splendid
clothes and amusements every minute of the day; and I'd like above
everything to live with people that wear low necks." (Poor Huldah never
took off her dress without bewailing the fact that her lot was cast in
Riverboro, where her pretty white shoulders could never be seen.)

"That would be fun, for a while anyway," Emma Jane remarked. "But
wouldn't that be pleasure more than joy? Oh, I've got an idea!"

"Don't shriek so!" said the startled Huldah. "I thought it was a mouse."

"I don't have them very often," apologized Emma Jane,--"ideas, I mean;
this one shook me like a stroke of lightning. Rebecca, couldn't it be
success?"

"That's good," mused Rebecca; "I can see that success would be a joy,
but it doesn't seem to me like a rose, somehow. I was wondering if it
could be love?"

"I wish we could have a peep at the book! It must be perfectly
elergant!" said Emma Jane. "But now you say it is love, I think that's
the best guess yet."

All day long the four words haunted and possessed Rebecca; she said
them over to herself continually. Even the prosaic Emma Jane was
affected by them, for in the evening she said, "I don't expect you to
believe it, but I have another idea,--that's two in one day; I had it
while I was putting cologne on your head. The rose of joy might be
helpfulness."

"If it is, then it is always blooming in your dear little heart, you
darlingest, kind Emmie, taking such good care of your troublesome
Becky!"

"Don't dare to call yourself troublesome! You're--you're--you're my
rose of joy, that's what you are!" And the two girls hugged each other
affectionately.

In the middle of the night Rebecca touched Emma Jane on the shoulder
softly. "Are you very fast asleep, Emmie?" she whispered.

"Not so very," answered Emma Jane drowsily.

"I've thought of something new. If you sang or painted or wrote,--not a
little, but beautifully, you know,--wouldn't the doing of it, just as
much as you wanted, give you the rose of joy?"

"It might if it was a real talent," answered Emma Jane, "though I don't
like it so well as love. If you have another thought, Becky, keep it
till morning."

"I did have one more inspiration," said Rebecca when they were dressing
next morning, "but I didn't wake you. I wondered if the rose of joy
could be sacrifice? But I think sacrifice would be a lily, not a rose;
don't you?"

The journey southward, the first glimpse of the ocean, the strange new
scenes, the ea