y be an heiress. Hal may thank
his stars to get her, though I hate him as I do poison.'

It was Tom who had insisted that Harold's basket should be bought in New
York, where there was a better chance, he said, and he had himself
selected flowers which he knew were not fresh, and would be still worse
twenty-four hours later.

'Why don't you get yours here, if it is the be-best place?' Will
Peterkin had asked him, and he replied:

'Oh, we can't be bothered with more than one basket in the train. I can
find something there.'

He did not say what he intended to find, or that baskets were quite too
common for him. But after leaving the young ladies in the evening, he
went to a florist's and ordered for Jerrie a book of white daisies, with
a rack of purple pansies for it to rest upon.

'That will certainly be unique, and show her that I have taste,' he
thought.

For Nina a bouquet was sufficient, while for Ann Eliza Peterkin he
ordered nothing. Tom could be lavish of his money where his own interest
was concerned, but where he had no interest he was stingy and even mean,
and so poor little red-haired Ann Eliza, who would have prized a leaf
from him more than all the florist's garden from another, was to get
nothing from him.

'What business has old Peterkin's daughter to graduate with ladies, any
way?' he thought, and he looked on with a sneer, while Billy ordered
five baskets, one of which was to be of white roses, with a heart of
blue forget-me-nots in the centre.

'What, under heaven, are you going to do with five baskets?' he asked;
but Billy was non committal, for he would not own that three were
intended for Jerrie, whom he wished to carry off the palm so far as
flowers were concerned.

And she did; for of all the young ladies who the next day passed in
review before the multitude, no one attracted so much attention or
received so much praise as Jerrie. For clearness of reasoning, depth of
thought, and purity of language, her essay, though a little too
metaphysical, perhaps, was accounted the best, and listened to with rapt
attention. And when the musical voice ceased, and the young girl, who
had never looked more beautiful than she did then, with the sparkle in
her eyes and the flush on her cheeks, bowed to the audience, bouquets of
flowers fell around her like hailstones, while basket after basket was
handed up to her, Tom Tracy's book showing conspicuously from the rest
and attracting unusual admiration.