Happy Leap Day!
Leap Day is celebrated at Roanoke Academy, too.
Did you know that the French have a paper that is only printed on Leap Day? La Bougie du Sapeur (The Sapper’s Candle) is a satirical paper that is only published once every four years. It was started in the 1980s and has had ten issues so far. If it is able to continue, the eleventh should come out today. For those who want to know more, La Bougie du Sapeur even has a Facebook page.
According to tradition in many European countries, Leap Year is a time when women were allowed to ask a man to marry them. In some countries, if the man said no, he had to buy her twelve pairs of gloves (to cover the shame of not having a ring.)
Some young ladies, however, use this to their advantage. Wily Laurel Griffin deliberately targets boys who will have to say no, in order to increase her collection of gloves.
Laurel is not the only young woman who attempts to propose on Leap Year. The other young woman’s proposal goes awry, though for entirely different reasons.
Vladimir Von Dread wisely made himself scarce for the day, lest he be required to hand out a truly prestigious number of gloves, though, as Zoe Forrest notes, it was not as if Bavaria could not afford it.
Who is this other young woman who may or may not end up engaged? To find out who it is, and how many gloves Laurel Griffin scored, you’ll have to read Guardians of the Twilight Lands.