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.

[Illustration: SHE HAD GONE WITH MAUDE TO CLAUDE'S STORE]

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
worshipped and offered sacrifices. She had also gone with Maude
Arthurlena to Claude Merrill's store to buy 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 wasn'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