Next week came St. Valentine’s Day.  Several of the girls received valentines from home, and they wrote them to each other.  Katy and Clover both had one from Phil, exactly alike, with the same purple bird in the middle of the page, and “I love you” printed underneath; and they joined in fabricating a gorgeous one for Rose, which was supposed to come from Potemkin de Montmorencey, the hero of the album.  But the most surprising valentine was received by Miss Jane.  It came with the others, while all the household were at dinner.  The girls saw her redden and look angry, but she put the letter in her pocket, and said nothing.

In the afternoon, it came out through Bella that “Miss Jane’s letter was in poetry, and that she was just mad as fire about it.”  Just before tea, Louisa came running down the Row, to No. 5, where Katy was sitting with Rose.

“Girls, what do you think?  That letter which Miss Jane got this morning was a valentine, the most dreadful thing, but so funny!” she stopped to laugh.

“How do you know?” cried the other two.

“Miss Marsh told Alice Gibbons.  She’s a sort of cousin, you know; and Miss Marsh often tells her things.  She says Miss Jane and Mrs. Nipson are furious, and are determined to find out who sent it.  It was from Mr. Hardhack, Miss Jane’s missionary,—­or no, not from Mr. Hardhack, but from a cannibal who had just eaten Mr. Hardhack up; and he sent Miss Jane a lock of his hair, and the recipe the tribe cooked him by.  They found him ‘very nice,’ he said, and ‘He turned out quite tender.’  That was one of the lines in the poem.  Did you ever hear of any thing like it?  Who do you suppose could have sent it?”

“Who could it have been?” cried the others.  Katy had one moment’s awful misgiving; but a glance at Rose’s face, calm and innocent as a baby’s, reassured her.  It was impossible that she could have done this mischievous thing.  Katy, you see, was not privy to that entry in Rose’s journal, “Pay Miss Jane off,” nor aware that Rose had just written underneath, “Did it.  Feb. 14, 1869.”

Nobody ever found out the author of this audacious valentine.  Rose kept her own counsel, and Miss Jane probably concluded that “the better part of valor was discretion,” for the threatened inquiries were never made.

And now it lacked but six weeks to the end of the term.  The girls counted the days, and practised various devices to make them pass more quickly.  Esther Dearborn, who had a turn for arithmetic, set herself to a careful calculation of how many hours, minutes, and seconds must pass before the happy time should come.  Annie Silsbie strung forty-two tiny squares of card-board on a thread and each night slipped one off and burned it up in the candle.  Others made diagrams of the time, with a division for each day, and every night blotted one out with a sense of triumph.  None of these devices made the time hasten.  It never moved more slowly than now, when life seemed to consist of a universal waiting.