On his way he stopped at a florist's. It was a habit he had acquired under similar circumstances. He was puzzled to know just what to send in a land where the highways and hedges run riot with flowers, but he finally selected some wonderful orchids of delicate lavender and mauve. Purposely, he put no card with them, feeling that she would guess the sender.
He got into his dress clothes in rather an ungracious humor. Pomona was the next place, a fruit town further south. Oh, it was too bad! Well, at least he would see her again at the concert that night. He was grateful for this much. Her seat was on an aisle, she told him; he would be able to speak to her during the intermission; more than this, she had said, in her best convent manner, that he might ride home with her papa and mamma afterwards.
Still, this was an unsatisfactory way of carrying on an affair of the sort, especially when it was the first really serious one he had ever had. Clean out of Van's mind had faded the memory of a Montana cow-girl, a San Francisco actress, a senior in the Lambda Mu sorority, a——but space forbids. He mussed three ties. Freshmen are petulant things.
Perkins, who led the Mandolin Club, joshed him at dinner.
"What's the matter, my boy; didn't you have a good time this afternoon?"
"Of course he didn't," answered a guitar man. "You must have noticed his bored expression all through; that is, when you saw him at all."
"That was merely the blasé look that comes with four months at the Youngest and Best," said "Cap." Smith. "The Freshman was happy on his little inside because he was so well got up. He really looked the part; now he's in ordinary clothes, like a common strolling player, and he feels cross."
"No," growled Van Dyke, "I've caught cold or something."
"Oh," said Phillips, the Glee Club leader. He took up his table fork and bit the end; holding it to his ear he gave the table a starting chord, and they hummed "Ma Onliest One," while Van grew red, and the rest of the dining-room stopped to listen.
Dolores Payson sat in an orchestra seat and smiled up at the immaculate Mr. Van Dyke, above the only bunch of orchids in the theatre. He came to chat with her during the interval between "La Czarina" and "Schneider's Band." She was doubly guarded by her father on one side and her mother on the other. It was a way they had. She introduced him demurely with an adorable little wave of her black fan. He wondered if, should he quit college right away, he could get a job which would enable him to support a wife. He looked at the placid, olive-skinned mother, not yet old enough to be very fat, and decided that he could; his glance wandered to the angular, sharp-featured American father, and he was sure he couldn't.