After Rose and her father had made their brief toilets, they found the family at luncheon.

“I was wet to the skin, and through it, I believe,” said Rose. “No, I sha’n’t take cold, mama. Nobody takes cold here. Tom must be wet through to his bones—absolutely water-logged.”

“The boys were a-drip like water-rats,” said Mrs. Lyndsay. “I am sure some of you will have pneumonia.”

“But I got an eighteen-and-a-half-pound salmon,” cried Jack.

“He’s had him in his lap for an hour, like a baby,” said Dick.

“That is capable of olfactory demonstration,” remarked Anne.

“He’ll get that salmon framed,” cried Dick. “Such a fuss—”

“Did you get any, sir?” asked his father.

“No.”

“Are you sorry Jack did?”

“No, I am not that mean,” returned the boy, flushing. “Ned he caught it, and he let Jack bring it in. Jack wanted it so very bad.”

107“Badly, sir?”

“Badly.”

“And it was Ned’s fish, after all.”

As he spoke, Lyndsay nodded gently, smiling at the youngest son, and no more was said; but the boys understood well enough that neither the selfishness nor the self-denial had gone unnoticed. This was made more plain when Mr. Lyndsay said:

“I shall fish the upper pool to-morrow morning—or, rather, you may, Ned, for I have letters to write.”

“And Jack and Dick?” said Ned.

“Those other fellows may slay trout.” He disliked even the approach to tale-telling by his boys, and when Mrs. Lyndsay made an appeal, in her mild way, he said, laughing:

“The laws of the Medes and Persians were never changed. Let it rest there. My barbarians understand me, I fancy.”

There was a little silence, which Rose broke.

“What is that in the glass, Dick, on the window-ledge?”

“What Pierre calls a lamprey. It is the very lowest of vertebrates. It has only a cartilaginous skeleton.”

“Must be an awful learned beast,” said Ned.

“It holds on to the side of the salmon, Rosy.”

“Just like a fellow outside of an omnibus,” said Dick.

“What a queer thing!” and Rose got up to look at it. “I wonder if the salmon likes it. A parasite!”

“Which proves,” laughed Anne, “that even a parasite is capable of attachment. The obligation is all on one side.”

108“Literally,” said Lyndsay.

“Archie, you are worse than Mr. B.,” said Anne. “If you say anything clever, he begins to dissect it for the benefit of all concerned. The application of anatomy to humor is one of the lowest of social pursuits. I loathe that man.”

“You don’t really loathe any one, aunty.”

“If you do not,” said Margaret, “it is a pity to say that sort of thing.”

“But I do loathe the man—I do; I do. I am honest. He has every quality of what Dick tenderly calls a G. I. P., except the probability of ultimate usefulness.”

“Reasonably complete that,” said Lyndsay, while Jack grinned his appreciation.

“He is a clergyman, Anne,” remarked Margaret, with emphasis.

“That only makes it worse. I have heard him preach. Don’t you think a man who has no humor must be a bad man?”

“Anne!”

“One moment, dear. Let me finish him. I was going to say, Archie, that if a mule was to kick that man just for fun, he would never know he was kicked.”

“That covers the ground. You should have edited a newspaper, Anne. Such vituperative qualities are wasted here.”

“Indeed, I think so,” said Mrs. Lyndsay, rising at the end of her luncheon. “It may amuse you, Archie, but for the boys it is bad, dear, bad.”

Upon this the twins, enchanted to hear of wickedness, became critically attentive to the matter, and for 109a moment refrained from their diet. Anne, a little vexed, smiled as her sister-in-law stood opposite, but made no other reply.

“I dare say it amuses you, my dear Anne.”

“It does.”

“But should it, dear, and at the cost of temptation to others? Go out, boys.” The twins went forth merry. “And—and, dear, don’t you think—?”

Between question and answer Lyndsay made swift retreat, with an explanatory cigar-case in his hand.

“Yes, I think, Margaret”; and then, the gray eyes lighting up, “I think, Margaret, that you do not always think. If you did, you would criticize that wicked Archie.”

“Archie! Archie! What do you mean?”

“I admit your premise. Homicide applied to character is bad enough; but don’t you think that Archie ought to give up killing salmon?”

“What?”

“You see it teaches the boys to be cruel. It is the sad beginning of murder. There is only a difference of degree in it. Suppose, now, a man kills a monkey, and then—you follow me, dear—and then—oh, do come here, Rose—and then he gets a shot somewhere in Africa at the missing link. You see where killing salmon lands you at last. Where shall we draw the line?”

Rose laughed, despite her mother’s face of puzzled yet obstinate gravity.

“What do you mean, Anne?”

