“And I was afraid a girl who could do a thing like that might blame us for entering the senior parlor uninvited!”
Bea’s hands fell listlessly at her sides as she walked away. “I don’t care,” she said. And Berta, who was wise in some unexpected ways, wondered why people always said they did not care just when they cared the most.
Next day various anonymous verses were delivered at the door where Lila Allan wrestled with the rules for indirect discourse, while her roommate, chin in hand, stared gloomily out at the snow-darkened sky. Valentines were silly, anyway, and it was a shame for any one to waste time and energy in hunting foolish rhymes for eyes and hair and smiles and hearts. How could a person be sure about anybody, if a girl with a face like a white flower could send valentines to herself with the address side down?
All day long the senior caldron bubbled notes faithfully till the very last minute. After chapel the class fluttered into their little parlor, with its fire blazing merrily and its shaded lamps glowing. Somebody, disguised in a long gray beard and flowing gray robe, stalked in amid laughter and clapping, and began to distribute the contents of the kettle.
Berta, hanging at a perilous angle over the stairway just outside, felt some one halt silently beside her, and glanced up into Bea’s eyes.
“Hello!” she said, in an excited whisper. “Can you see all right, Bea? I think she has called my senior’s name about twenty times already. Look how the valentines are heaped in her lap! Where’s your senior?”
“That person with the gray beard,” began Bea, calmly, only to be interrupted by, “Why, so it is! What fun! Where does she put the envelopes addressed to herself? Oh, yes, I see. Why——” Berta caught Bea’s skirts in a firm grasp. “See here, young lady, you’ll go over the banisters head first if you don’t undouble yourself pretty soon. You’ll——”
“That’s the very valentine—that big, square envelope in her hand this instant! She sent it to herself——”
Bea saw Saint Valentine read aloud the name, and then stop short, staring at the address in a puzzled way. She turned the envelope over to examine its back, and study the waxen seal. Suddenly she bent her head in the delighted laughter that Bea once had thought so charming. She laughed till the long gray beard threatened to shake itself free.
“Isn’t that the greatest joke! I was scribbling verses last night till I was too sleepy to see straight. I didn’t mean to send this to myself. How perfectly ridiculous!” and she tossed the innocent missive into the fire.