The note went by the morning’s mail.  Its answer came in two days.

My dear Nita You are a witch fit for the hanging!  How did you know—­how could you guess!—­I was going to send you some of our Pink Ramblers?  Only they are not quite blossomed out enough yet.  When they are you shall have more than you can hold in your two small hands!  But to thank me for them ahead of time!  It is just like you!  You always were a witch!  Why don’t you come to see me?  I should have been up last visiting day only that the house was full of workmen, and Isabel had engagements, and somebody must stay—­I was the somebody!—­A visitor!  Too bad!  Love—­
          
                                 Georgiana.

Before the pink roses had lost a petal another box was brought to Miss Sterling’s door.  Her fingers quivered with hope as she untied the ribbon.  The address was in the same firm, open hand.  A shimmer of gold met her first glance, but the scrap of white she had longed for was missing.  Without doubt the pilferer had thwarted her again.  She put the yellow beauties into water with half-hearted pleasure.  Why couldn’t Miss Sniffen let her have her own!  She pounded the air with her little impotent fists.  She did not go down to tea.  Unhappiness and worry are not appetizers.

The next morning it was whispered from room to room that the second card had been filched from Miss Sterling’s box of roses.  Miss Castlevaine loved so well the transmitting of newsy tidbits, that they were not apt to remain long in one quarter.

“I’d do something about it!” she declared to Miss Major.  “It has come to a pretty pass if our belongings have to be tampered with before we even are allowed to see them!  I think somebody ought to tell the president.”

The incident, however, passed with talk, nobody being willing to risk her residence in behalf of Juanita Sterling.

When Polly Dudley heard of it she waxed wrathful.

“I never liked Miss Sniffen,” she declared, “and now I just hate her!”

“Polly!” remonstrated Miss Sterling.

“I don’t care, I do!  I wish mother was on the Board, then I ’d try to make her say something!  What business has Miss Sniffen to open your boxes, anyhow?  I almost know they came from Mr. Randolph, and that’s why she’s mad about it!”

“Polly, I hope you won’t say that to anybody else.  You’ve no more reason to think he sent them than you have to think King George sent them.”

Polly chuckled.

“You haven’t—­intimated such a thing, have you?—­to anybody else, I mean?” The question held an anxious tone.

“Why, no, I guess not,” was the slow answer, “except mother.  I think I said to mother that probably he was the one.”

Miss Sterling shook her head with a tiny scowl.  “Your mother must think me an intensely silly woman,” she sighed.

“Oh, I didn’t say you thought so!” Polly hastened to explain.  “I only said I did.”