"Well, you did," laughed the stranger. "There's one on the step now, unless my skirt switched it off when I jumped. I didn't intend to come in this time, though I meant to return after I had done an errand; but now I'm here I'll stay a minute if it isn't too early."
"If you'll excuse the table," returned Mrs. Driscoll "Alma and I have a late tea." She stooped at the door and picked up a valentine from the edge of the step, and both women were smiling as they entered the room where Alma was standing, flushed and wide-eyed, scarcely able to believe that she recognized the voice.
Sure enough, as the visitor came into the lamplight, the little girl saw that the valentine her mother had caught and brought in out of the dark was really Miss Joslyn. She could hardly believe her eyes as she looked at the merry, blushing face which she was wont to see so serious and watchful. All the pretty teacher's scholars admired her, but she had a dignity and strictness which gave them some awe of her, too, and it seemed wonderful to Alma that this important person should be standing here and laughing with her mother, right in their own sitting-room.
Miss Joslyn's bright eyes saw signs of tears in her pupil's face, and she also saw the handsome valentines strewn upon the table. "Well, well, Alma!" she exclaimed softly, "you have quite a show there!"
"And here is another," said Mrs. Driscoll, handing the latest arrival to the little girl. Alma smiled gratefully at her teacher as she opened the envelope and took out a dove in full flight, carrying a leaf in its beak. On the leaf was printed in gold letters the word Love.
"I was caught in the act, Alma," laughed Miss Joslyn, "but I guess I am too old and slow to be running about at night with valentines."
"I like it the best of all," replied the little girl. "It was bought for me," she added in her own thought, and she was right. Twenty minutes ago the white dove had been reposing at a stationer's, with every prospect of remaining there until another Valentine's Day came around.
"Please sit down, Miss Joslyn," said Mrs. Driscoll.
"Well, just for a minute," replied the young lady, taking the offered chair, "but I wish you would finish your supper."