"For me!" she cried. "Who could have sent it? How pretty it is—how pretty! A great deal too pretty for me. Oh, what a kind, dear somebody there is in the world!"
Everybody in the house was glad because Lotty was glad. Grandmamma came in to hear the valentine; so did papa, and Jack, Lotty's big brother, and Fred, her little one. Even the cook made up an excuse about the pudding, and stole upstairs to hear the "fine verses which somebody had sint to Miss Lotty. It's swate as roses she is, any day," said cook; "and good luck to him for sinding it, whoiver he is."
By and by Lotty's tender heart began to busy itself with a new plan.
"Grandma," she said, "I'm thinking about little Mary Riley. She works so hard, and she hardly ever has anything nice happen to her. Don't you think I might send her my valentine—in a different envelope, you know, with her name on it and all? She'd be so pleased."
"But I thought you liked it so much yourself, dear," replied grandmamma, unwilling to have her darling spare one bit of brightness out of her sick-room life.
"Oh, I do; that's the reason I want to give it away," said Lotty, simply, and stroking Blue, who, had she known how, would gladly have purred under the soft touch. "But I shall go on liking it all the same if Mary has it, and she'll like it too. Don't you see, grandmamma? I've copied the verses in my book, so that I can keep them."
Grandmamma consented. The new envelope was found, Mary's address was written upon it, and away went happy Blue to give pleasure to a fresh friend.
"This is best of all," she said to herself, as Mary laid aside her weary sewing to read over and over again the wonderful verses, which seemed to have dropped out of fairy-land. She almost cried with pleasure that they should be sent to her.
"I wish I could buy a frame for 'em—a beautiful gold frame," she whispered to herself.
Pink would have been vain had she heard this; but Blue glowed with a purer feeling—the happiness of giving happiness.