Well I knew what touched his pride, and struck that little revealing spark from his deliberate pen:  Josephine Bowen was rich, and he only a poor lawyer in a country-town:  he felt it even in this first flush of love, and to that feeling I must answer when I wrote him,—­not merely to the announcement, and the delight, and the man’s pride.  So I answered his letter at once, and he answered mine in person.  I had nothing to say to him, when I saw him; it was enough to see how perfectly happy and contented he was,—­how the proud, restless eyes, that had always looked a challenge to all the world, were now tranquil to their depths.  Nothing had interfered with his passion.  Mrs. Bowen liked him always, Mr. Bowen liked him now; nobody had objected, it had not occurred to anybody to object; money had not been mentioned any more than it would have been in Arcadia.  Strange to say, the good, simple woman, and the good, shrewd man had both divined Frank’s peculiar sensitiveness, and respected it.

There was no period fixed for the engagement, it was indefinite as yet, and the winter, with all its excitements of South and North, passed by at length, and the first of April the Bowens moved out to Ridgefield.  It was earlier than usual; but the city was crazed with excitement, and Mr. Bowen was tried and worn; he wanted quiet.  Then I saw a great deal of Josephine, and in spite of Laura, and her still restless objections to the child’s childish, laughing, inconsequent manner, I grew into liking her:  not that there seemed any great depth to her; she was not specially intellectual, or witty, or studious, or practical; she did not try to be anything:  perhaps that was her charm to me.  I had seen so many women laboring at themselves to be something, that one who was content to live without thinking about it was a real phenomenon to me.  Nothing bores me (though I be stoned for the confession, I must make it!) more than a woman who is bent on improving her mind, or forming her manners, or moulding her character, or watching her motives, with that deadly-lively conscientiousness that makes so many good people disagreeable.  Why can’t they consider the lilies, which grow by receiving sun and air and dew from God, and not hopping about over the lots to find the warmest corner or the wettest hollow, to see how much bigger and brighter they can grow?  It was real rest to me to have this tiny, bright creature come in to me every day during Frank’s office-hours as unintentionally as a yellow butterfly would come in at the window.  Sometimes she strayed to the kitchen-porch, and, resting her elbows on the window-sill and her chin on both palms, looked at me with wondering eyes while I made bread or cake; sometimes she came by the long parlor-window, and sat down on a brioche at my feet while I sewed, talking in her direct, unconsidered way, so fresh, and withal so good and pure, I came to thinking the day very dull that did not bring “Kitten” to see me.