Miss Farrel imagined Rose in a brilliant house-party at Wiltmere, Mrs.Wilton's and Miss Pamela's country home; whereas in reality she was roaming about the fields and woods with an old bull-terrier for guard and companion.

Rose generally carried a book on these occasions, and generally not a modern book.

Her governess had a terror of modern books, especially of novels.

She had looked into a few and shuddered.
Rose's taste in literature was almost Elizabethan.

She was not allowed, of course, to glance at early English novels, which her governess classed with late English and American in point of morality, but no poetry except Byron was prohibited.
Rose loved to sit under a tree with the dog in a white coil beside her, and hold her book open on her lap and read a word now and then, and amuse herself with fancies the rest of the time.