--a little message like this--"

Patty Wyatt passing the door, sauntered in. The card was exhibited in
spite of a feeble protest from Mae.

"That handwriting shows a lot of character," Patty commented.

This was considered a concession; for Patty, from the first, had held
aloof from the cult of Cuthbert St. John. She was Rosalie's friend.

The days that followed, were filled with bewildering experiences for Mae
Mertelle. Having accepted the first installment of sunflowers, she could
not well refuse the second. Once having committed herself, she was lost.
Candy and books followed the flowers in horrifying profusion. The candy
was of an inexpensive variety--Patty had discovered the ten-cent
store--but the boxes that contained it made up in decorativeness what
the candy lacked; they were sprinkled with Cupids and roses in vivid
profusion. A message in the same back hand accompanied each gift, signed
sometimes with initials, and sometimes with a simple "Bertie." Parcels
had never before been delivered with such unsuspicious promptitude. Miss
Sallie was the one through whose hands they went. She glanced at the
outside, scrawled a "deliver," and the maid would choose the most
embarrassing moments to comply--always when Mae Mertelle was surrounded
by an audience.

Mae's Englishman, from an object of sentiment, in a few days' time
became the joke of the school. His taste in literature was as impossible
as his taste in candy. He ran to titles which are supposed to be the
special prerogative of the kitchen. "Loved and Lost," "A Born Coquette,"
"Thorns among the Orange Blossoms." Poor Mae repudiated them, but to no
avail; the school had accepted Cuthbert--and was bent upon eliciting all
the entertainment possible from his British vagaries. Mae's life became
one long dread of seeing the maid appear with a parcel. The last straw
was the arrival of a complete edition--in paper--of Marie Corelli.

"He--he never sent them!" she sobbed. "Somebody's just trying to be
funny."

"You mustn't mind, Mae, because they aren't just the sort that an
American man would choose," Patty offered comfort. "You know that
Englishmen have queer tastes, particularly in books. _Everybody_ reads
Marie Corelli over there."

The next Saturday, a party of girls was taken to the city for shopping
and the matinee. Among other errands, the art class visited a photograph
dealer's, to purchase some early Italian masters. Patty's interest in
Giotto and his k