Spontaneous as always, Mahala had picked up the _pièce de résistance_ of the evening, an offering beside which all else paled into insignificance. She lifted it lightly, smiled on it, turned it a bit that she might see its full beauty, her head cocked on one side in a bird-like gesture habitual with her, lifted it level with her breast, buried her face among its waxen satin petals and gracefully ran her delicate finger-tips through the clinging maidenhair. Then the audience caught the fact that she was searching for a card. She was looking, and her fingers were feeling—and her search was not being rewarded. The handsomest floral tribute that the Ashwater Commencement knew that night had either been sent anonymously, or the card had been lost. Mahala’s curiosity was making her look over the length and breadth of the heap in front of her and at the two gorgeous baskets set before it. Then she gently set down the lilies and roses at her knees and lifting her head, she searched the audience with a long and deliberate look. There was only one person in the audience who knew when that look found its resting place. There was only one person, high up, far back, in the gallery who read to the depths of Mahala’s eyes in that instant and through whose heart flowed the cool acquiescence of peace when he saw her fingers slip out and deliberately break from its stem the bud of a white rose that she thrust among the laces covering her bosom. It was only a moment more before the music was pealing; the Superintendent had made his short speech, as president of the School Board, Martin Moreland was telling what increasingly wonderful work was done each year by the youth of the town, how well deserved were the sheepskins that he was now to bestow upon them. The boys were trying to figure out a problem none of them had remembered to concentrate upon—how they least awkwardly might accept and dispose of the beribboned roll thrust at them. They did not know whether to hold it like a ball bat or a fan. It took the daring of Junior Moreland to make of it a trumpet through which he sent a message to his shocked mother in the audience. It was only a few seconds later that Jemima Davis was on her knees in front of Mahala gathering into the folds of a widely spread sheet every tribute, large and small, bearing the girl’s name. Guarding like a soldier the beautiful baskets and the sheaf, she whispered to Mahala: “Who sent you them lilies and roses, darlin’?” Mahala leaned to Jemima’s ear to respond: “Hunt through them carefully, Jemima. If you find a note, you will hide it for me, won’t you, old dearest dear?” Jemima answered convincingly: “You just bet your sweet life I will!” So with a heart of contentment, Mahala led the procession down the aisle, climbed into the omnibus before her parents had a chance to object, and with the others was carried away to the banquet at the Newberry House.