"I am glad that it will not be permanent," remarked her father. "Let us say no more about it. It does not look so bad as it might, and the mere fact that you did not bleach it through vanity makes me more tolerant of it. Now, my child, I am going for a walk over the grounds, and would like your company."
"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.