ted herself on a divan. Why couldn't her blood
run as fast as his? Why must she be so cold and deliberate at a crucial
time? "Going to be friends!" What an utterly inadequate speech!

"I want to talk to you about that," rejoined his mother. "Will you
please go into my study and bring me a letter you'll find on the table?"

Without a word, and still with the dissatisfied line in his forehead,
the young man rose and moved away toward the closed door of the
sanctum.

He opened it and there was a moment of dead silence. Mrs. Barry could
visualize Geraldine as she looked standing there, radiantly expectant,
mischievously blissful. The door slammed, and all was silence.

The mother laughed softly over the bit of sewing she had picked up. For
a minute she could not see very plainly, but she wiped her eyes and it
passed.

CHAPTER XVI

Apple Blossoms

Of course Ben wanted to be married at once, and whatever he wanted
Geraldine wanted, but Mrs. Barry overruled this.

"I hope you will go back to school, Ben, and get your sheepskin," she
said. "I want you to live in the city, too, and leave Geraldine with me.
I would like to have some happiness with a daughter before she is
engrossed in being your wife. Wait for your wedding until the orchard
blooms again."

Ecstatic as Ben was, he could see sense in this; but vacation came first
and Geraldine was a belle at Keefeport that summer. Her beauty
blossomed, and all the repressed vivacity of her nature came to the
surface. Her room at Rockcrest commanded the ocean, and every night
before she slept she knelt before her window and gave thanks for a
happiness which seemed as illimitable as the waters rolling to the
horizon. She yachted, and danced, and canoed, and flew, all that
summer. She gained the hearts of the women by her unspoiled modesty and
consideration, while Ben was the envy of every bachelor at the resort.
Nor did Geraldine forget Miss Upton. Every few days she called at the
shop, and the two women there were never tired of admiring and
exclaiming over the charming costumes in which Mrs. Barry dressed her
child, and many a gift the girl brought to them, never forgetting what
she owed to her good fairy.

Pete was a happy general utility man and Miss Upton borrowed him at
times; but he liked best working on the yacht, where he was never
through polishing and cleaning, keeping it spick and span. He was given
a blue suit and a yachting cap and rolled around the