leads me on isn't strong enough. It's better
than nothing; I don't deny that. I can grope my way by it when I might
expect to be utterly bewildered--but, oh, mother dear, it's not love."

But having read this page in the morning, she suppressed and destroyed
it. After the night's rest she was more sure of herself. Since she had
any clue at all she felt it wise to possess her soul in patience and see
to what issue it would lead her. For the passages she withdrew she
substituted, therefore, such an account of Rosie as would put her mother
in touch with that portion of Claude's life.

"It's hard to know how the little thing feels just now," she went on,
when the main facts had been given, "because she's so stunned by dread.
It's the same dread that oppresses us all, but which is so much more
terrible for them. For poor little Rosie the things that have happened
are secondary now to what may happen still. _That_ almost blots Claude
out of her mind. Luckily she has a great deal of pluck--of what in our
old-fashioned New England phrase was called grit. That she'll win in the
end, and come out at last to a kind of happiness, I haven't the least
doubt, especially as she has that fine fellow, Jim Breen, to turn to.
You remember him, don't you? It's touching to see his tenderness to
Rosie, now that she has such a need of him. It's the more touching
because she doesn't give him anything but the most indirect
encouragement. He knows perfectly well that whatever he gets from her
now will be only her second best, but he's grateful even for that.

"She came to me yesterday morning of her own accord, before I could get
word to her. William Sweetapple had heard the news and told her as he
passed the house where they have just gone to live in Susan Street.
Rosie had been early to the door to take in the milk, and Sweetapple was
going by. She flew here at once. I had expected her to be crushed--but
she wasn't. As I've just said, she seemed to be looking forward rather
than looking back. She was looking forward to what I've hinted at and
dare not say, and setting her face as a flint. That is how I can best
describe her--and yet it was as a flint with a wonderful shine on it, as
if something had come to her in the way of inner illumination that used
not to be in her at all. Jim Breen is fond of saying that this is not
the Rosie of a year or two ago, and it isn't. It's not even the Rosie of
the episode with Claude. Her face is now like a li