"Matter?" repeated Katherine, trying to look unconscious. "Yes; are you tired?" "Well--it has been a pretty busy day, you know," and a half- repressed sigh seemed to indicate weariness. "Who is that, I wonder?" remarked Miss Minot, as some one knocked for admittance. "Come in." The door opened and a maid put her head inside. "A box for Miss Minturn," she said, briefly. Katherine sprang forward to take it and a strange tremor seized her as she severed the twine, removed the wrapper and lifted the cover. Then the rich color flooded cheek and brow as she saw a small but exquisite spray bouquet of white moss rosebuds lying upon a bed of moist cotton, and, beside them, a card bearing the name, "Phillip Harris Stanley." "Sadie! Did you ever see anything so lovely?" she cried, holding it out for her friend to admire, and trying not to look too happy. "'Lovely' doesn't half express it," returned the girl, glancing from the waxen buds to the radiant face bending above them. "Ahem! Who sent 'em?" "Dr. Stanley." "U-m! just the thing to wear with that pink gauze to-night," was the laconic suggestion. "They would look pretty with it, wouldn't they?" said Katherine, innocently. "I reckon that was what they were meant for, or they would have come before and been handed in downstairs," Miss Minot observed, with an audible chuckle. "Nonsense, Sadie!" "What'll you wager on it?" "How can one make a wager on what can't be verified?" "Oh"--with an irrepressible giggle--"I'll take care of that part of it, if you'll only bet." "What a perfect torment you can be, Sadie Minot, when you take a notion," interposed Katherine, flushing, but with a laugh that rang out clearly and sweetly. "But I must go and find mamma. She will be wondering what has become of me," and she turned abruptly away to get out of range of a pair of saucy, twinkling eyes. She carefully sprinkled her buds, then covered them to keep them fresh, after which she went out to seek her parents, humming a bar of their farewell song on the way. As the sound of her footsteps died away in the distance Sadie sank upon a chair and gave vent to a ringing peal of mirthful laughter. "Moss rosebuds!" she panted. "They will look 'pretty' with her dress! Oh, innocence! thy name is Katherine." A few hours later the main building of the seminary was ablaze with light and resounding with music, happy voices and laughter, together with the tripping of many feet in the merry dance.