"Isn't that the greatest joke! I was scribbling verses last night till I was too sleepy to see straight. I didn't mean to send this to myself. How perfectly ridiculous!" and she tossed the innocent missive into the fire.
Outside on the shadowy stairway Berta gave a little squeal of pain. "Ouch! You're pinching me black and blue! Why, Bea, Bea Leigh, whatever in the world----"
A packet of white, bound with an elastic, went flying through the air, to fall with a rustling plop into the half-empty caldron. An inquisitive senior going out to investigate spied only the deserted stairs, and heard nothing but four scampering feet on the corridor overhead. Saint Valentine, with a voice that dropped lower and lower into a muffled murmur, read her own name fifteen times in succession, and blushed rose-pink, from gray beard to powdered hair, while the other seniors laughed and laughed.
Two minutes after the valentines had been counted and the result announced Bea was waltzing about Berta's room, with that unwilling captive in her arms.
"Ho! Who says your senior is more popular than my senior now?" she jeered. "Who won that time, I want to know?"
"Before I'd have a senior who sends valentines to herself!" grumbled Berta wickedly, to the ceiling.
"Ho!" chanted shameless Bea. "I knew it was a mistake all along. That's the reason I didn't tear up my valentines."
"Yes?" commented Miss Berta, with an inflection so maddening that in three seconds she was fleeing for her life.
It had been raining for a week. Berta was writing a poem, her elbows on the desk, her hair clutched in one hand, her pen in the other. At the window Robbie Belle was working happily over her curve-tracing, now and then drawing back to gaze with admiration at the sweeping lines of her problem. Once the slanting beat of the drops against the pane caught her eye, and she paused for a moment to consider their angle of incidence. She decided that she liked curves better than angles. She did not wonder why, as Berta would have done, but having recognized the fact of preference turned placidly back to her instruments.
Splash! came a fiercer gust of rain, and Berta stirred uneasily, tossing her head as if striving subconsciously to shake off a vague irritation of hearing. Another heavier sound was mingling with the steady patter. Rub-a-dub-dub, rub-a-dub-dub! Robbie Belle glanced up and listened, her pencil uplifted.