of
loss than he had ever before felt, even when he had lost his mother.

Wonderful as little Rose was, she was not his own. But, he wondered
suddenly, wasn't this aching sense of need perhaps something utterly
different from unsatisfied paternal instinct? He turned his head toward
the kitchen where his Rag-weed was working and asked himself if she were
gone and some other woman were here--such as little Rose might be when
she grew up, one to whom he went out spontaneously, would not his life
be more complete and far more worth while? What a fool he was, to bother
his head with such get-nowhere questions! He dismissed them roughly, but
new processes of thought had been opened, new emotions awakened.

Meanwhile, little Rose's response to his clumsy tenderness taught him
many unsuspected lessons. He never would have believed the pleasure
there could be in simply watching a child's eyes light with glee over a
five-cent bag of candy. It began to be a regular thing for him to bring
one home from Fallon, each trip, and the gay hunts that followed as
she searched for it--sometimes to find the treasure in Martin's hat,
sometimes under the buggy seat, sometimes in a knobby hump under the
table-cloth at her plate--more than once brought his rare smile. For
years afterward, the memory of one evening lingered with him. He was
resting in an old chair tipped back against the house, thinking deeply,
when the little girl, tired from her play, climbed into his lap and,
making a cozy nest for herself in the crook of his arm, fell asleep. He
had finished planning out the work upon which he had been concentrating
and had been about to take her into the house when he suddenly became
aware of the child's loveliness. In the silvery moonlight all the fairy,
flower-like quality of her was enhanced. Martin studied her closely,
reverently. It was his first conscious worship of beauty. Leaning down
to the rosy lips he listened to the almost imperceptible breathing;
he touched the long, sweeping lashes resting on the smooth cheeks and
lifted one of the curls the wind had been ruffling lightly against his
face. With his whole soul, he marvelled at her softness and relaxation.
A profound, pitying rebellion gripped him at the idea that anything so
sweet, so perfect must pass slowly through the defacing furnaces of time
and pain. "Little Rose of Sharon!" he thought gently, conscious of an
actual tearing at his heart, even a startling stinging in his eye