Gladys Farmer had not been able to leave her classes at the High School to help in this friendly work, but at eleven o’clock a livery automobile drove up, laden with white and pink peonies from her front yard, and bringing a box of hothouse flowers she had ordered for Enid from Hastings.  The girls admired them, but declared that Gladys was extravagant, as usual; the flowers from her own yard would really have been enough.  The car was driven by a lank, ragged boy who worked about the town garage, and who was called “Silent Irv,” because nobody could ever get a word out of him.  He had almost no voice at all,—­a thin little squeak in the top of his throat, like the gasping whisper of a medium in her trance state.  When he came to the front door, both arms full of peonies, he managed to wheeze out: 

“These are from Miss Farmer.  There are some more down there.”

The girls went back to his car with him, and he took out a square box, tied up with white ribbons and little silver bells, containing the bridal bouquet.

“How did you happen to get these?” Ralph asked the thin boy.  “I was to go to town for them.”

The messenger swallowed.  “Miss Farmer told me if there were any other flowers at the station marked for here, I should bring them along.”

“That was nice of her.”  Ralph thrust his hand into his trousers pocket.  “How much?  I’ll settle with you before I forget.”

A pink flush swept over the boy’s pale face,—­a delicate face under ragged hair, contracted by a kind of shrinking unhappiness.  His eyes were always half-closed, as if he did not want to see the world around him, or to be seen by it.  He went about like somebody in a dream.  “Miss Farmer,” he whispered, “has paid me.”

“Well, she thinks of everything!” exclaimed one of the girls.  “You used to go to school to Gladys, didn’t you, Irv?”

“Yes, mam.”  He got into his car without opening the door, slipping like an eel round the steering-rod, and drove off.

The girls followed Ralph up the gravel walk toward the house.  One whispered to the others:  “Do you suppose Gladys will come out tonight with Bayliss Wheeler?  I always thought she had a pretty warm spot in her heart for Claude, myself.”

Some one changed the subject.  “I can’t get over hearing Irv talk so much.  Gladys must have put a spell on him.”

“She was always kind to him in school,” said the girl who had questioned the silent boy.  “She said he was good in his studies, but he was so frightened he could never recite.  She let him write out the answers at his desk.”

Ralph stayed for lunch, playing about with the girls until his mother telephoned for him.  “Now I’ll have to go home and look after my brother, or he’ll turn up tonight in a striped shirt.”

“Give him our love,” the girls called after him, “and tell him not to be late.”

As he drove toward the farm, Ralph met Dan, taking Claude’s trunk into town.  He slowed his car.  “Any message?” he called.