HER FRESHMAN VALENTINES
WHEN Bea straightened her head from its anxious tilt over the desk, she
drew the tip of her tongue from its perilous position between two rows of
white teeth, and heaved a mighty sigh of relief.
Then she blinked admiringly upon the white pile of envelopes lying in the
glow of the drop-light. "There! That makes fifteen valentines all for
her. She will be sure to receive more than any other senior, and that
will teach Berta Abbott a thing or two. The idea of her insisting that
her senior is more popular than my senior!"
With a smile that was rather more sleepy than dreamy, the industrious
young freshman picked up the precious missives.
"O Lila,--my magnanimous roommate,--are you asleep? Do you want to listen
to my last valentines? I intend to run down and put them in the senior
caldron presently. Is this sentimental? When I read it to Berta, she
laughed at it.
"My Music
"At thy birth were gathered voices of the sea,
Murmur of the breezes in the forest tree,
Songs of birds and laughter--"
At this point an open umbrella, which hid the pillow on the farther
narrow bed, gave a convulsive shiver, and a fretful voice complained:
"Will you turn off that gas and stop your nonsense? Here it is midnight,
if it's an hour, and I haven't slept a wink, with that light blazing. I
know I shall fail in the written test to-morrow, Valentine's day or not."
Bea stared pensively at the Topsy-like corona above the flushed face. "I
don't believe she ever puts her hair up in curlers now, do you? She is
superior to such vanities, and anyway, it is naturally curly, you know,
and that probably makes a difference. I wonder if she even stoops to
making verses. Do you suppose she sends valentines to other girls? Of
course, she doesn't care a snap whether she receives more than any, and
is declared the most popular senior. H'm-m-m!" drifting into reverie
afresh. "I dare say I could compose a poem on that idea. For instance:
"I know a senior all sedate--"
The umbrella bounced tempestuously across the floor, and was followed by
a pillow driven hard and straight at a tousled head that ducked just in
time.
"U-huh!" ferociously. "Well,
"I know a freshman, sure as fate!
Who shall no longer sit up late,
Because her long-suffering roommate--"
Here the gas flared suddenly into darkness, and slippered feet scurried
away from the desk. The door opened and shut quickly; and Bea, her
valentines clutched safely against her dressing gown, was speeding
through the dark corridors toward the senior parlor. There a kettle,
overflowing with bits of white, swung from a tripod before the shadowy
folds of the parlor portières.
Ah! Bea, bending toward the caldron with arm extended, stiffened without
moving. She had heard something. Yes, there it was again--a muffled
footfall on the stairs near by. Hark! Down the black shaft from the cave
above came stealing a second slender figure in a flowing robe of some
pale woolly stuff. In her hands also was clasped a packet of envelopes.
"Hello, Berta!" Bea said.
"Oh, good-morning, Miss Leigh!" responded Berta, advancing with a tread
the stateliness of which was somewhat impaired by a loosely flapping
sole. "Did you rise early in order to prepare for the Latin test?"
Bea brushed aside the query with the contempt it deserved. "Are all those
for your senior? I don't think it's fair for you to copy verses out of
any old book, while every one of mine is original; and yet yours count
exactly as much. Well, anyway, I wouldn't send my senior anything that
was ordinary and unworthy of her acceptance. How many have you?"
This ignoble curiosity was likewise ignored by Miss Berta, who proceeded
with dignified slowness to drop her valentines one by one into the
caldron. Bea, with lingering care, deposited her contribution on the very
top. One slid over the edge, and in rescuing it she disturbed a fold of
the portière. A glimpse within set her eyes to sparkling.
"Berta, there's an open fire in the senior parlor, and it's still red!"
"Ho," whispered Berta, in reply to the unspoken challenge, "I'm not
afraid! Let's," and two flowing, woolly robes glided into the warm room,
with its heart of glowing coals. One bold intruder nestled in the biggest
arm-chair, the other fumbled for the tongs.
"Aren't we wicked! Robbie wouldn't do it." Berta cuddled deeper among the
comforting cushions. "But--oh!--doesn't it feel good in here!"
Bea poked a coal until it split into a faint blue blaze. "We're worse
than wicked. We're cheeky,--that's what,--coming into this room without
being invited. Suppose some senior should discover us!" She paused,
smitten by the terror of the new thought. "Just suppose my senior should
find me here! She has a horror of anything underhanded or sly. I should
die of shame!" It was a genuine groan, and Berta was too startled to
laugh.
"I guess it isn't very nice of us," she acknowledged meekly.
"I'm going this instant." Bea's hand was on the portière when a rustling
in the kettle caught her attention. Through a rift between the folds she
spied lace ruffles about a delicate hand that was dropping envelopes down
upon the others. Over the tripod a face appeared for one moment in the
dim light, and then was gone. Light steps retreated swiftly, and a door
closed not far away on the senior corridor. Bea had recognized her
senior.