Anne rarely argued seriously with this sister-in-law, who, despite their differences, was very dear to her. 110Her delight was, like the cuttle-fish, so to obscure the whole atmosphere of a discussion with mistiness of vague analogy as to enable her to retreat with honor.

“Good gracious!” Margaret went on, fanning herself violently, as she did in all weather, and amuseingly indicating by her use of the fan her own moods, “what did I say to bring out all this nonsense? I think I—yes—what was it, Rose?”

Any one’s irritation, of which she herself seemed to be the cause, troubled the little lady, especially if Anne were the person involved. Nevertheless, no experience sufficed quite to keep Mrs. Lyndsay out of these risks when her motherly instincts were in action.

Rose smiled, as she replied:

“Dear little mother, Aunt Anne objects to your criticism of her form of sport, and the naughty aunty is raising a dust of words, in which she will scuttle away.” As she spoke she cast a loving arm around her mother, and one on her aunt’s thin shoulders. But Margaret Lyndsay had the persistency of all instinctive beings.

“I think it bad for the boys. I always shall think it bad. Dick is now too fond of ridiculing serious things, and they think whatever you do is right, and whatever you say they think delightful. As for Ned—”

“Ned! my Ned! That boy is an angel. I won’t have a word—”

“As if I did not know it!” said Margaret, with the nearest approach to wrath of which she was capable. “Really, Anne Lyndsay, may I not even praise my own boys?”

111“I think, my dear Margaret, you lack imagination,” said Anne. Like a great algebraist, who is apt to skip in his statements a long series of equations, she was given to omitting the logical steps by which her swift reason passed to a conclusion satisfactorily true for her, but obscure enough to her hearers.

“I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Lyndsay.

“Nor I,” echoed Rose.

“My dears,” said Anne, smiling, “the prosperity of life lies largely in the true use of imagination.”

“You are incorrigible, Anne. But I know I am right.”

“Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, are ofttimes different,” quoted Anne, rising, and not over well pleased. “I think I shall go and lie down.”

“I think I would,” said Mrs. Lyndsay, simply. “You are not looking well to-day.”

“I am well enough,” said Miss Anne.

“All ready!—and the fish and Polycarp!” cried Lyndsay.

Rose was soon in the canoe, and the men began poling across the river. As they moved, she sat, reflecting upon the little scene she had witnessed. It troubled her that two people so dear to her should not always understand each other. The mother had already ceased to think of it, and the aunt’s irritability was a matter of minutes. Only Anne Lyndsay knew how sternly a remarkable intellect had by degrees dictated terms of reasonable life to a quick temper and a tongue too perilously skilful. This endless warfare was now rarely visible, but its difficulties were terribly increased at times when weakness and 112pain grew hard to endure and fought on the side of her foes. There were, indeed, times during the weariness of travel when Rose Lyndsay was startled by what she saw; times when Anne was striving with constantly increasing pain. Then it would end with a laugh and a jest, and some quaint defense of pain as a form of moral education, until Rose, despite herself, would be reassured, and she
Who would have given a caliph’s gold
For consolation, was herself consoled.

These things troubled her as she crossed the stream. Once ashore she ceased to think of them. Polycarp, with few words, slung the salmon on his back, and, leaving Ambrose to pious meditations and the canoe, indicated the ox-road to Rose, who went on in front.

After twenty minutes of swift walking, Rose came out of the wood-path into a clearing of some fifty acres, and at last to a cabin set in an inclosure. Here were a few beds of the commoner flowers and a squared-log house. The windows were open, the clean white muslin curtains pulled back, and on the ledges tomato-cans and a broken jug or two filled with that flower which grows best for the poor, the red geranium. On the south end of the cabin a Japanese ivy, given by Mrs. Lyndsay, had made a fair fight with the rigor of a Canadian winter and was part way up to the gable. Noticing the absence of dirt and of the litter of chips, rags, egg-shells, and bits of paper, so common where labor has all it can do to attend to the essential, Rose tapped on the open door, and then, turning, saw Mrs. 113Maybrook standing at the well. She came forward at once to meet her visitor.

“Why, I guess you must be Margaret Lyndsay’s daughter.”

Rose, a little taken aback by the familiar manner of this identification, perhaps showed it to this shrewd observer in something about her bearing as she said, “A pleasant evening after the rain,” and took the proffered hand. “Yes, I am Rose Lyndsay.”

“I’m never quite rid of my Quaker fashion of naming folks without their handles. Seems to get you nearer to people. Now, don’t you think so? Come in.”

Rose, as her host stepped aside, entered the cabin. It was bedroom, kitchen, and sitting-room all in one, like most of these rude homes, but it was absolutely clean, and just now, as the cooking was done out of doors, was cool and airy. Mrs. Maybrook was in a much-mended gown, and bore signs enough of contact with pots and pans. Still the great coils of hair were fairly neat, and the gray eyes shone clear and smiling. She made none of the apologies for her house or its furniture such as the poor are apt to make, nor yet for herself or her dress.

