“Oh, Nolla,” laughed Polly, teasingly. “Are you selecting Jim for your first love?”
“First love! I should say double no! I am hunting for a comic one for him—just because he is so sentimental and sits with moony eyes when he is near any pretty girl. I thought I would die with laughter that night he sat and gazed with soulful eyes at Ruth.”
Finally the girls found several very funny cards which had sarcastic lines under the pictures. These they were going to mail to Jim and Ken. Then Eleanor had an idea.
“I just guess I’ll mail one each to John, Tom, Pete and Paul, too. If I dared, I’d get Pete to re-mail one to Bob so she wouldn’t know who sent it. Being postmarked ‘Chicago’ she’d break her head trying to think who sent it to her.”
“Oh, that will be fun, Nolla. Have them remailed so the boys won’t know we sent them. Let’s do that with all of ours.”
The need of secrecy, and the trouble of selecting appropriate lines for each of their friends, took time. But Eleanor wired her father to keep the secret and do the mailing for them, and he wired back his consent. So the valentines meant for the Chicago friends went to Mr. Maynard, and duly reached each one as had been intended.
And those for Jim and Ken were handed to a porter on the train that ran to New Haven, with a liberal tip if he would drop them in a letter-box when he jumped from the train. His wide grin showed he was ready to abet the pranks such generous pretty young misses planned to tease their beaux.
Elizabeth Dalken had taken a violent fancy to Jim Latimer when she met him at the different Christmas parties, and Valentine’s Day being an opportunity for love-lorn misses and youths, she bought a very expensive Valentine, with sentiment as soft as down, and suggestive of heart-aches and sighs and what-not.
But Elizabeth had no independence, whatever, and once she had the Valentine boxed and ready to post, she wished she knew someone who would address it. She feared to have her own cramped writing seen on it.
In Mrs. Wellington’s school was a clever girl who could imitate hand-writing to perfection, and Elizabeth presented her with a box of bon-bons a few days before Valentine’s Day. Then the following day she asked a favor. Would Myrtle address a box for her?