"Not I," retorted Jack, merrily, "I kicked over them nearly a year ago."
"So I heard," replied Miss Seaton, sweetly; and Jack wondered what she meant.
When Jack found himself again beside Rose, he decided that, flowers or no flowers, he would ask for an explanation. But his first attempt was met with such a bewilderingly merry smile, and such confident assurance that explanations were not in order, that it proved a successful failure.
When, at last, in the early morning hours he was seated before the open fire in his bedroom, pulling away reflectively at his pipe, he had time to think it over. He came to the conclusion that it was trivial in him to have staked his all on her wearing those flowers, for she certainly--certainly had led him to think that she was anything but indifferent to him.
"That look now," mused Jack. "I don't believe that a girl like Rose Blossom would look that way if she didn't mean it--if she did n't care. No other girl could look that way." He reached for his watch on the dressing-case. "I shall get good two hours' sleep before that early train.--What's that?" He noticed for the first time, that on the bed lay a familiar-looking box in a brown paper wrapper. In a trice he had broken the string, whisked off the cover, scattered the tissue paper right and left.--There lay the violets, white, and sweet, and almost as fresh as when he gave them his virgin kiss nearly twelve hours before.
Jack sat down stupefied on the bed. What had he given her, anyway? He thought intensely for a full minute.
"Great Scott! the pajamas!" And then Jack Sherrill rolled over on the bed, ignoring the damage to dress suit and violets, and, burying his face in the pillow, gave vent to a smothered yell.
There was a merry exchange of notes between Cambridge and New York during the next two weeks, and Rose had promised to wear any flowers--and only his--he might send her for the ball at Mrs. Fenlick's the middle of February, and for which Jack was coming on. It would occur during the last week of Rose's visit, and Jack thought that possibly--possibly,--well, he could n't define just what "possibly;" but it proved to be an infinitely absorbing one, and Jack felt it was "now or never" with him.
Mrs. Heath had claimed Rose as her guest for the last three weeks, and the days were filled with pleasures. On the Saturday before the ball, and a week before Rose was to return to Mount Hunger, two seats in a box at the opera had been sent in to Mrs. Heath from a friend.
"Look at these, Rose!" Mrs. Heath exclaimed, showing her the note. "Just exactly what you were wishing to hear, and we thought we could not arrange it for next week. That opera has been changed for to-day's matinée, and now you can hear both Lohengrin and Siegfried."