The picture show wasn’t a great deal of fun for Katherine when most of her thoughts were drifting back to her poor room-mate. The rest of the girls laughed and cried at little Mary Pickford’s pathos and drollery, but she felt it difficult to keep her attention on the screen, and was almost glad when it was over, and they could hurry back to Ambler House.
The door of Suite 22 stood open, all the lights blazed forth, the sound of happy laughter came to her ears and the unmistakable perfume of American beauty roses greeted her nostrils.
“Peggy!” she cried, as she entered the room, to find every available vase full of the most gorgeous roses she had ever seen, and an appreciative sophomore and junior court listening to the tale of Peggy’s sad experiences of the afternoon.
“You little wretch,” she said, shaking her fist at her room-mate in mock rage, “when you get me to sympathize with you again, you’ll know it. It’s just a joke now, isn’t it, but, girls, she was crying her eyes out over it an hour or so ago.”
“Th-that’s just what I’ve been telling them,” cried Peggy, “and now I can’t think how I could.”
“Well, what’s made the change?” Katherine demanded.
Iva Belmington and Hazel Pilcher waved magnificently toward the overladen vases and water pitchers. “Those,” they said simply.
And at the same time Peggy poured a shower of cards into her lap, and, taking them up, she read, one after the other, the names of all the six boys from Amherst who had come to their dance that afternoon.
“Wasn’t it lovely?” cried Peggy. “They evidently left the order at the florist’s when they drove through the town. Look at Jim’s card, Katherine, he wrote something on it.”
From the assortment in her lap, Katherine selected the card which read Mr. James Huntington Smith, and there sure enough across the top of it were the words in pencil, “With appreciation for a very jolly afternoon.”