“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 coarse 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
nearby.
Another long silence, broken only by an occasional excited bounce
from Jamie when the sociable cuttlefish 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 Mama, 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 spied 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? Oh, 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