"Not a very good world, I fancy, if you were afraid or ashamed to be found in it. Where did this come from?" asked Dr. Alec, surveying the book with great disfavor.

Rose told him, and added slowly,--

"I particularly wanted to read it, and fancied I might, because you did when it was so much talked about the winter we were in Rome."

"I did read it to see if it was fit for you."

"And decided that it was not, I suppose; since you never gave it to me?"

"Yes."

"Then I won't finish it. But, uncle, I don't see why I should not,"

added Rose, wistfully; for she had reached the heart of the romance and found it wonderfully fascinating.

"You may not _see_, but don't you _feel_ why not?" asked Dr. Alec, gravely.

Rose leaned her flushed cheek on her hand and thought a minute; then looked up, and answered honestly,--

"Yes, I do: but can't explain it; except that I know something _must_ be wrong, because I blushed and started when you came in."

"Exactly," and the doctor gave an emphatic nod, as if the symptoms pleased him.

"But I really don't see any harm in the book so far. It is by a famous author, wonderfully well written as you know, and the characters so life-like that I feel as if I should really meet them somewhere."

"I hope not!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the doctor, shutting the book quickly, as if to keep the objectionable beings from escaping.

Rose laughed, but persisted in her defence; for she did want to finish the absorbing story, yet would not without leave.

"I have read French novels before, and you gave them to me. Not many to be sure, but the best; so I think I know what is good, and shouldn't like this if it was harmful."

Her uncle's answer was to reopen the volume and turn the leaves an instant as if to find a particular place; then he put it into her hand, saying quietly,--

"Read a page or two aloud, translating as you go. You used to like that: try it again."

Rose obeyed, and went glibly down a page, doing her best to give the sense in her purest English. Presently she went more slowly, then skipped a sentence here and there, and finally stopped short, looking as if she needed a screen again.

"What's the matter?" asked her uncle, who had been watching her with a serious eye.

"Some phrases are untranslatable, and it only spoils them to try. They are not amiss in French, but sound coa.r.s.e and bad in our blunt English," she said a little pettishly; for she felt annoyed by her failure to prove the contested point.

"Ah, my dear! if the fine phrases won't bear putting into honest English, the thoughts they express won't bear putting into your innocent mind. That chapter is the key to the whole book; and if you had been led up, or rather down, to it artfully and artistically, you might have read it to yourself without seeing how bad it is. All the worse for the undeniable talent which hides the evil so subtly and makes the danger so delightful."

He paused a moment, then added with an anxious glance at the book, over which she was still bending,--

"Finish it if you choose: only remember, my girl, that one may read at forty what is unsafe at twenty, and that we never can be too careful what food we give that precious yet perilous thing called imagination."

And taking his "Review" he went away to look over a learned article which interested him much less than the workings of a young mind near by.

Another long silence, broken only by an occasional excited bounce from Jamie, when the sociable cuttle-fish looked in at the windows, or the "Nautilus" scuttled a ship or two in its terrific course. A bell rang, and the doctor popped his head out to see if he was wanted. It was only a message for Aunt Plenty, and he was about to pop in again when his eye was caught by a square parcel on the slab.

"What's this?" he asked, taking it up.

"Rose wants me to leave it at Kitty Van's when I go. I forgot to bring her book from mamma; so I shall go and get it as soon as ever I've done this," replied Jamie, from his nest.

As the volume in his hands was a corpulent one, and Jamie only a third of the way through, Dr. Alec thought Rose's prospect rather doubtful; and, slipping the parcel into his pocket, he walked away, saying with a satisfied air,--

"Virtue doesn't always get rewarded; but it shall be this time, if I can do it."

More than half an hour afterward, Rose woke from a little nap, and found the various old favorites, with which she had tried to solace herself, replaced by the simple, wholesome story promised by Aunt Jessie.

"Good boy! I'll go and thank him," she said, half-aloud; jumping up, wide awake and much pleased.

