Was this the world, after all? Rose asked herself; and, if so, what was amiss with it, and where was the charm, the bewilderment, the intoxication, the glamour?

She had been glad to come to Boston, for the last two weeks in Edgewood had proved intolerable. She had always been a favorite heretofore, from the days when the boys fought for the privilege of dragging her sled up the hills, and filling her tiny mitten with peppermints, down to the year when she came home from the Wareham Female Seminary, an acknowledged belle and beauty. Suddenly she had felt her popularity dwindling. There was no real change in the demeanor of her acquaintances, but there was a certain subtle difference of atmosphere. Everybody sympathized tacitly with Stephen, and she did not wonder, for there were times when she secretly took his part against herself. Only a few candid friends had referred to the rupture openly in conversation, but these had been blunt in their disapproval.

It seemed part of her ill fortune that just at this time Rufus should be threatened with partial blindness, and that Stephen’s heart, already sore, should be torn with new anxieties. She could hardly bear to see the doctor’s carriage drive by day after day, and hear night after night that Rufus was unresigned, melancholy, half mad; while Stephen, as the doctor said, was brother, mother, and father in one, as gentle as a woman, as firm as Gibraltar.

These foes to her peace of mind all came from within; but without was the hourly reproach of her grandmother, whose scorching tongue touched every sensitive spot in the girl’s nature and burned it like fire.

Finally a way of escape opened. Mrs. Wealthy Brooks, who had always been rheumatic, grew suddenly worse. She had heard of a “magnetic” physician in Boston, also of one who used electricity with wonderful effect, and she announced her intention of taking both treatments impartially and alternately. The neighbors were quite willing that Wealthy Ann Brooks should spend the deceased Ezra’s money in any way she pleased,—she had earned it, goodness knows, by living with him for twenty-five years,—but before the day for her departure arrived her right arm and knee became so much more painful that it was impossible for her to travel alone.

At this juncture Rose was called upon to act as nurse and companion in a friendly way. She seized the opportunity hungrily as a way out of her present trouble; but, knowing what Mrs. Brooks’s temper was in time of health, she could see clearly what it was likely to prove when pain and anguish wrung the brow.

Rose had been in Boston now for some weeks, and she was sitting in the Joy Street boarding-house,—Joy Street, forsooth! It was nearly bedtime, and she was looking out upon a huddle of roofs and back yards, upon a landscape filled with clothes-lines, ash-barrels, and ill-fed cats. There were no sleek country tabbies, with the memory in their eyes of tasted cream, nothing but city-born, city-bred, thin, despairing cats of the pavement, cats no more forlorn than Rose herself.

She had “seen Boston,” for she had accompanied Mrs. Brooks in the horse-cars daily to the two different temples of healing where that lady worshiped and offered sacrifices. She had also gone with Maude Arthurlena to Claude Merrill’s store to buy a pair of gloves, and had overheard Miss Dix (the fashionable “lady assistant” before mentioned) say to Miss Brackett of the ribbon department, that she thought Mr. Merrill must have worn his blinders that time he stayed so long in Edgewood. This bit of polished irony was unintelligible to Rose at first, but she mastered it after an hour’s reflection. She was n’t looking her best that day, she knew; the cotton dresses that seemed so pretty at home were common and countrified here, and her best black cashmere looked cheap and shapeless beside Miss Dix’s brilliantine. Miss Dix’s figure was her strong point, and her dressmaker was particularly skillful in the arts of suggestion, concealment, and revelation. Beauty has its chosen backgrounds. Rose in white dimity, standing knee deep in her blossoming brier bushes, the river running at her feet, dark pine trees behind her graceful head, sounded depths and touched heights of harmony forever beyond the reach of the modish Miss Dix, but she was out of her element and suffered accordingly.

Rose had gone to walk with Claude one evening when she first arrived. He had shown her the State House and the Park Street Church, and sat with her on one of the benches in the Common until nearly ten. She knew that Mrs. Brooks had told her nephew of the broken engagement, but he made no reference to the matter, save to congratulate her that she was rid of a man who was so clumsy, so dull and behind the times, as Stephen Waterman, saying that he had always marveled she could engage herself to anybody who could insult her by offering her a turquoise ring.

