“Pray for me, Emily.”  She reached out her arms.  Emily came to them and they clung together.  “I am so happy, darling—­” Jean whispered, “but there isn’t anything to tell, not really—­yet—­Emily—­”

When Emily had gone, Jean got out her memory books.  She had made of breakfast a slight affair.  How could one eat in the face of such astounding events.  Already this morning flowers had arrived for her, heather and American Beauties.  And Derry had written on his card, “The heather because of you—­the roses because of the day—­”

There were two hours on her hands before church.  She could dress in one—­the intervening time must be filled.

Her memory books were great fat volumes kept on a shelf by themselves, and forming a record of everything that had happened to her since her first day at boarding school.  They were in no sense diaries, nor could they be called scrap-books.  They had, rather, been compiled with an eye to certain red-letter events—­and their bulkiness had been enhanced by the insertion between the leaves of various objects not intended for such limited space.  There was a mask which she had worn at Hallowe’en; the tulle which had tied her roses at graduation; a little silver ring marking a childish romance; a flattened and much-dried chocolate drop with tender associations; dance-favors, clippings, photographs, theater programs, each illumined and emphasized by a line or two of sentiment or of nonsense in Jean’s girlish scrawl.

Even now, as she turned the leaves, she found herself laughing over a rhyme which her father had cut from his daily paper, and had sent in response to her wild plea for a box of something good to eat: 

  “Mary had a little lamb,
  A little pork, a little jam,
  A little egg on toast,
  A little potted roast,
  A little stew with dumplings white,
  A little shad,
  For Mary had,
  A little appetite.”

The big box had followed—­how dear Daddy had always been—­but had she ever wanted to eat like that?

There were letters which her father had written, pasted in, envelopes and all, to be read in certain longing moments when she had missed him and her mother.  There were love letters from certain callow college boys—­love—!  She laughed now as she thought of the pale passion they had offered her.

Derry had had no word for her the night before when he had left her at her door.  Her father had been with her, so Derry could only press her hand and watch her as she went in.  But there had been no need for words.  All the evening what they had felt had flamed between them—.