Rose Elderkin was a year younger than the French stranger, and a marvellously fair type of New England girl-beauty: light brown hair in unwieldy masses; skin wonderfully clear and transparent, and that flushed at a rebuke, or a run down the village street, till her cheeks blazed with scarlet; a lip delicately thin, but blood-red, and exquisitely cut; a great hazel eye, that in her moments of glee, or any occasional excitement, fairly danced and sparkled with a kind of insane merriment, and at other times took on a demure and pensive look, which to future wooers might possibly prove the more dangerous of the two. The features named make up a captivating girlish beauty, but one which, under a New England atmosphere, is rarely carried forward into womanhood. The lips grow pinched and bloodless; the skin blanched against all proof of blushes; the eyes sunken, and the blithe sparkle that was so full of infectious joy is lost forever in that exhausting blaze of girlhood. But we make no prophecy in regard to the future of our little friend Rose. Adèle thinks her very charming; Reuben is disposed to rank her--whatever Phil may think or say--far above Suke Boody. And in his reading of the delightful "Children of the Abbey," which he has stolen, (by favor of Phil, who owns the book,) he has thought of Rose when Amanda first appeared; and when the divine Amanda is in tears, he has thought of Rose; and when Amanda smiles, with Mortimer kneeling at her feet, he has still thought of Rose.
These four, Adèle, Phil, Rose, and Reuben are fellow-attendants at the school of the excellent Miss Betsey Onthank. The schoolhouse itself is a modest one, and stands upon a cross-road leading from the main street of the village, and is upon the side of the little brook which courses through the valley lying to the westward. A half-dozen or more of sugar-maples stand near it, and throw over it a grateful shade in August. In March these trees are exposed to a series of tappings on the part of the more mechanically inclined of the pupils,--Phil Elderkin being chiefest,--and gimlets, quills, and dinner-pails are brought into requisition with prodigious results. In the heats of summer, and when the brook is low, adventurous ones, of whom Reuben is chiefest, undertake to dam its current; and it being traditional in the school that one day a strange fisherman once took out two trout, half as long as Miss Onthank's ruler, from under the bridge by which the high road crosses the brook, Reuben plies every artifice, whether of bent pins, or hooks purchased from the Tew partners, (unknown to Aunt Eliza, who is prejudiced against fish-hooks as dangerous,) to catch a third; and finding other resources vain, he punches two or three holes through the bottom of his little dinner-pail, to make a scoop-net of it, and manfully wades under the bridge to explore all the hollows of that unknown region. While in this precarious position, he is reported by some timid child to the mistress, who straightway sallies out, ferule in hand and cap-strings flying, and orders him to land; which Reuben, taking warning by the threatening tone of the old lady, refuses, unless she promises not to flog him; and the kind-hearted mistress, fearing too long exposure of the lad to the chilly water, gives the promise. But with the tell-tale pail dangling at his belt, he does not escape so easily the inquisitive Aunt Eliza.