to answer it any more. I called on Miss Melody,
but she had gone to town, and that hopeless Mrs. Whipp babbled about
your attentions. I don't want you to break the apple blossoms anyway."

"All right, honey, I won't. They're nearly gone; but I shall always love
apple blossoms. They're fragrant like her spirit, pink and white like
her, wholesome like her, modest like her. You see she has always been
kept in the background. No one has taken the bloom from her freshness.
She has had blows, has come in contact with some of the world's mud, but
it washed away and disappeared under her own purity."

Mrs. Barry looked into the speaker's flashing eyes. "My poor boy," she
said at last. "I wonder whether you're crazy or whether you're right.
What am I going to do!"

"Of course I don't know what you're going to do," he returned, his lips
and voice suddenly serious. "It depends largely upon whether you want
my future wife to hand out ice-cream cones to the trippers at
Keefeport."

"What do you mean now?" Mrs. Barry asked it severely.

"Why, the little girl is going to try to earn her living, of course, and
she will be slow to leave Miss Upton's protection, for she has proved,
that a girl's beauty may be her worst enemy. Miss Upton will do a bigger
business than ever, that is easily prophesied. The hilarious, rowdy
parties that come over in motor-boats will pass the word along that
there is something worth seeing at Upton's this year. They will crack
their jokes, and Miss Melody will be loyal to her employer. She won't
want to discourage trade. They will make longer visits than usual and
the phonograph will work overtime."

Mrs. Barry had risen slowly during this harangue and now looked down
upon her son with haughty, displeased eyes.

"I shall speak to Miss Upton," she said.

"I advise you not to," returned Ben dryly, crossing one leg over the
other and embracing his knee. "I don't think you are in any position to
dictate. I left a merry party down there just now. Mrs. Whipp cracking
the air with chuckles, Mehitable rocking the store with her activities,
Miss Melody enveloped in a gigantic apron and with a large smudge across
her cheek, having the time of her life unpacking boxes. I was sorry to
bereave them of Pete, but it won't take them long now to be ready for
business."

Mrs. Barry did not speak. A catbird sang in an apple tree, a call to
vespers.

"This won't do for me," said Ben, suddenly rising. "I'll go up and