So it happened that when the rest of the girls were packing their suit-cases with joyous exclamations over everything they put in, Peggy, too, was packing hers. And when the happy party stepped into its several cabs, she was at, last triumphantly wearing the very brown taffeta that she thought ideal for the train, and her face was as beaming as the spring morning. What chattering went on inside those jolting cabs, what hopes, what surmises, what anticipations filled those youthful hearts!
When they stepped out at the station, a breathless boy from the florist’s ran up to the group panting out, “Miss Parsons, where is Miss Parsons, please? I ran over to the school but I got there just too late.”
And when Peggy, her face flushing with surprise and pleasure, admitted that she was the one sought, he eagerly handed her, not one box, but two, and amid the excitement of the crowding girls, Peggy unwrapped them then and there. One was fragrant with the most generous bunch of violets she had ever seen, tied with the daintiest lavender ribbon and thrust through with a violet pin so that she might transfer the glowing beauty of them from the box and tissue wrappings to her coat at once. The other box was white with lilies of the valley, and Peggy buried her bright face in their sweetness ecstatically. Then she bethought her to look for cards.
“Because, of course, magical as it seems, getting here like this just as I am about to start, and not knowing a single person I’d dream would send me any flowers, still, I suppose somebody did like me enough to do it. So I’ll—just—see—”
Her inquiring fingers slid inside the envelope that came with the lilies of the valley.
“Mr. Huntington,” she read. Then with increasing excitement she opened the other little envelope and her eyes danced as she read that card.
“James Huntington Smith.”
“Oh, how lovely of them, how lovely,” she cried. And then and there with hasty fingers, she mingled the lilies of the valley in with the violets, and gleefully pinned on the whole gorgeous if somewhat too conspicuous bunch. In stories, the girls who receive flowers divide them up among their friends. But in life, how seldom, how seldom! With a finer appreciation of the intentions of those who sent them, they are quite delightedly selfish with them, and almost any real live girl would have combined two bunches, if they were flowers that went well together, as Peggy did, and would have worn them that way, and been proud to do it, too.
There is something about the wearing of flowers sent by a really interesting person that just tips the whole day with a kind of satisfied glory. Peggy’s manner instantly took on a lovely graciousness and sweetness, for she was wearing the evidence that two people liked her and wanted her to have a good time, and it behooved her to live up to the added beauty the flowers lent her.
It was a very long ride down to their destination, and Peggy had time to conjure up in her mind all the pictures she had ever seen of men in the navy, and battleships, and cannons, and such warlike objects. She thrilled to the thought of such a life, with its roving over the whole world after school was done, in those great gray floating forts of cruisers with their long sinister guns always ready for whatever might deserve their cruel attention. Even when women vote, she thought, there would be no such glory of open sea for them. There would still be heights on which men would dwell where women could never expect to climb. Well, came the comforting thought, but the women could go and dance with these wonders that were afraid of nothing! They could be waited on by them, too, and served to ices! My, my! Well, it wasn’t so bad after all. Peggy began to feel that everything in the world was pretty well balanced after all. And she was glad that she lived in so fine a place, and that she was young and nice looking, and that she had a pink dress in her suit-case.