For answer some one handed her the picture. The young lady glanced at it, then tore it in pieces as she looked sadly around on her scholars.
"Whoever sent this knows that Alma's mother works in the factory," she said. "It makes me ashamed of my whole school to think there is one child in it cruel enough to do this thing;" then, amid the silent consternation of the scholars, Miss Joslyn rose, and leaving the half-emptied box, went home without another word.
"What a fuss about nothing," said Ada Singer. "The idea of crying because you get a 'comic!' What else could Alma Driscoll expect?"
Lucy Berry's cheeks had been growing redder all through this scene, and now she turned upon Ada.
"She has a right to expect a great deal else," she returned excitedly, "but we've all been so hateful to her it's a wonder if she did. I wish I'd been kind to her before," she continued, her heart aching with the remembrance of the little lonely figure, and the big, hollow dinner-pail; "but I'm going to be her friend now, always, and you can be friends with us or not, just as you please;" and turning from the astonished Ada, Lucy Berry marched out of the schoolroom, fearing she should cry if she stayed, and sure that if there were any more beauties for her in the white box, her stanch friend, Frank Morse, would take care of them for her. Among the valentines she had already received was one addressed in his handwriting, and she looked at it as she walked along.
"It's the handsomest one I ever saw," she thought, lifting a rose here, and a group of cupids there, and reading the tender messages thus disclosed.
"I know what I'll do!" she exclaimed aloud. "I'll send it to Alma. Frank won't care," and covering the valentine in its box, she started to run, and turned a corner at such speed that she bumped into somebody coming at equal or greater speed, from the opposite direction. A passer-by just then would have been amused to see a boy and girl sitting flat on the sidewalk, rubbing their heads and staring at one another.
"Nothing. Something's down, and it's me."
"Well, excuse me; but I guess you haven't seen any more stars than I have. I don't care anything for the Fourth now, I've seen enough fireworks to last me a year."