Her last words , called back to her father through her tears as she and her aunt drove down the lane , were , `` I 'll be back , daddy . In three years I 'll be back . Do n't cry , but just look forward to that . '' He had looked forward to it through the three long , lonely years that followed , in all of which he never saw his darling . Half a continent was between them and Mrs. Adair had vetoed vacation visits , under some specious pretense . But every week brought its letter from Sara . Old Man Shaw had every one of them , tied up with one of her old blue hair ribbons , and kept in her mother 's little rose-wood work-box in the parlour . He spent every Sunday afternoon re-reading them , with her photograph before him . He lived alone , refusing to be pestered with kind help , but he kept the house in beautiful order . `` A better housekeeper than farmer , '' said White Sands people . He would have nothing altered . When Sara came back she was not to be hurt by changes . It never occurred to him that she might be changed herself . And now those three interminable years were gone , and Sara was coming home . She wrote him nothing of her aunt 's pleadings and reproaches and ready , futile tears ; she wrote only that she would graduate in June and start for home a week later . Thenceforth Old Man Shaw went about in a state of beatitude , making ready for her homecoming . As he sat on the bench in the sunshine , with the blue sea sparkling and crinkling down at the foot of the green slope , he reflected with satisfaction that all was in perfect order . There was nothing left to do save count the hours until that beautiful , longed-for day after to-morrow . He gave himself over to a reverie , as sweet as a day-dream in a haunted valley . The red roses were out in bloom .
Sara had always loved those red roses -- they were as vivid XXXXX herself , with all her own fullness of life and joy of living .
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