erself 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 plowed 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 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.

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.

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.