"Am I, auntie?" Beatrice flushed with pleasure.

"Yes. At least you are in regard to your feeling for Nature. He sees
beauty in everything; or used to do so. It seems to be a family trait of
the Raymonds. I don't notice it so much in Adele; but then she takes
after my people."

"Perhaps it is because she is so beautiful herself," remarked Bee
meditatively. "I've noticed that people don't prize what they themselves
possess."

"Don't say that, Bee. You are far from being homely," spoke Mrs. Raymond
graciously, noting a trace of wistfulness in her niece's tone. "Beside,
'Beauty is only skin--'"

"Yes; I know, Aunt Annie. Spare me!" The girl put her hand in laughing
protest over her aunt's mouth. "Still, I wouldn't mind having the skin.
I just believe that that saying, and the other: 'Handsome is as handsome
does,' were invented by some ugly old thing with a skin as yellow as a
pumpkin. Oh, here is Adele at last!"

Mrs. Raymond laughed, and turned toward the door through which her
daughter came, her face aglow with pride.

"Beatrice has been ready a long time," she chided, the gentleness of her
tone softening the reproof. "You should not have kept her waiting, my
daughter, when this is the day she is expecting a letter from her
father."

"Don't scold her, auntie," pleaded Bee gazing at her cousin with
admiring eyes. "Oh, Adele! how do you make yourself look so pretty?"

Adele smiled, well pleased. She was accustomed to being told of her
beauty, but she never wearied of the homage it exacted.

"You look nice too, Bee," she said condescendingly with a glance of
approval at Beatrice's white robed figure. "Aren't you going to wear any
hat?"

"I am going to carry it until we reach the road." Bee caught up a broad
brimmed leghorn from a chair, and held it carelessly by the strings. "I
don't like to wear one any more than I have to. I'll beat you to the
gate, Adele."

"A race?" Adele drew her brows together in a prim little frown. "Such
great girls as we are. Why, we are almost young ladies! It would not be
proper."

"Bother propriety!" ejaculated her cousin. "There is a whole year before
we are sixteen. We don't need to give up running until then. Do we,
auntie?"

"No;" answered her aunt indulgently. "Be girls just as long as you can.
You will be young ladies soon enough. I wish Adele would take more
exercise."

"Just through the orchard then," cried Adele catching up her skirts
daintily. "Here goes! Oh, Bee!"