Nor was it true that she had gone to church, as intimated above. The fact was, she had summoned up her energies for an awful step for anyone to take: she had run away from poverty, and hard work, and privation, and discomfort, and wretchedness, in the hope and belief—alas! too rudely to be shaken—that henceforth there was to be perpetual sunshine in her path, and perpetual joy in her heart. We are all of us too ready to fancy that grapes grow on thorns, and Rose was no exception to the general rule. She had never read Wordsworth, and perhaps if she had she would not have understood that grand ode, though the knowledge did painfully come to her in after-life, where he invokes Duty as stern daughter of the voice of God: ‘Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring and reprove; Thou who art victory and law When empty terrors overawe; From vain temptations dost set free And calm’st the weary strife of frail humanity.’ At home for a long time she had been disappointed at her lot. She was getting tired of hard work and humble fare, ignorant of the fact that God gives us what is best for us, and that His wisdom is as omnipotent as His love. She had no companions to guide her aright, and was tired of the awkward admiration of the homely and lubberly lads with whom she came in contact. She had taken to reading trashy novels, which had not merely amused her, but filled her head with nonsense. Greedily she drank in all their poison. Little by little they broke down all the defences of her common-sense, as she read of splendid marriages made by simple village girls, of runaway matches, of wonderful elopements. They taught her how pleasure was the supreme good, how true happiness consisted in having wealth, in riding in a brougham, in being dressed in silks and satins, in wearing diamonds, in going to grand balls; in short, in realizing what at the meeting-house had been pretty plainly denounced as the pleasures of sin for a season.