But she did not go; for, just then, she espied her uncle standing on the rug warming his hands with a generally fresh and breezy look about him, which suggested a recent struggle with the elements.

"How did this come?" she asked suspiciously.

"A man brought it."

"This man? O uncle! why did you take so much trouble just to gratify a wish of mine?" she cried, taking both the cold hands in hers, with a tenderly reproachful glance from the storm without to the ruddy face above her.

"Because, having taken away your French bonbons with the poisonous color on them, I wanted to get you something better. Here it is, all pure sugar; the sort that sweetens the heart as well as the tongue, and leaves no bad taste behind."

"How good you are to me! I don't deserve it; for I didn't resist temptation, though I tried. Uncle, after I'd put the book away, I thought I _must_ just see how it ended, and I'm afraid I should have read it all if it had not been gone," said Rose, laying her face down on the hands she held, as humbly as a repentant child.

But Uncle Alec lifted up the bent head, and looking into the eyes that met his frankly, though either held a tear, he said, with the energy that always made his words remembered,--

"My little girl, I would face a dozen storms far worse than this to keep your soul as stainless as snow; for it is the small temptations which undermine integrity, unless we watch and pray, and never think them too trivial to be resisted."

Some people would consider Dr. Alec an over-careful man: but Rose felt that he was right; and, when she said her prayers that night, added a meek pet.i.tion to be kept from yielding to three of the small temptations which beset a rich, pretty, and romantic girl,--extravagance, coquetry, and novel-reading.

CHAPTER XII.

_AT KITTY'S BALL._

Rose had no new gown to wear on this festive occasion, and gave one little sigh of regret as she put on the pale blue silk, refreshed with clouds of _gaze de Chambrey_. But a smile followed, very bright and sweet, as she added the cl.u.s.ters of forget-me-not which Charlie had conjured up through the agency of an old German florist: for one part of her plan _had_ been carried out, and Prince was invited to be her escort, much to his delight; though he wisely made no protestations of any sort, and showed his grat.i.tude by being a model gentleman. This pleased Rose; for the late humiliation and a very sincere desire to atone for it, gave him an air of pensive dignity which was very effective.

Aunt Clara could not go; for a certain new cosmetic, privately used to improve the once fine complexion, which had been her pride till late hours impaired it, had brought out an unsightly eruption, reducing her to the depths of woe, and leaving her no solace for her disappointment but the sight of the elegant velvet dress spread forth upon her bed in melancholy state.

So Aunt Jessie was chaperon, to Rose's great satisfaction, and looked as "pretty as a pink," Archie thought, in her matronly pearl-colored gown, with a dainty trifle of rich lace on her still abundant hair. He was very proud of his little mamma, and as devoted as a lover, "to keep his hand in against Phebe's return," she said laughingly, when he brought her a nosegay of blush-roses to light up her quiet costume.

A happier mother did not live than Mrs. Jessie, as she sat contentedly beside Sister Jane (who graced the frivolous scene in a serious black gown with a diadem of purple asters nodding above her severe brow), both watching their boys with the maternal conviction that no other parent could show such remarkable specimens as these. Each had done her best according to her light; and years of faithful care were now beginning to bear fruit in the promise of goodly men, so dear to the hearts of true mothers.

Mrs. Jessie watched her three tall sons with something like wonder; for Archie was a fine fellow, grave and rather stately, but full of the cordial courtesy and respect we see so little of now-a-days, and which is the sure sign of good home-training. "The cadets," as Will and Geordie called themselves, were there as gorgeous as you please; and the agonies they suffered that night with tight boots and stiff collars no pen can fitly tell. But only to one another did they confide these sufferings, in the rare moments of repose when they could stand on one aching foot with heads comfortably sunken inside the excruciating collars, which rasped their ears and made the lobes thereof a pleasing scarlet. Brief were these moments, however; and the Spartan boys danced on with smiling faces, undaunted by the hidden anguish which preyed upon them "fore and aft," as Will expressed it.