Then Mahala laid her head upon her pillow and tried to go to sleep, but sleep was a long time coming. Never in her life had she found so many things of which to think. She knew that her mother would not give over her pursuit of the sender of the wonderful gift in the morning. She was reasonably certain that Junior would not be thwarted in his desires without putting up a fight that might very possibly, according to his methods of soldiering, become disagreeable. And there remained in her consciousness the memory of a look that she had seen in her father’s eyes that night, a look that had been gradually disquieting her for a long time. She had tried to evade it, to forget it, to make herself think it was not there. From to-night on she knew that it was not a thing to be longer evaded. It was something to be faced and to be dealt with. When she awakened in the morning, the house was so filled with sunshine, and there were so many people coming to see her wealth of beautiful gifts, to examine minutely the wonderful baskets and the sheaf of flowers that had been bestowed upon her, to try to fix in their consciousness, on the part of many filled with envy, just what amount of expense had been lavished upon Mahala’s graduation, that her fears were forgotten. Many of these callers were making the rounds. They had already been to the Williams’ residence and a few of them had felt sufficiently familiar with Mrs. Moreland to call there, also. By the time they reached the Spellmans’, they were able to draw a convincing conclusion as to which young person of Ashwater had received the largest number of the most expensive gifts, the most flowers, and worn the costliest clothing. Serena Moulton, who was responsible for the foundations of Mahala’s dress, stopped in for a view of the finished product. As she stood before it, she clasped her hands and looked at Mahala laughingly. “The first thing I know,” she said, “you’ll be taking my business from me. It just ain’t in my skin to do all this little fine ruffly business and all the handwork that you do. I’m terrible beholden to a sewing machine. I do like a long straight seam that I can set down to and just make my old Singer sing.” Mahala knew that this was intended to be funny, and so she laughed as heartily as she could over it. “Well, Serena,” she said, “there’s no telling which way the cat’s going to jump in this world. It may happen that very way.” She almost started at hearing the words on her own lips, while a fleeting shadow swept across her heart.