Homespun Tales | Page 6

tones: "Get up and eat your breakfast, Rufus! The
boys will be picking the side jams today, and I'm going down to work
on the logs. If you come along, bring your own pick-pole and peavey."
Then, going to the kitchen pantry, he collected, from the various
shelves, a pitcher of milk, a loaf of bread, half an apple pie, and a bowl
of blueberries, and, with the easy methods of a household unswayed by
feminine rule, moved toward a seat under an apple tree and took his
morning meal in great apparent content. Having finished, and washed
his dishes with much more thoroughness than is common to
unsuperintended man, and having given Rufus the second call to
breakfast with the vigor and acrimony that usually mark that unpleasant
performance, he strode to a high point on the riverbank and, shading his

eyes with his hand, gazed steadily downstream.
Patches of green fodder and blossoming potatoes melted into soft fields
that had been lately mown, and there were glimpses of tasseling corn
rising high to catch the sun. Far, far down on the opposite bank of the
river was the hint of a brown roof, and the tip of a chimney that sent a
slender wisp of smoke into the clear air. Beyond this, and farther back
from the water, the trees apparently hid a cluster of other chimneys, for
thin spirals of smoke ascended here and there. The little brown roof
could never have revealed itself to any but a lover's eye; and that
discerned something even smaller, something like a pinkish speck, that
moved hither and thither on a piece of greensward that sloped to the
waterside.
"She's up!" Stephen exclaimed under his breath, his eyes shining, his
lips smiling. His voice had a note of hushed exaltation about it, as if
"she," whoever she might be, had, in condescending to rise, conferred a
priceless boon upon a waiting universe. If she were indeed "up" (so his
tone implied), then the day, somewhat falsely heralded by the sunrise,
had really begun, and the human race might pursue its appointed tasks,
inspired and uplifted by the consciousness of her existence. It might
properly be grateful for the fact of her birth; that she had grown to
woman's estate; and, above all, that, in common with the sun, the lark,
the morning-glory, and other beautiful things of the early day, she was
up and about her lovely, cheery, heart-warming business.
The handful of chimneys and the smoke-spirals rising here and there
among the trees on the river-bank belonged to what was known as the
Brier Neighborhood. There were only a few houses in all, scattered
along a side road leading from the river up to Liberty Center. There
were no great signs of thrift or prosperity, but the Wiley cottage, the
only one near the water, was neat and well cared for, and Nature had
done her best to conceal man's indolence, poverty, or neglect.
Bushes of sweetbrier grew in fragrant little forests as tall as the fences.
Clumps of wild roses sprang up at every turn, and over all the stone
walls, as well as on every heap of rocks by the wayside, prickly
blackberry vines ran and clambered and clung, yielding fruit and thorns

impartially to the neighborhood children.
The pinkish speck that Stephen Waterman had spied from his side of
the river was Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood on the Edgewood
side. As there was another of her name on Brigadier Hill, the
Edgewood minister called one of them the climbing Rose and the other
the brier Rose, or sometimes Rose of the river. She was well named,
the pinkish speck. She had not only some of the sweetest attributes of
the wild rose, but the parallel might have been extended as far as the
thorns, for she had wounded her scores,--hearts, be it understood, not
hands. The wounding was, 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,