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 deck the jolliest of jolly little tars. When autumn came, Ben Barry took rooms in the city, coming to Keefe for the week-ends. Geraldine, who had had the usual school-girl fragments of music and languages, studied hard, and Mrs. Barry took her to town for one month instead of the three which she usually spent there. It was best not to divert Ben too much. So the winter wore away, and the snow melted and the crocuses peeped up again. The robins returned, and Ben understood at last why their insistent, joyous cry was always of _Geraldine, Geraldine, Geraldine_! The orchard was under solicitous surveillance this spring, and though it takes the watched pot so long to boil, at last the rosy clouds drifting in the sky seemed to catch in the apple boughs and rest there, and then the wedding day was set.