"No Holsover blood there!" he muttered.
Mr. North was the only expressman, or carrier, in this very obscure part of the country. Twice a week he came and went, carrying letters and packages, as well as occasionally a traveller, to the different villages of towns about. Once a month he visited Boston. His own house stood on a country road about three miles from Holsover Farm. There he lived almost alone, his widowed mother being too infirm to be considered very much of a companion for a hearty, burly, good-humored man like himself.
The old farm-house in which Miss Holsover lived stood near the cross-roads. It was a long low building with one story and an attic, above which rose the slanting roof. Some old trees grew at one side, but everything about it was dismal and uninviting to visitors. Miss Holsover said she was glad of this. She liked to shut herself away as much as possible from her fellow-creatures.
Not a human being in all the country about ever remembered a sympathetic word or look from her. She was a tall grim woman of sixty, with bushy eyebrows, gray hair, and thin, bluish lips. What comfort she could take in life every one wondered, but it was whispered that she was hoarding money; that if the truth was but known, untold sums lay hidden somewhere in the old house.
Certainly Jesse Grey saw nothing of the kind. As the boy had said to Mr. North, he did not know how he had come to Holsover Farm. Jesse only knew that he had "always been there." There were no dim remembrances in his mind of any past which did not include the desolate house, and Miss Holsover's cruel face and figure. The only variations in his surroundings had been visits from the one human being Miss Holsover had ever shown any fondness for. This was her reprobate nephew Bill.
The boy had appeared and disappeared so many times in the course of Jesse Grey's remembrance that he had felt as if he might expect him any particularly windy night, or any time when things were going on a little comfortably. For Bill's visits to the farm were his seasons of terror. Bill was a coarse, violent-tempered lad, who delighted in terrifying him in every way possible, who forced his so-called aunt into new cruelties to the helpless child, and who seemed only to know that he could suffer.
Of late Jesse had begun to wonder when Bill would reappear. Last year, just at this season, he had suddenly arrived, and how well Jesse remembered his saying with a coarse laugh that he had come back as a valentine! What was a valentine? Jesse wondered. He looked at Mr. North's spacious back a moment before he said,
"Mr. North, can you tell me what a valentine is like?"
Mr. North peered around with a queer smile at his little companion. "Wa'al," he said, slowly, "there's all kinds. I think it's sort o' good luck, or good wishes, like as if you wuz to do me a favor. I don't know as I've seen many in my day. They hev 'em in store winders—paper things, with Cupids; but they say on 'em, 'I'm your valentine.' Neow ef eny one wuz to say he wuz my valentine, he'd oughter do me a good turn; seems to me as if a valentine oughter be good luck."
It was a long speech, and Mr. North delivered it with some difficulty, flecking his horses with his whip now and then, and apparently taking a great interest in the weather.