“I have only just found out,” wrote Larry, “that you have not received a letter and a later note which I wrote you. I can not understand what has become of them and I am trying to find out. But I hasten to tell you, meanwhile, that I wrote, as I said I would, and I know that you must have thought me—well, I don’t know what you must have thought, if you thought of me at all!
“I have been anxiously waiting a reply from you, wondering, thinking that you were sick, or offended—about that at the last, you know. Yet I felt that you would have written me some sort of a reply, if only out of courtesy. Now Marcella writes me that you have not heard from me at all.
“I shall write in full again, but hurry this off at once. This is only to say that what I said to you at that last short moment was only too true for my peace of mind and that my missing letter went into matters between us. My Commencement comes shortly before yours, I believe, and I expect to be home to see the sweet girl graduate receive her diploma. Do I dare to hope that she will be glad to see me?”
The heart of that sweet girl graduate was thrilling over Larry’s letter then. Yes. She would be glad to see Larry, without a doubt. So he had meant it. What difference did it make about lost letters now? Yet—she would enjoy knowing just what had been in that first message.
School would go on, of course, no matter what interesting and important things were happening outside. Betty managed to concentrate on her lessons now. Those senior examinations! Then “at last” the expected letter came:
“Dear Valentine Lady:
“I am seeing you as you looked in the library that night. No wonder my resolution failed me. But since you are not offended, I am not sorry. Your note assuring me of that fact came promptly and relieved my very much disturbed feelings. Thank you, dear girl. So far there is no trace of the letter. Judd declares that he mailed all the letters he carried to the post that day. There is no one at your end of the route that would be interested in holding back a letter from me, I am sure. We can let it go, and since I am to see you so soon, I shall not write, or try to remember all the details I mentioned in that missive. But there were one or two important points that I think I’d better mention.
“The first is that I have been interested in you, Betty, for a long time. But after that first meeting, when I found how very, very young you were, I decided that a love affair might better be postponed, if there were any chance of one with you. I have had little of what is called college society here, for reasons that I will mention in a moment. I have been a busy fellow all through the university, with most of my recreation with the fellows, as we say.
“Of course, every time I saw you, I was tempted to begin a courtship. It was good, but harrowing last summer to be with you, and to tell the truth, it was when I got to thinking that those other youngsters whom you knew so well would perhaps carry you off after all, that is, some one of them—one in particular—well, that is what brought me flying, after my valentine. And with your looking like a young lady of the olden time, so sweet and lovely, it quite finished me.
“If the circumstances were ordinary, Betty, I would merely start in to win your love, with no explanation. But you probably do not remember stating, in some conversation with the other girls on the boat last summer, that your parents would never hear to an engagement while you were in high school and that you would have to be ‘awfully in love’ to go against anything they wanted or did not want. I could not blame them, though for a girl not yet eighteen you seem mature and able to choose whom you like. But of course I am no cool-headed parent on this question! I’m not on their side of the argument at all! But that is why I am not going to ask you for a pledge when I come. I am going to ask you for permission to win your love if I can and to find out how your heart does stand on that important point. Then I am going to see all I can of you, unless I find that you—I am not sure, though, that I could keep away from you under any circumstances. There might be some chance that you could learn to like me enough.