Claude was very interesting that evening, Rose thought, but rather gloomy and unlike his former self. He referred to his grave responsibilities, to the frail health of Maude Arthurlena, and to the vicissitudes of business. He vaguely intimated that his daily life in the store was not so pleasant as it had been formerly; that there were “those” (he would speak no more plainly) who embarrassed him with undesired attentions, “those” who, without the smallest shadow of right, vexed him with petty jealousies.

Rose dared not ask questions on so delicate a topic, but she remembered in a flash Miss Dix’s heavy eyebrows, snapping eyes, and high color. Claude seemed very happy that Rose had come to Boston, though he was surprised, knowing what a trial his aunt must be, now that she was so helpless. It was unfortunate, also, that Rose could not go on excursions without leaving his aunt alone, or he should have been glad to offer his escort. He pressed her hand when he left her at her door, telling her she could never realize what a comfort her friendship was to him; could never imagine how thankful he was that she had courageously freed herself from ties that in time would have made her wretched. His heart was full, he said, of feelings he dared not utter; but in the near future, when certain clouds had rolled by, he would unlock its treasures, and then—but no more tonight: he could not trust himself.

Rose felt as if she were assuming one of the characters in a mysterious romance, such as unfolded itself only in books or in Boston; but thrilling as it was, it was nevertheless extremely unsatisfactory.

Convinced that Claude Merrill was passionately in love with her, one of her reasons for coming to Boston had been to fall more deeply in love with him, and thus heal some, at least, of the wounds she had inflicted. It may have been a foolish idea, but after three weeks it seemed still worse,—a useless one; for after several interviews she felt herself drifting farther and farther from Claude; and if he felt any burning ambition to make her his own, he certainly concealed it with admirable art. Given up, with the most offensive magnanimity, by Stephen, and not greatly desired by Claude,—that seemed the present status of proud Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood.

It was June, she remembered, as she leaned out of the open window; at least it was June in Edgewood, and she supposed for convenience’ sake they called it June in Boston. Not that it mattered much what the poor city prisoners called it. How beautiful the river would be at home, with the trees along the banks in full leaf! How she hungered and thirsted for the river,—to see it sparkle in the sunlight; to watch the moonglade stretching from one bank to the other; to hear the soft lap of the water on the shore, and the distant murmur of the falls at the bridge! And the Brier Neighborhood would be at its loveliest, for the wild roses were in blossom by now. And the little house! How sweet it must look under the shade of the elms, with the Saco rippling at the back! Was poor Rufus still lying in a darkened room, and was Stephen nursing him,—disappointed Stephen, dear, noble old Stephen?

XII. Gold and Pinchbeck

Just then Mrs. Brooks groaned in the next room and called Rose, who went in to minister to her real needs, or to condole with her fancied ones, whichever course of action appeared to be the more agreeable at the moment.

Mrs. Brooks desired conversation, it seemed, or at least she desired an audience for a monologue, for she recognized no antiphonal obligations on the part of her listeners. The doctors were not doing her a speck of good, and she was just squandering money in a miserable boarding-house, when she might be enjoying poor health in her own home; and she did n’t believe her hens were receiving proper care, and she had forgotten to pull down the shades in the spare room, and the sun would fade the carpet out all white before she got back, and she did n’t believe Dr. Smith’s magnetism was any more use than a cat’s foot, nor Dr. Robinson’s electricity any better than a bumblebee’s buzz, and she had a great mind to go home and try Dr. Lord from Bonnie Eagle; and there was a letter for Rose on the bureau, which had come before supper, but the shiftless, lazy, worthless landlady had forgotten to send it up till just now.

