Because she had been all her life an obedient child, she paused with one hand on the railing and leaned down. There was a distinct note of exasperation in her voice as she asked: “What is it, Mama?” Mrs. Spellman found herself equally unable to ask the question she wanted to ask, and to the same degree unable not to ask it. She wavered. Mahala could see the workings of her brain as plainly as she could see her lips. Taking the bull by the horns was an old habit of hers. She took hold now courageously as ever. “If you’re bothering your head about those flowers,” she said very distinctly, “I’d advise you not to. It’s wearing. They are very lovely. Whoever sent them had only the kindest intentions. Jemima told you that she didn’t find anything to show where they had come from. What’s the use to speculate when all of us are worn out?” Mahala went to her room, closed the door, and standing before the mirror, surveyed her reflection from head to heels. She was not looking quite so fresh as she had the last time she had looked in that mirror, but she decided, that after delivering a valedictory and dancing for hours, she was still extremely presentable. She slipped from her dress and returned it to the form in the guest room from which it had been taken to serve its great purpose. As she shook out the skirts she said to it laughingly: “Let me tell you, you very nice dress, Edith gave me the hardest run to-night she ever did. But I still think that you’re the prettiest dress and the most appropriate that was worn at Commencement to-night.” She leaned forward and for an instant buried her face in the laces on the breast of the dress covering the wire form. Going back to her room, she put out the light. As speedily as possible, she slipped into her nightrobe and then she went to the window where for four years the little gold bird had sung to her daily from its shining house of brass, and standing beside it in the moonlight, she smoothed out the twist of paper and upon it she read three words. She stood a long time in the moonlight looking across the roofs of neighbouring houses and down the moon-whitened street; then she turned and walked back to her dressing table. Among the bottles and brushes on top of it there lay a white rosebud. She looked at it a few minutes; finally she picked it up, twisted the wisp of paper around the stem of it, and went to her closet. From a top shelf she took down a beautiful lacquered box that represented one of the handsomest of her father’s gifts from the city. It was shining in black and gold while across it flew white storks with touches of red above a silver lake bordered by gold reeds. She lifted the lining of her workbasket and from beneath it she took out a tiny gold key. With this she unlocked the box and laid the white rose and the three words inside it, relocked and replaced the box, and returned the key to its hiding place beneath the lining of her workbasket.