“Come in and sit down. I’m that glad to see you. Oh, Polycarp, is that you? And your father has sent me a salmon? My old man will like that. Put it in the brook, Polycarp.”

“But it is my fish,” said Rose. “I killed it and I wanted you to have it; my father had nothing to do with it, I am glad of a chance to thank you, Mrs. Maybrook, for—for all you were to my mother—all you did last summer when our dear Harry died.”

114And this fine young woman, in her tailor-made London walking-gown, thereupon having got to the end of words, and having had this thing in mind for ten minutes, fell an easy victim to nature, so that her eyes filled as she spoke. When this came about, Dorothy became as easy a prey to the despotism of sympathetic emotion, and her tears, too, fell like ripe apples on a windy November day. Also, upon this, these two “fools of nature” looked at each other and smiled through their tears, which is a mysteriously explanatory and apologetic habit among rightly made women. After this they were in a way friends. The elder woman took the hand of the younger and said:

“When my last boy died, there was a woman I just hated, and she came and she cried. It makes a heap of matter who cries,—don’t it, now?”

“Oh, it does—it does,” said Rose, with still a little sob in her voice.

“I didn’t want that woman to cry. But you don’t mind my crying, now, do you? That was the sweetest little fellow.”

“Please don’t,” said Rose.

“No, no; I won’t, I know. Isn’t it awful lucky men can’t cry? That’s just the only way we can get even with ’em. How’s mother? And Miss Anne? Now, that is a woman. Never saw a woman like her in all my born life. Ain’t she got a way of saying things? Oh, here’s Hiram. Hiram, this is Miss Rose Lyndsay. I reckon”—Mrs. Maybrook reckoned, calculated, or guessed with the entire indifference of a woman who had lived south, north, and east—“I reckon they knew what they was about when they 115called you Rose. ’T ain’t easy naming children. They ain’t all like flowers, that just grow up, according to their kind. If you’d have been called Becky, there wouldn’t have been no kind of reason in it.“

“I trust not,” laughed Rose.

“How do you do, miss?” said Hiram. He was tall, a little bent, clad in sober gray, and had a shock of stiff, grizzly hair and a full gray beard. His eyes, which were pale blue and meaningless, wandered as he stood.

“Miss Rose has fetched a fish,” said Dorothy. “You might clean it, Hiram.”

“I’ll do it,” he said, stolidly, and turned to go like a dull boy sent on an errand.

“And don’t forget to fetch the cows in at sundown.”

“I’ll do it,” and he went out.

“He’s a bit touched in his head,” said his wife. “You see, when we were at Marysville the war kind o’ upset him. They wanted him to go into the rebel army, and he wasn’t minded to do it. I got him a place on a railroad, so he didn’t have to; but he was awful worried, and took to thinking about it, and his brothers that were in our army,—on the other side,—and then he got off his head. He ain’t been the same man since,—and twice he ran away. But I fetched him both times, and then the fevers took the children. He ain’t been the same man since. I’ve got to p’int him a good bit,—that’s what he calls it; but if he’s p’inted right, he goes sure. To my thinking, it is a queer world, Miss Rose. I wish I was certain there is a better.”

116“But there is,” said Rose.

“Well, well. Maybe. Anyhow, I never felt no call to doubt what I was to do in this one. Old Kitchins used to pray over me. He was an awful certain man about other folks’ sins; never missed fire. At last, one day, when he was a-consoling me, and thinking he’d just only got to be a kind of centurion for a woman’s troubles, and say go and they’d go, I asked him if he’d any knowledge of the gospel of grinning,—and that ended him. Come out and see my flowers.”

Rose got up, laughing. “I want you to walk to Colkett’s with me. I told the men to go up the river, so as to bring us back. You see, I made sure you would go.”

“Go!—of course I’ll go,” said Dorothy. “No, I won’t want a bonnet. I’ve got one somewhere, under the bed, I guess,” and, so saying, they set off. It required little skill to draw from this frank and fearless nature, as they walked, the history of a wandering life, of the children dead, of the half-witted husband, of her own long-continued asthma, now gone, as she hoped. It was told with curious vivacity,—with some sense of the humorous quality of complete disaster, and when she spoke of her dead it was with brief gravity, which seemed to deny sympathy or hasten away from it. As they moved along and her companion talked, Rose glanced with curiosity at the Quaker-born woman, who had lost nearly every trace of her origin. She walked well, and there was a certain distinctiveness, if not distinction, in her erect carriage 117and refinement of feature, still visible after years of toil and troubles.

At last, after a pause, Rose sp............