Yours truly,
ALIX CROWN.
P.S.—I have advised your mother to go to Philadelphia whenever you are ready for her to come. A.
P.S.S.—Under separate cover by registered post I am also returning to you the bracelet you sent me from Paris. I think I wrote you a long time ago how much I admired it. A.
Meanwhile, Thane was making the best of a rather empty morning. He put off finishing a letter to his mother, who had returned to New York and was so busy with dressmakers that twice she had employed the telegraph in promising to "write soon,"—a letter in which he already had written, among other rapturous passages: "She is positively ravishing, mater dear. I am simply mad about her, and I know you will be too." He was determined that the day should not be a total loss; he would turn at least a portion of it to profit.
First of all, he visited Alaska Spigg at the log-hut village library. Miss Spigg was very proud of her geraniums. No one else in Windomville,—or in the world, for that matter, if one were to recall Mr. Pollock's article in the Sun,—no one else cultivated such geraniums as those to be seen in the pots that crowned the superinforced windowsills at the library.
There was no such thing as a florist's shop in Windomville. Roses or orchids or even carnations were unobtainable. A potted geranium plant, in full bloom,—one of Alaska Spigg's tall, sturdy, jealously guarded treasures was the best he could do in the way of a floral offering to his goddess. So he set about the supposedly hopeless task of inducing Alaska to part with one of her plants. Half an hour after entering the library he departed with a balloon shaped object in his arms. He was not too proud to be seen shuffling up the lane with his prize, a huge thing loosely done up in newspapers,—leaving behind him a completely dazzled Alaska who went about the place aimlessly folding and unfolding a brand new two-dollar bill.
"I don't know what come over me," explained Alaska later on to a couple of astonished ladies who had hurried in to see if the report was true that she had parted with one of her geraniums. "For the life of me, I don't know how I happened to do it. 'Specially the one I was proudest of, too. I've always said I'd never sell one of my plants,—not even if the President of the United States was to come in and offer me untold millions for it,—and here I—I—why, Martha, I almost GAVE it to him, honest I did. I just couldn't seem to help letting him have it. Of course, I don't mind its loss half so much, knowing that it is going to Alix. She loves flowers. She'll take the best of care of it. But how I ever came to—"
"Don't cry, Alaska," broke in one of her callers cheerfully. "You'll be getting it back before long."
"Never," lamented Alaska. "What makes you think I'll get it back?" she went on, suddenly peeping over the edge of her handkerchief.