‘He must regard her as something more than a sister,’ he thought; ’he cannot see her every day without loving her, and by-and-by he will tell her so, and then my cake is dough.  If I can only get him committed to Maude while Jerrie is away, my way is clear, for I am quite sure she does not care for Dick, and she would be a fool not to take Tracy Park if she could get it.  And why shouldn’t Hal love Maude?  She is pretty, and sweet, and winning, and will some day be an heiress.  Hal may thank his stars to get her, though I hate him as I do poison.’

It was Tom who had insisted that Harold’s basket should be bought in New York, where there was a better chance, he said, and he had himself selected flowers which he knew were not fresh, and would be still worse twenty-four hours later.

‘Why don’t you get yours here, if it is the be-best place?’ Will Peterkin had asked him, and he replied: 

’Oh, we can’t be bothered with more than one basket in the train.  I can find something there.’

He did not say what he intended to find, or that baskets were quite too common for him.  But after leaving the young ladies in the evening, he went to a florist’s and ordered for Jerrie a book of white daisies, with a rack of purple pansies for it to rest upon.

‘That will certainly be unique, and show her that I have taste,’ he thought.

For Nina a bouquet was sufficient, while for Ann Eliza Peterkin he ordered nothing.  Tom could be lavish of his money where his own interest was concerned, but where he had no interest he was stingy and even mean, and so poor little red-haired Ann Eliza, who would have prized a leaf from him more than all the florist’s garden from another, was to get nothing from him.

’What business has old Peterkin’s daughter to graduate with ladies, any way?’ he thought, and he looked on with a sneer, while Billy ordered five baskets, one of which was to be of white roses, with a heart of blue forget-me-nots in the centre.

‘What, under heaven, are you going to do with five baskets?’ he asked; but Billy was non committal, for he would not own that three were intended for Jerrie, whom he wished to carry off the palm so far as flowers were concerned.

And she did; for of all the young ladies who the next day passed in review before the multitude, no one attracted so much attention or received so much praise as Jerrie.  For clearness of reasoning, depth of thought, and purity of language, her essay, though a little too metaphysical, perhaps, was accounted the best, and listened to with rapt attention.  And when the musical voice ceased, and the young girl, who had never looked more beautiful than she did then, with the sparkle in her eyes and the flush on her cheeks, bowed to the audience, bouquets of flowers fell around her like hailstones, while basket after basket was handed up to her, Tom Tracy’s book showing conspicuously from the rest and attracting unusual admiration.