Christina was touched. It was so ungracious to receive gifts from Love's storehouse without even a thrill of gratitude. She had thought Gavin was forgetting her. He was so good, and so kind, too, and she loved all the Grant Girls so. But how was it possible to make a hero out of a young man who could only sing of heroic deeds, and would never, never perform one? She slowly opened the last valentine. It belonged to the class that she and Allister had exchanged. It was very ugly and very funny; a picture of a tall, lank woman in spectacles and a college gown, her claw-like hands holding a ponderous volume. Christina laughed gaily and mentally blamed John, either he or Jimmie was surely the guilty person. But she looked at the post-mark again and saw to her surprise that it had a United States stamp, and the place stamped on the envelope was one she knew nothing whatever about, El Monte, California. "Look at this," she cried, running to Ellen. "Who do we know in California?" "Why, what in the world?" asked Ellen in bewilderment. "I've got a perfectly horrible one from the very same place." It was quite true, a very ugly and insulting thing it was, with the same post-mark, El Monte, and furthermore, it transpired that there was one for John and one for Jimmie in the same queer printed hand with the same postmark! and as for Uncle Neil's--a foolish old man with a fiddle--it was quite the funniest thing Christina had ever seen. When John and Uncle Neil had received their insults and laughed over them, there was much speculation. The family could scarcely eat their supper through wondering who had sent them. "El Monte," spelled John, spreading them all out on the table before him. "Now, who is it we know in that place? I've heard somebody talk about going there." "Oh," cried Jimmie with one of his high-pitched yells, "that's where The Woman went! Mrs. Johnnie Dunn's there for the Winter. That's where her sister lives, I heard Trooper say so the other day." The family looked at each other dumbfounded. It surely could not be possible. The Woman had always been a faithful friend of Mrs. Lindsay and it was hardly likely she would take all this trouble to send such foolish messages to her family. Indeed Mrs. Johnnie Dunn would think twice of the money before she spent it on such nonsense. "Indeed it would not be Sarah," declared Mrs. Lindsay as they argued and speculated. "She would be far from doing such a thing. Maybe you will find soon who it is." But further light on the subject only went to fasten suspicion upon Sarah. It appeared that the Lindsays were not by any means the only ones in Orchard Glen who had received valentines from California. There was such a rain of love's tokens upon the village on the Fourteenth of February that Tilly and her father were nearly drowned in the deluge and had to call in the aid of Mrs. Holmes and Aunt Jinny to help keep their heads above water!