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Title: The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation
Author: Johnston, Annie F. (Annie Fellows), 1863-1931
Language: English
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_The_ LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION
ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION
Works of ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON The Little Colonel Series
(_Trade Mark, Reg. U.S. Pat. Of._)
Each one vol., large 12mo, cloth, illustrated
The Little Colonel Stories $1.50
(Containing in one volume the three stories, "The
Little Colonel," "The Giant Scissors," and
"Two Little Knights of Kentucky.")
The Little Colonel's House Party 1.50
The Little Colonel's Holidays 1.50
The Little Colonel's Hero 1.50
The Little Colonel at Boarding-School 1.50
The Little Colonel in Arizona 1.50
The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation 1.50
The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor 1.50
The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding 1.50
The above 9 vols., _boxed_ 13.50
_In Preparation_--A New Little Colonel Book 1.50
The Little Colonel Good Times Book 1.50
Illustrated Holiday Editions
Each one vol., small quarto, cloth, illustrated, and printed
in colour
The Little Colonel $1.25
The Giant Scissors 1.25
Two Little Knights of Kentucky 1.25
Big Brother 1.25
Cosy Corner Series
Each one vol., thin 12mo, cloth, illustrated
The Little Colonel $.50
The Giant Scissors .50
Two Little Knights of Kentucky .50
Big Brother .50
Ole Mammy's Torment .50
The Story of Dago .50
Cicely .50
Aunt 'Liza's Hero .50
The Quilt that Jack Built .50
Flip's "Islands of Providence" .50
Mildred's Inheritance .50
Other Books
Joel: A Boy of Galilee $1.50
In the Desert of Waiting .50
The Three Weavers .50
Keeping Tryst .50
The Legend of the Bleeding Heart .50
Asa Holmes 1.00
Songs Ysame (Poems, with Albion Fellows Bacon) 1.00
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
200 Summer Street Boston, Mass.
[Illustration: "'GEE WHIZ!' EXCLAIMED ROB, IN A TEASING TONE, 'SAY THAT
AGAIN, WON'T YOU PLEASE?'" (_See page 163_)]
The Little Colonel's
Christmas Vacation
By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
Author of "The Little Colonel Series," "Big Brother,"
"Ole Mammy's Torment," "Joel: A Boy of Galilee,"
"Asa Holmes," etc.
Illustrated by ETHELDRED B. BARRY
BOSTON * L. C. PAGE
& COMPANY * PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1905_
By L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(Incorporated)
_All rights reserved_
Published October, 1905
Ninth Impression, June, 1908
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WARWICK HALL 1
II. "THE OLD GIRLS' WELCOME TO THE NEW" 22
III. AN EXCURSION 46
IV. "KEEP TRYST" 70
V. A MEMORY-BOOK AND A SOUVENIR SPOON 95
VI. CHRISTMAS CAROLS 121
VII. HOMEWARD BOUND 138
VIII. A PICNIC IN THE SNOW 156
IX. A PROGRESSIVE CHRISTMAS PARTY 176
X. THE DUNGEON OF DISAPPOINTMENT 198
XI. IN THE ATTIC 218
XII. HUMDRUM DAYS 235
XIII. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF AMANTHIS 254
XIV. "CINDERELLA" 273
XV. A HARD-EARNED PEARL 292
XVI. "SWEET SIXTEEN" 315
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"'GEE WHIZ!' EXCLAIMED ROB, IN A TEASING TONE.
'SAY THAT AGAIN, WON'T YOU PLEASE?'"
(_See page 163_) _Frontispiece_
"MADAM'S CONVERSATION LED FAR AWAY FROM THE
CREST AND ITS LESSON" 25
"STUDYING THE FACE OF THE HANDSOME YOUNG FELLOW
WITH INTEREST" 105
"'I TELL YOU SOMEBODY WAS TRYING TO SANDBAG ME'" 152
"ONE OF THE BOYS HAD DARED HIM TO CARRY IT" 221
"'I NEARLY FAINTED WHEN I HAPPENED TO LOOK UP'" 248
"SHE RODE OVER TO ROLLINGTON" 299
"'NO MATTAH WHAT LIES AHEAD . . . I'LL NOT
DISAPPOINT THEM'" 333
THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION
CHAPTER I.
WARWICK HALL
WARWICK HALL looked more like an old English castle than a modern
boarding-school for girls. Gazing at its high towers and massive portal,
one almost expected to see some velvet-clad page or lady-in-waiting come
down the many flights of marble steps leading between stately terraces
to the river. Even a knight with a gerfalcon on his wrist would not have
seemed out of place, and if a slow-going barge had trailed by between
the willow-fringed banks of the Potomac, it would have seemed more in
keeping with the scene than the steamboats puffing past to Mount Vernon,
with crowds of excursionists on deck.
