arc-lit snow of the park driveway, one starlit February night, Louise
broke into a sudden delighted giggle.

"Day after tomorrow's Lincoln's birthday. Aren't you glad?"

Glad? Was ever a schoolboy sorry for an added day of freedom?

"Two days after that's St. Valentine's day. We'll have a box up at
school then. What kind of valentines do you like best?" he quizzed in
return. "Paper hearts and things with lots of lace on them, or celluloid
ones in boxes?"

Louise hesitated for a moment.

"I like," she said finally, "any kind of valentines, but best I like
lots and lots of them--more'n anyone else in the room gets. Last year I
was third, and in second grade a girl got one more valentine than I did.
It was only a comic, but that gave her nine, and I had eight. This year
I want to be first!"

It was no small honor which the girl craved. To lead in the valentine
distribution is to be acknowledged the belle of the room until the June
examinations break up the little, pupil cliques and send their members
to the different higher-grade rooms. John resolved that her wish should
be fulfilled, but that achievement lay at the end of a path beset with
pitfalls. Let rumor make the rounds that he purposed stuffing the box,
and others would play at the same game. Witness a girl in an early
grade, the homeliest of the room, who begged a dollar from her father
and filled the box to overflowing with a hundred penny valentines
addressed to herself.

He left for his paper route half an hour earlier, that Lincoln's
birthday afternoon, and turned abruptly westward as he reached the
corner where the wagon drove up with his nightly bundle. He halted a
moment in front of the school store. In the window was the usual display
of rubber balls, penny trinkets, and magazines, and beyond them, he
could see the deserted interior. As he had foreseen, the holiday had
brought the usual lack of juvenile trade, and investment in the
valentine market could be made without fear.

He swung the door back. The trip bell rang noisily, and tall, angular
Miss Thomas came out from the suite of little rooms in the rear.

"Valentines," said he briefly. She reached a shallow box containing a
dozen or so of the little printed love missives to the glassy-topped
counter, where he pawed them over with one half-washed hand.

"I want more than these!"

The look of boredom, bred by long months of finicky penny purchasers,
vanished. She stooped for one of the packe