was a common sight, like that of the ardent couples sitting on its shady banks
these summer days, looking only into each other's eyes, but exclaiming about
the beauty of the water. Lovers would come and go, sometimes reappearing with
successive installments of loves in a way wholly mysterious to the river.
Meantime it had its own work to do and must be about it, for the side jams
were to be broken and the boom "let out" at the Edgewood bridge.



II

"Old Kennebec"


It was just seven o'clock that same morning when Rose Wiley smoothed the last
wrinkle from her dimity counterpane, picked up a shred of corn-husk from the
spotless floor under the bed, slapped a mosquito on the window-sill, removed
all signs of murder with a moist towel, and before running down to breakfast
cast a frowning look at her pincushion. Almira, otherwise "Mite," Shapley had
been in her room the afternoon before and disturbed with her careless hand the
pattern of Rose's pins. They were kept religiously in the form of a Maltese
cross; and if, while she was extricating one from her clothing, there had been
an alarm of fire, Rose would have stuck the pin in its appointed place in the
design, at the risk of losing her life.

Entering the kitchen with her light step, she brought the morning sunshine
with her. The old people had already engaged in differences of opinion, but
they commonly suspended open warfare in her presence. There were the usual
last things to be done for breakfast, offices that belonged to her as her
grandmother's assistant. She took yesterday's soda biscuits out of the steamer