Randolph entered the car, his eyes shining. Evidently no one within had witnessed this little episode.
“Almost home,” he said, coming up behind Pet. “Too bad I couldn’t”—
“Oh! that lily,” laughed the girl. “Well, Randolph, perhaps it will do you good to fail just once. It’s a sort of discipline, you know.”
“I’m afraid I shall have to get my discipline some other way,” said Randolph demurely; and he deposited the lilies in the lap of astonished Pet.
Just what she saw in those exquisite, fragrant things, all dripping from the cool depths from which they had come to greet her, I cannot say. She looked her delight at Randolph, and then buried the pretty pink of her own cheeks in the white petals. I believe she did not even thank the giver; but he was satisfied.
Twenty minutes later the train thundered into the Fitchburg depot in Boston, and the long, ten-thousand mile journey was at an end.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
CONCLUSION.
I have entitled this chapter “Conclusion,” because it seems necessary to have the last chapter of a book named in that way. But the author might as well have named it “Beginning,” for there is no such thing in life as a “conclusion,” unless, indeed (as Randolph, looking over my shoulder, and fresh from the classic shades of Cambridge, suggests), we take the literal meaning of the word, a “shutting together”—of the covers of this book!