl like me can be one
if she wishes hard enough and works hard, too.

"Why," he interpolated again, "there doesn't seem to be any evidence of
your weirdly wonderful spelling and grammar here."

"Go on," answered Donald, smiling slightly.

I reckon it will take me a long, long time to get education and
earn all that money, but I can do it, Dr. Mac. I am sure I can do
it. I told my grandfather all that I mean to do, and he won't try
to stop me none. Of course he does not want for me to go away from
him, but I explained that I _had_ to, and of course that made it
all right.

When you was telling us what those nurses done, something seemed
like it went jump inside my heart, and straightways I know that the
dear Lord meant for me to do it, too. I read a story once about a
girl in france named Jone of Ark and I reckon I felt like she done
when she see the angel.