But, alas for poor Harold’s gift!  Dick had watered it the last thing before going to bed and the first thing in the morning, but the flowers were limp and faded, and gave forth a sickly odor, while the leaves of the roses were dropping off, and only the size, which was immense, remained to tell what it once had been.  But Jerrie singled it out from all the rest, and held it in her hands until the exercises were over; and that night, at a reception given to the graduates, she wore in her bosom two faded pink roses, the only ones she could make hold together, and which Nina told her smelled a little old.  But Jerrie did not care.  They were Harold’s roses, which he had sent to her, and she prized them more than all the rest she had received.  At little Billy’s heart she had laughed till she cried, and then had given it to a young girl, not a graduate, who admired it exceedingly.  Tom’s book she knew was exquisite, and placed it with others, and thanked him for it, and told him it was lovely, and then gave it to Ann Eliza, whose offerings had been so few.  A bouquet from Dick St. Claire and Fred Raymond, a basket from her brother, and one more from herself, were all, and the little red-haired girl, who, with her heavy gold chain and locket, and diamond ear-rings, and three bracelets, and five finger-rings, had looked like a jeweller’s shop, felt aggrieved and neglected, and Jerrie found her sobbing in her room as if her heart was broken.

‘Only four snipping things,’ she said, ’and you had twenty-five, and mother will be so disappointed, and father too, when he knows just how few I got.  I wish I was popular like you.’

‘Never mind,’ Jerrie said, cheerfully.  ’It was only a happen so—­my getting so many.  You are just as nice as I am, and I’ll give you part of mine to take home to your mother.  I can never carry them all.  I should have to charter a car,’ and in a few moments six of Jerrie’s baskets were transferred to Ann Eliza’s room, including Tom Tracy’s book.

’Oh, I can’t take that, Ann Eliza said; he didn’t mean it for me; he didn’t give me anything, and I—­I—­’

Here she began to sob again, and laying her hand pityingly upon the bowed head, Jerrie said: 

’Yes, I know; I understand.  Something from Tom Tracy would have pleased you more than from anyone; but listen to me, Annie.  Tom is not worth your tears.’

‘Don’t you care for him?’ the girl asked, lifting her head suddenly.

‘Not a particle, as you mean.  You have nothing to fear from me,’ Jerrie replied.

This was a grain of comfort to the girl who had been weak enough to waste her affections upon Tom Tracy, and who, fearing Jerrie was a rival, was weak enough to hope that with her out of the way she might eventually succeed in bringing him to her feet, for she knew his fondness for money, and knew, too, that she should in all probability be one day the heiress to a million.  So great was her infatuation for the man who had never shown her the slightest attention, that even his flowers, though second-hand, and not intended for her, were everything to her, and when she packed her trunk that night she put them carefully away in many wrappings of paper, to be brought out at home in the privacy of her own room, and kept as long as the least beauty or perfume remained.