entine's day. It was a long time, to be sure, since Betty
had been much excited over the last named festival; in her experience
only children exchanged valentines. But at Harding it seemed to be
different. While the day was still several weeks off she had received
three invitations to valentine parties. She consulted Mary Brooks and
found that this was not at all unusual.

"All the campus houses give them," Mary explained, "and the big ones
outside, just as they do for Hallowe'en. They have valentine boxes, you
know, and sometimes fancy dress balls."

And there the matter would have dropped if Mary had not spent all her
monthly allowance three full weeks before she was supposed to have any
more. Poverty was Mary's chronic state. Not that Dr. Brooks's checks
were small, but his daughter's spending capacity was infinite.

"You wait till you're a prominent sophomore," she said when Katherine
laughed at her, "and all your friends are making societies, and you just
have to provide violets and suppers, in hopes that they'll do as much
for you later on. The whole trouble is that father wants me to be on an
allowance, instead of writing home for money when I'm out. And no matter
how much I say I need, it never lasts out the month."

"Why don't you tutor?" suggested Rachel, who got along easily on a third
of what Mary spent. "I hope to next year."

"Tutor!" repeated Mary with a reminiscent chuckle. "I tried to tutor my
cousin this fall in algebra, and the poor thing flunked much worse than
before. But anyway the faculty wouldn't give me regular tutoring. I look
too well-to-do. Ah! how deceitful are appearances!" sighed Mary, opening
her pocketbook, where five copper pennies rattled about forlornly.

But the very next day she dashed into Betty's room proclaiming loudly,
"I have an idea, and I want you to help me, Betty Wales. You can draw
and I'll cut them out and drum up customers, and I guess I can write the
verses. We ought to make our ad. to-night."

"Our what?" inquired Betty in an absolutely mystified tone.

Then Mary explained that she proposed to sell valentines. "Lots of the
girls who can't draw buy theirs, not down-town, you know--we don't give
that kind here,--but cunning little hand-made ones with pen-and-ink
drawings and original verses. Haven't you noticed the signs on the 'For
Sale' bulletin?"

Betty had not even seen that bulletin board since she and Helen had
hunted second-hand screens early in the fall,