“And all you girls?” Nelly asked, with the pretty pink glow deepening in her cheeks. “Will you all promise?”
And they all promised; for there was a sort of honest earnestness in Nelly’s nature to which they found it natural to yield.
So the valentine was directed in Nelly’s most neat and proper manner to “Mr. Joe Greene,” and was dropped into the post-office with the rest of the valentines the girls had written that day.
On the fifteenth the six girls were all together at school, comparing notes and exchanging confidences. But Kitty Greene drew Nelly aside, and said, while they walked up and down the hall together, their arms around each other as girls will,—
“I saw Joe get it, Nelly.”
Nelly’s pretty cheeks glowed and her eyes shone like stars, but she asked no questions. Indeed, they were scarcely necessary, for Kitty was eager enough to tell her story.
“He got it, don’t you think, along with half-a-dozen others, and he read them all before he came to this one. I knew this, you know, by the shape of the envelope. When he came to it I saw him read it all through, and then I saw him go back and read it again. I heard him say to himself,—
“‘That’s an honest letter from some little saint.’
“Then he came up to me and held it toward me, while I pretended to be very busy with my valentines. Then he asked,—