fearless and honest. The faint color came and went under the clear skin as
freely as the heart could send it, and though her hair was brown and soft,
there were ruddy tints among the coils, that flashed out unexpectedly here
and there like threads of red gold twined in a mass of fine silk.

John looked at her in some astonishment, for in his anxiety to be gone and
in the dimness of the corner where they had sat, he had not realized that
Josephine was any more remarkable in her appearance than most of the
extremely young women who annually make their entrance into society, with
the average stock of pink and white prettiness. They call them "buds" in
Boston--an abbreviation for rosebuds.

Fresh young roses of each opening year, fresh with the dew of heaven and
the blush of innocence, coming up in this wild garden of a world, what
would the gardener do without you? Where would all beauty and sweetness be
found among the thorny bushes and the withering old shrubs and the rotting
weeds, were it not for you? Maidens with clean hands and pure hearts, in
whose touch there is something that heals the ills and soothes the pains
of mortality, roses whose petals are yet unspotted by dust and rain, and
whose divine perfume the hot south wind has not scorched, nor the east
wind nipped and frozen--you are the protest, set every year among us,
against the rottenness of the world's doings, the protest of the angelic
life against the earthly, of the eternal good against the eternal bad.

John Harrington looked at Miss Thorn, and looked at her with pleasure, for
he saw that she was fair--but in spite of her newly discovered beauty he
resisted Miss Schenectady's invitation to sit down again, and departed.
Any other man would have stayed, under the circumstances.

"Well, Josephine," said Miss Schenectady, when he was gone, "now you have