“I was standing on one foot wondering how quick I could get out,” Rose said, relating it all to Miss Silence, on her return. “But when she spoke that way I just thought that if I were old and sick I’d be glad to have somebody come in; and I sat down and racked my brain to tell everything I could think of. She seemed real cheered up when I came away, and I promised her I’d come again.” “I thought you never wanted to go where there were sick people,” and Silence Blossom’s eyes twinkled. “Well, it wasn’t so bad as I thought it was going to be, though her hands are kind of skinny. And I don’t think I feel quite as I did about sick folks now. Besides, it must be dreadful to lie in bed day after day, and if I can make a little of the time pass, why I’m glad to.” “There is where the gladness comes in,” said Mrs. Patience. “It is making the hours of suffering a little brighter, a little easier. And now you have learned this I think you will never forget it.” “And I also remember that I promised to come down to Helen Green’s to get out my Latin with her,” and gathering an armful of books Rose hurried away. “I am glad that Rose went in to see Aunt Polly; she is such a bit of sunshine that she could not help but do her good. Besides, she has always had such a morbid dread of a sick room,” Silence remarked as she watched her away. “I am glad, too,” agreed Mrs. Blossom, “for Rose can gain as well as give. Of course I would not want her to go where there was any danger, but her exuberant young nature will be made the deeper and richer for being stirred and lifted out of itself.” So among the threads of interest running from the Blossom home Rose knit her threads. The people of Farmdale became her friends, and because they were her friends she loved them, and so it was not strange that she won love in return. With the Fifields her relations through the years continued of the friendliest. On her part the painfulness of being falsely accused had faded away; and on their part the fact that it had been an unjust charge had not only made them one and all feel that they owed her something in return, but had awakened an interest in her that otherwise they might never have felt. Miss Eudora regarded her in the light of a romance; Miss Jane Fifield commended the fact that she was neither vain, nor, as she was pleased to put it, “silly”; while Mr. Nathan, in his pride at Rose’s persistence, and the quality he called her “grit,” went so far as to freshen up the languages of his college days, that he might the more help her.