Lucy sat upright.  Her cheeks were still flushed, but her eyes had lost their excited light.  “Frank Morse and I are going to take some pretty valentines to Alma’s as soon as it is dark,” she said.

“That will be pleasant.  Now let us read over the lesson for to-day again, and know what a joyous thing life is.”

“Well, mother, will you go and see Mrs. Driscoll some time?”

“Certainly I will, Sunday.  I suppose she is too busy to see me other days.”

In the Singer house another excited child had rushed home from school and sought and found her mother.

Mrs. Singer had just reached a most interesting spot in the novel she was reading, when Ada startled her by running into the room and slamming the door behind her.

“Mother, you know you don’t want me to go with the factory people,” she cried.

“Of course not.  What’s the matter?” returned Mrs. Singer briefly, keeping her finger between the leaves of her half-closed book.

“Why, Lucy Berry is angry with me, and I don’t care.  I shall never go with her again!”

“Dear me, Ada.  I should think you could settle these little differences without bothering me.  What has the factory to do with it?”

“Why, there is a new girl at school, Alma Driscoll, and her mother works there; and she tried to come with Lucy and me, and Lucy would have let her, but I told her you wouldn’t like it, and, anyway, of course we didn’t want her.  So to-day when the valentine box was opened, Alma Driscoll got a ‘comic;’ and she couldn’t take a joke and cried and went home.  I can’t bear a cry-baby, anyway.  And then Miss Joslyn made a fuss about it and she went home, and after that Lucy Berry flared up at me and said she was going to be friends with Alma after this, and she went home.  It just spoiled everybody’s fun to have them act so silly.  Lucy got Frank Morse to bring out all his valentines and hers.  I’ll never go with her again, whether she goes with Alma or not!”

Angry little sparks were shining in Ada’s eyes, and she evidently made great effort not to cry.

“What was this comic valentine that made so much trouble?”

“Oh, something about a factory girl.  You know the verses are always silly on those.”

“Well, it wasn’t very nice to send it to her before all the children, I must say.  Who do you suppose did it?”

“No one ever tells who sends valentines,” returned Ada defiantly.  “No one will ever know.”

“Well, if the foolish child, whoever it was, only had known, she wasn’t so smart or so unkind as she thought she was.  Mrs. Driscoll isn’t an ordinary factory hand.  She is an assistant in the bookkeeping department.”

“Well, they must be awfully poor, the way Alma looks, anyway,” returned Ada.

“I suppose they are poor.  I happened to hear Mr. Knapp begging your father to let a Mrs. Driscoll have that position, and your father finally consented.  I remember his telling how long the husband had been away trying for work, and what worthy people they were, old friends of his.  They lived in some neighboring town; so when Mrs. Driscoll was offered this position they came here.  They live”—­