"We will have you turning dressmaker next and setting up an
establishment for yourself," he observed, in a sportive tone.
"Well, why not?" she gayly retorted. "If I took a notion to learn
dressmaking, I am sure I could do it. But"--more gravely--"I am
going to study like everything this winter and make up for lost
time. Mamma and I have been talking it over, and she thinks I can
begin the regular course if I want to. I do, and I mean to go
through and graduate like any other student."
"Indeed! We are making great plans, aren't we?"
"Yes, I know it sounds big for me; but Mrs. Minturn says 'there is
nothing we cannot do if we do not limit God,' and Miss Katherine
says--"
"Well, what does Miss Katherine say?" queried her uncle, in an
eager tone, as Dorothy paused to count the threads she was taking
on her needle.
She looked up quickly into his face, his tone having attracted
her.
"I guess you think she is pretty nice, too," she observed,
naively.
"What has put that idea into your small head?"
"Oh! the way you speak of her and look at her sometimes, and--
well, of course"--with an appreciative sigh--"anybody couldn't
help loving her."
"But you haven't told me what she said," persisted the man, but
feeling the color mounting in his face as he caught the merry
gleam in his sister's eyes.
"Oh! she said that 'God being the only intelligence, man reflects
that intelligence, and there is nothing we cannot learn if we keep
that in our thought as we study'; so you see, it is all right for
me to plan to go through college if I want to," and the tone
indicated that the matter was settled.
"'Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast
revealed them unto babes,'" quoted Phillip Stanley to himself, as
he stooped to recover a spool that rolled from Mrs. Seabrook's
lap.
At the same moment the sound of wheels fell upon their ears; the
next, a carriage stopped before their door and a stalwart figure
leaped to the ground.
"Papa!" "William!" fell simultaneously from the lips of the mother
and daughter--one with a ring of triumph in her voice, the other
with a note of intense yearning in her tones.
The man caught his wife to his breast.
"Sweetheart, it is joy to hold you here once more," he breathed,
as their lips met; and she knew there was no cloud between them.
Then he turned and knelt beside his child, folding her in a long,
silent embrace.
One swift glance into her bright, eager, happy face had told him a
story that thrilled his soul and made him, for the moment, dumb.
"Papa, you can see, can't you?--and you are glad, aren't you?
"Dorothy at length observed, as she lifted wet but joyful eyes to
his bronzed face.
"Darling, I can see, and I am more than 'glad,'" he returned, in a
husky tone, as he gently released her, then arose to greet his
brother-in-law.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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