"None at all, Grace," confessed Pocahontas, ruefully, "except a single calla. I cut my last white rosebuds and camellias to send to Nina Byrd Marion the very day before I heard about the Shirley ball. Isn't it provoking?"
"Then somebody must get you some," Grace responded promptly, pausing in her preparations, and regarding her sister with the air of an autocrat; "if the men are not lost to all sense of honor and decency, you'll have plenty. Of course you must have plenty. If only they will have sufficient intellect to select white ones! But they won't. I'd better instruct Roy and Berkeley at once."
On the morning of the ball, Berkeley entered his mother's room, where the three ladies sat in solemn conclave regarding with discontent a waiter full of colored flowers which a thoughtful neighbor had just sent over to Pocahontas. He held in his hand a good-sized box which he deposited in his sister's lap with the remark:
"Look, Princess! Here's a New Year's gift just come for you. I don't know the writing. I wonder what it is!"
"A subtle aroma suggests—fruit," hazarded
Grace, sniffing curiously.
"Perhaps flowers," suggests Mrs. Mason, who that morning was a woman with one idea.
Pocahontas wrestled with the cords, unfolded the wrappers, and lifted the cover. Then she uttered a long drawn "oh" of satisfaction.
"What is it?" demanded the others with lively impatience.
Pocahontas lifted a card and turned it in her hand, and a smile broke over her face as she answered: "Flowers; from Jim Byrd."
Then she removed the damp moss and cotton, and lifted spray after spray of beautiful snowy jasmin—Cape Jasmin, pure and powerful, and starry wreaths of the more delicate Catalonian. Only white flowers—all jasmin, Jim's favorite flower; and with them were tropical ferns and grasses. As she held the exquisite blossoms in her hands and inhaled their rich perfume, the girl was conscious that when her old friend penned the order for the fragrant gift, his heart had been full of home, and of the evening beside the river when she had worn his flowers in hair and dress, and had bidden him farewell.