e Dijon rose up to him
and recited with parrot-like glibness:

"With the compliments of Peter Grimm."

The fat man half unconsciously took the rose from the little hand and
stood looking as though in dire doubt what to do with it. The boy did
not help him out. Already he had moved on to the next passenger,--this
time a man of clerical bearing and suspiciously vivid nose,--and handed
him a gleaming Madonna lily.

"With the compliments of Peter Grimm," he announced, passing on to the
next.

And so on down the bunched line of waiting men and women the lad made
his way. In front of each, he paused, presented a flower taken at random
from the basket, recited his droning formula, and passed on.

The fat travelling man stared stupidly at his rose. Then he looked about
him, half shamefacedly and in wonder.

"What in blazes----?" he began.

"You must be a stranger in this part of the state," volunteered a big
young fellow, who had just come out of the waiting-room. "Did you never
hear of the flower-giving at the Junction?"

"No. What's the idea? Is it done on a bet? Or is it an 'ad' for the man
on the sign over there?"

"Neither. It has been Peter Grimm's custom for twenty years or more.
Ever since I first knew him."

"And it isn't an ad?"

"No," was the enigmatic answer as the big young man moved off in the
wake of the lad. "It's Peter Grimm."

The boy meanwhile had reached the last of the passengers. She was
middle-aged and motherly-looking. She peered down at him with more than
common interest as he went through his pat little presentation formula.
A psychologist would have gathered much from the lad's tense, flushed
face and in the oddly strained look of the big blue eyes. To this woman,
he was only a thin, lonely looking youngster, whose face held an
unconscious appeal that she answered without reading it.

"I am very much obliged to Mr. Peter Grimm for sending me this lovely
flower," she said, a little patronisingly, as she sniffed at the
half-opened Killarney rose she held.

"You need not be," answered the boy. "He didn't really send it to you.
In fact, I'm quite sure he never even heard of you. He just sent it
because he is good and because----"

"Because he loves flowers," suggested the woman as the boy hesitated.

"No," corrected the boy, in his gentle, old-fashioned diction, wherein
lurked the faintest trace of foreign accent, "I never heard him say
anything about loving flowers. But I know the fl