“Father!” she cried,—­“you dear!  Where did you come from?”

It was some time before any connected conversation was possible.

“Why, father, how brown you are!”

“And Rosalind, how tall you are, and how rosy!  To think I have lost six months of your life!”

“And I want to tell you everything just in one minute.  What shall I do?” Rosalind said, laughing, as she held him fast.

It did indeed seem a task of alarming proportions to tell all there was to tell; Rosalind felt a little impatient at having to share her father with her grandmother that evening.  And there was almost as much to hear,—­of Cousin Louis, whose health was now restored, but who was to spend some months in England, of their adventures, and the sights they had seen.

“We shall want something to talk about when we get home,” she was reminded.

It would have been plain to the least observant that Patterson Whittredge’s life was bound up with that of this little daughter.  As he talked to his mother, his eyes rested fondly on Rosalind, and every subject led back to her at last.

Rosalind, looking from her father to her grandmother, noted how much alike were their dark eyes, but here the resemblance ended.  Mrs. Whittredge’s oldest son, although he might possess something of her strong will, had nothing of her haughty reserve.  His manner, in spite of the preoccupation of the student, was one of winning cordiality.  Older and graver than Allan, there was yet a strong likeness between the brothers.

Rosalind could not rest until she had taken her father to all the historic spots, as she merrily called them,—­Red Hill, the Gilpin place, the cemetery, and the magician’s shop, of course.

“Friendship has been good for you, little girl,” he said, as they set out far a walk next day.

“I used to think that stories were better than real things, father, but it isn’t so in Friendship.  At first I was—­oh, so lonely; I thought I never could be the least bit happy without you and Cousin Louis; but the magician and the Forest helped me, and since then I have had a beautiful time.  I love Friendship.  I almost wish we could live here.”

“And desert Cousin Louis and the university?”

“No, I suppose not; but we can come back in the summer, can’t we?  And, oh, father dear, you’ll join the Arden Foresters, won’t you?”

As they walked up the winding road at the cemetery, Mr. Whittredge heard something of those puzzles which had so disturbed Rosalind’s first weeks in Friendship, beginning with the story of the rose.

“It’s funny, father, but I hadn’t thought till then that grown people had quarrels.  I might have known it from the story of the Forest; I remembered that afterward, and how things all came right.”

“Poor little girl!  You should have been warned; and yet in spite of it you have learned that realities are better than dreams.”