"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 lessons half done or postponed with a hope that teacher wouldn't call on him, of a skating party with Louise when a geography map should have been outlined, and of arithmetic papers hurriedly done in the half-hour "B" class recitation period, to be returned with a heavily penciled "20" or "30" across their surfaces, arose to annoy him. His teacher spoke again. "There are one or two boys and girls in the 'A' class who will have to do better next month," John fancied that she was looking squarely at him, "or they'll be sent down into the 'B' division." That wasn't the worst of the matter. He had to take that testimonial of disgrace _home_ to be signed, and duly commented upon, by his mother. The card reposed safely in his pocket over Saturday, while he pondered now and then upon the least painful method of breaking the news to her. Sunday passed. On Monday morning, as he stood up from the breakfast table, he broke out, "Mother!" "Yes, son?" His courage vanished, and he was unable to go any further. "What is it?" she asked.