The letter was from Mite Shapley, but Rose could read only half of it to Mrs. Brooks, little beside the news that the Waterman barn, the finest barn in the whole township, had been struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Stephen was away at the time, having taken Rufus to Portland, where an operation on his eyes would shortly be performed at the hospital, and one of the neighbors was sleeping at the River Farm and taking care of the cattle; still the house might not have been saved but for one of Alcestis Crambry’s sudden bursts of common sense, which occurred now quite regularly. He succeeded not only in getting the horses out of the stalls, but gave the alarm so promptly that the whole neighborhood was soon on the scene of action. Stephen was the only man, Mite reminded Rose, who ever had any patience with, or took any pains to teach, Alcestis, but he never could have expected to be rewarded in this practical way. The barn was only partly insured; and when she had met Stephen at the station next day, and condoled with him on his loss, he had said: “Oh, well, Mite, a little more or less does n’t make much difference just now.”

“The rest would n’t interest you, Mrs. Brooks,” said Rose, precipitately preparing to leave the room.

“Something about Claude, I suppose,” ventured that astute lady. “I think Mite kind of fancied him. I don’t believe he ever gave her any real encouragement; but he’d make love to a pump, Claude Merrill would, and so would his father before him. How my sister Abby made out to land him we never knew, for they said he’d proposed to every woman in the town of Bingham, not excepting the wooden Indian girl in front of the cigar-store, and not one of ‘em but our Abby ever got a chance to name the day. Abby was as set as the everlastin’ hills, and if she’d made up her mind to have a man he could n’t wriggle away from her nohow in the world. It beats all how girls do run after these slick-haired, sweet-tongued, Miss Nancy kind o’ fellers, that ain’t but little good as beaux an’ worth less than nothing as husbands.”

Rose scarcely noticed what Mrs. Brooks said, she was too anxious to read the rest of Mite Shapley’s letter in the quiet of her own room.

Stephen looks thin and pale [so it ran on], but he does not allow anybody to sympathize with him. I think you ought to know something that I have n’t told before for fear of hurting your feelings; but if I were in your place I’d like to hear everything, and then you’ll know how to act when you come home. Just after you left, Stephen ploughed up all the land in front of your new house,—every inch of it, all up and down the road, between the fence and the front doorstep,—and then he planted corn where you were going to have your flower-beds. He has closed all the blinds and hung a “To Let” sign on the large elm at the gate. Stephen never was spiteful in his life, but this looks a little like spite. Perhaps he only wanted to save his self-respect and let people know that everything between you was over forever. Perhaps he thought it would stop talk once and for all. But you won’t mind, you lucky girl, staying nearly three months in Boston! [So Almira purled on in violet ink, with shaded letters.] How I wish it had come my way, though I’m not good at rubbing rheumatic patients, even when they are his aunt. Is he as devoted as ever? And when will it be? How do you like the theater? Mother thinks you won’t attend; but, by what he used to say, I am sure church members in Boston always go to amusements.

Your loving friend,
Almira Shapley.

P.S. They say Rufus’s doctor’s bills here, and the operation and hospital expenses in Portland, will mount up to five hundred dollars. Of course Stephen will be dreadfully hampered by the toss of his barn, and maybe he wants to let your house that was to be, because he really needs money. In that case the dooryard won’t be very attractive to tenants, with corn planted right up to the steps and no path left! It’s two feet tall now, and by August (just when you were intending to move in) it will hide the front windows. Not that you’ll care, with a diamond on your engagement finger!

The letter was more than flesh and blood could stand, and Rose flung herself on her bed to think and regret and repent, and, if possible, to sob herself to sleep.

She knew now that she had never admired and respected Stephen so much as at the moment when, under the reproach of his eyes, she had given him back his ring. When she left Edgewood and parted with him forever she had really loved him better than when she had promised to marry him.

Claude Merrill, on his native Boston heath, did not appear the romantic, inspiring figure he had once been in her eyes. A week ago she distrusted him; tonight she despised him.

