"Easily enough. I'll attend to that. Goodnight, now, Midget. Hop to bed, and dream hearts and darts and loves and doves and roses and posies and all such things."
"All right, I will. Good-night, Father dear. Is Mother there?"
"Yes,—hold the wire."
So Mrs. Maynard came and said a loving goodnight to her near yet faraway daughter, and Marjorie went to bed all cheered up, instead of lonely and despondent.
St. Valentine's Day was a fine, crisp winter day, with sunshine dancing on the snow, and blue sky beaming down on the bare branches of the trees.
The fun began at breakfast-time, when everybody found valentines at their plates,—for as Midge and Delight agreed, they had made so many, and they must use them up somehow. So Miss Hart and Mrs. Spencer received several in the course of the day; two were surreptitiously stuffed into Doctor Mendel's coat pockets, and the kittens each received some.
Lessons that morning were not really lessons at all. Miss Hart called it a Literature Class.
First she told the girls about the origin of Valentines, and how they happened to be named for St. Valentine, and why he was chosen as the patron saint of love. Then she read them some celebrated valentines written by great poets, and the girls had to read them after her, with great care as to their elocution.
She showed them some curious valentines, whose initials spelled names or words, and were called acrostics, and told of some quaint old-fashioned valentines that had been sent to her grandmother.
"And now," she said finally, "we've had enough of the sentimental side, I will read you a funny valentine story."