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Show had gone to their sleeping rooms, and the very little girls were sound asleep in the nursery, and June and the five other medium little girls were in their sleeping room, June went to her own small drawer in the big bureau at one end of the room. Here each little girl kept her own personal, cherished possessions, pos-sessions, the few things she had brought with her from the great outside out-side world and the chance possession? she had acquired in the home. June had very little. There was r piece of paper lace she had saved from a bos of Christmas candy, a few empty spools, which for some reason she had become especially attached to, and the locket, the little gold locket and chiin she had had about her neck when, over five years ago, she had been brought, hungry and dirty, into the home from the street where she had been found. This locket was the most prized ol all her possessions, not so much for the little chain and case, but for the ring of golden hair Inside. June opened the case with a little pink finger nail and looked long at the glossy curl tied with a tiny bow ol blue ribbon. Then, when no one was looking, she took out the little crystal that protected it and slipped the treas-ure treas-ure out from the locket. "That's for my valentine," she ssid to herself, as she laid the curl in th drawer where she could easily get it in the morning. After she had gone to sleep that night she dreamed dreams of Mttle red paper hearts and lovely ladies with golden curls and blue silk dresses, and VALlTlf y u v y y y y y TV WAS afternoon recreation hour in r-&zxx the Martin home, tz-v-v Ja i 1 ) and the dozen l Y' Kir's dressed in 1'" sS)i ' fresh blue ging- , ( ) hiim frocks' sat fro IV ? with heads eager- Jl Mi- y Dent around (( . the long, low II v ro tabIe- I "Isn't this just V Jo b beautiful?" asked '"WJ -5 Mildred, a girl of twelve, as she held up a sheet of blue paper, decorated decorat-ed with a border of tiny golden hearts There was a chorus of "Os !" from thi other girls ns they looked up from their cutting and pasting. "Who's your valentine for, Mildred?" asked one of the girls. "Oh, it's for the cook's little boy," said Mildred. "Won't he like it, though?" Mildred looked at the red paper roses of the girl who sat next to her. "Who is yours for?" she asked. "Mine Is for the apple woman on the corner," she answered. "She gave me an apple once, and she always smiles when we pass." So It was that the girls who lived at the Martin homo had found friends to send the valentines to. You see, they had no friends on the outside world, for they had all been brought as waifs into the kind care of Mrs. Titus, the matron, or "mother," of the home. But little blue-eyed June could think of no one in all the world to send her valentine to, and yet she sat there, with eager little fingers, cutting out dozens of red hearts and arrows. She was beginning to paste tlie gold letters on a sheet of blue paper when Mildred caught sight of it "Look what June is doing," she said. "Isn't it pretty? Why, she cuts as nice hearts as us big girls. Who are you going to send it to, June?" Little June hung her head and looked timidly at Mildred. "It's for somebody," some-body," she said ; "for my valentine." "I don't believe she knows herself," said another girl, scornfully, and then they all went on with their work, too much interested in what they were doing to ask June any more about it. , Just as June had the last gold "e" pasted on the blue paper Mrs. Titus, the matron, came into the room. "It's four o'clock, girls," she said; "time to put the things away." Quickly each child placed her scissors, scis-sors, paste and papers into her own little workbox and put it into the cupboard cup-board at the end of the room. Then each one went about the special duty that had been given to her for the week. At supper, when all the girls sat around the table with Mrs. Titus, the mother, at the head, June was still trying try-ing to think of someone to send her valentine to; and during the play hour that followed, when the girls were allowed al-lowed to sing and dance to their hearts' content, little June, usually the merriest of them all, sat in a corner of the room puzzling about her valentine. Suddenly it came upon her, and when she had once thought of it it seemed so strange that she hadn't thought of it before. She would take her valentine "This la Yours, Lady." all the time she dreamed she though! she was standing in the kitchen filling a gigantic salt cellar while the cook made the cocoa. The next day was St. Valentine's day, and when the children took theli walk in the park June watched eagerlj every carriage that passed them, but the lovely lady did not appear. Finally, when she had almost given up all hopes of seeing her, June saw hei walking toward them. As she passed June slipped her' valentine with , the little curl pasted on it into the lady's hand. "This is yours, lady," she said, and then she ran back to the girls, who thought that June had merely picked up something that the lady had dropped. All that day June was carried away with joy- the kind of joy that she had never known about before, for all she had been so well cared for in the home. To think that she had a real true valentine valen-tine a sort of relation, no doubt and that It was a secret she was keeping from the other girls, was enough to make the day the most remarkable she could remember. The next morning, when all the girls sat in the schoolroom and June was working anxiously over her copybook, the door suddenly opened and Mrs. Titus Ti-tus came into the room. She smiled, as she always did, and then she said: "June, will you please come here." Little June rose with trembling knees, for she half expected that she had done wrong in sending the beautiful beauti-ful lady a valentine and that Mrs. Titus Ti-tus had found it out. It was not until June had followed Mrs. Titus into the reception room that she found out that the beautiful lady had called to see her. "You call her June," the lady began eagerly. "That name was on the paper she gave me. My little girl's name was Alfreda. She left us when she was only two years old." "Yes," said Mrs. Titus. "She was brought here the first of June, five years ago, and that is why we called her 'June.' " The lady gave a half cry of delight. Then Mrs. Titus asked June to go upstairs up-stairs and get the little locket. In a minute June had got the treasure and laid It into the lady's hand. "Oh, my darling little Alfreda !" cried the lady, as she stooped down and seized the child in her arms. While June nestled in the beautiful lady's arms Mrs. Titus told exactly where the lost child had been found. "We always thought that someone must have stolen her from us," said the lady when the matron had finished, "but she must have crawled or toddled away when the nurse wasn't looking." She looked at the child with the softest soft-est of eyes. "But why did you give me that little paper with the lock of hair?" she asked. " 'Cuuse I wanted you to be my valentine," val-entine," said the child, as she put tor little red lips up for a klss u Could Think of No One to Send It To. to the lovely lady in the park, whom the girls met almost every day, driving or sometimes walking. She always nodded nod-ded to them as they passed, and June had imagined, just as all the other girls had imagined, that the lady's sweet smile was meant especially for her. Then it occurred to June that her valentine wasn't good enough for the lovely lady. The little hearts and gold letters seemed so rough and imperfect as she recalled them, and she longed to ask Mrs. Titus for a penny to buy one of the printed card valentines she had seen in the store windows. You see, June didn't realize that a handmade valentine would bring much more love md thought than the sort she could buy. That night, when the six big girls |