ome other
girl or instead of a boy. Maria felt especially proud of ranking
ahead of the boys.

The next day was, as she had anticipated, one of happy triumph for
her. She stood on the stage in her lovely dress and read her
valedictory, which, although trite enough, was in reality rather
better in style than most valedictories. She received a number of
presents, a tiny gold watch from her father among them, and a ring
with a turquoise stone from Ida, and quantities of flowers. The day
after the graduation Maria had her photograph taken, with all her
floral offerings around her, with a basket of roses on her arm and
great bouquets in her lap and on a little photographic table beside
her. The basket of roses was an anonymous offering. It came with no
card. If Maria had dreamed that Wollaston Lee had sent it, she would
never have sat for her photograph with it on her arm. But she did not
think of Wollaston at all that day. He was completely out of her mind
for the time, swallowed up in her sense of personal joy and triumph.
Wollaston had not graduated first in his class in the academy the
year before. A girl had headed that class also. Maria had felt a
malicious joy at the fact, at the time, and it was entirely beyond
her imagination now that Wollaston, who had seemed to dislike her,
although she was forced to admit that he had been exceedingly
honorable, had sent roses to her. She suspected that one of the
teachers, a young man who had paid, in a covert and shamefaced way, a
little attention to her, had sent the basket. She thought the roses
lovely, and recognized the inadvisability of thanking this teacher,
since he had not enclosed his card. She did not like him very
well--indeed, she felt a certain repugnance to him--but roses were
roses, and she was a young girl.

"Who gave you the basket of roses, dear?" her father asked when she
was displaying her trophies the day after her graduation.

Maria blushed. "I don't know," said she; "there wasn't any card with
them." As she spoke she seemed to see the face of the young history
teacher, Mr. Latimer, with his sparse, sandy beard, and she felt how
very distasteful he was to her, even if gilded, so to speak, by roses.

"I think some enamoured boy in her class who was too shy to send his
card with his floral offering was the one," Ida said to Harry when
Maria had gone out. She laughed a softly sarcastic laugh.

Harry looked at her uneasily.

"Maria is too young to get s