“If you’re bothering your head about those flowers,” she said very distinctly, “I’d advise you not to. It’s wearing. They are very lovely. Whoever sent them had only the kindest intentions. Jemima told you that she didn’t find anything to show where they had come from. What’s the use to speculate when all of us are worn out?”
Mahala went to her room, closed the door, and standing before the mirror, surveyed her reflection from head to heels. She was not looking quite so fresh as she had the last time she had looked in that mirror, but she decided, that after delivering a valedictory and dancing for hours, she was still extremely presentable. She slipped from her dress and returned it to the form in the guest room from which it had been taken to serve its great purpose. As she shook out the skirts she said to it laughingly: “Let me tell you, you very nice dress, Edith gave me the hardest run to-night she ever did. But I still think that you’re the prettiest dress and the most appropriate that was worn at Commencement to-night.”
She leaned forward and for an instant buried her face in the laces on the breast of the dress covering the wire form. Going back to her room, she put out the light. As speedily as possible, she slipped into her nightrobe and then she went to the window where for four years the little gold bird had sung to her daily from its shining house of brass, and standing beside it in the moonlight, she smoothed out the twist of paper and upon it she read three words. She stood a long time in the moonlight looking across the roofs of neighbouring houses and down the moon-whitened street; then she turned and walked back to her dressing table. Among the bottles and brushes on top of it there lay a white rosebud. She looked at it a few minutes; finally she picked it up, twisted the wisp of paper around the stem of it, and went to her closet. From a top shelf she took down a beautiful lacquered box that represented one of the handsomest of her father’s gifts from the city. It was shining in black and gold while across it flew white storks with touches of red above a silver lake bordered by gold reeds.
She lifted the lining of her workbasket and from beneath it she took out a tiny gold key. With this she unlocked the box and laid the white rose and the three words inside it, relocked and replaced the box, and returned the key to its hiding place beneath the lining of her workbasket.
Then Mahala laid her head upon her pillow and tried to go to sleep, but sleep was a long time coming. Never in her life had she found so many things of which to think. She knew that her mother would not give over her pursuit of the sender of the wonderful gift in the morning. She was reasonably certain that Junior would not be thwarted in his desires without putting up a fight that might very possibly, according to his methods of soldiering, become disagreeable. And there remained in her consciousness the memory of a look that she had seen in her father’s eyes that night, a look that had been gradually disquieting her for a long time. She had tried to evade it, to forget it, to make herself think it was not there. From to-night on she knew that it was not a thing to be longer evaded. It was something to be faced and to be dealt with.
When she awakened in the morning, the house was so filled with sunshine, and there were so many people coming to see her wealth of beautiful gifts, to examine minutely the wonderful baskets and the sheaf of flowers that had been bestowed upon her, to try to fix in their consciousness, on the part of many filled with envy, just what amount of expense had been lavished upon Mahala’s graduation, that her fears were forgotten. Many of these callers were making the rounds. They had already been to the Williams’ residence and a few of them had felt sufficiently familiar with Mrs. Moreland to call there, also. By the time they reached the Spellmans’, they were able to draw a convincing conclusion as to which young person of Ashwater had received the largest number of the most expensive gifts, the most flowers, and worn the costliest clothing.
Serena Moulton, who was responsible for the foundations of Mahala’s dress, stopped in for a view of the finished product. As she stood before it, she clasped her hands and looked at Mahala laughingly.
“The first thing I know,” she said, “you’ll be taking my business from me. It just ain’t in my skin to do all this little fine ruffly business and all the handwork that you do. I’m terrible beholden to a sewing machine. I do like a long straight seam that I can set down to and just make my old Singer sing.”
Mahala knew that this was intended to be funny, and so she laughed as heartily as she could over it.
“Well, Serena,” she said, “there’s no telling which way the cat’s going to jump in this world. It may happen that very way.”