nd it in looking at each other's valentines
if you wish."

The pupils crowded back to his lady's seat, while he stood on a chair
near the wall and craned his neck to see the vision of celluloid and
pink and blue ribbon which had come in that last box. She examined the
wrappings again, but no identifying mark could be found. As John stepped
down, Sid DuPree tried to edge past him, and found his way blocked
immediately. Louise looked up at her youthful fiance.

"Oh, Johnny, Johnny," she smiled delightedly.

"I sent--" began Sid from behind his shoulder. Then was John filled with
sudden wrath. He would squelch this persistent rival once and for all.

"You sent it?" he sneered.

"I did," DuPree replied. Louise watched the two eagerly.

"Why that cost all of a quarter. And kids who asks folks to have sundaes
and then can't pay for them, don't spend that much for valentines.
Cheapskates never do!"

Sid scowled. Before he could make suitable reply, Miss Brown rapped for
order and he had to go back to his seat. There, as he squirmed in his
seat while waiting for the dismissal bell, he caught John looking at him
and stuck out his tongue as a manifestation of his scorn. But that
gentleman only grinned. Wrongfully or no, he knew that the credit for
the twenty-five cent valentine had been given to him, and he was content
to let matters rest as they were.

Valentine's day past, Washington's birthday was the one festive oasis
left for the children in the desert of school days. Though the cold
weather held marvelously well, little by little the thermometer beside
the drug store's door showed rising-temperature levels as John stopped
to look at it on the way to school. The long, northern shadows which the
houses and apartments cast against the soot-grayed snow were shortening
rapidly, and his paper route, so long patrolled in entire or
semi-darkness, was now completed just as dusk set in.

Then Miss Brown reached back in her desk drawer for a certain packet of
narrow manila envelopes, that last February afternoon, and brought to a
certain small boy who occupied the seat just in front of her desk,
sudden realization that March was upon the class.

"Please have them signed and returned by Monday," she told the pupils as
she distributed them.

John drew the white, finger-marked card from the ragged envelope, and
his face went first white and then scarlet as his eye followed the long
column of marks. Accusing memories of lesso