time if I can do it."

More than half an hour afterward, Rose woke from a little nap and found
the various old favorites with which she had tried to solace herself
replaced by the simple, wholesome story promised by Aunt Jessie.

"Good boy! I'll go and thank him," she said half aloud, jumping up, wide
awake and much pleased.

But she did not go, for just then she spied her uncle standing on the
rug warming his hands with a generally fresh and breezy look about him
which suggested a recent struggle with the elements.

"How did this come?" she asked suspiciously.

"A man brought it."

"This man? Oh, Uncle! Why did you take so much trouble just to gratify
a wish of mine?" she cried, taking both the cold hands in hers with a
tenderly reproachful glance from the storm without to the ruddy face
above her.

"Because, having taken away your French bonbons with the poisonous color
on them, I wanted to get you something better. Here it is, all pure
sugar, the sort that sweetens the heart as well as the tongue and leaves
no bad taste behind."

"How good you are to me! I don't deserve it, for I didn't resist
temptation, though I tried. Uncle, after I'd put the book away, I
thought I must just see how it ended, and I'm afraid I should have read
it all if it had not been gone," said Rose, laying her face down on the
hands she held as humbly as a repentant child.

But Uncle Alec lifted up the bent head and, looking into the eyes that
met his frankly, though either held a tear, he said, with the energy
that always made his words remembered: "My little girl, I would face a
dozen storms far worse than this to keep your soul as stainless as snow,
for it is the small temptations which undermine integrity unless we
watch and pray and never think them too trivial to be resisted."

Some people would consider Dr. Alec an overcareful man, but Rose felt
that he was right, and when she said her prayers that night, added a
meek petition to be kept from yielding to three of the small temptations
which beset a rich, pretty, and romantic girl extravagance, coquetry,
and novel reading.

Chapter 12 AT KITTY'S BALL

Rose had no new gown to wear on this festive occasion, and gave one
little sigh of regret as she put on the pale blue silk refreshed with
clouds of gaze de Chambery. But a smile followed, very bright and sweet,
as she added the clusters of forget-me-not which Charlie had conjured
up through the agency of an old German