What had happened to Rose was the dilation of her vision. She saw things under a wider sky and in a clearer light. Above all, her heart was wrung with pity for Stephen—Stephen, with no comforting woman’s hand to help him in his sore trouble; Stephen, bearing his losses alone, his burdens and anxieties alone, his nursing and daily work alone. Oh, how she felt herself needed! Needed! that was the magic word that unlocked her better nature. “Darkness is the time for making roots and establishing plants, whether of the soil or of the soul,” and all at once Rose had become a woman: a little one, perhaps, but a whole woman—and a bit of an angel, too, with healing in her wings. When and how had this metamorphosis come about? Last summer the fragile brier-rose had hung over the river and looked at its pretty reflection in the placid surface of the water. Its few buds and blossoms were so lovely, it sighed for nothing more. The changes in the plant had been wrought secretly and silently. In some mysterious way, as common to soul as to plant life, the roots had gathered in more nourishment from the earth, they had stored up strength and force, and all at once there was a marvelous fructifying of the plant, hardiness of stalk, new shoots everywhere, vigorous leafage, and a shower of blossoms.

But everything was awry: Boston was a failure; Claude was a weakling and a flirt; her turquoise ring was lying on the river-bank; Stephen did not love her any longer; her flower-beds were ploughed up and planted in corn; and the cottage that Stephen had built and she had 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 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 backyards 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 downstream to her just at dusk in a birch-bark canoe, or sometimes, in the moonlight, on a couple of logs rafted together.

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.

XIII. 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 box-stall, 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 heaven, but I can only say that it would be a sight pleasanter place for a good many if she did n’t.”

“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 turrible wild an’ hot-headed myself afore you ketched me an’ tamed me down.”

“You ain’t so tame now as I wish you was,” Mrs. Wiley replied testily.

“If you could smoke a clay pipe ‘t would calm your nerves, mother, an’ help you to git some philosophy inter you; you need a little philosophy turrible bad.”

“I need patience consid’able more,” was Mrs. Wiley’s withering retort.

“That’s the way with folks,” said Old Kennebec reflectively, as he went on peacefully puffing. “If you try to indoose ‘em to take an int’rest in a bran’-new virtue, they won’t look at it; but they ‘ll run down a side street an’ buy half a yard more o’ some turrible old shop-worn trait o’ character that they’ve kep’ in stock all their lives, an’ that everybody’s sick to death of. There was a man in Gard’ner—”

But alas! the experiences of the Gardiner man, though told in the same delightful fashion that had won Mrs. Wiley’s heart many years before, now fell upon the empty air. In these years of Old Kennebec’s “anecdotage,” his pipe was his best listener and his truest confidant.

Mr. Wiley’s constant intercessions with his wife made Rose’s home-coming somewhat easier, and the sight of her own room and belongings soothed her troubled spirit, but the days went on, and nothing happened to change the situation. She had lost a lover, that was all, and there were plenty more to choose from, or there always had been; but the only one she wanted was the one who made no sign. She used to think that she could twist Stephen around her little finger; that she had only to beckon to him and he would follow her to the ends of the earth. Now fear had entered her heart. She no longer felt sure, because she no longer felt worthy, of him, and feeling both uncertainty and unworthiness, her lips were sealed and she was rendered incapable of making any bid for forgiveness.

So the little world of Pleasant River went on, to all outward seeming, as it had ever gone. On one side of the stream a girl’s heart was longing, and pining, and sickening, with hope deferred, and growing, too, with such astonishing rapidity that the very angels marveled! And on the other, a man’s whole vision of life and duty was widening and deepening under the fructifying influence of his sorrow.

The corn waved high and green in front of the vacant riverside cottage, but Stephen sent no word or message to Rose. He had seen her once, but only from a distance. She seemed paler and thinner, he thought,—the result, probably, of her metropolitan gayeties. He heard no rumor of any engagement and he wondered if it were possible that her love for Claude Merrill had not, after all, been returned in kind. This seemed a wild impossibility. His mind refused to entertain the supposition that any man on earth could resist falling in love with Rose, or, having fallen in, that he could ever contrive to climb out. So he worked on at his farm harder than ever, and grew soberer and more careworn daily. Rufus had never seemed so near and dear to him as in these weeks when he had lived under the shadow of threatened blindness. The burning of the barn and the strain upon their slender property brought the brothers together shoulder to shoulder.

