Jack smiled benignly down at her. “But I saw it,” he insisted. “Do you think I don’t know your handwriting? The verses weren’t yours, unless they turn out spring poets amazingly fast up here, but the writing was, except that on the envelope, and the Cupids were. The design was the same as the one on the picture frame you gave me last winter. Beginning to remember?” he inquired with an exasperating chuckle.
“No,” said Betty severely. Then a light broke over her face. “Oh yes, of course, I made that. Oh Jack Burgess, how perfectly rich!”
“Don’t think so myself, but Bobbie will. You see I told him that I could put up a good guess who sent him that valentine, and that I’d find out for sure when I came up. But evidently he couldn’t wait, so he’s made his sister ask him up too, in the hope of happening on the valentine lady, I suppose. Know his sister?”
“No,” said Betty, who was almost speechless with laughter. “Oh, Jack, listen!” and she told the story of the valentine firm. “Probably his sister bought it and sent it to him,” she finished. “Or anyway some girl did. Jack, he’s looking this way again. Did you tell him I sent it?”
“No,” said Jack hastily, “that is–I–well, I only said that the girl I knew up here sent it. He evidently suspects you. See him stare.”
“Jack, how could you?”
“How couldn’t I you’d better say,” chuckled Jack. “I never heard of this valentine graft. What should I think, please? Never mind; I’ll undeceive the poor boy at the intermission. He’ll be badly disappointed. You see, he said it was his sister all along, and—”
The curtain rolled slowly up, disclosing the Glee Club grouped in a rainbow-tinted semicircle about the leader, and the concert began.
At the intermission Jack brought Mr. Winchester and his sister to meet Betty, and there were more explanations and much laughter. Then Jack insisted upon meeting the rest of the firm, so Betty hunted up Mary. Her Harvard man knew the other two slightly, and the story had to be detailed again for his benefit.
“I say,” he said when he had heard it, “that’s what I call enterprise, but you made just one mistake. Next year you must sell your stock to us. Then all of it will be sure to land with the ladies, and your cousin’s feelings won’t be hurt.”