They all looked up. They had forgotten it was Valentine's Day, and it came to them that if Emmy Lou's mother had not gone away, never to come back, the year before, Valentine's Day would not have been forgotten. Aunt Cordelia smoothed the black dress she was wearing because of the mother who would never come back, and looked troubled. But Emmy Lou laid the blue and gold valentine on Aunt Cordelia's knee. In the valentine's centre were two hands clasping. Emmy Lou's forefinger pointed to the words beneath the clasped hands. "I can read it," said Emmy Lou. They listened. Uncle Charlie put down his paper. Aunt Louise looked over Aunt Cordelia's shoulder. "B," said Emmy Lou, "e--Be." The aunties nodded. "M," said Emmy Lou, "y--my." Emmy Lou 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."]