Frances was about to answer when the bell rang insistently.
"Good Lord!" groaned the professor.
"I don't think it is a visitor," soothed Frances. "What is it, Susan?"
The old woman came briskly into the room. "I dunno! Some sassy niggah jes' poked dis box at me an' run off." Susan was always ready to find fault with the manners of the rising generation; she put the box down gingerly just on the professor's papers.
"Here!" he snatched it up and set it forcibly on the hearth. "Flowers! And the thing is wet!"
Frances, delighted, knelt by the box. "Miss Frances Holloway," she read; "give me your knife! Oh!" for the top wrenched off disclosed a sheaf of chrysanthemums, white and yellow, and a card, "Mr. Frank Lawson."
"They are for all, of course!" she filled her arms with them and got to her feet. "Take this box in the kitchen, Susan."
"Wait!" her father called, "what are you going to do to-day?"
"We are going shopping in the morning, and there is a tally-ho party to Monticello this afternoon."