buttoned down before.' It was Phil's
letter that caused the wreck," she explained to her mother, as she
emptied the burnt cakes into the fire. "There it is on the table."

Phil's letters were family property. Mrs. Ware carried it off to read,
and Mary, taking another pan, proceeded to shape another gingerbread
man. As she did so, her thoughts went from it to little Don Moredock for
whom it was intended, and then to Pink Upham, who had been the devoted
slave of the little fellow with the broken leg ever since the accident
occurred. As she recalled Pink's patience and gentleness with the child,
she wondered just what sort of an impression he would make on Phil. The
more she pondered the more certain she was that Phil would see him
through Jack's eyes and little Don's, rather than through hers. And
somehow, thinking that, she began to get a different view of him
herself.

It was nearly sundown before she found time to run over to the
Moredocks' with the gingerbread man, and tell Don the story which it was
intended to illustrate. He had never heard it before, and insisted upon
her repeating it over and over. He kept her much later than she had
intended to stay, and a young moon was shining on the snow when she
started home again. Pink Upham, stopping on his way home to supper to
leave a feather whirligig he had made for Don, met her going out of the
gate as he went in.

Two minutes later he had caught up with her, and was walking along
beside her. There was to be a Valentine party at Sara Downs on the
fourteenth, he told her. A fancy dress affair. He wanted her to go with
him, as his valentine. Now if it had not been for Phil's letter, Mary's
eyes might not have been opened quite so soon to the fact that Pink
regarded her as the right girl, no matter what she thought of him. But
all at once she realized that he was looking down at her as no one had
ever looked before. There was something in his glance like the dumb
wistfulness that makes a hunting dog's eyes so pathetic, and she felt a
little shiver run over her. She didn't want him to care like _that_! It
was perfectly thrilling to feel that she had aroused a deep regard in
any one's heart, but, oh, _why_ did it have to be some one who fell so
short of her standard of what a true prince must measure up to?

Embarrassed and troubled, she hurried away from him as soon as they
reached the gate. The lamps were lighted and supper was ready when she
went into the house. She