[Illustration: Nelly Reading her Valentine.--PAGE 220.]
Nelly read it with rising color and a little quiver about her mouth,
which Bertha understood; but she read it with firm voice and careful,
deliberate accent.
“Then,” she said, when she had finished, “I shall burn up all the rest
of my valentines, and send only this one; for it is what I mean, in
earnest, and, as old Aunty Smoke says, ‘Ef it don’t do no good, it
can’t do no harm.’”
“To whom shall you send it, dear?” Bertha asked gently, a little
subdued by Nelly’s epistolary success.
“I hadn’t made up my mind,” Nelly answered thoughtfully; “they all need
it.”
“O, send it to Joe, my cousin Joe,” cried Kitty Greene. “He is staying
with us, and _he_ needs it--bad enough. If ever a boy was full of his
pranks, Joe is, and if ever a boy tormented a girl’s life out, Joe does
mine.”
A color clear and bright as flame glowed on Nelly Hunt’s cheeks. Had
she had dark-eyed Joe in her mind all the while? She only answered very
quietly,--
“I don’t mind. I had just as lief send it to Joe. That is, I’ll send it
to him if you’ll promise, on your sacred honor, never in any way to let
him know who wrote it.”
“Oh, I will--true as I live and breathe I’ll never tell him, and never
let him guess, if I can help it.”
“And all you girls?” Nelly asked, with the pretty pink glow deepening
in her cheeks. “Will you all promise?”
And they all promised; for there was a sort of honest earnestness in
Nelly’s nature to which they found it natural to yield.
So the valentine was directed in Nelly’s most neat and proper manner to
“Mr. Joe Greene,” and was dropped into the post-office with the rest of
the valentines the girls had written that day.
On the fifteenth the six girls were all together at school, comparing
notes and exchanging confidences. But Kitty Greene drew Nelly aside,
and said, while they walked up and down the hall together, their arms
around each other as girls will,--
“I saw Joe get it, Nelly.”
Nelly’s pretty cheeks glowed and her eyes shone like stars, but she
asked no questions. Indeed, they were scarcely necessary, for Kitty was
eager enough to tell her story.
“He got it, don’t you think, along with half-a-dozen others, and he
read them all before he came to this one. I knew this, you know, by
the shape of the envelope. When he came to it I saw him read it all
through, and then I saw him go back and read it again. I heard him say
to himself,--
“‘That’s an honest letter from some little saint.’
“Then he came up to me and held it toward me, while I pretended to be
very busy with my valentines. Then he asked,--
“‘Do you know that handwriting, Kit?’
“I felt like an awful little liar, but I had promised you. I stretched
out my hand for it, and said carelessly,--
“‘Why, ain’t it Sue’s?’
“Sue is his sister, you know. So he thought I did not know who it came
from, and he changed his mind, and put it into his pocket, and went
off. When I teased him afterward to let me see it, he said,--
“‘No; there are some things a fellow would be a cad to show.’
“So I saw it hit home, and well it might. It was a tremendous letter,
Nelly.”
And Kitty ended with a hug and a kiss, and a look of that loyal
admiration which a girl can give another girl now and then.
When the spring came Joe Greene went away from Chester, and did not
come back there any more. No doubt Nelly Hunt would have forgotten his
very existence but for the valentine, which she could not forget. She
used to blush, as she grew older, to think how “bumptious” it was, as
she used to call it to herself. What was _she_, that she should have
undertaken to preach a sermon to that boy? What if he remembered it
only to think how presuming it was, and to laugh at it? But, luckily,
he did not know from whom it came; and with that thought she cooled her
blushes.
Nelly was twenty when Joe Greene came back to Chester again. And now
he came as a physician, just through his studies, and anxious to build
up a practice. Soon his fame grew. His patients were among the poor at
first, and he cured them; and then richer people heard of it, and sent
for him. But, while he took all the patients that came, he never gave
up his practice among those who most needed him. His praise was in all
their mouths. There had never been any doctor like this one.
Nelly was Miss Hunt now, for Bertha had gone away from her into the
other, unknown country, and Nelly’s grief had made her gentle heart yet
more gentle, and her helpful spirit yet more helpful.
Toward night, one summer day, she had gone to see an old woman who
had been her nurse once, and had found her very ill,--quite too ill
to be left alone, and certainly in need of a physician. So Nelly tore
a leaf from her memorandum-book and wrote on it a few lines, begging
Dr. Greene to come at once, and then called to the first passer-by and
entreated him to take it to the doctor.
It was scarcely half an hour before Dr. Greene came in, quietly and
gravely. He attended to his patient with that careful consideration
which made all those poor souls whom he visited adore him. Then he
turned to Nelly.
“Who will stay with her to-night?” he asked; “for, indeed, she hardly
ought to be left alone.”