“If you lose your girl, Steve,” said the boy, “and I lose my eyesight, and we both lose the barn, why, it’ll be us two against the world, for a spell!”

The “To Let” sign on the little house was an arrant piece of hypocrisy. Nothing but the direst extremity could have caused him to allow an alien step on that sacred threshold. The ploughing up of the flower-beds and planting of the corn had served a double purpose. It showed the too curious public the finality of his break with Rose and her absolute freedom; it also prevented them from suspecting that he still entered the place. His visits were not many, but he could not bear to let the dust settle on the furniture that he and Rose had chosen together; and whenever he locked the door and went back to the River Farm, he thought of a verse in the Bible: “Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.”

It was now Friday of the last week in August.

The river was full of logs, thousands upon thousands of them covering the surface of the water from the bridge almost up to the Brier Neighborhood. The Edgewood drive was late, owing to a long drought and low water; but it was to begin on the following Monday, and Lije Dennett and his under boss were looking over the situation and planning the campaign. As they leaned over the bridge-rail they saw Mr. Wiley driving clown the river road. When he caught sight of them he hitched the old white horse at the corner and walked toward them, filling his pipe the while in his usual leisurely manner. “We’re not busy this forenoon,” said Lije Dennett. “S’pose we stand right here and let Old Kennebec have his say out for once. We’ve never heard the end of one of his stories, an’ he’s be’n talkin’ for twenty years.”

“All right,” rejoined his companion, with a broad grin at the idea. “I’m willin’, if you are; but who’s goin’ to tell our fam’lies the reason we’ve deserted ‘em? I bate yer we shan’t budge till the crack o’ doom. The road commissioner’ll come along once a year and mend the bridge under our feet, but Old Kennebec’ll talk straight on till the day o’ jedgment.”

Mr. Wiley had one of the most enjoyable mornings of his life, and felt that after half a century of neglect his powers were at last appreciated by his fellow citizens.

He proposed numerous strategic movements to be made upon the logs, whereby they would move more swiftly than usual. He described several successful drives on the Kennebec, when the logs had melted down the river almost by magic, owing to his generalship; and he paid a tribute, in passing, to the docility of the boss, who on that occasion had never moved a single log without asking his advice.

From this topic he proceeded genially to narrate the life-histories of the boss, the under boss, and several Indians belonging to the crew,—histories in which he himself played a gallant and conspicuous part. The conversation then drifted naturally to the exploits of river-drivers in general, and Mr. Wiley narrated the sorts of feats in log-riding, pick-pole-throwing, and the shooting of rapids that he had done in his youth. These stories were such as had seldom been heard by the ear of man; and, as they passed into circulation instantaneously, we are probably enjoying some of them to this day.

They were still being told when a Crambry child appeared on the bridge, bearing a note for the old man. Upon reading it he moved off rapidly in the direction of the store, ejaculating: “Bless my soul! I clean forgot that saleratus, and mother’s settin’ at the kitchen table with the bowl in her lap, waitin’ for it! Got so int’rested in your list’nin’ I never thought o’ the time.”

The connubial discussion that followed this breach of discipline began on the arrival of the saleratus, and lasted through supper; and Rose went to bed almost immediately afterward for very dullness and apathy. Her life stretched out before her in the most aimless and monotonous fashion. She saw nothing but heartache in the future; and that she richly deserved it made it none the easier to bear.

