ur company."

Beatrice ran joyfully for her hat.

"He's giving me a chance," she whispered, scarcely able to control her
emotion. "I am glad, glad! I won't think a thing about Adele. I won't
mind my looks a bit, but just be so good that maybe, maybe--" She did
not finish her sentence, but squeezed her hands together rapturously.

"I have been too busy since my return to go over the place," said the
naturalist as they set forth. "Beginning with this morning we will go
over a portion of it daily until the entire place has been inspected.
Will it be too much of a walk for you to take the gardens and the
orchard today?"

"Why, no;" answered Bee quickly. "I am used to walking, father. We
always walked into town from Uncle Henry's, and to school too. Aunt
Annie thought it was good for us. Then I run about the fields quite a
little."

"Annie has followed my idea exactly," he commented approvingly. "There
is nothing so conducive to good health as outdoor exercise. Ah! here we
are at the gardens. They have been well kept; but, but--" He glanced
around the mass of blossom and vines knitting his brows in perplexity.
"The rose?" he said. "The one your mother planted. Can this be it?"

He stopped beside a large moss rose bush as he spoke. It was of sturdy
growth, completely covered with buds and blossoms of satiny white deeply
embowered in a soft greenery of moss.

"Yes; this is it, father," spoke Beatrice softly. "Uncle Henry had it
tended carefully because he knew that you would wish it. Is it not
beautiful? I think I love it best of all the roses." She bent over a
cluster to inhale its fragrance as she finished speaking.

"It has grown," he said musingly. "It was so small. I should not have
known it. I did not think to find so large a bush."

"You have been gone for years," she reminded him. "Have you forgotten,
father? A small plant would have time to become a large shrub."

"True;" he said. "True." He broke a half blown bud from the bush and
held it for a moment against his lips. "It was her favorite rose," he
said, putting it in the buttonhole of his coat.

The gravity of his face softened into tenderness, and his eyes were
misty as he leaned over the rose bush. Bee gazed at him longingly. The
impulse of her heart was to go to him, slip her hand in his, or to
nestle against him caressingly. Had she done so father and daughter must
have drawn very close to each other, but something--perhaps delicacy,
perhaps shynes