can't pretend she isn't wrapped up in the boy.
You've said that yourself."

"Yes, she's wrapped up in him; she'd give her life for him; but she is so
light. I didn't suppose she was so light; but it's borne in upon me more
and more."

They were constantly seeing Rose and his mother, in the sort of abeyance
the Triscoes had fallen into. One afternoon the Addings came to Mrs.
March's room to look from her windows at a parade of bicyclers' clubs
from the neighboring towns. The spectacle prospered through its first
half-hour, with the charm which German sentiment and ingenuity, are able
to lend even a bicycle parade. The wheelmen and wheelwomen filed by on
machines wreathed with flowers and ribbons, and decked with streaming
banners. Here and there one sat under a moving arch of blossoms, or in a
bower of leaves and petals, and they were all gay with their club
costumes and insignia. In the height of the display a sudden mountain
shower gathered and broke upon them. They braved it till it became a
drenching down-pour; then they leaped from their machines and fled to any
shelter they could find, under trees and in doorways. The men used their
greater agility to get the best places, and kept them; the women made no
appeal for them by word or look, but took the rain in the open as if they
expected nothing else.

Rose watched the scene with a silent intensity which March interpreted.
"There's your chance, Rose. Why don't you go down and rebuke those
fellows?"

Rose blushed and shrank away without answer, and Mrs. March promptly
attacked her husband in his behalf. "Why don't you go and rebuke them
yourself?"

"Well, for one thing, there isn't any conversation in my phrase-book
Between an indignant American Herr and a Party of German Wheelmen who
have taken Shelter from the Rain and are keeping the Wheelwomen out in
the Wet." Mrs. Adding shrieked her delight, and he was flattered into
going on. "For another thing, I think it's very well for you ladies to
realize from an object-lesson of this sort what spoiled children of our
civilization you are. It ought to make you grateful for your privileges."

"There is something in that," Mrs. Adding joyfully consented.

"Oh, there is no civilization but ours," said Mrs. March, in a burst of
vindictive patriotism. "I am more and more convinced of it the longer I
stay in Europe."

"Perhaps that's why we like to stay so long in Europe; it strengthens us
in the conviction that Ameri