“Some one has sent you flowers?” cried little Mrs. Moore, noticing these, even before she took note of the dainty green and white curtains, and the green denim couch cover, that Peggy and Katherine had been inspired to supply.
“No, they didn’t,” cried Peggy from the doorway. “They didn’t send her the flowers,—look on the card!”
And when Mrs. Moore picked up the card that lay beside the pins, she read aloud, “For Mrs. Moore; welcome to Hampton, from one of Lilian’s friends, Myra Whitewell.”
If you could have seen the look of pleasure with which the little woman lifted those fragrant flowers, and with shaking fingers fastened them to her girdle! Oh, precious first impression of college! How it crept into her heart with the fragrance of those violets—quite the nicest thing that had ever come to her in her care-worn, workaday life!
Lilian’s own face was suffused.
That Myra, of all people, should have been so dear and thoughtful! And, a moment since Lilian had been harboring a rather bitter and unkind thought against the black-haired freshman.
For Myra was the only one of the Ambler House “crowd” who had not been at the station to meet her mother. Lilian felt hurt. But now, she remembered Myra’s chemistry laboratory, that was in full session at this moment—and to her, also, a new feeling came with the odor of those violets.
She thought, with quick gratitude, that nothing she could ever do for Myra would be too much now to repay her for that glad and surprised light in her mother’s eyes.
“And now, Mrs. Moore, you’re going to be handed from one to another of us, hour by hour,” laughingly explained Peggy. “Your daughter has some classes that she really feels she must attend. Ordinary classes we could all cut with pleasure, but Lilian’s this morning happen to include math, and Lilian is—well, she doesn’t know a triangle from a piece of fudge, Mrs. Moore——”
She broke off, giggling, and fled down the corridor to escape Lilian, who pursued with pretended rage, at her daring thus to lay bare her mathematical shortcomings to her trusting mother.