“But, Mr. Hawkins,” insisted Miss Fletcher, “there are better things than those for us to learn.  Haven’t you ever felt the need of an education yourself?”

Pop looked at her suspiciously:  “Look a-here, young woman.  I’m nigh on to seventy.  I never hed a doctor but onct in my life, an’ then he chopped my arm off when it might hev got well whar it wuz.  I kin plow, an’ fell trees, an’ haul wood.  Thar ain’t a log-rollin’ ner a house-raisin’ in our neck of the woods thet Jeb Hawkins ain’t sent fer.  I kin h’ist a barrel with the best of ’em, and shake up Ole Dan Tucker ez peart ez the next one.  Now how about yer scholards?  This here horspittle is full of ’em.  Pale-faced, spindly-legged, nerve-jerking young fellows thet has spent ther fust twenty years gittin’ larnin’, an’ ther next twenty gittin’ over hit.  Me an’ Sal will keep to the open!”

But Sally was not so confident.  As her strength began to return she took a growing interest in all that went on around her, asking eager, intelligent questions and noting with wistful curiosity the speech and manners of the nurses who served her.  She was a raw recruit from Nature, unsophisticated, illiterate.  Under a bondage of poverty and drudgery she had led her starved life in the mountain fastnesses; but now she had opened her eyes on a new and unexpected world.

“How do you go about gittin’ a larnin’?” she ventured at last to ask one of the friendly nurses.  “Can’t you fetch me up some of them thar picter books?”

For hours after this she pored over her new treasures, until one day Miss Fletcher brought her a primer, and the seventeen-year-old girl grappled for the first time with the alphabet.  After that she was loath to have the book out of her hand, going painfully and slowly over the lessons, mastering each in turn with patient perseverance.

Pop viewed this proceeding with disfavor.  He seemed to sense the entering wedge that was to separate her from him.  His pride in her accomplishment was overshadowed by his jealousy, and when she was able to read a whole page and attempted to explain the intricate process to him, he was distinctly cast down.  He left the hospital that afternoon for the first time, and was gone until dusk.  When he returned he carried a bunch of faded wild flowers that he had tramped two miles in the country to get for his girl.

May dragged into June, and still they were kept at the hospital.  The old man became as restless as a caged animal; he paced the corridors for hours at a time and his eyes grew furtive and defiant.  He, who had lived out of sight of the smoke from his nearest neighbor’s chimneys, who had spent his life in the vast, still solitudes of the hills, was incredibly lonely here among his fellow men.

“If Pop has to stay here much longer, I’m afraid he’ll smash the furniture,” said the night nurse who, like everybody else in the ward, had grown interested in the old man.  “He packs his things every morning before the doctor comes, only to unpack them after he leaves.”