"You were born to be a Harvard girl, Miss Moore, the crimson becomes
you go perfectly, that great bunch of Jacqueminots is just what you
need to bring out the color in your cheeks," said Arnold Lester, rather
an old beau, and one of Mrs. Endicott's devoted cavaliers.
"Miss Moore is making her roses pale with envy," gallantly answered
Robert Maynard. He had not been able to take his eyes from the girl's
face since he met her.
Anna looked down at her roses and smiled. Her gown and gloves were
black. The great fragrant bunch was the only suggestion of color that
she had worn for over a year. She was still in mourning for her
father, one of the first great financial magnates to go under in the
last Wall Street crash. His failure killed him, and the young daughter
and the invalid wife were left practically unprovided for.
Mrs. Tremont could hardly conceal her annoyance. She had met her young
cousin for the first time the preceding summer and taking a fancy to
her; she exacted a promise from the girl's mother that Anna should pay
her a visit the following autumn. But she reckoned without the girl's
beauty and the havoc it would make with her plans. The discussion as
to the roses outvieing Anna's cheeks in color was abruptly terminated
by a great cheer that rolled simultaneously along both sides of the
field as the two teams entered the lists. Cheer upon cheer went up,
swelled and grew in volume, only to be taken up again and again, till
the sound became one vast echoing roar without apparent end or
beginning.
From the moment the teams appeared, Anna Moore had no eyes or ears for
sights or sounds about her. Every muscle in her lithe young body was
strained to catch a glimpse of one familiar figure. She had little
difficulty in singling him out from the rest. He had stripped off his
sweater and stood with head well down, his great limbs tense, straining
for the word to spring. Anna's breath came quickly, as if she had been
running, the roses that he had sent her heaved with the tumult in her
breast. It seemed to her as if she must cry out with the delight of
seeing him again.
"Look, Grace," said Mrs. Standish Tremont, to the younger of her
nieces, "there is Lennox Sanderson."
"Play!" called the referee, and at the word the Harvard wedge shot
forward and crashed into the onrushing mass of blue-legged bodies. The
mimic war was on, and raged with all the excitement of real battle for
the next three-quarters of an hour; the center was pierced, the flanks
were turned, columns were formed and broken, weak spots were protected,
all the tactics of the science of arms was employed, and yet, neither
side could gain an advantage.