SAINT VALENTINE’S HOUSE.
Do you know, children, how and where all the valentines are made that you see in the shops nowadays?
Well, suppose I tell you all about it.
When you go to fairy-land, turn to the left after you enter the gate, and the first house you come to will be Saint Valentine’s.
This is what I did when I went there, and you shall hear what I saw.
On entering the house, I found myself in a large hall hung with gold and silver paper, and glittering with an incomparable brightness. Here were hundreds of little cupids with tiny wings, who were running and flying about, as busy as bees.
One was carrying a roll of gold paper as big as himself; another was painting beautiful flowers on white paper; others were making paper lace. But all seemed to be helping and waiting on a person who sat by a huge table at the farther end of the hall, and this person I soon found to be Saint Valentine himself.
He was a young man, and very handsome. He was dressed in sky-blue velvet, embroidered with gold, and had great fat pearls for buttons. He seemed as busy as the rest, and merely nodded and smiled when he saw me, and called out,—
“Number Three Shears,
Approach, my dears!”