She laughed. "I guess, Floyd, if this is a book of memories, that last page is to picture the last great event of your life--your graduation night. Don't you remember how your new patent leathers pinched your feet, so that you limped across the platform after your diploma? It is shaped like a rosebud, for it is like that. Every week you will open a new petal, and finally, when you have opened them all, it will be a full-blown rose. When you come back Rose will have unfolded a few petals, too." "Well, I am going to unfold every one of these right now. I never could wait that long to see what is in the centre. Of course I have a vague idea, but I want to be sure. So in two minutes we will know this mystery." "No," she said firmly, taking the book from his hand. "What would the book mean to you then, Floyd? Every particle of the pleasure--the expectation--would be gone. It took Rose a long time to make this book and you surely would not destroy its value in a few minutes. She even formed every leaf like a petal, so that it would give you the pleasure of watching it unfold like a real rose. It is just a symbol of herself--a little bud of promise." "She's great to think of all that; I like her. Oh, she and Dorothy are going to stop a minute to-night; Dot has something for me and I want them to see some of my things. But I do want to open this book. I guess I will give it to you to keep until I am ready to shut this trunk, so it won't be such a temptation. But let's eat pretty soon; I am simply starved." At the supper table he talked incessantly of his departure. One moment he wished that she could go along; the next he exulted over the idea of being in a house with a crowd of fellows. While he talked a boy came to the door and was dragged in by a ruthless hand. While they ate quantities of hot waffles they talked of the "fellows and girls." For the most part they talked of the girls. The sister heard new phrases--a new language; he had always used a different one to her. They spoke of girls as "four-flushers," as "easies," as "stiffs" and "stand-patters." Occasionally Floyd stopped in the centre of a remark and nodded his head warningly towards his sister, but the talkative John rambled on, speaking in a free and easy way of the girls he had grown up with. During the last year Floyd had ceased to talk to his sister about his girl friends, and they seldom came to his home. In her presence his comrades talked continually of school; but if she was busy near she could hear them laughing and chatting in tones different from the ones they used when she was there. She had tried in every way she could to attract them to her home, for formerly they had come in great crowds. But Floyd did not seem to want them; he preferred going to their homes. At times she wondered if she had been in their way when they had come.