'Smiles', Eliot H. Robinson [books suggested by elon musk TXT] 📗

to the wonderful hunting tales told by her beloved Uncle Don, upon whose lap she was now contentedly curled. Her mother and father sat near by.

"Yes, to both questions," responded Donald.

"Did you shoot any bears?" queried his little niece, expectantly.

"No bears this trip, although I almost scalded to death a bare-legged little girl," was the reply. And with Rose thus made the central figure of his recital at the very outset, Donald proceeded to tell of his experiences and new friendships; but consciously refrained from mentioning the unpleasant incident with which his trip ended, and Smiles' parting embrace.

His faithful reproduction of the soft mountain dialect brought frequent smiles from his listeners, and filled the child with delighted amusement.

"I just love Smiles," she cried, as he finished his story.

"Indeed, so does every one who knows her. You do, don't you, Mike?" added Donald, and the dog beat a tattoo on the rug with his stumpy tail.

"Witchery," laughed his father. "Even your clumsy description has strangely stirred my youthful blood, and 'I longs fer ter see this hyar wonderful child dryad of ther primeval forest.' If you ever go back there, you had better wear magic armor as protection against that illusive smile which seems to have cast a spell of enchantment over your civilized senses."

"Pshaw, you needn't be concerned about my feelings for her. She's no siren, but a very real little person. I'll admit that she's amazingly attractive; but she's merely a child."

"Children grow up," teased his sister.

"I'm aware of that natural phenomenon," answered Donald, somewhat curtly. "But ... Great Scott, can't I describe a fifteen—no, sixteen-year-old little savage, without all you people imagining that I'm going to be such a fool as to fall in love with her?"

"Sometimes it isn't what one says, but the way he says it, that incriminates," put in his brother-in-law, adding his voice to the general baiting which had apparently disclosed a tender spot.

"Hang it all, I believe that I'll go back and ask Smiles to marry me, if only to put an end to your teasing," cried Don with a laugh not entirely natural. "At least I might perhaps succeed in frustrating your obvious designs, Ethel. Oh, I'm not blind!"

"I've almost concluded that you are—or hopeless," answered his sister. "However, I'm perfectly willing to admit that I would like to see you married to Marion Treville—she's my closest friend, and would certainly make you a perfect wife."

"Too perfect, by far. Can you imagine me hitched with that proud and classic beauty? I should go mad."

"But I want my pretty basket that little Smiles made for me," broke in Muriel, to whom the present remarks held no interest, and who emphasized her demand by seizing his cheeks.

"To be sure you do, and I want to see my present, too. I'll bring them right down."

Not at all ill pleased at this opportunity to escape from his family's jesting, which, for some indefinable reason, aroused his belligerency, Donald jumped up hastily and departed for the sanctuary of his bedroom, to get the bulky bundle with its mysterious enclosure. Minutes slipped by, and he failed to return to the group downstairs.

At last his absorption was broken into by the arrival of Muriel, whose entrance into the room, with the traces of tears on her cheeks, brought him back to the present with a remorseful start.

"You didn't come down, an' you didn't come down, Uncle Don, an' now mother says it's bedtime, an' I want Smiles' basket to take with me."

"Why, I'm terribly sorry that I've been so long, sweetheart-mine. I stopped to read the letter she wrote to me, and, I'm ashamed to say, forgot that you were waiting for me. But see, here's your present. Little Rose made it all herself for you. Isn't it pretty?"

With a cry of delight the child gathered the simple basket into her chubby arms and bent her head over it. "Oh, don't it smell sweet, Uncle Don. Does Smiles smell like that?"

"Perhaps not exactly," he replied, chuckling.

"Now please show me what she sent to you. Was it a basket, too?"

"No, not a basket. It's a very great secret; but, if you'll promise not to tell a soul, no matter how they tease, I'll show it to you."

"Cross my heart, an' hope to die," said the child earnestly, making across her pinafore the mystic sign, so potent to the childish mind.

Donald opened a drawer in the chiffonier and took out a small and obviously cheap glazed blue-and-white vase. The child took it wonderingly and, removing the cover, sniffed audibly and deeply.

"My. This smells like Rose," she said with conviction.

"You're right, it does, indeed, because it is roses—dried wild rose petals which she gathered and preserved herself. I saw it in her little cabin, and know that it was her most precious possession, yet she gave it to 'Uncle Don' as a keepsake, so that he might remember her whenever he smells of it."

"Wasn't she just too sweet to do that. My, how I would like to see her, Uncle Don."

"Well, perhaps you may, some day."

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:—