of a thing with a tin pail in her hand and a sunbonnet falling
off her wavy hair, Stephen suddenly stopped swinging his feet.
She gravely announced her wants, reading them from a bit of
paper,--1 quart molasses, 1 package ginger, 1 lb. cheese, 2
pairs shoe laces, 1 card shirt buttons.

While the storekeeper drew off the molasses she exchanged shy
looks with Stephen, who, clean, well-dressed, and carefully
mothered as he was, felt all at once uncouth and awkward, rather
as if he were some clumsy lout pitchforked into the presence of a
fairy queen. He offered her the little bunch of bachelor's
buttons he held in his hand, augury of the future, had he known
it,--and she accepted them with a smile. She dropped her
memorandum; he picked it up, and she smiled again, doing still
more fatal damage than in the first instance. No words were
spoken, but Rose, even at ten, had less need of them than most of
her sex, for her dimples, aided by dancing eyes, length of
lashes, and curve of lips, quite took the place of conversation.
The dimples tempted, assented, denied, corroborated, deplored,
protested, sympathized, while the intoxicated beholder cudgeled
his brain for words or deeds which should provoke and evoke more
and more dimples.

The storekeeper hung the molasses pail over Rose's right arm and
tucked the packages under her left, and as he opened the mosquito
netting door to let her pass out she looked back at Stephen,
perched on the kerosene barrel. Just a little girl, a little
glance, a little dimple, and Stephen was never quite the same
again. The years went on, and the boy became man, yet no other
image had ever troubled the deep, placid waters of his heart.