The gorgeous peacocks strutting along the terraces in the sun were
partly responsible for this impression of mediæval grandeur. It was for
that very purpose that Madam Chartley, the head of the school, kept the
peacocks. That was one reason, also, that she proudly retained the coat
of arms in the great stained glass window over the stairs, when
circumstances obliged her to turn her ancestral home into a
boarding-school. She thought a sense of mediæval grandeur was good for
girls, especially young American girls, who are apt to be brought up
without proper respect for age, either of individuals or institutions.
In the dining-room, two long lines of portraits looked down from
opposite walls. One was headed by a grim old earl, and the other by an
equally grim old Pilgrim father of _Mayflower_ fame. The two lines
joined over the fireplace in the portraits of Madam Chartley's
great-grandparents. It was for this great-grandmother, a daughter of the
Pilgrims and a beautiful Washington belle, that Warwick Hall had been
built; for she refused to give up her native land entirely, even for the
son of an earl.
At his death, when the title and the English estates were inherited by a
distant cousin, the only male heir, this place on the Potomac was all
that was left to her and her daughter. It had been closed for two
generations. Now it had come down at last to Madam Chartley. Although
it found her too poor to keep up such an establishment, it also found
her too proud to let her heritage go to strangers, and practical enough
to find some way by which she might retain it comfortably. That way was
to turn it into a first-class boarding-school. She was a graduate of one
of the best American colleges. The patrician standards inherited from
her old world ancestors, combined with the energy and common sense of
the new, made her an ideal woman to undertake the education of young
girls, and Warwick Hall was an ideal place in which to carry out her
wise theories.
The Potomac was red with the glow of the sunset one September evening,
when four girls, on their way back to Washington after a day's
sightseeing, hurried to the upper deck of the steamboat. Some one had
called out that Warwick Hall was in sight. In their haste to reach the
railing, they scarcely noticed a tall girl in blue, already standing
there, who obligingly moved along to make room for them.
She scrutinized them closely, however, for she had seen them in the
cabin a little while before, and their conversation had been so amusing
that she longed to make their acquaintance. Her face brightened
expectantly at their approach, and, as they leaned over the railing, she
studied them with growing interest. The oldest one was near her own age,
she decided after a careful survey, about seventeen; and they were all
particular about the little things that count so much with fastidious
schoolgirls. She approved of each one of them from their broad silk
shoe-laces to the pink tips of their carefully manicured finger-nails.
As the boat swung around a bend in the river, bringing the castle-like
building into full view, a chorus of delighted exclamations broke out
all along the deck. The four girls hung over the railing with eager
faces.
"Look, Lloyd, look!" cried one of them, excitedly. "Peacocks on the
terraces! It's the finishing touch to the picture. We'll feel like Lady
Clare walking down those marble steps. There surely must be a milk-white
doe somewhere in the background."
"Oh, Betty, Betty!" was the laughing answer. "You'll do nothing now but
quote Tennyson and write poetry from mawning till night."
"They're from Kentucky," thought the girl in blue. "I'm sure of it from
the way they talk."
As the boat glided slowly along, Lloyd threw her arm around the girl
beside her, with an impulsive squeeze.
"Kitty Walton," she exclaimed, "aren't you _glad_ that the old
Lloydsboro Seminary burned down? If it hadn't, we wouldn't be on ouah
way now to that heavenly-looking boahding-school!"
The sudden hug loosened Kitty's hat, held insecurely by one pin, and in
another instant the strong breeze would have carried it over into the
river had not the girl in blue caught it as it swept past her. She
handed it back with a friendly smile, glad of an opportunity to speak.
"You are new pupils for Warwick Hall, aren't you?" she asked, when Kitty
had laughingly thanked her. "I hope so, for I'm one of the old girls.
This will be my third year."
"How perfectly lovely!" exclaimed Kitty. "We've been fairly crazy to
meet some one from there. Do tell us if it is as fine as it looks, and
as the catalogue says."
"It is the very nicest place in the world," was the enthusiastic reply.
"There are hardly any rules, and none of them are the kind that rub you
up the wrong way. We don't have to wear uniforms, and we're not marched
out to walk in wholesale lots like prisoners in a chain-gang."
"That's what I used to despise at the Seminary," interrupted Lloyd. "I
always felt like pah't of a circus parade, or an inmate of some asylum,
out for an airing. Keeping in step and keeping in line with a lot of
othahs made a punishment out of the walk, when it would have been such a
pleasuah if we could have skipped along as we pleased. I felt resentful
from the moment the gong rang for us to stah't. It had such a bossy,
tyrannical sawt of sound."