Feeling feverish and sleepless, she slipped on her gray Shaker cloak and stole quietly downstairs for a breath of air. Her grandfather and grandmother were talking on the piazza, and good humor seemed to have been restored. “I was over to the tavern tonight,” she heard him say, as she sat down at a little distance. “I was over to the tavern tonight, an’ a feller from Gorham got to talkin’ an’ braggin’ ‘bout what a stock o’ goods they kep’ in the store over there. ‘An’,’ says I, ‘I bate ye dollars to doughnuts that there hain’t a darn thing ye can ask for at Bill Pike’s store at Pleasant River that he can’t go down cellar, or up attic, or out in the barn chamber an’ git for ye.’ Well, sir, he took me up, an’ I borrered the money of Joe Dennett, who held the stakes, an’ we went right over to Bill Pike’s with all the boys follerin’ on behind. An’ the Gorham man never let on what he was going to ask for till the hull crowd of us got inside the store. Then says he, as p’lite as a basket o’ chips, ‘Mr. Pike, I’d like to buy a pulpit if you can oblige me with one.’

“Bill scratched his head an’ I held my breath. Then says he, ‘’Pears to me I’d ought to hev a pulpit or two, if I can jest remember where I keep ‘em. I don’t never cal’late to be out o’ pulpits, but I’m so plagued for room I can’t keep ‘em in here with the groc’ries. Jim (that’s his new store boy), you jest take a lantern an’ run out in the far corner o’ the shed, at the end o’ the hickory woodpile, an’ see how many pulpits we’ve got in stock!’ Well, Jim run out, an’ when he come back he says, ‘We’ve got two, Mr. Pike. Shall I bring one of ‘em in?’

“At that the boys all bust out laughin’ an’ hollerin’ an’ tauntin’ the Gorham man, an’ he paid up with a good will, I tell ye!”

“I don’t approve of bettin’,” said Mrs. Wiley grimly, “but I’ll try to sanctify the money by usin’ it for a new wash-boiler.”

“The fact is,” explained Old Kennebec, somewhat confused, “that the boys made me spend every cent of it then an’ there.”

Rose heard her grandmother’s caustic reply, and then paid no further attention until her keen ear caught the sound of Stephen’s name. It was a part of her unhappiness that since her broken engagement no one would ever allude to him, and she longed to hear him mentioned, so that perchance she could get some inkling of his movements.

“I met Stephen tonight for the first time in a week,” said Mr. Wiley. “He kind o’ keeps out o’ my way lately. He’s goin’ to drive his span into Portland tomorrow mornin’ and bring Rufus home from the hospital Sunday afternoon. The doctors think they’ve made a success of their job, but Rufus has got to be bandaged up a spell longer. Stephen is goin’ to join the drive Monday mornin’ at the bridge here, so I’ll get the latest news o’ the boy. Land! I’ll be turrible glad if he gets out with his eyesight, if it’s only for Steve’s sake. He’s a turrible good fellow, Steve is! He said something tonight that made me set more store by him than ever. I told you I hed n’t heard an unkind word ag’in’ Rose sence she come home from Boston, an’ no more I hev till this evenin’. There was two or three fellers talkin’ in the post-office, an’ they did n’t suspicion I was settin’ on the steps outside the screen door. That Jim Jenkins, that Rose so everlastin’ly snubbed at the tavern dance, spoke up, an’ says he: ‘This time last year Rose Wiley could ‘a’ hed the choice of any man on the river, an’ now I bet ye she can’t get nary one.’

“Steve was there, jest goin’ out the door, with some bags o’ coffee an’ sugar under his arm.

“‘I guess you’re mistaken about that,’ he says, speakin’ up jest like lightnin’; ‘so long as Stephen Waterman’s alive, Rose Wiley can have him, for one; and that everybody’s welcome to know.’

“He spoke right out, loud an’ plain, jest as if he was readin’ the Declaration of Independence. I expected the boys would everlastin’ly poke fun at him, but they never said a word. I guess his eyes flashed, for he come out the screen door, slammin’ it after him, and stalked by me as if he was too worked up to notice anything or anybody. I did n’t foller him, for his long legs git over the ground too fast for me, but thinks I, ‘Mebbe I’ll hev some use for my lemonade-set after all.’”

“I hope to the land you will,” responded Mrs. Wiley, “for I’m about sick o’ movin’ it round when I sweep under my bed. And I shall be glad if Rose an’ Stephen do make it up, for Wealthy Ann Brooks’s gossip is too much for a Christian woman to stand.”