In one corner of the garden, which was protected on the north and west by a high stone wall, where the soil was warm, loamy, and well drained, he made a little rose garden. He bought treatises on the flower, and when he heard of or saw a variety that was particularly fine he added it to his collection. "Webb is marked with my love of roses," his mother often said, with her low, pleased laugh. Amy had observed that even in busiest times he often visited his rose garden as if it contained pets that were never forgotten. He once laughingly remarked that he "gave receptions there only by special invitation," and so she had never seen the spot except from a distance. On the third morning after her birthday Amy came down very early. The bird symphony had penetrated her open windows with such a jubilant resonance that she had been awakened almost with the dawn. The air was so cool and exhilarating, and there was such a wealth of dewy beauty on every side, that she yielded to the impulse to go out and enjoy the most delightful hour of the day. To her surprise, she saw Webb going down the path leading to the garden. "What's on your conscience," she cried, "that you can't sleep?" "What's on yours?" he retorted. "The shame of leaving so many mornings like this unseen and not enjoyed. I mean to repent and mend my ways from this time forth; that is, if I wake up. May I go with you?" "What a droll question!" he replied, in laughing invitation. "Well, I did not know," she said, joining him, "but that you were going to visit that _sanctum sanctorum_ of yours." "I am. Your virtue of early rising is about to be rewarded. You know when some great personage is to be specially honored, he is given the freedom of a city or library, etc. I shall now give you the freedom of my rose garden for the rest of the summer, and from this time till frost you can always find roses for your belt. I meant to do this on your birthday, but the buds were not sufficiently forward this backward season." "I'm not a great personage." "No, thanks, you're not. You are only our Amy." "I'm content. Oh, Webb, what miracles have you been working here?" she exclaimed, as she passed through some screening shrubbery, and looked upon a plot given up wholly to roses, many of which were open, more in the phase of exquisite buds, while the majority were still closely wrapped in their green calyxes.