e mused
over it for some hours.

VI. Hearts And Other Hearts

Stephen had brought a change of clothes, as he had a habit of being
ducked once at least during the day; and since there was a halt in the
proceedings and no need of his services for an hour or two, he found
Rose and walked with her to a secluded spot where they could watch the
logs and not be seen by the people.

"You frightened everybody almost to death, jumping into the river,"
chided Rose.

Stephen laughed. "They thought I was a fool 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