the bees humming on their way, and take her last look at the place.
As well as she knew she was going to leave it, she knew she should
return to it no more. It was not only that her age made it
improbable,--for she had no doubt of Billy's ability to run over a dozen
times yet; it was some inward certainty that told her she was going for
good. It pleased her in every way. She liked new peoples and untried
lands.

Yet, as she sat there, old faces crowded upon her, and they were
pleasant to behold. Her husband was not there. With his death he seemed
to have withdrawn into a remote place where no summons could reach him,
even if she wished to call. And she had never wished it. But these were
faces scarcely remembered in her daytime mood, very clear in the
sunlight and with no possibility of mistake. One was like her own, only
where hers sparkled with irony and discontent, this was softer and more
sweet. "Why," said Madam Fulton aloud, "mother!" It gave her no
surprise. Nothing seemed disturbing in this calm world, where things
were throbbing warmly and, she knew at last, for the general good. Then
she reflected that this was probably the effect of happiness because she
was going to marry Billy Stark. It must be love, she thought, instead of
their gay friendship. Youth and age were perhaps not so unlike after
all, when one shut one's eyes and sat in the garden in the sun.

Billy Stark faded out of her musings, and the forgotten faces came the
more clearly, all smiling, all bearing a mysterious benediction. She
found herself recalling old memories with them, doings that had been
once of great importance, but of later years had been packed into the
rubbish hole of childish things. There was the summer day when she had
lost the stolen prism from the parlor lamp, and mother had looked at her
gravely for a moment and then smiled, seeing that tears were coming, and
said it was no matter. Mother had never known that the tears were all
for the loss of the red and blue lights in the prism, and somehow her
kindness had not mattered then, because it could not bring the colors
back. But now it seemed to the old lady in the garden that mother had
been very kind indeed. "Don't mind it," the sweet face seemed to be
saying. "Don't mind anything." And as she listened, she was restored to
the pleasant usages of some morning land where one could be reassured in
a blest authority that made it so.

It seemed a long time that she sat there in t