tree. All was still, save for the crickets' ceaseless chirp, the soft thud of
an August sweeting dropping in the grass, and the swish-swash of the water
against his boat, tethered in the Willow Cove.

He remembered when he first saw Rose, for that must have been when he began to
love her, though he was only fourteen and quite unconscious that the first
seed had been dropped in the rich soil of his boyish heart.

He was seated on the kerosene barrel in the Edgewood post-office, which was
also the general country store, where newspapers, letters, molasses, nails,
salt codfish, hairpins, sugar, liver pills, canned goods, beans, and ginghams
dwelt in genial proximity. When she entered, just a little pink-and-white slip
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 pitch-
forked 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.