It was an event, indeed, for one of the Baldwins to go away by the river boat. The Water Wagtail was one of the finest of the fleet plying up and down the Nessing River, and Mr. Baldwin had obtained for Beth one of the staterooms for the trip.
The county paper, which ran a page of Hudsonvale news (“in spite of Mary Devine,” Mr. Baldwin said), had printed a note of Beth’s proposed departure for school, and the date. Was that how Larry knew? For when Beth went down to the dock and aboard the Water Wagtail, the steward had just taken a box of cut flowers to her stateroom.
“I declare for’t, Missy,” said the shining-faced negro, “yo’ friend suttenly has sent yo’ a heap o’ posies.”
“Let me see the card, steward,” she said quickly.
It was Larry’s, and Beth knew that flowers like these grew only in his mother’s garden—in Hudsonvale, at least.
Her family had trooped aboard after her—with Mary Devine and a dozen other girls who had been Beth’s friends at the high school. They made a noisy and jolly party. And how they wondered and exclaimed over the flower-filled stateroom.
“Why!” cried Mary Devine, “it’s just like a bridal tour you’re starting on. Aren’t you lucky, B. B.?”
“I surely am,” admitted Beth, smiling.
“But where’s the groom?” asked one of the other girls, slily. “Did he send the flowers?”
“How ridiculous!” rejoined Mary, scornfully. “It’s the best man who sends the flowers, not the groom. He has to help smell ’em!”