Where did you get the pluck to hold for over a year a job that few men
would have taken at all? You got it from a plucky mother, you bravest
of boys. You attacked single-handed a man almost twice your size, and
fought as a demon, merely at the suggestion that you be deceptive and
dishonest. Could your mother or your father have been untruthful? Here
you are, so hungry and starved that you are dying for love. Where
did you get all that capacity for loving? You didn't inherit it from
hardened, heartless people, who would disfigure you and purposely leave
you to die, that's one sure thing. You once told me of saving your big
bullfrog from a rattlesnake. You knew you risked a horrible death when
you did it. Yet you will spend miserable years torturing yourself with
the idea that your own mother might have cut off that hand. Shame on
you, Freckles! Your mother would have done this----"

The Angel deliberately turned back the cover, slipped up the sleeve, and
laid her lips on the scars.

"Freckles! Wake up!" she cried, almost shaking him. "Come to your
senses! Be a thinking, reasoning man! You have brooded too much, and
been all your life too much alone. It's all as plain as plain can be to
me. You must see it! Like breeds like in this world! You must be some
sort of a reproduction of your parents, and I am not afraid to vouch for
them, not for a minute!

"And then, too, if more proof is needed, here it is: Mr. McLean says
that you never once have failed in tact and courtesy. He says that you
are the most perfect gentleman he ever knew, and he has traveled the
world over. How does it happen, Freckles? No one at that Home taught
you. Hundreds of men couldn't be taught, even in a school of etiquette;
so it must be instinctive with you. If it is, why, that means that it is
born in you, and a direct inheritance from a race of men that have been
gentlemen for ages, and couldn't be anything else.

"Then there's your singing. I don't believe there ever was a mortal with
a sweeter voice than yours, and while that doesn't prove anything, there
is a point that does. The little training you had from that choirmaster
won't account for the wonderful accent and ease with which you sing.
Somewhere in your close blood is a marvelously trained vocalist; we
every one of us believe that, Freckles.

"Why does my father refer to you constantly as being of fine perceptions
and honor? Because you are, Freckles. Why does the Bird Woman leave her