so
light-hearted for weeks.

Just inside her door she stumbled over a big pasteboard box. There was
a note on top, and she hurried to light her lamp. "I know that you
will be glad to hear I am going to the party, after all," she read. "I
have found a very pretty white dress in my cousin's wardrobe that fits
me well enough. As long as you have had such a thorny time on my
account, it is only fair that you should share my roses; so I send
them with the earnest wish that the coming year may bring you no thorn
without some rose to cover it, and that it may be a very, very happy
New Year indeed to you. Sincerely your friend, Rhoda Balfour."

Cicely tore aside the paraffine paper, and found six great roses, each
with a leafy stem half as long as Cicely herself. She caught them up
in her arms and laid her face against their velvety petals. For a
moment, as she stood with closed eyes, drinking in their summer
fragrance, she could have almost believed she was back in the old
garden.

"Marcelle, dear," she murmured, "I can be brave now! I can hold out a
little longer, for she wrote, 'Sincerely your friend.'"

The little room was glorified in Cicely's eyes that night by the
flowers she loved best. She ate her scant supper as if she were at a
festival, sent a little letter of thanks that made the tears come to
Miss Balfour's handsome eyes, and afterward wrote a bright, hopeful
letter to Marcelle that lifted a burden from the elder sister's heart.
Marcelle had been half afraid that Cicely would be growing bitter
against all the world.

"Think of it, sister!" Cicely wrote. "American Beauties are a dollar
apiece, and I have _six_! There is a music-teacher who has the room
across the hall from mine. She is at home this week with a cold on her
lungs, and to-morrow, when I go to work, I am going to loan her all my
beautiful roses. It's too bad to have them 'wasting their sweetness on
the desert air' all day while I am gone. So she shall have them until
I come home at night."

Madame Levaney gave no holiday to her employees on New Year's day, but
Cicely did not care. She left her roses at Miss Waite's door with the
announcement that they were hers for the day, but that she would have
to call for them and claim them at night. The oddness of the
arrangement, and the quaint way in which Cicely made it, won Miss
Waite's heart, and when she heard the girl's step in the hall that
evening, she opened the door.

"Come right in," she ca