"We"ll tell her," she promised. "And by the way," she added to Priscilla, "I think it would be nice for us to send some flowers to Mae, from our--er--secret society. But I"m afraid the treasury is pretty low just now. They"ll have to be cheaper than violets. What are your cheapest flowers?" she inquired of the man.
"There"s a kind of small sunflower that some people likes for decoration. "Cut-and-come-again" they"re called. I can give you a good-sized bunch for fifty cents. They make quite a show."
"Just the thing! Send a bunch of sunflowers to Miss Van Arsdale with this card." Patty drew a blank card toward her, and in an upright back hand traced the inscription, "Your disconsolate C. St. J."
She sealed it in an envelope, then regarded the florist sternly.
"Are you a Mason?" she asked, her eye on the crescent in his b.u.t.tonhole.
"Y--yes," he acknowledged.
"Then you understand the nature of an oath of secrecy? You are not to divulge to anyone the sender of these flowers. The tall young lady with the yellow hair will come in here and try to make you tell who sent them. You are not to remember. It may even have been a man. You don"t know anything about it. This secret society at Saint Ursula"s is so very much more secret than the Masonic Society, that it is even a secret that it exists. Do you understand?"
"I--yes, ma"am," he grinned.
"If it becomes known," she added darkly, "I shall not be responsible for your life."
She and Priscilla each contributed a quarter for the flowers.
"It"s going to be expensive," Patty sighed. "I think we"ll have to ask Miss Sallie for an extra allowance while this committee is in session."
Mae was in her room, surrounded by an a.s.semblage of her special followers, when the flowers arrived. She received the box in some bewilderment.
"He"s sending flowers on Wednesdays as well as Sat.u.r.days!" her room-mate cried. "He must be getting desperate."
Mae opened the box amid an excited hush.
"How perfectly lovely!" they cried in chorus, though with a slightly perfunctory undertone. They would have preferred crimson roses.
Mae regarded the offering for a moment of stupefied amazement. She had been pretending so long, that by now she almost believed in Cuthbert herself. The circle was waiting, and she rallied her powers to meet this unexpected crisis.
"I wonder what sunflowers mean?" she asked softly. "They must convey some message. Does anybody know the language of flowers?"
n.o.body did know the language of flowers; but they were relieved at the suggestion.
"Here"s a card!" Evalina Smith plucked it from among the bristling leaves.
Mae made a motion to examine it in private, but she had been so generous with her confidences heretofore, that she was not allowed to withdraw them at this interesting point. They leaned over her shoulder and read it aloud.
""Your disconsolate C. St. J."--Oh, Mae, think how he must be suffering!"
"Poor man!"
"He simply couldn"t remain silent any longer."
"He"s the soul of honor," said Mae. "He wouldn"t write a real letter because he promised not to, but I suppose--a little message like this--"
Patty Wyatt pa.s.sing the door, sauntered in. The card was exhibited in spite of a feeble protest from Mae.
"That handwriting shows a lot of character," Patty commented.
This was considered a concession; for Patty, from the first, had held aloof from the cult of Cuthbert St. John. She was Rosalie"s friend.
The days that followed, were filled with bewildering experiences for Mae Mertelle. Having accepted the first installment of sunflowers, she could not well refuse the second. Once having committed herself, she was lost.
Candy and books followed the flowers in horrifying profusion. The candy was of an inexpensive variety--Patty had discovered the ten-cent store--but the boxes that contained it made up in decorativeness what the candy lacked; they were sprinkled with Cupids and roses in vivid profusion. A message in the same back hand accompanied each gift, signed sometimes with initials, and sometimes with a simple "Bertie." Parcels had never before been delivered with such unsuspicious prompt.i.tude. Miss Sallie was the one through whose hands they went. She glanced at the outside, scrawled a "deliver," and the maid would choose the most embarra.s.sing moments to comply--always when Mae Mertelle was surrounded by an audience.
Mae"s Englishman, from an object of sentiment, in a few days" time became the joke of the school. His taste in literature was as impossible as his taste in candy. He ran to t.i.tles which are supposed to be the special prerogative of the kitchen. "Loved and Lost," "A Born Coquette,"
"Thorns among the Orange Blossoms." Poor Mae repudiated them, but to no avail; the school had accepted Cuthbert--and was bent upon eliciting all the entertainment possible from his British vagaries. Mae"s life became one long dread of seeing the maid appear with a parcel. The last straw was the arrival of a complete edition--in paper--of Marie Corelli.
"He--he never sent them!" she sobbed. "Somebody"s just trying to be funny."
"You mustn"t mind, Mae, because they aren"t just the sort that an American man would choose," Patty offered comfort. "You know that Englishmen have queer tastes, particularly in books. _Everybody_ reads Marie Corelli over there."
The next Sat.u.r.day, a party of girls was taken to the city for shopping and the matinee. Among other errands, the art cla.s.s visited a photograph dealer"s, to purchase some early Italian masters. Patty"s interest in Giotto and his kind was not very keen, and she sauntered off on a tour of inspection. She happened upon a pile of actors and actresses, and her eye brightened as she singled out a large photograph of an unfamiliar leading man, with curling mustache and dimpled chin and large appealing eyes. He was dressed in hunting costume and conspicuously displayed a crop. The picture was the last word in Twentieth Century Romance. And, most perfect touch of all, it bore a London mark!
Patty un.o.btrusively deflected the rest of the committee from a consideration of Fra Angelico, and the three heads bent delightedly over the find.
"It"s perfect!" Conny sighed. "But it costs a dollar and fifty cents."
"We"ll have to go without soda water _forever_!" said Priscilla.
"It is expensive," Patty agreed, "but--" as she restudied the liquid, appealing eyes--"I really think it"s worth it."
They each contributed fifty cents, and the picture was theirs.
Patty wrote across the front, in the bold back hand that Mae had come to hate, a tender message in French, and signed the full name, "Cuthbert St. John." She had it wrapped in a plain envelope and requested the somewhat wondering clerk to mail it the following Wednesday morning, as it was an anniversary present and must not arrive before the day.
The picture came on the five-o"clock delivery, and was handed to Mae as the girls trooped out from afternoon study. She received it in sulky silence and retired to her room. Half a dozen of her dearest friends followed at her heels; Mae had worked hard to gain a following, and now it couldn"t be shaken off.
"Open it, Mae quick!"
"What do you s"pose it is?"
"It can"t be flowers or candy. He must be starting something new."
"I don"t care what it is!" Mae viciously tossed the parcel into the wastebasket.
Irene McCullough fished it out and cut the string.
"Oh, Mae, it"s his photograph!" she squealed. "And he"s per-fect-ly beau-ti-ful!"
"Did you ever see such eyes!"
"Does he curl his mustache, or it is natural?"
"Why didn"t you tell us he had a dimple in his chin?"
"Does he always wear those clothes?"