Page:Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903).djvu/277

Rh out bewailing the fact that her lot was cast in Riverboro, where her pretty white shoulders could never be seen.)

"That would be fun, for a while anyway," Emma Jane remarked. "But would n't that be pleasure more than joy? Oh, I 've got an idea!"

"Don't shriek so!" said the startled Huldah. "I thought it was a mouse."

"I don't have them very often," apologized Emma Jane,—"ideas, I mean; this one shook me like a stroke of lightning. Rebecca, could n't it be success?"

"That 's good," mused Rebecca; "I can see that success would be a joy, but it doesn't seem to me like a rose, somehow. I was wondering if it could be love?"

"I wish we could have a peep at the book! It must be perfectly elergant!" said Emma Jane. "But now you say it is love, I think that 's the best guess yet."

All day long the four words haunted and possessed Rebecca; she said them over to herself continually. Even the prosaic Emma Jane was affected by them, for in the evening she said, "I don't expect you to believe it, but I have another idea, that 's two in one day; I had it while I was putting cologne on your head. The rose of joy might be helpfulness."

"If it is, then it is always blooming in your dear