They had reached the boats. The Bertrams seated themselves in their own. Miss Meadowsweet advised them not to put up the sail, but thought if she kept within easy distance, they might manage the oars. Loftus and Mabel rowed. Kate sat in the stern and steered. Beatrice Meadowsweet applauded, and rowed her own boat with skill. She reached the shore before them, and called out in her clear voice: "I sha'n't wait now. I shall see you all at seven this evening." "Reply for us, Kate," whispered Loftus. "Reply for us all, quickly." "Yes--we'll come," called Catherine across the water. Beatrice smiled. Her smile was of the sunniest. It flashed back a look of almost love at Catherine. Then she turned to walk up the steep steps which led from the quay to the little High Street. "We ought not to go," instantly began Catherine. Loftus stopped rowing, bent forward and put his hand across her mouth. "Not another word," he said. "I'll undertake to conciliate the mother, and I think she can trust to my ideas of good-breeding." Meanwhile Beatrice walked quickly home. The Meadowsweets lived at the far end of the town in a large gray stone house. The house stood back a little from the road, and a great elm tree threw its protecting shade over the porch and upper windows. It was, however, an ordinary house in a street, and looked a little old-fashioned and a little gloomy until you stepped into the drawing-room, which was furnished certainly with no pretension to modern taste or art, but opened with French windows into a glorious, big, old-world garden. The house was known by the name of the Gray House, and the old garden as the Gray Garden, but the garden at least bore no resemblance to its neutral-tinted name. It had green alleys, and sheltering trees, and a great expanse of smoothly kept lawn. It possessed flower-beds and flower borders innumerable. There was more than one bower composed entirely of rose-trees, and there were very long hedges of sweet briar and Scotch roses.