stuck
strictly to that promise.

By the time they were dressed, they had decided to put it in the blue
room, a guest-chamber in the north wing, seldom used in winter, because
it was so hard to heat. "Nobody will ever think of coming in here," said
Malcolm, "and it will be plenty warm for a bear if we turn on the
furnace a little." As he spoke, he was tying the bear's rope around a
leg of the big, high-posted bed.

"Won't Ginger be surprised?" answered Keith. "We'll tell her that we
have a valentine six feet long, and keep her guessing."

There was no time for teasing, however, as the first guest arrived while
they were still in the blue room.

"I hate to go off and leave him in the dark," said Keith, with a final
loving pat. "I guess he'll not mind, though. Maybe he'll think he is in
the woods if I put this good-smelling pine pillow on the rug
beside him."

"Oh, boys," called Virginia from the hall down-stairs. "See what an
enormous valentine pie Aunt Allison has made!"

Looking over the banisters, the boys saw that a table had been drawn
into the middle of the wide reception-hall, and on it sat the largest
pie that they had ever seen. It was in a bright new tin pan, and its
daintily browned crust would have made them hungry even if their
appetites had not been sharpened by the cold and exercise of the
afternoon.

"What a queer place to serve pie," said Malcolm, in a disapproving
undertone to his brother. "Why don't they have it in the dining-room? It
looks mighty good, but somehow it doesn't seem proper to have it stuck
out here in the hall. Mamma would never do such a thing."

"Aw, it's made of paper! She fooled us, sure, Malcolm," called back
Keith, who had run on ahead to look. "It is only painted to look like a
pie. But isn't it a splendid imitation?"

Virginia, pleased to have caught them so cleverly, showed them the ends
of twenty-four pieces of narrow ribbon, peeping from under the
delicately brown top crust. "The white ones are for the girls, and the
red ones for the boys," she explained. "There is a valentine on the end
of each one, and those on the red ribbons match the ones on the white.
We'll all pull at once, and the ones who have valentines alike will go
out to dinner together."

The guests came promptly. They had been invited for half-past six, and
dinner was to be served soon after that time. The last to arrive was the
Little Colonel. She came in charge of an old coloured woman, Mom Beck,