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 lifelike that I feel as if I should really meet them somewhere.""I hope not!" ejaculated the doctor, shutting the book quickly, as if to keep the objectionable beings from escaping.
Rose laughed, but persisted in her defense, 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 thattry 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 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 chooseonly 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 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 overcareful man, but Rose felt that he was right, and when she said her prayers that night, added a meek petition to be kept from yielding to three of the small temptations which beset a rich, pretty, and romantic girlextravagance, coquetry, and novel reading.
