"See that lovely light coming through our stained-glass window! Isn't it like a rainbow! Oh, I hope it means good luck just as it always has in the past! And somehow it makes this room more beautiful. I did not dream anything could!"
Naturally Frieda was prejudiced and an enthusiast, and yet she had ample reason for her point of view. For a moment there was an unusual silence as the four girls looked around them. Consciously or unconsciously they realized that these next few weeks were to mark important changes in their lives. For after they had slipped by things could never be exactly the same. Jack would be married and that would represent the first important break, and after that—well, they were not little girls any longer, for even Frieda had lately shown unmistakable signs of being grown-up.
The walls of the long room were hung with western smilax and since the party was to be a typical American one, the girls had been wildly extravagant and used American Beauty roses for the decoration. Now the air was fragrant with their rich and penetrating perfume. The old colonial mantel was banked with them, and garlands of green swinging from one white column to another had big baskets filled with roses suspended between the posts. The room itself was fifty feet long and three-fourths as broad. All the woodwork and the walls were a warm gray. The greater part of the furniture had of course been removed and a white tarpaulin covered the hardwood floor, but in the bay window there were palms and vases of roses and an old-fashioned colonial sofa, besides several chairs. Also there were occasional chairs along the walls for the older persons who might care to watch the dancing. The music was to be concealed in the hall behind a bank of evergreens just beneath the wide mahogany stairs.
"Well, if there is anything more that can be done to make this place more attractive, I am sure I don't know what it is," Jean insisted at last. "And I am especially glad that we asked Mr. Parker to come tonight. Because of course he may have built more expensive houses than ours, yet I am quite sure he has never made one more attractive. Besides, he is awfully nice. Gracious, girls, who is that knocking? Ruth thinks we are being nice and obedient and lying down until seven."
But Olive had walked over to the closed door and opened it half-way.
"Don't be alarmed," she laughed back. "It is only the flowers Frank is sending us for tonight. Let's open them now and see what choice he has made. Ruth told him about our dresses, so that he could not make any serious mistake."
Almost concealed by four great boxes reaching as high as her head, Olive came back to where Jack was sitting and placed them in a great pile before her.
"You give them to us, Jack dear, since they are from Frank," she urged.
The first was marked with Frieda's name, but as she took the top off the box and lifted out a card her cheeks turned suddenly crimson.
"These are not from Frank after all," Frieda remarked with a pretense of unconcern, "Mr. Russell says that I was so kind about reading to him when his leg was broken that he asked Frank as a special favor to let him send me my bouquet for tonight." Her fingers fumbled nervously at the tissue paper and her eyes were downcast, since she did not specially care to have any one staring at her at this moment. She could imagine Jack's puzzled and slightly worried expression and Jean's and Olive's teasing looks. For the absurd friendship that had developed between the solemn young Professor and Frieda was one of the ill-concealed jokes in the family.