"Well, here we are, little sister. Don't tell any one what I have just told you, for I want to make all my preliminary arrangements before I astound the world with the announcement of what I am going to do." "You needn't laugh," answered Rose. "I guess that it will dismay plenty of Back Bay families who have babies." There was a catch in her voice as she bade him good-night, and she was not sorry for an excuse for running into the hospital, offered by the mellow notes of a distant church clock tolling the hour of ten. It was the signal for "lights out" in the bedrooms, and this was appreciated, too, for it made it possible for her to undress in the dark, and the pale moonlight which came in through the window, as the moon played hide and seek behind the broken masses of storm clouds--for the blizzard had ended as quickly as it had come on--was reflected on two glistening tear drops on her flushed cheeks. In the darkness her roommate could not see them and be led to ask questions. The two girls, one the self-educated, unknown child of the southern mountain side, the other the college-bred daughter of one of New England's oldest families, had become fast friends and generally exchanged whispered confidences until the sleep which comes of physical exhaustion speedily claimed them; but to-night Rose was in no mood for conversation. The last thread which bound the old life to the new was soon to be broken, and she felt lonelier, more nearly homesick, than she had since leaving Webb's Gap. "Perhaps I shall never see him again," she half whispered. "But I shall never, _never_ forget him, he has been so good and meant so much to me. And I shall always love him." She saw that her roommate was asleep, softly raised the window-shade to let in the moonlight that she loved, and, clad in her simple nightdress, short sleeved and cut low at the neck, seated herself before the mirror to brush her wavy mass of hair, and, as she leaned forward, and it fell about her face, tear bedewed and made almost childlike again by its frame of tumbling curls, she smiled faintly in recollection. "I look the way I used to in my homemade, one-piece dresses," she breathed. "Just as I did that afternoon when he first saw me. 'Yo' looked so funny a-fallin' over thet thar dawg, an' a-rollin' on the floor.' What a way to greet a famous physician--only I didn't know it then." For a moment she sat like this, her thoughts far away from the northern city; then a faint blush mantled her face, and she hastily jumped up and shut out the soft light by pulling down the shade. CHAPTER XXVII THE GOAL You cannot, by a bridge of sighs, attain the future's golden years, But try a bridge of rainbow hopes erected on substantial piers Of honest work, and you will find it leads you surely to the goal. 'Tis God that gives the dreamer's dreams, as radiant as the morning, But, if the will to work is weak, they often die a-borning.