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Show ...Our Boys ana 0irl$... EDITED BY AUNT BUSY. This department Is conducted eolely In the inter est" of our drl and boy readers. I Aunt Busy Is glad to hear any tlmo from th 1 V r,1en and nephew mho read this page, and to gjrs J y them all the advice and help In her power. Write on one side of the paper only. ' Do not have letters too long. Oiiplnal etorlea and verses will be gladly receirtd And carefully edited. The manuscripts of contributions not accepted wID I e returned. ' a,T.es Bj' ltei' Aun Busy. Intermountala , Cathollo. Rait Tke City. ! LETTERS AND ANSWERS. White Water, Colo., Feb. 6. 1009. Dear Aunt Busy: This is the first time I have written to you. j I have a canary bird and my sister has one that jt figs. I 1 am in the fifth jrrade and I am 11 years old. f I We go to ehureh when we can get to town. i I have been through the catechism two times. I ' e havG two priests. Their names are Father Con- v ay and Father Poricr. j.j I will close. Your loving piece. 1 AGXES M'DOXALD. ; j J Lawrence. Cal., lob. 16. 1909. ! J Iar Aunt Tuy : Just a few lines to beg of j i you to admit me once more into your happy band. and j.ardon zne for neglecting to "write to you. .j 1 am spending- the winter days in the beautiful ;.j Santa Clara TiDey of California. It is certainly ; j t he paradise of the world, where fruit and flowers gro-sr in xinmdaiice. ) WelL hoping to obtain pardon for my long si- I lenw, I am yonr loving niece. ; l THERESA POWELL. ; Atjei Bnsy is certainly proud of her little niece Thereea. viio -writes sach an interesting letter. Aunt Buy vill always remember the dear little ,('.- firL ""ho Tras ever kind, polity courteous and rblig-) rblig-) "P """ aso rnnember her as being one lit- '' tie g-irl who had the very lovable habit of saying always al-ways a pleasant "Good morning.'"' Aunt Buy send her love and Iwrt wishes to the dear little niece in V , her lovely California home. A. . Xr-T 'a ""lwrae. dear little niece, from -"''"" Colorado. Anut Busy thinks your letter intereet- iri'4 and hopes? to hear from you soon again and rftn. Yon arc certainly a good child to know your catechism go well. The Old Lady's Valentine. There were four beings who lived in the small j brown house by the roadside; Mr. Allison, who i worked in a lawyers office, cultivated the small garden in the cummer, and in winter chopped wood, ; tended fires and studied law in the long evenings. Then there was his young wife, who did the housework, house-work, made most of the clothes for the family, and in the intervals gave Ruth her lessons. Ruth was their '"blessed baby," six and one-half years of age; last, but not least, there was the mortgage the greedy mortgage, who prevented their having good I things to eat, made Mrs. Alison patch, darn and -t '" do wonderful feats of "making over"; kept papa I thin and pale from overwork, and the house from j having the paint it so sorely needed. Ruth had heard of the mortgage for most of I her little lifetime, and she thought of it as a very j real something, not at all unlike the dragon in her fairy book the one with an appetite for children. So when her mother, the day before St Yal- eniine's day. answered her request for some pen- nies to buy a valentine with a hug and the oft-re- peatcd answer that she had no pennies to spare just I then, wise little Ruth laid it to the mortgage and i paid no more. if "Are written ones nice, mamma?'' she asked. ; "Xieer than bought ones, sometimes," answered mamma, cheerfully. "To whom do you want to 'I pend a valentine, Ducky f' she asked a little later. ? seeing the child very busy with her paint box and 1 1 some bits of paper. I "It's for the old lady, 'mamma. I don't believe she will have very many, and I think I'll have her " I for my valentine, -wouldn't you? You said she . 'suffers terribly,' and I feel so sorry for her." The old lady was a very rich and bad-tempered ; old ptson, who lived in a great house, with towers ' . J like a castle, not very far from the Alisons. The house stood in the midst of a splendid park, surrounded sur-rounded by an iron fence, of which the palings were Y surmounted by gilded spearheads. "It's exactly like the enchanted house." Ruth had often told herself, as fhc peeked in. The old lady was too ill ever to walk, but Ruth and her mother had sometimes seen her driving in the carriage, or being wheeled about the garden in an invalid's chair in the summer, and she always V looked cross and sick. "Ruth held up a tiny sheet of "Brownie paper," on which there were two vermillion hearts, transfixed trans-fixed by a wobbly arrow, and four lines of straggling strag-gling writing. Mrs. Alison read it soberly, though her eyes twinkled: I know an old lady with silver hair; Though she is old. I do not care; I'll take her if she'll take me. My own true Yalentine to be. "That's very nice, Pet." she said; "I'm sure. HjeTi like it." When Mrs. Alison had put on Ruth's warm outdoor garments that afternoon she forgot all ! ;:bitut hrr, and Ruth, quite forgetting to mention 1 where the was going, took her valentine, m its Hiiall envelope, and went directly to the gate of the old lady's home, and the lodge keeper, supposing s-he had a message for some one, opened the gate directly. v It was a long, long way up to the house, but she 'rudged along through the snow until she came to I the pillared stone porch.' Some careless servant had jh ft the heavy front door ajar, and after several timid knocks Ruth pushed it open. Til play I'm St. Yalentine and walk straight upstairs." When she reached the first landing chance led Ij. r to the right one of several doors, and a peevish voice answered her knock. "Come in." ... "So Ruth opened the door, and there, sitting lc.ee to a blazing wood fire, was the old lady her-felf. her-felf. She was a fierce looking old lady, with a pointed point-ed