Again the bell pealed. “It surely can’t be more flowers!” laughed Polly, running to the door. But it was. A card on the outside read: “Say it with Flowers,” to Miss Anne Stewart.
By this time everyone was laughing and trying to guess who could have sent the blossoms. And had the bell sounded again, no one would have been surprised. But it didn’t, and after guessing of all impossible persons who might be the senders of the flower-valentines, Anne ventured: “Someone may have telegraphed to New York this morning, you know, to send us these flowers, at once. I’ve heard said, the florists were so rushed to-day with valentine orders that they couldn’t secure enough flowers from the wholesale shops.”
“That’s about it!” declared Eleanor. “John sent you this last box, and maybe Daddy sent us each the smaller boxes. But who could have sent Polly a hundred dollars’ worth of American Beauties?”
Finally they went to bed with the great question still unsolved; and Polly often wondered, thereafter, if Mr. Dalken could have sent her those roses? Had she guessed the truth, would she have been content to go on so serenely with her studies of interior decorating?
CHAPTER XII—MR. FABIAN PLOTS FOR FACTS
The roses kept for more than two weeks, filling the Studio rooms with fragrance, but keeping their secret as to who had sent them to Polly. She had gone to everyone she knew and tried to find out who had given them to her. Then she beguiled Mr. Ashby into finding out if Mr. Dalken was the guilty one. And when he was found innocent, she bribed Mr. Dalken to find out if the Latimers or the Evans sent them—but she could not see why anyone should spend so much money on her, and try to hide the fact.
When Mr. Fabian was satisfied that it was not one of their old friends who had sent the roses, he thought of a way to find out. The box had had the name on its cover, of one of Fifth avenue’s most fashionable florists, so he went there and tried to learn what he wanted to know, by asking the proprietor.
But the man smiled and shook his head. “We are never allowed to divulge state secrets, Mr. Fabian.”
“Not even when that secret concerns a protegée of mine? I do not wish to use the knowledge, but merely to relieve my mind.”
“If I were to tell you, Mr. Fabian, I should have to also tell the six other individuals who begged me to tell them confidentially who ordered the roses.”