The sentence echoed out of the past, carrying his recollection back to the night 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. I know I can do it, Dr. Mac, if you will help me a little bit like you promised. Most of all I figures I need a heap of book learning, and it is books I wants for you to get me. You know the books I need to have, Dr. Mac, and in this letter I am going to put $10.