, on the whole, very innocently done; and if fault could be imputed
anywhere, it might rightly have been laid at the door of the kind powers
who had made her what she was, since the smile that blesses a single
heart is always destined to break many more.

She had not a single silk gown, but she had what is far better, a figure
to show off a cotton one. Not a brooch nor a pair of earrings was
numbered among her possessions, but any ordinary gems would have looked
rather dull and trivial when compelled to undergo comparison with her
bright eyes. As to her hair, the local milliner declared it impossible
for Rose Wiley to get an unbecoming hat; that on one occasion, being in
a frolicsome mood, Rose had tried on all the headgear in the village
emporium,--children's gingham "Shakers," mourning bonnets for aged
dames, men's haying hats and visored caps,--and she proved superior to
every test, looking as pretty as a pink in the best ones and simply
ravishing in the worst. In fact, she had been so fashioned and finished
by Nature that, had she been set on a revolving pedestal in a
show-window, the bystanders would have exclaimed, as each new charm came
into view: "Look at her waist!" "See her shoulders!" "And her neck and
chin!" "And her hair!" While the children, gazing with raptured
admiration, would have shrieked, in unison, "I choose her for mine."

All this is as much as to say that Rose of the river was a beauty, yet
it 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 grati