f
the strings and paper. The basket was full of fruit, with a big Hawaiian
pineapple in the middle, and in the box there were layers of pink roses
with long, woody stems and dark-green leaves. They filled the room with
a cool smell that made another air to breathe. Mary stood with her apron
full of paper and cardboard. When she saw Thea take an envelope out from
under the flowers, she uttered an exclamation, pointed to the roses, and
then to the bosom of her own dress, on the left side. Thea laughed and
nodded. She understood that Mary associated the color with Ottenburg's
BOUTONNIERE. She pointed to the water pitcher,--she had nothing else big
enough to hold the flowers,--and made Mary put it on the window sill
beside her.

After Mary was gone Thea locked the door. When the landlady knocked, she
pretended that she was asleep. She lay still all afternoon and with
drowsy eyes watched the roses open. They were the first hothouse flowers
she had ever had. The cool fragrance they released was soothing, and as
the pink petals curled back, they were the only things between her and
the gray sky. She lay on her side, putting the room and the
boarding-house behind her. Fred knew where all the pleasant things in
the world were, she reflected, and knew the road to them. He had keys to
all the nice places in his pocket, and seemed to jingle them from time
to time. And then, he was young; and her friends had always been old.
Her mind went back over them. They had all been teachers; wonderfully
kind, but still teachers. Ray Kennedy, she knew, had wanted to marry
her, but he was the most protecting and teacher-like of them all. She
moved impatiently in her cot and threw her braids away from her hot
neck, over her pillow. "I don't want him for a teacher," she thought,
frowning petulantly out of the window. "I've had such a string of them.
I want him for a sweetheart."

VI

"THEA," said Fred Ottenburg one drizzly afternoon in April, while they
sat waiting for their tea at a restaurant in the Pullman Building,
overlooking the lake, "what are you going to do this summer?"

"I don't know. Work, I suppose."

"With Bowers, you mean? Even Bowers goes fishing for a month. Chicago's
no place to work, in the summer. Haven't you made any plans?"

Thea shrugged her shoulders. "No use having any plans when you haven't
any money. They are unbecoming."

"Aren't you going home?"

She shook her head. "No. It won't be comfortable there t