"You frightened everybody almost to death, jumping into the river," chided
Rose.
Stephen laughed. "They thought I was a fool to save a fool, I suppose."
"Perhaps not as bad as that, but it did seem reckless."
"I know; and the boy, no doubt, would be better off dead; but so should I be,
if I could have let him die."
Rose regarded this strange point of view for a moment, and then silently
acquiesced in it. She was constantly doing this, and she often felt that her
mental horizon broadened in the act; but she could not be sure that Stephen
grew any dearer to her because of his moral altitudes.
"Besides," Stephen argued, "I happened to be nearest to the river, and it was
my job."
"How do you always happen to be nearest to the people in trouble, and why is
it always your 'job'?"
"If there are any rewards for good conduct being distributed, I'm right in
line with my hand stretched out," Stephen replied, with meaning in his voice.
Rose blushed under her flowery hat as he led the way to a bench under a
sycamore tree that overhung the water.
She had almost convinced herself that she was as much in love with Stephen
Waterman as it was in her nature to be with anybody.
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