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chapter iii rose hartswick since rose hartswick had come back from her three years at the seminary, the life of the whole valley somehow had been changed. In the old days she had been simply one of the valley girls, a freckled, sunny-faced tomboy, the leader in every prank and frolic, but she had returned a full-blown woman, so changed that her neighbours hardly dared to speak to her. The little brown chrysalis had turned suddenly into a magnificent butterfly. Then all in a moment their surprise and apprehension vanished, and they awoke to a new delight. The change was all in the outward. The Squire’s daughter was still one of them; she was the same joyous, unspoiled country girl as when she had gone away, and she was glad to get back, glad all through and through; for the hills were home, and she had been homesick, she averred, every moment of her stay. Her joyousness had overflowed until the whole valley had shared it, and the young fellows had lost their heads like dandelions on a lawn. But Rose was not a girl for lovers. There was about her no slightest trace of sentimentality. She had been fortunate in inheriting the best traits of both her father and her mother. From the old Squire had come her active, practical bent, her self-reliance, and her instant readiness of resource, and from her mother, her tender heart and her sunny, laughing soul. She was a girl with enthusiasms, spontaneous the house of the black ring { 34 } and magnetic; a girl who helped her mother because she liked to do it; a girl who was busy all day and who had no time for lovers. The anxious swains who sighed and stammered filled her with glee. They seemed to her inexpressibly funny, and they aroused in her instantly a desire to make them sweat, to torment and startle and embarrass them until they were at their wits’ end. They were ludicrously in awe of her; never for a moment were they sure of her next move.When they began to grow serious she would laugh until they would blush like girls and grow confused and even angry. Then, before they could collect themselves or expostulate, she would be off on another tack, and they could only wonder if all girls were like that. One saw her oftenest in the afternoon, rattling helter-skelter by on a long-geared mustang which had been her chief crony since she was a girl of twelve. She was no timid rider. It was a sight to thrill one to see her plunge down a mountain road, or to have her sweep in mad career full upon one around a sudden bend. A cheery hail, a sunny ripple of laughter that made one feel for an hour afterwards that the world was good, a clatter of hoofs, and she was gone. Few there were, young or old, who would not turn at the sight, and follow the trim figure, rising and falling in perfect harmony with her mount, until it faded in the distance. “Mercy on us!” they would chuckle, “that girl will break her neck galloping in that crazy way.” But they would smile softly, and the day somehow would seem brighter. It became a saying in the valley that if one wished to see Rose, the surest way was to sit beside the road for a few days anywhere within twenty miles of Hartswick Hall. This love of horses and of the out-of-doors had come clearly from her father, and he delighted in it. There was not one of all his trotters, not even the vicious bay stallion,but what he allowed her to drive alone whenever she wished. Though she had never driven in a public race, it was the old man’s boast that there was no jockey in the region that he would sooner trust in a critical moment. She knew horses almost by instinct. She loved to break wild colts and vicious balkers and halterpullers . It was a joy to see her in battle with a stubborn beast. One who knows only the type of female who drops the reins and screams when the horse begins to back, knows little of what is possible. She was slight of figure, but she was marvellously strong in her shoulders and arms. And besides this she feared nothing in the shape of a horse. Never once in...

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