"Think of it, sister!" Cicely wrote. "American Beauties are a dollar apiece, and I have six! There is a music-teacher who has the room across the hall from mine. She is at home this week with a cold on her lungs, and to-morrow, when I go to work, I am going to loan her all my beautiful roses. It's too bad to have them 'wasting their sweetness on the desert air' all day while I am gone. So she shall have them until I come home at night."
Madame Levaney gave no holiday to her employees on New Year's day, but Cicely did not care. She left her roses at Miss Waite's door with the announcement that they were hers for the day, but that she would have to call for them and claim them at night. The oddness of the arrangement, and the quaint way in which Cicely made it, won Miss Waite's heart, and when she heard the girl's step in the hall that evening, she opened the door.
"Come right in," she called, cordially. "I can't spare the roses until after supper, so you will have to come in and eat with me. You've no idea how much I have enjoyed them!"
Cicely paused timidly on the threshold. There were the gorgeous American Beauties in a tall vase in the middle of the table, between some softly shaded candles. And there was a bright lamp on the open piano, and a glowing coal fire in the grate. The little table was spread for two, and a savoury smell of oysters stole out from the chafing-dish Miss Wade had just uncovered.
"We'll celebrate the New Year together, and drink to our friendship in good strong coffee," said Miss Waite, lifting the steaming pot from the hearth. "Draw your chair right up to the table, please, while everything is hot."
Only one who has been as cold and hungry and homesick as Cicely was, can know how much that evening meant to her, or how the cheer and the warmth of it all comforted her lonely little heart. The best of it was that it was only a beginning, and there were few nights afterward, during that long winter, when the warmth and light of Miss Waite's room was not shared for awhile, at least, with the little seamstress.
The roses lasted more than a week; then Miss Waite helped Cicely to gather up the petals as they fell, and together they packed them away in a little rose-jar, according to an old recipe that Miss Waite read out of her grandmother's time-yellowed note-book.
Then Cicely brought Miss Balfour's note.