Her eyes became dreamy. "How shall I say thank you?... I know. I must
give you one of my pretty flowers for your buttonhole." She began
pulling out one of the glorious roses, but suddenly checked herself and
gazed off pensively into space, a finger at her lip. "Ah! I thought this
gesture seemed strangely familiar, and now I remember. I gave him a
flower once before, and ah, look!... the president of the college has
tossed it away."
West glanced hastily down at his buttonhole. The lily-of-the-valley was
gone; he had no idea where he had lost it, nor could he now stay to
inquire. The rose he took with tender carefulness from the upper pocket
of his waistcoat.
"What did Mademoiselle expect?" said he, with a courtly bow. "The
president wears it over his heart."
Sharlee's smile was a coronation for a man.
"That one was for the president. This new one," said she, plucking it
out, "is for the director and--the man."
This new one, after all, she put into his buttonhole with her own hands,
while he held her great bunch of them. As she turned away from the
dainty ceremony, her color faintly heightened, Sharlee looked straight
into the narrow eyes of Miss Avery, who, talking with a little knot of
men some distance away, had been watching her closely.
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