chatters over white pebbles and bright sands. Now it was a broad, steady, full
happiness like the deeps of the river under the sun.

"Don't speak, Stephen, till you hear what I have to say. It takes a good deal
of courage for a girl to do as I am doing; but I want to show how sorry I am,
and it's the only way." She was trembling, and the words came faster and
faster. "I've been very wrong and foolish, and made you very unhappy, but I
have n't done what you would have hated most. I have n't been engaged to
Claude Merrill; he has n't so much as asked me. I am here to beg you to
forgive me, to eat breakfast with me, to drive me to the minister's and marry
me quickly, quickly, before anything happens to prevent us, and then to bring
me home here to live all the days of my life. Oh, Stephen dear, honestly,
honestly, you have n't lost anything in all this long, miserable summer. I've
suffered, too, and I'm better worth loving than I was. Will you take me back?"

Rose had a tremendous power of provoking and holding love, and Stephen of
loving. His was too generous a nature for revilings and complaints and
reproaches.

The shores of his heart were strewn with the wreckage of the troubled summer,
but if the tide of love is high enough, it washes such things out of
remembrance. He just opened his arms and took Rose to his heart, faults and
all, with joy and gratitude; and she was as happy as a child who has escaped
the scolding it richly deserves, and who determines, for very thankfulness'
sake, never to be naughty again.

"You don't know what you've done for me, Stephen," she whispered, with her
face hidden on his shoulder. "I was just a common little prickly rosebush when
you came along like a good gardener and 'grafted in' something better; the
something better was your love, Stephen dear, and it's made everything