"Oh," said Carnation with a gasp, "it is lovely. Is it gold? Why, it has your name on. It is the medal of the class. How proud your father and mother will be!"
And she clasped her hands and gazed, but did not offer to take it in her fingers.
"No, indeed, that they won't," said John Charles grimly; "they won't ever know, and if they did they wouldn't care. I am not going to tell them or any one. I won it for you. All the time I was working I kept saying to myself, 'If I win the medal I shall give it to Carnation to wear round her neck on a blue ribbon—because blue is her colour——'"
"Oh, but I could not!" cried the girl, going back a step or two, "I dare not! Any one might see and read—what is written on it."
"You needn't wear it outside, Carnation," he pleaded, in a low tone; "see, I put the ribbon through it that you might."
"It is pretty"—her face had a kind of inner shining upon it, and her eyes glittered darkly—"it was very nice of you to think about me—not that I believe for a moment you really did. But, indeed, indeed, I can't take it——"
The face of John Charles Morrison fell. His jaw, a singularly determined one, began to square itself.
"Very well," he said, flirting the ribbon out of the clasp and throwing the box on the ground, "do you see that pond down there? As sure as daith" (he used the old school-boy oath of asseveration) "I'll throw it in that pond if ye dinna tak' it!"
Something very like a sob came into the lad's throat.
"And I worked so hard for it. And I thought you would have liked it!"