"You'll not find it that way at Warwick Hall," was the emphatic answer.
"There are bells for rising and chapel and meals, but the signal for
exercise is a hunter's horn, blown on the upper terrace. There's
something so breezy and out-of-doors in the sound that it is almost as
irresistible a call as the Pied Piper of Hamelin's. You ought to see the
doors fly open along the corridors, and the girls pour out when that
horn blows. We can go in twos or threes or squads, any way we please,
and in any direction, so long as we keep inside the grounds. There's an
orchard to stroll through, and a wooded hillside, and a big meadow. On
bad days there is over half a mile of gravel road that runs through the
grounds to the trolley station, or we can take our exercise going round
and round the garden walks. The garden is over there at the left of the
Hall," she explained, waving her hand toward it. "Do you see that
pergola stretching along the highest terrace? That is where the garden
begins, and the ivy running over it was started from a slip that Madam
Chartley brought from Sir Walter Scott's home at Abbotsford.
"It is the stateliest old garden you ever saw, and the pride of the
school. There's a sun-dial in it, and hollyhocks from Ann Hathaway's
cottage, and rhododendrons from Killarney. There's all the flowers
mentioned in the old songs. Madam has brought slips and roots and seeds
from all sorts of places, so that nearly every plant is connected with
some noted place or person. I simply love it. In warm weather I get up
early in the morning, and study my Latin out in the honeysuckle arbour.
Latin is my hardest study, but it doesn't seem half so hard out there
among the bees and hummingbirds, where it's all so sweet and still."
"Oh, will they let you do things like that?" came the same amazed
question from all four at once.
"You wait and see," was the encouraging reply. "That isn't the
beginning."
The four exchanged ecstatic glances.
"Oh, we haven't introduced ourselves," exclaimed Kitty, bethinking
herself of formalities. "I am Katherine Walton, and this is my big
sister, Allison. That is Lloyd Sherman and Elizabeth Lewis. They're
almost as good as sisters, for they live together, and Lloyd's mother is
Betty's godmother. And we're all from the same place, Lloydsboro Valley,
Kentucky."
"And I am Juliet Lynn from Wisconsin. That is, I lived there till papa
had to come to Washington. He's a Congressman now. I was sure that you
were from Kentucky, and I've been hoping that you were new girls for the
Hall ever since I heard you talking about some house-party where you all
did such funny things."
"Oh, yes, that was one we had this summer at The Beeches," began Kitty,
glibly, "when we all took turns--"
But, with a big-sister frown of warning, Allison said, in a low aside:
"For pity's sake, don't stop to tell all that long rigmarole over _now_.
We want to hear some more about the school."
"What is Madam Chartley herself like?" she asked, turning to Juliet.
"She must be something of an old dragon if she can keep forty girls
straight with so few rules. We've pictured her as a big British
matron, dignified and imposing,--a sort of lioness rampant, you know,
with a stern air, as if she was about to say in a deep voice,
'England--expects--every--man--to--do--his--duty,--sir!'"
"But she isn't that way at all!" cried Juliet, almost indignantly.
"She's just as American as you are, for she was born and educated in
this country. She has the gentlest voice and sweetest manner. Her hair
is snow-white, and there's something awfully aristocratic about her, for
she is--sort of--well, I hardly know how to express it, but just what
you'd expect the 'daughter of a hundred earls' to be, you know. But you
won't feel one bit in awe of her. The girls simply adore her."
"But isn't she something to be afraid of when you break the rules?"
queried Kitty, anxiously. "When you have midnight feasts and pillow-case
prowls and all that?"
Juliet shook her head. "We don't do those things. I tell you it isn't
like any other boarding-school you ever heard of."
"Then I know I sha'n't like it," declared Kitty. "All my life I've
looked forward to going off to school just for the jolly good times I'd
have. You see we were only day-pupils at Lloydsboro Seminary, and there
wasn't a chance for that kind of fun, except the one term when Lloyd and
Betty boarded in the school while their family was away from home. We
managed to stir up a little excitement then, and I'd hoped for all sorts
of thrilling adventures here. I'm horribly disappointed that it's so
tame and goody-goody."
Juliet's face coloured resentfully. "It isn't tame at all!" she
declared. "It's only that we are always so busy doing pleasant things
and going to interesting places that nobody cares for stolen spreads.
Some girls don't like the place just at first, because it's so different
from what they've been used to. But by the end of the term they're so in
love with Warwick Hall and everything about it that nothing could induce
them to change schools. There's only one girl I ever heard of who didn't
like it."
"And why didn't she?" asked Lloyd and Allison, in the same breath.
