to save a fool, I suppose."

"Perhaps not as bad as that, but it did seem reckless."

"I know; and the boy, no doubt, would be better off dead; but so should
I be, if I could have let him die."

Rose regarded this strange point of view for a moment, and then silently
acquiesced in it. She was constantly doing this, and she often felt that
her mental horizon broadened in the act; but she could not be sure that
Stephen grew any dearer to her because of his moral altitudes.

"Besides," Stephen argued, "I happened to be nearest to the river, and
it was my job."

"How do you always happen to be nearest to the people in trouble, and
why is it always your 'job'!"

"If there are any rewards for good conduct being distributed, I'm right
in line with my hand stretched out," Stephen replied, with meaning in
his voice.

Rose blushed under her flowery hat as he led the way to a bench under a
sycamore tree that overhung the water.

She had almost convinced herself that she was as much in love with
Stephen Waterman as it was in her nature to be with anybody. He was
handsome in his big way, kind, generous, temperate, well educated, and
well-to-do. No fault could be found with his family, for his mother had
been a teacher, and his father, though a farmer, a college graduate.
Stephen himself had had one year at Bowdoin, but had been recalled, as
the head of the house, when his father died. That was a severe blow; but
his mother's death, three years after, was a grief never to be quite
forgotten. Rose, too, was the child of a gently bred mother, and all her
instincts were refined. Yes; Stephen in himself satisfied her in all the
larger wants of her nature, but she had an unsatisfied hunger for the
world,--the world of Portland, where her cousins lived; or, better
still, the world of Boston, of which she heard through Mrs. Wealthy
Brooks, whose nephew Claude often came to visit her in Edgewood. Life on
a farm a mile and a half distant from post-office and stores; life in
the house with Rufus, who was rumored to be somewhat wild and
unsteady,--this prospect seemed a trifle dull and uneventful to the
trivial part of her, though to the better part it was enough. The better
part of her loved Stephen Waterman, dimly feeling the richness of his
nature, the tenderness of his affection, the strength of his character.
Rose was not destitute either of imagination or sentiment. She did not
relish this constant weighing of Stephen in the bala