"Then she'd have stuck to us if I had been. I guess you've forgotten the way it is at school."

Mrs. Singer sighed and opened her book wistfully. "You ought to be kind to everybody, Ada," she said vaguely, "but I really think I shall have to take you out of the public school. It is such a mixed crowd there. I should have done it long ago, only your father thinks there is no such education."

Ada saw that in another minute her mother would be buried again in her story. "But what shall I do about Frank and Lucy?" she asked, half crying.

"Why, is Frank in it, too?"

"Yes. I know Lucy has been talking to him. He came back and got her valentines."

"Oh, pshaw! Don't make a quarrel over it. Just be polite to Alma Driscoll.

They're perfectly respectable people. You don't need to avoid her. Don't worry. Lucy will soon get over her little excitement, and you may be sure she will be glad to make up with you and be more friendly than ever."

Mrs. Singer began to read, and Ada saw it was useless to pursue the subject. She left the room undecidedly, her lips pressed together. All right, let Lucy befriend Alma. She wouldn't _look_ at her, and they'd just see which would get tired of it first.

This hard little determination seemed to give Ada a good deal of comfort for the present, and she longed for to-morrow, to begin to show Lucy Berry what she had lost.

Meanwhile Alma Driscoll had hastened home to an empty cottage, where she threw herself on the calico-covered bed and gave way again to her hurt and sorrow, until she had cried herself to sleep.

There her mother found her when she returned from work. Mrs. Driscoll had plenty of troubles of her own in these days, adjusting herself to her present situation and trying hard to fill the position which her old friend Mr. Knapp had found for her. Alma knew this, and every evening when her mother came home from the factory she met her cheerfully, and had so far bravely refrained from telling of the trials at school, which were big ones to her, and which she often longed to pour out; but the sight of her mother's face always silenced her. She knew, young as she was, that her mother was finding life in the great school of the world as hard as she was in pretty Miss Joslyn's room; and so she kept still, but her eyes grew bigger, and her mother saw it.

To-day when Mrs. Driscoll came in, she was surprised to find the house dark. She lighted the lamp and saw Alma asleep on the bed. "Poor little dear," she thought. "The hours must seem long between school and my coming home."

She went around quietly, getting supper, and when it was ready she came again to the bed and kissed Alma's cheek.

"Doesn't my little girl want anything to eat to-night?" she asked.

Alma turned and opened her eyes.

"Guess which it is," went on Mrs. Driscoll, smiling. "Breakfast or supper."

"Oh, have you come?" Alma sat up. She clasped her arms around her mother.

"Please don't make me go to school any more," she said, the big sob with which she went to sleep rising again in her throat.

"Why, what has happened, dear?" Mrs. Driscoll grew serious.

"I don't want to tell you, mother, only please let me stay at home. I'll study just as hard."

"You'd be lonely here all day, Alma."

"I want to be lonely," returned the little girl earnestly.

Mrs. Driscoll looked very sober. "Let's sit down at the table," she said, "for I have your boiled egg all ready."

Alma took her place opposite her mother. Supper was usually the bright spot in the day, but this evening there seemed nothing but clouds.

"I want to hear all about it, Alma, but you'd better eat first," said Mrs.

Driscoll, as she poured the tea.

"It isn't anything very much," replied the little girl, torn between the longing for sympathy and unwillingness to give her mother pain; "only there aren't any lonely children in that school. Everybody has some one she likes to play with."

A pang of understanding went through the mother's heart, so tender that she forced a smile.

"Oh, my dearie," she said, "you remind me of the old song,--

'Every la.s.sie has her laddie, Nane, they say, have I, But all the lads, they smile on me, When comin' thro' the rye.'

If my Alma smiles on all the children, they'll all smile on her."

Alma shook her head. It was too great an undertaking to explain all those daily experiences of longing and disappointment to her mother. The child's throat grew so full of the sob that she could not swallow the nice egg.

"This is Valentine's Day," she said, with an effort. "They had a box in school. Everybody got pretty ones but me. They sent me a 'comic.'"

She swallowed bravely between the sentences, but big tears rolled down her cheeks and splashed on the gingham ap.r.o.n.

"Well, wasn't it meant to make you laugh, dearie?"

"N-no. It was--was a hateful one. I--I can't tell you."

A line came in Mrs. Driscoll's forehead. Her swift thought pictured the scene only too vividly. She swallowed, too.

"Silly pictures can't hurt us, Alma," she said.

"But please don't make me go back," returned the child earnestly. "I cried and ran away, and I know all the other children laughed, and, oh, mother, I _can't_ go back!" She was sobbing again, now, and trying to dry her tears with her ap.r.o.n.

Mrs. Driscoll's lips pressed firmly together to keep from quivering.

"Mother," said Alma brokenly, as soon as she could speak again, "when do you think father will come home?"

For a minute the mother could not reply. The last letter she had received from her husband had sounded discouraged, and for six weeks now she had heard nothing. Her anxiety was very great; but it made her position at the factory more than ever important, while it increased the difficulty of performing her work.

"I can't tell, dearie," she answered low. "We must pray and wait."

As she finished speaking there came a loud knock at the door. A very unusual sound this, for no one had yet called on them, except Mr. Knapp, once on business.

"I'll go," said Mrs. Driscoll. "Wipe your eyes, Alma."

To her surprise, when she opened the door no one was there. Something white on the step caught her eye in the gloom. It was a box, and when she brought it to the light, she saw that it was addressed to Miss Alma Driscoll.

Her heart was too sore to hand it to the child until she had made certain that its contents were not designed to hurt. One glimpse of the gold and red interior, however, made her clap on the cover again. She brought the box to the table and seated herself.

"What's all this?" she asked, pa.s.sing it to the child. "It seems to be for you. There was n.o.body there, but I found that on the step."

Alma's swollen eyes looked wonderingly at the box as she took off the cover and discovered the elaborate valentine.

"My! What a beauty!" exclaimed her mother.

The little girl lifted the red roses and looked at the verses. The catches kept coming in her throat and she smiled faintly.