nose arfd chin that nearly met; from under her ( mass of white hair a pair of sharp black ryes peered "UlRuth came in. as she was bid. and stumped across the room, her shiny new rubbers sinking deep into the 60ft carpet. From under her scarlet hood, n few black curls escaped in little tendrils; her cheeks were deep pink from the cold, and dimpled charmingly when she smiled, while her soft black eyes looked up affectionately into the old lady's sharp ones, as the child said: "I'm St. Yalentine, and I've brought this for you." Perhaps the eross old lady had been a black-eyed black-eyed little girl herself once. At any rate, she made no protest as the "Brownie" envelope was laid on her black satin knee, and St. Yalentine took off her mittens to warm her cold fingers nt the fire. The old lady's trembling fingers took up the little missive, where, all unknown to its bearer, the thumb of one red mitten had printed a rosy seal, and opened it. She stared so long at the' verse that Ruth offered to read it to her, and did so. leaning lean-ing confidingly against the old lady's arm. When she finished she looked up for the answer. "Xow that is certainly sweet of you," said the old lady, all the peevishness gone from her voice. "Do you really want me to be your valentine V "1 es. 1 do," said Ruth, and so it was settled. "Won't you take off your coat and stay a while T asked the old lady, in tones that would have astonished her long-suffering attendants. So presently Ruth was sitting on a hassock in front of the fire, her copper-toed shoes buried in a white bear rug, while the andirons, in the shape of solemn looking owls, blinked their round yellow glass eyes at her. And they all had a beautiful time together. It really was surprising how entertaining enter-taining the old lady could be. She told exciting tales of w-hen she was a little girl, and had a white pony, which she rode, "down in Yirginny." She exhibited wonderful carved temples and idols from Japan, and balls that opened to disclose the smaller small-er balls, until the last one was no larger than a pea. She gave Ruth queer Chinese sweetmeats from p. red lacquered box. and, "to keep for her very own." a fan edged with lace and adorned with painted peacocks. In return Ruth told all her childish history, even about the greedy mortgage, which was. she said: "So hungry wo have to feed it all the time, find it will cat anything. If we didn't it would take our house. Don't you suppose a mortgage looks like the dragon in the fairy book?" The old lady said she supposed it was something like that. She was enjoying Ruth's visit immensely, immense-ly, and twice she laughed aloud at something the child said, so that the tall footman entering with the tea tray jumped so that he nearly dropped it, in surprise at the unusual sound. They had tea together, and when Ruth said she was not allowed real tea the old lady made the footman foot-man make "Cambric tea" for her. which he did, under Ruth's directions, with an air of condescension. condescen-sion. They had plum cake, too. but when a tall clock chimed 4, Ruth hastily swallowed the last crumb of hers and jumped up. "Oh, I have to be in by a quarter past 4. promptly, prompt-ly, and your front yard is so long I must hurry." A pleasant faced nurse came forward from the next room, where she had been sitting, to help Ruth with her coat and rubbers, so Ruth kissed her for "thank you." Then she ran to her valentine, threw her arms about her neck and kissed her warmly. "I've had a lovely time," she cried. "Don't forget for-get I am your valentine." And the old lady, who probably had not kissed any one in a great many years, surprised herself by rcturning the caress and asking Ruth to come again. Then she went home in the carriage, with the two prancing horses, to Ruth's intense delight. Her mother's 'astonishment when she saw her small daughter being solemnly assisted to alight by the grand footman was intense. Ruth never saw her valentine again, for when she went, as she had promised to do, the old lady was too ill to see her. While the old lady lay sick things went from bad to worse in the small house. The mortgage was greedier than ever; Mrs. Alison was sick for a month, and when she got well her husband got a cold, which he could not seem to get rid of. lie consulted the doctor, who looked grave, and advised him to seek a change of air. "A few weeks in the eouth, now I can do very little if you stay here." "He might as well prescribe a change of head," said papa, cheerfully. "I'll get well without that, honey," he told his wife. But he did not get well, and at last had to take two weeks' vacation, "to get well in," and at the enc of the two weeks he coughed worse than ever, and was almost discouraged. "Guess I'll hire myself out to cough into phonographs phono-graphs for an advertisement for some cough medicine med-icine firm; a horrible example of neglected cold. I don't seem to he good for anything else. If it wasn't for that mortgage, we could ' Could what was never said, for something in his voice made Ruth and her mother both hug him tight, and just then the postman rang. "It's a letter for you." cried Ruth, dancing in. very glad to have something to take his thoughts off the mortgage. Papa opened it, and as he read the terrible mortgage shriveled up into nothing but a piece of paper, and never again had it any terrors for them. "Look here, honey!" he cried, excitedly, to his wife, who ran to read over his shoulder. "Why, Ruth, you are an heiress! The old lady has died and left you in her will, because vou were her valentine. val-entine. $."1.000 !" "Five thousand dollars! That will pay off the mortgage and send you south to get well!" exclaimed ex-claimed Mrs. Alison. "Will you lend, me some of your money. Miss Heiress, if I make over the house to you?"' asked papa, laudiing. But Rfuth was crying because the old lady was dead. |