work we choose should be our own
God lets alone."

Rose sat silent, as if conscious that she deserved his poetical reproof.

"Come, you have catechized me pretty well; now I'll take my turn and ask
you why you look 'uplifted,' as you call it. What have you been doing
to make yourself more like your namesake than ever?" asked Mac, carrying
war into the enemy's camp with the sudden question.

"Nothing but live, and enjoy doing it. I actually sit here, day after
day, as happy and contented with little things as Dulce is and feel as
if I wasn't much older than she," answered the girl, feeling as if
some change was going on in that pleasant sort of pause but unable to
describe it.

"As if a rose should shut and be a bud again," murmured Mac, borrowing
from his beloved Keats.

"Ah, but I can't do that! I must go on blooming whether I like it or
not, and the only trouble I have is to know what leaf I ought to unfold
next," said Rose, playfully smoothing out the white gown, in which she
looked very like a daisy among the green.

"How far have you got?" asked Mac, continuing his catechism as if the
fancy suited him.

"Let me see. Since I came home last year, I've been gay, then sad,
then busy, and now I am simply happy. I don't know why, but seem to
be waiting for what is to come next and getting ready for it, perhaps
unconsciously," she said, looking dreamily away to the hills again, is
if the new experience was coming to her from afar.

Mac watched her thoughtfully for a minute, wondering how many more
leaves must unfold before the golden heart of this human flower would
lie open to the sun. He felt a curious desire to help in some way, and
could think of none better than to offer her what he had found most
helpful to himself. Picking up another book, he opened it at a place
where an oak leaf lay and, handing it to her, said, as if presenting
something very excellent and precious: "If you want to be ready to take
whatever comes in a brave and noble way, read that, and the one where
the page is turned down."

Rose took it, saw the words "Self-Reliance," and turning the leaves,
read here and there a passage which was marked: "'My life is for itself,
and not for a spectacle.'

"'Insist on yourself: never imitate. That which each can do best, none
but his Maker can teach him.'

"'Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope or dare too
much.'"

Then, coming to the folded page, whose title was "Heroism,