When the two midnight visitors stole timorously forth a moment later,
Bea's eyes traveled wistfully toward the big envelope lying squarely on
top of all the valentines.
Berta regarded her keenly. "Why don't you march up and read the name, if
you want to so much?" was her blunt question.
"She must be pretty fond of somebody," whispered Bea, "if she stayed up
till now just to write valentines for her. I wish----"
"Do you think it is sneaking to look?" persisted Berta. "If she objected
to having it seen, she might have turned it address down."
"It is address down," murmured Bea, sadly, "and I know it would be
dishonorable to try to see it. She herself would call any act like that
contemptible."
At this crisis Berta sneezed--sneezed hard and long and with suspicious
vehemence. And when Bea cast one lingering farewell glance toward the
caldron, she perceived that the topmost missives were sliding over the
edge in the breeze raised by that gusty sneeze. The big square envelope
tumbled clumsily down upon its back and lay staring, quite close to the
flickering gas. Bea's wilful eyes rested on it one illuminating instant,
and then leaped away, while her cheeks whitened suddenly. The name on the
valentine was that of the senior herself.
Poor little Bea! After the first dazed moment she began to select and
gather up the fifteen valentines which she had deposited five minutes
before.
"Why, Beatrice Leigh!" gasped Berta. "You haven't any right to take them
back after you have mailed them!"
"Do you imagine for one moment that I shall give valentines to a girl who
sends them to herself? And the senior who receives the most is declared
the most popular in the class!"
"But--but," stammered Berta, "perhaps she thought--perhaps she didn't
think----"
"And I was afraid a girl who could do a thing like that might blame us
for entering the senior parlor uninvited!"
Bea's hands fell listlessly at her sides as she walked away. "I don't
care," she said. And Berta, who was wise in some unexpected ways,
wondered why people always said they did not care just when they cared
the most.
Next day various anonymous verses were delivered at the door where Lila
Allan wrestled with the rules for indirect discourse, while her roommate,
chin in hand, stared gloomily out at the snow-darkened sky. Valentines
were silly, anyway, and it was a shame for any one to waste time and
energy in hunting foolish rhymes for eyes and hair and smiles and hearts.
How could a person be sure about anybody, if a girl with a face like a
white flower could send valentines to herself with the address side down?
All day long the senior caldron bubbled notes faithfully till the very
last minute. After chapel the class fluttered into their little parlor,
with its fire blazing merrily and its shaded lamps glowing. Somebody,
disguised in a long gray beard and flowing gray robe, stalked in amid
laughter and clapping, and began to distribute the contents of the
kettle.
Berta, hanging at a perilous angle over the stairway just outside, felt
some one halt silently beside her, and glanced up into Bea's eyes.
"Hello!" she said, in an excited whisper. "Can you see all right, Bea? I
think she has called my senior's name about twenty times already. Look
how the valentines are heaped in her lap! Where's your senior?"
"That person with the gray beard," began Bea, calmly, only to be
interrupted by, "Why, so it is! What fun! Where does she put the
envelopes addressed to herself? Oh, yes, I see. Why----" Berta caught
Bea's skirts in a firm grasp. "See here, young lady, you'll go over the
banisters head first if you don't undouble yourself pretty soon.
You'll----"
"That's the very valentine--that big, square envelope in her hand this
instant! She sent it to herself----"
Bea saw Saint Valentine read aloud the name, and then stop short, staring
at the address in a puzzled way. She turned the envelope over to examine
its back, and study the waxen seal. Suddenly she bent her head in the
delighted laughter that Bea once had thought so charming. She laughed
till the long gray beard threatened to shake itself free.
"Isn't that the greatest joke! I was scribbling verses last night till I
was too sleepy to see straight. I didn't mean to send this to myself. How
perfectly ridiculous!" and she tossed the innocent missive into the fire.
Outside on the shadowy stairway Berta gave a little squeal of pain.
"Ouch! You're pinching me black and blue! Why, Bea, Bea Leigh, whatever
in the world----"
A packet of white, bound with an elastic, went flying through the air, to
fall with a rustling plop into the half-empty caldron. An inquisitive
senior going out to investigate spied only the deserted stairs, and heard
nothing but four scampering feet on the corridor overhead. Saint
Valentine, with a voice that dropped lower and lower into a muffled
murmur, read her own name fifteen times in succession, and blushed
rose-pink, from gray beard to powdered hair, while the other seniors
laughed and laughed.
Two minutes after the valentines had been counted and the result
announced Bea was waltzing about Berta's room, with that unwilling
captive in her arms.
"Ho! Who says your senior is more popular than my senior now?" she
jeered. "Who won that time, I want to know?"
"Before I'd have a senior who sends valentines to herself!" grumbled
Berta wickedly, to the ceiling.
"Ho!" chanted shameless Bea. "I knew it was a mistake all along. That's
the reason I didn't tear up my valentines."
"Yes?" commented Miss Berta, with an inflection so maddening that in
three seconds she was fleeing for her life.