quite fails to explain, nevertheless, the secret of her power. When she looked
her worst the spell was as potent as when she looked her best. Hidden away
somewhere was a vital spark which warmed every one who came in contact with
it. Her lovely little person was a trifle below medium height, and it might as
well be confessed that her soul, on the morning when Stephen Waterman saw her
hanging out the clothes on the river-bank, was not large enough to be at all
out of proportion; but when eyes and dimples, lips and cheeks, enslave the
onlooker, the soul is seldom subjected to a close or critical scrutiny.
Besides, Rose Wiley was a nice girl, neat as wax, energetic, merry, amiable,
economical. She was a dutiful granddaughter to two of the most irritating old
people in the county; she never patronized her pug-nosed, pasty-faced girl
friends; she made wonderful pies and doughnuts; and besides, small souls, if
they are of the right sort, sometimes have a way of growing, to the
discomfiture of cynics and the gratification of the angels.

So, on one bank of the river grew the brier rose, a fragile thing, swaying on
a slender stalk and looking at its pretty reflection in the water; and on the
other a sturdy pine tree, well rooted against wind and storm. And the sturdy
pine yearned for the wild rose; and the rose, so far as it knew, yearned for
nothing at all, certainly not for rugged pine trees standing tall and grim in
rocky soil. If, in its present stage of development, it gravitated toward
anything in particular, it would have been a well-dressed white birch growing
on an irreproachable lawn.

And the river, now deep, now shallow, now smooth, now tumultuous, now
sparkling in sunshine, now gloomy under clouds, rolled on to the engulfing
sea. It could not stop to concern itself with the petty comedies and tragedies
that were being enacted along its shores, else it would never have reached its
destination. Only last night, under a full moon, there had been pairs of
lovers leaning over the rails of all the bridges along its course; but that