“A certain window,” mused Peggy. “Are you a carpenter and did you want to see how it was made?”
Her mischievous taunt brought an explanation.
“I’m an Amherst man,” he began, and Peggy leaned her elbows on the table, forgetful of the steaming soup that had just been set before her. “And I had finished my exams, so I took a vacation to this part of the country, where I used to go to school. The last time I was around here I came up for the game, early in the fall. And—well, you know how it is with glee club fellows, they sing their heads off when their team has won, and I guess we serenaded every corner of the Andrews dorms until midnight. Do you remember—did you happen to be awake and hear us?”
“Oh, yes,” breathed Peggy ecstatically, and then a furious flush went over her face. Was her awful adventure of that evening to be recalled now—would he guess that she—she, whom he had saved from the storm was the very one who had toppled the terrible rose-tree in its heavy jardinière down onto his head as if she were firing on him from a Zeppelin? So he was one of the young men she had nearly killed! What a mercy that he had not died, after all. With a crushing wave of memory, the whole moonlit scene flashed back to her, and once more the ache of uncertainty and remorse were poignant in her heart. She recalled Katherine’s joyous shout that they were unharmed, and then—and then her own rush back to the window and the song they had sung just for her!
“You heard?” he was asking in pleasant interest. “Which house are you in?”
“Oh,” cried Peggy in consternation. “The other one.”
And then she realized by his puzzled expression and his mouth twitching into a laugh that her reply didn’t make sense. “I mean I didn’t hear it,” she rushed headlong into the fib in her distress. “I didn’t and my rose-tree is still all safe in its jardinière in my room, and—and—anyway you must realize that it was an accident!” she finished desperately.
The boy’s hand went swiftly into an inner pocket and drew out of a small envelope a tiny withered rose bud, quite browned and crumply. He held it silently over to her across the table, his eyes shining with delight.
She looked at it with an attempt at impersonal curiosity, and then the corners of her mouth crinkled up, and that flickering dimple came into play and she met his eyes with enjoyment as keen as his own.
“And you all sang to me,” she reminded, “and I never was so excited before.”