Nelly Reading her Valentine.—Page [220].
Nelly read it with rising color and a little quiver about her mouth, which Bertha understood; but she read it with firm voice and careful, deliberate accent.
“Then,” she said, when she had finished, “I shall burn up all the rest of my valentines, and send only this one; for it is what I mean, in earnest, and, as old Aunty Smoke says, ‘Ef it don’t do no good, it can’t do no harm.’”
“To whom shall you send it, dear?” Bertha asked gently, a little subdued by Nelly’s epistolary success.
“I hadn’t made up my mind,” Nelly answered thoughtfully; “they all need it.”
“O, send it to Joe, my cousin Joe,” cried Kitty Greene. “He is staying with us, and he needs it—bad enough. If ever a boy was full of his pranks, Joe is, and if ever a boy tormented a girl’s life out, Joe does mine.”
A color clear and bright as flame glowed on Nelly Hunt’s cheeks. Had she had dark-eyed Joe in her mind all the while? She only answered very quietly,—
“I don’t mind. I had just as lief send it to Joe. That is, I’ll send it to him if you’ll promise, on your sacred honor, never in any way to let him know who wrote it.”
“Oh, I will—true as I live and breathe I’ll never tell him, and never let him guess, if I can help it.”