“I shall stay,” was the quiet answer.
“Then come to the door with me, please, and let me give you your
directions.”
Nelly followed, and stood there, in the soft summer dusk,--a pretty
picture, with the wild-rose flush dawning in her cheeks, and a new
light kindling her eyes. She listened carefully to all his injunctions,
and then turned as if to go. But he put out a hand to detain her.
“How very much I owe to you!” he said.
“_You_, how?” And a deep, deep crimson dyed Nelly’s face and throat. In
that moment she thought of her “bumptious” valentine, which had not
crossed her mind before for a long time.
He looked at her with a smile in his eyes, but with a face that
preserved all its respectful gravity. He took a red leather case out
of his pocket, and from the case he took the very old valentine which
Nelly remembered so well. Then he produced the brief note she had
written that afternoon; and still there was light enough left in the
day to see them by, as he held them side by side.
“Your hand has matured somewhat since this valentine was written,” he
remarked quietly; “but some of these letters I should know anywhere. No
one could deceive me.”
“I did not suppose you had kept that foolish thing,” Nelly said, with a
pitiful little quiver in her voice, as if she were just on the point of
bursting into tears. “I am so ashamed!”
Dr. Joe looked at her a moment, as she stood there in the waning
light,--a lovely, graceful girl from whom any man might be proud to win
even a passing interest. So this was the woman, the thought of whom
he had carried in his heart for years! If he had ever done any good
thing, he was paid for it in the satisfaction of that hour.
“Are you sorry,” he asked slowly, “that you have helped one man to be
his best self? Those words of yours were to me like the voice of my
inmost soul. Since then this paper has never left me, nor have I ever
ceased to strive to be worthy of the esteem of my unknown ‘valentine.’
If ever I have been generous instead of selfish, brave instead of
cowardly, strong instead of weak, it has been because I have remembered
the words written here, and meant to live in their spirit. Are you
sorry for that? or do you grudge me the dear pleasure of thanking you?”
“No, I’m not sorry, nor do I grudge you any thing; but it was a girl’s
freak, and I am not worthy of so much praise and honor.”
“It was a good girl’s good intention,” he said almost solemnly. “Let us
be thankful that it succeeded.”
Nelly went back to the bedside of the old woman with a fluttering
heart. How strange it seemed to think this sick woman was old enough
to have outlived all anxieties except those about her pains and her
supper! Had not she been young once? and had no one ever looked at her
as Dr. Joe looked?
The next morning he came again. His medicine, a night’s sleep, Nelly’s
care,--something seemed to have given the poor old patient a fresh
lease of life. There was no need that Nelly should stay with her any
more; but she went to see her daily, and it was curious how often Dr.
Joe’s visits happened at the same time.
One night the doctor had left his horse at home, and he and Nelly
walked away together. They talked about the lingering sunset and the
soft south wind and even the old woman; for Nelly, woman-like, was
struggling desperately to keep Dr. Joe from saying what she desperately
wanted to hear. But, at last, it came,--a half-blunt, half-awkward
speech, yet with Dr. Joe’s honest heart in it,--
“I’ve lived all these years just to earn your esteem, and now I find I
don’t care a thing about that unless I can also win your love.”
I think Nelly’s answer must have satisfied him, for she is Mrs.
Joseph Greene now; and that valentine--worn and old, but choicely
framed--always hangs over the doctor’s study table.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
_Bright; Lively, and Enjoyable_
“Jolly Good Times” Series
_By Mary P. Wells Smith_
JOLLY GOOD TIMES; or, CHILD LIFE ON A FARM.
JOLLY GOOD TIMES AT SCHOOL; also, SOME TIMES NOT SO JOLLY.
THE BROWNS.
THEIR CANOE TRIP.
JOLLY GOOD TIMES AT HACKMATACK.
MORE GOOD TIMES AT HACKMATACK.
JOLLY GOOD TIMES TO-DAY.
A JOLLY GOOD SUMMER.
[Illustration]
_With Illustrations, 12 mo, cloth, gilt, $1.25 per volume. The set of
eight volumes, uniformly bound in cloth, gilt, in a box, $10.00._
Of these stories the Boston “Transcript” says: “Few series of juvenile
books appeal more strongly to children than the ‘Jolly Good Times’
Series, written by Mary P. Wells Smith. The naturalness of the stories,
their brightness, their truth to boy and girl life and character, and
the skill with which the author manages incident and dialogue, have
given them deserved popularity.”
It is Mrs. Smith’s happy ability to take the incidents of
child-life,--such a life as any child of bright mind and sweet
character, blessed with the surroundings of a good home, might
have,--and to record them with such faithfulness to the child’s
character, and yet with such charm in the narrative, as to make them
engagingly interesting to other children.--_Gazette and Courier_,
Greenfield, Mass.