re of those roses,"
a voice said.

Philip threw up his head as if he had been shot; he turned sharply with
a great thrill, for he thought his mother spoke to him. Perhaps it was
only the Southern inflection so long unheard, perhaps the sunlight that
shone in his eyes dazzled him, but, as he stared, the white figure
before him seemed to him to look exactly as his mother had looked long
ago. Stumbling over his words, he caught at the first that came.

"I--I think it's all right," he said.

The girl smiled frankly, yet with a dignity in her puzzled air. "I'm
afraid I shall have to be right decided," she said. "These roses are
private property and I mustn't let you have them."

"Oh!" Philip dropped the great bunch of gorgeous color guiltily by his
side, but still held tightly the prickly mass of stems, knowing his
right, yet half wondering if he could have made a mistake. He stammered:

"I thought--to whom do they belong?"

"They belong to my cousin, Mr. Philip Fairfield Beckwith"--the sound of
his own name was pleasant as the falling voice strayed through it. "He
is coming home in a few days, so I want them to look their prettiest for
him--for his first sight of them. I take care of this rose garden," she
said, and laid a motherly hand on the nearest flower. Then she smiled.
"It doesn't seem right hospitable to stop you, but if you will come over
to Westerly, to our house, father will be glad to see you, and I will
certainly give you all the flowers you want." The sweet and masterful
apparition looked with a gracious certainty of obedience straight into
Philip's bewildered eyes.

[Illustration: "I reckon I shall have to ask you not pick any more of
those roses," a voice said.]

"The boy Shelby!" Many a time in the months after Philip Beckwith
smiled to himself reminiscently, tenderly, as he thought of "the boy
Shelby" whom he had read into John Fairfield's letter; "the boy Shelby"
who was twenty-two years old and the only child; "the boy Shelby" whom
he had blamed with such easy severity for idling at Fairfield; "the boy
Shelby" who was no boy at all, but this white flower of girlhood,
called--after the quaint and reasonable Southern way--as a boy is
called, by the surname of her mother's people.

Toward Westerly, out of the garden of the old time, out of the dimness
of a forgotten past, the two took their radiant youth and the brightness
of to-day. But a breeze blew across the tangle of weeds and flowers as
the