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So the winter went on, like a lovely dream to this pretty creature, like a long tedium to Mr. Rycker, except for his visits at Mr. Vane’s house and his Sunday and saint-day services. He found the parsonage more and more in- tolerable, for Mr. Preston was at once too ill and too irritable to be socially useful, and poor Katy and her mother were too busy to do more than attend to the young parson’s material wants: a blessed thing, no doubt, for Katy, since she was a woman, and propinquity lent its mighty aid to the spells which Satan finds for idle hea
rts as well as idle hands. But hard work is armor of proof against Satan and Cupid both; so the old parson’s daughter went her way absorbed in the savory pottages and unsavory tempers of the sick-room, while pretty, idle Dolly, with nothing more to occupy her than her daily walk to vespers, when she floated through snow and ice like a Christmas fairy in ermine and velvet to say her prayers and sing her psalms, or her occasional drive through the aisles of scented pine woods or over the shining fields, when her heart kept glad time to the sleigh-bells and her thoughts flew faster and further than the swift feet of the horses her father loved to drive—pretty Dolly fell into those golden meshes that gods and men are ‘ware of, nor even fluttered, dove that she was, in that glittering captivity. So the year wore on, past its death and renewal, into the first days of February—it is those days about me now that have recalled Dolly’s simple story—and one afternoon, as the little girl, crouched in a corner of the deep luxurious lounge her father had wheeled into the sunshine for her, was absorbed in a pretty book of poems that came among her Christmas presents, she fell on a valentine therein: tinkling of cadence, gay with quips and conceits, roses and posies, doves and loves—a fanciful love poem in fact, but mysterious of title to Dolly.

“Papa,” she said to her dozing father, who started from a half dream to answer—”papa, what is a valentine ?”

Now when a man just wakes up, in answering the question that wakes him he is sometimes unnecessarily and unintentionally honest. It had been Mr. Vane’s plan, when he made a theory of education, years ago, for his baby girl, never to let her talk, or hear talk, of love and lovers; but here was he taken all unawares and half awake, so he answered, concisely:

“A sort of love-letter, little girl, that is sent on St. Valentine’s Day. I’m sure I don’t know why. Ask Katy next time you see her.”

“A real in earnest love-letter, papa ?”

“Why, no, child, by no means—just a custom. I suppose sometimes people take that opportunity to be earnest.” And with a half laugh that merged in a yawn, he fell off again into a doze.

He had driven twenty miles in the keen wind that morning, and taken soup and sherry at lunch—unusual practice for him; but he was tired and chilled. No wonder he slept. So has many a guardian slept before, and while sleeping an angel, good or evil, has come and loosed the seal above his treasure, to his loss.

“How nice it would be to have a valentine !” said Dolly that evening after dinner, when her, father had given himself over to the evening paper, and Mr. Rycker, who had dined with them, was playing a stupid game of jack-straws with her, just as he had done forty times with six-year-old Hilda, only Hilda had not such pink and taper fingers, being Dutch-blooded for six generations, and sturdy as a small Delft jar.