"Yes," I replied; "people always like to see how schoolboys are made into men."
Her face beamed with pleasure and pride as she said: "My brother is going to graduate; he's going to speak. I have brought these flowers to throw at him."
They were not greenhouse favorites, but just old-fashioned domestic flowers, such as we associate with the dear grandmothers. "But," I thought, "they will seem sweet and beautiful to him, for his little sister's sake."
"That is my brother," she went on, pointing with her nosegay.
"The one with the light hair?" I asked.
"O, no;" she said, smiling and shaking her head in innocent reproof; "not that homely one with red hair; that handsome one with brown, wavy hair. His eyes look brown, too; but they are not, they are dark blue. There! he's got his hand up to his head now. You see him, don't you?"
In an eager way she looked from him to me, as if some important fate depended on my identifying her brother.
"I see him," I said. "He is a very good-looking brother."
"Yes, he is beautiful," she said, with artless delight, "and he's good, and he studies so hard. He has taken care of me ever since mama died. Here is his name on the program. He is not the valedictorian, but he has an honor for all that."
I saw in the little creature's familiarity with these technical college terms that she had closely identified herself with her brother's studies, hopes, and successes.