"Mamma!--it wouldn't take any of them at all for my hair and the bouquet de corsage too--there'd be thousands left--Well Joe,--what are you waiting for?"
"I didn't say," said Joe, looking a good deal blank and a little afraid,--"I should have said--that the bouquet--is--"
"What is it?"
"It is--I believe, ma'am,--the man said it was for Miss Ringgan."
"For me!" exclaimed Fleda, her cheeks forming instantly the most exquisite commentary on the gift that the giver could have desired. She took in her hand the superb bunch of flowers from which the fingers of Florence unclosed as if it had been an icicle.
"Why didn't you say so before?" she inquired sharply; but the "fowling-piece" had wisely disappeared.
"I am very glad!" exclaimed Edith. "They have had plenty all winter, and you haven't had one--I am very glad it is yours, Fleda."
But such a shadow had come upon every other face that Fleda's pleasure was completely overclouded. She smelled at her roses, just ready to burst into tears, and wishing sincerely that they had never come.
"I am afraid, my dear Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn quietly going on with her breakfast,--"that there is a thorn somewhere among those flowers."
Fleda was too sure of it. But not by any means the one Mrs. Evelyn intended.