Rose of Dutcher's Coolly. Garland Hamlin
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."
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."
John looked up in astonishment at her excitement.
"Who said so?"
"Dr. Thatcher, the man who visited our school today. He said I'd ought to go, and he said he'd help me."
Her exultation passed suddenly. Somehow there was not so much to tell as she had fancied, and she suddenly found herself unable to explain the basis of her enthusiasm. The perceived, but untranslatable expression of the Doctor's eyes and voice was the real foundation of her hope, and that she had not definitely and consciously noted – to explain it was impossible. If her father could only have seen him!
"I guess you'd better wait awhile," her father said, with a smile, which Rose resented.
"He's coming tonight."
"Who's he?"
"Dr. Thatcher. He used to live here. He knows you."
John grew a little more intent on her news.
"Does! I wonder if he is old Stuart Thatcher's son? He had a boy who went east to school somewheres."
Rose went into the house and set to work with the graceful celerity which Mrs. Diehl called "knack."
"Rose, you can turn off work when you really want to, to beat anything I ever see."
Rose smiled and hummed a tune. Mrs. Diehl was made curious.
"You're wonderful good-natured, it seems to me. What's the reason, already?"
"We're going to have company."
"Who, for Peter's sake?"
"Dr. Thatcher."
"What's he come here for?"
"To see pappa," said Rose, as she rushed upstairs into her attic-room. It was cold up there, warmed only by the stove-pipe from the sitting-room, but she sat down and fell into a dream in which she recalled every look and word he had given her.
She came suddenly to herself, and began putting on her red dress, which was her company dress. When she came downstairs in her creaking new shoes Mrs. Diehl was properly indignant.
"Well! I declare. Couldn't you get along in your calico?"
"No, I couldn't!" Rose replied, with easy sharpness, which showed the frequent passages at arms between them.
When Thatcher came in with the teacher he was quite startled by the change in her. She looked taller and older and more intricate some way.
She took his hat and coat and made him at home in much better form than he had reason to think she knew. She on her part watched him closely. His manner at the table was a source of enlightenment to her. She felt him to be a strong man, therefore his delicacy and consideration meant much to her. It suggested related things dimly. It made her appreciate vaguely the charm of the world from whence he came.
Dr. Thatcher was not young, and his experience as a physician had added to his natural insight. He studied Rose keenly while he talked with John concerning the changes in the neighborhood.
He saw in the girl great energy and resolution, and a mental organization not simple. She had reason and reserve force not apprehended by her father. The problem was, should he continue to encourage her. Education of a girl like that might be glorious – or tragic! After supper John Dutcher took him into the corner, and, while Rose helped clear away the dishes, the two men talked.
"You see," John explained, "she's been talkin' about going on studyin' for the last six months. I don't know what's got into the girl, but she wants to go to Madison. I suppose her learnin' of that Bluff-Sidin' girl goin' has kind o' spurred her on. I want her to go to the high school at the Sidin', but she wants to go away" – he choked a little on that phrase – "but if you an' teacher here think the girl'd' ought to go, why, I'll send her."
The younger man looked grave – very grave. He foresaw lonely hours for John Dutcher.
"Well – the girl interests me very much, Mr. Dutcher. It's a strong point in her favor that she wants to go. Most girls of her age have little ambition beyond candy and new dresses. I guess it's your duty to send her. What she wants is the larger life that will come to her in Madison. The preparatory work can be done here at the Siding. I believe it is one of the accredited schools. Of course she will come home often, and when she comes to Madison, I will see that she has a home until she gets 'wunted,' as you farmers say."
The teacher came in at this point full of wild praise of Rose's ability. "She's great on history and geography. She knows about every city and river and mountain on the maps."
"She's always been great for geography," confirmed John. "Used to sit and follow out lines on the maps when she wasn't knee-high to a 'tater." A tender tone came into his voice, almost as if he were speaking of a dead child. He too had a quick imagination, and he felt already the loss of his girl, his daily companion.
The matter was decided there. "You send her to me, when she gets ready,