did not hesitate. "V," said Emmy Lou, "a, l, e, n, t, i, n,
e--Valentine. Be my Valentine."

"There!" said Aunt Cordelia.

"Well!" said Aunt Katie.

"At last!" said Aunt Louise.

"H'm!" said Uncle Charlie.

A LITTLE FEMININE CASABIANCA

The close of the first week of Emmy Lou's second year at a certain large
public school found her round, chubby self, like a pink-cheeked period,
ending the long line of intermingled little boys and girls making what
was known, twenty-five years ago, as the First-Reader Class. Emmy Lou
had spent her first year in the Primer Class, where the teacher, Miss
Clara by name, had concealed the kindliest of hearts behind a brusque
and energetic manner, and had possessed, along with her red hair and a
temper tinged with that color also, a sharp voice that, by its
unexpected snap in attacking some small sinner, had caused Emmy Lou's
little heart to jump many times a day. Here Emmy Lou had spent the year
in strenuously guiding a squeaking pencil across a protesting slate, or
singing in chorus, as Miss Clara's long wooden pointer went up and down
the rows of words on the spelling-chart: "A-t, at; b-a-t, bat; c-a-t,
cat," or "a-n, an; b-a-n, ban; c-a-n, can." Emmy Lou herself had so
little idea of what it was all about, that she was dependent on her
neighbor to give her the key to the proper starting-point heading the
various columns--"a-t, at," or "a-n, an," or "e-t, et," or "o-n, on;"
after that it was easy sailing. But one awful day, while the class
stopped suddenly at Miss Clara's warning finger as visitors opened the
door, Emmy Lou, her eyes squeezed tight shut, her little body rocking to
and fro to the rhythm, went right on, "m-a-n, man," "p-a-n, pan"--until
at the sound of her own sing-song little voice rising with appalling
fervor upon the silence, she stopped to find that the page in the
meantime had been turned, and that the pointer was directed to a column
beginning "o-y, oy."

[Illustration: "Guiding a squeaking pencil across a protesting slate."]

Among other things incident to that first year, too, had been Recess.
At that time everybody was turned out into a brick-paved yard, the boys
on one side of a high fence, the girls on the other. And here, waiting
without the wooden shed where stood a row of buckets each holding a
shiny tin dipper, Emmy Lou would stop on the sloppy outskirts for the
thirst of the larger girls to be assuaged, that the little