furnished, that beloved cottage, was to let. She was in Boston; but what did that amount to, after all? What was the State House to a bleeding heart, or the Old South Church to a pride wounded like hers? At last she fell asleep, but it was only[Pg 144] by stopping her ears to the noises of the city streets and making herself imagine the sound of the river rippling under her bedroom windows at home. The back yards of Boston faded, and in their place came the banks of the Saco, strewn with pine needles, fragrant with wild flowers. Then there was the bit of sunny beach, where Stephen moored his boat. She could hear the sound of his paddle. Boston lovers came a-courting in the horse-cars, but hers had floated down stream to her just at dusk in a birch-bark canoe, or sometimes, in the moonlight, on a couple of logs rafted together. [Pg 144] But it was all over now, and she could see only Stephen’s stern face as he flung the despised turquoise ring down the river bank. [Pg 145] A COUNTRY CHEVALIER It was early in August when Mrs. Wealthy Brooks announced her speedy return from Boston to Edgewood. “It’s jest as well Rose is comin’ back,” said Mr. Wiley to his wife. “I never favored her goin’ to Boston, where that rosy-posy Claude feller is. When he was down here he was kep’ kind o’ tied up in a boxstall, but there he’s caperin’ loose round the pastur’.” “I should think Rose would be ashamed to come back, after the way she’s carried on,” remarked Mrs. Wiley, “but if she needed punishment I guess she’s got it bein’ comp’ny-keeper to Wealthy Ann Brooks. Bein’ a church member in good an’ reg’lar standin’, I s’pose Wealthy Ann’ll go to[Pg 146] heaven, but I can only say that it would be a sight pleasanter place for a good many if she didn’t.” [Pg 146] “Rose has be’n foolish an’ flirty an’ wrong-headed,” allowed her grandfather; “but it won’t do no good to treat her like a hardened criminile, same’s you did afore she went away. She ain’t hardly got her wisdom teeth cut, in love affairs! She ain’t broke the laws of the State o’ Maine, nor any o’ the ten commandments; she ain’t disgraced the family, an’ there’s a chance for her to reform, seein’ as how she ain’t twenty year old yet. I was
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