"Rose wants me to leave it at Kitty Van's when I go. I forgot to bring her book from mamma; 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 espied 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.
"This man? O 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."