disguised her writing in the address, and there was another girl--name
of Myrtle Vining--who used to have myrtle on her note-paper, and all
over the place--and here these flowers looked to me as if they were
meant for myrtle, and these two crossed arrows are like capital
V--and how I came to be such an egregious dolt, Lord only knows! Well,
I've paid for it--that I have--I've paid for it. Look here--don't
touch! I'll show you what I found out when it was too late--after
she'd played shy with me till I got angry and left her, and it was all
over--my eyes aren't good enough to see it now, but I suppose it's
there still--"

With infinite care and the small blade of his pocket-knife, he lifted
the tiny tip of a tiny Cupid's wing. With bent head and puckered
eyelids, Guthrie peered under, and read: "Yours, M. C.," written on a
space of paper hardly larger than a pin's head.

"In my valentine that night," said Mr Pennycuick, "I'd asked her to
have me. I didn't hide it up in this way; I knew, while I wondered that
she took no notice, that she must have seen it. This was her answer.
And I never got it, sir, till she was married to another man--and then
by the merest accident. Then I couldn't even have the satisfaction of
telling her that I'd got it, and how it was I hadn't got it before. Of
course, I wasn't going to upset her after she was married to another
man. I've had to let her think what she liked of me."

Guthrie was certainly interested now, but not as interested as he would
have been the day before. The day before, this story would have moved
him to pour out the tale of his own untimely and irreparable loss. He
and old Mr Pennycuick would--metaphorically speaking--have mingled
their tears together.