At length the timid beauties of April were merged into the exuberance of the leaf and flower of May, and Nature was resplendent in the full glory of the springtide. The last day of the month fell upon a Sat.u.r.day, and early in the morning of that day Bee dressed herself to go into town for the mail. Seating herself upon the steps of the piazza to wait for Adele who was to accompany her she feasted her eyes upon the beauty of the orchard whose trees seemed like great pink and white bouquets set in the ground. Suddenly a puff of wind stirred the branches, and sent the petals of the apple blossoms flying in every direction.

"Dear me!" exclaimed the girl springing up from the steps in pretended dismay as a shower of the fragrant blooms deluged her. "Snow in May! I told Adele that it would be Christmas before she was ready. Come out, and see the storm, Aunt Annie."

A lady standing just inside a long French window which opened upon the porch came through it to her niece's side.

"What an idea!" she said in a clear musical voice.

"Get the broom, Bee, and sweep off the steps. I shall be glad when the blossoms are gone. They make such a litter."

"Why, Aunt Annie, glad when the blossoms are gone? You can't mean it.

Just look at those trees! Did you ever see anything so pretty?"

"They are pretty enough, child," returned Mrs. Raymond carelessly.

"There! cease your rhapsodies, and get the broom. When you have seen as many Springs as I have you won't be quite so ecstatic over them."

"I believe that I'll always feel just as I do now," declared Bee as she ran for the broom. "When the trees begin to bud something gets into my being that makes me feel like--like--Oh, like Alexander the Great: that I could conquer the world."

"It's the wine of youth in your blood, Bee." The lady smiled at the girl's enthusiasm. "That's what it is to be young. You are very like your father."

"Am I, auntie?" Beatrice flushed with pleasure.

"Yes. At least you are in regard to your feeling for Nature. He sees beauty in everything; or used to do so. It seems to be a family trait of the Raymonds. I don't notice it so much in Adele; but then she takes after my people."

"Perhaps it is because she is so beautiful herself," remarked Bee meditatively. "I've noticed that people don't prize what they themselves possess."

"Don't say that, Bee. You are far from being homely," spoke Mrs. Raymond graciously, noting a trace of wistfulness in her niece's tone. "Beside, 'Beauty is only skin--'"

"Yes; I know, Aunt Annie. Spare me!" The girl put her hand in laughing protest over her aunt's mouth. "Still, I wouldn't mind having the skin.

I just believe that that saying, and the other: 'Handsome is as handsome does,' were invented by some ugly old thing with a skin as yellow as a pumpkin. Oh, here is Adele at last!"

Mrs. Raymond laughed, and turned toward the door through which her daughter came, her face aglow with pride.

"Beatrice has been ready a long time," she chided, the gentleness of her tone softening the reproof. "You should not have kept her waiting, my daughter, when this is the day she is expecting a letter from her father."

"Don't scold her, auntie," pleaded Bee gazing at her cousin with admiring eyes. "Oh, Adele! how do you make yourself look so pretty?"

Adele smiled, well pleased. She was accustomed to being told of her beauty, but she never wearied of the homage it exacted.

"You look nice too, Bee," she said condescendingly with a glance of approval at Beatrice's white robed figure. "Aren't you going to wear any hat?"

"I am going to carry it until we reach the road." Bee caught up a broad brimmed leghorn from a chair, and held it carelessly by the strings. "I don't like to wear one any more than I have to. I'll beat you to the gate, Adele."

"A race?" Adele drew her brows together in a prim little frown. "Such great girls as we are. Why, we are almost young ladies! It would not be proper."

"Bother propriety!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed her cousin. "There is a whole year before we are sixteen. We don't need to give up running until then. Do we, auntie?"

"No;" answered her aunt indulgently. "Be girls just as long as you can.

You will be young ladies soon enough. I wish Adele would take more exercise."

"Just through the orchard then," cried Adele catching up her skirts daintily. "Here goes! Oh, Bee!"

"What's the matter?" asked Bee, surprised.

"No wonder you could be dressed before I was," exclaimed Adele in shocked tones. "There are three b.u.t.tons of your dress unfastened."

"Are there?" Bee backed up to her unconcernedly. "Do b.u.t.ton them, like a dear. I never was good at closing exercises."

Adele giggled appreciatively.

"Professor Lawrence says that closing exercises should be marked by decorum as well as dispatch," she remarked in didatic accents. "I observe the dispatch, Miss Raymond, but I must say--"

"Oh, hurry up," interrupted Bee impatiently. "What's a b.u.t.ton more or less on such a glorious day as this? Come on, or I shall run a race with my shadow."

"Catch me then." Adele darted away quickly. "If I beat I shall read your letter first."

"Good-bye, dears," called Mrs. Raymond after them. "Don't let her beat you, Bee."

"I won't, auntie," Beatrice paused long enough to say, and then sped after her cousin.

There were ripples of sunshine all tangled over the bowers of apple blooms, and dancing blithely over the mats of blue violets in the gra.s.s.

Gold belted honeybees hummed a song of contentment in every flowery cl.u.s.ter. Gauze-winged dragon flies darted hither and thither, while b.u.t.terflies sailed by on new born wings of bronze, and scarlet and gold.

The wind laughed a gleeful accompaniment to the merry maidens who ran gaily down the path o'ershadowed by the trees. Adele's graceful form was in the lead, but Beatrice was gradually gaining upon her. At length, as they were nearing the edge of the orchard, Bee gave an exultant shout and pa.s.sed her cousin, reaching the gate just ahead of her.

"Weren't you awfully afraid that I'd get to read that letter?" laughed Adele as, flushed and panting, she leaned against the gate. "How fast you do run, Bee! I am all out of breath."

"So am I," admitted Bee. "We will have time to rest for a moment before going on to the office. Take off your hat, and you will soon be cool."

She swung her own back and forth by the strings as she spoke.

"I'm afraid of freckles," sighed her cousin.

"Gracious!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bee, quickly putting her hat on her head. "I had forgotten all about freckles. How can you always remember, Adele?"

"Perhaps if you had to take the care of your skin that I do, you would not forget either."

"But don't you ever get tired of it? I should think that you would want to go bareheaded sometimes."

"I would, Bee; but I like to keep my skin nice too. One can't do both."

"Can't one?" asked Bee thoughtfully. "I should think that the skin would need air and sunshine just like the flowers, and the b.u.t.terflies, and all other pretty growing things."

"Mamma always puts her lillies in the shade, doesn't she?" queried Adele laughing. "It keeps them white, and that's the reason she tells me to keep on my hat. Tan and freckles may be healthful, but they are not pretty. At least she doesn't think so. Do you know the reason that I always give Dolly Madison as my favorite character in history, Bee?"

"No. I have wondered about it. I should think you would prefer Queen Elizabeth, or Joan of Arc, or somebody like them. I like women who do things. Miss Rosa Bonheur, Miss Herschel, or Grace Darling suit me better."

"Well, I like Dolly best because I sympathize with her. When she was a little girl her mother cut holes in her sunbonnet, and tied her hair through them so that she couldn't throw it off. She had a pretty skin too, and her mother didn't want it to get tanned, or sun-burned. I always think of what Dolly had to go through whenever I want to throw off my hat, and it helps me to keep it on. I know just how she felt about that everlasting bonnet. But after a while, you know, she became the mistress of the White House."

Bee laughed outright.

"Is that the reason that you are taking such good care of your complexion?" she asked teasingly. "I never thought it of you, Adele."