"Well, she came from some ranch away out West, Wyoming or Nevada or some
of those places, where she'd been as free and easy as a squaw, and she
couldn't stand so much civilization. You see, from the minute you enter
Warwick Hall you feel somehow that you're a guest of Madam Chartley's
instead of a pupil. She uses the old family silver and the china has her
great-grandfather's crest on it, and she brought over a London butler
who grew up in the family service. She keeps him for the same reason
that she keeps the peacocks, I suppose. They give such a grand air to
the place.
"Lida Wilsy--that's the girl from the ranch--couldn't live up to so much
stateliness, especially of the stony-eyed butler. Hawkins was too much
for her. She told her roommate that she thought it was foolish to have
so many forks and spoons at each place. One was enough for anybody to
get through a dinner with. Life was too short for so much fuss and
feathers. She never could learn which to use first, and she would get
her silverware so hopelessly mixed up that by the time dessert was
brought on maybe she would have nothing to eat it with but an oyster
fork. I've seen her ready to go under the table from embarrassment. Not
that she cared so much what the girls thought. She joked about it to
them. Her father owned the biggest part of a silver mine, and they could
have had Tiffany's whole stock of forks if they'd wanted them. It was
Hawkins she was afraid of. Of course he was too well trained to show
what he thought of her mistakes, but you couldn't help feeling his high
and mighty inward scorn of such ignorance. It fairly oozed from his
finger-tips."
Kitty's black eyes sparkled, anticipating times ahead when she would
certainly make it lively for Hawkins.
"There's grandfathah!" cried Lloyd, catching sight of a white-haired old
gentleman who had just come up on deck. "I want to tell him about the
garden before we lose sight of it."
Juliet's glance followed her with interest as she darted away, for it
was a distinguished-looking old gentleman who lifted his hat with
elaborate courtesy at her approach. He was dressed in white duck, and
the right coat-sleeve hung empty.
"It's Colonel Lloyd," explained Allison, noting Juliet's glance of
curiosity. "He's bringing us all to school, for it wasn't convenient for
mother or Mrs. Sherman to come."
"They don't look alike," remarked Juliet, surveying them with a puzzled
expression. "But what is it about them--there is such a startling
resemblance?"
"Everybody notices it," said Kitty. "When Lloyd was smaller, they used
to call her the Little Colonel all the time, but especially when she was
in a temper. They call her Princess now."
"Princess," echoed Juliet. "That name suits her exactly."
She cast another admiring glance at the slender, fair-haired girl,
standing with her hand in her grandfather's arm, pointing out the
beauties of the place they were slowly passing.
"And she will suit Warwick Hall," she added, with a sudden burst
of schoolgirl enthusiasm, "just as the peacocks suit it, and the
coat of arms, and Madam Chartley herself. She's got that same
'daughter-of-a-hundred-earls' air about her that Madam has."
"Oh, it all sounds so delightful and fascinating," sighed Betty, pushing
back the brown hair that blew in little curls about her face, and
smiling at the slowly disappearing Hall with a happy light in her brown
eyes. "I can hardly wait for to-morrow."
The boat had glided on until only the high, square tower was left in
view, with the red sunset glow upon it.
"'The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story'"--
Betty sang half under her breath, with a farewell flutter of her
handkerchief, as the boat rounded a bend in the river which hid the
tower from sight. Already she was in love with the place, and already,
as Lloyd had predicted, she was fitting some line of Tennyson to it at
every turn.
Acquaintance progressed rapidly in the next half-hour. Long before they
reached Washington, Juliet knew, not only that she had guessed Allison's
age correctly at seventeen, that Betty was sixteen, and Lloyd and Kitty
a year younger, but that each girl in her own way would make a desirable
friend. Incidentally she learned that Allison and Kitty had lived in the
Philippines, and were daughters of the brave General Walton who had lost
his life there in his country's service. When they parted at the
boat-landing, it was with delightful anticipations of the next day, and
with each one eager to renew an acquaintance so pleasantly begun.
* * * * *
If Warwick Hall suggested ancient stateliness on the outside, it was
informal and frivolous enough within, when forty girls were taking
possession of their rooms on the opening day of the school year. In and
out like a flock of twittering sparrows, the old pupils darted from one
room to another, exchanging calls and greetings, laughing over old jokes
and reminiscences, and settling down into familiar corners with an ease
that the new girls envied.
Juliet Lynn, quickly establishing herself in her last year's quarters,
started down the corridor to announce at every door that she was the
first one unpacked and settled. All the other rooms were in hopeless
confusion, beds, chairs, and floors being piled with the contents of
open trunks.
At the first door where she paused, a shower of shoes and slippers was
the only answer to her triumphant announcement. At the next a laughing
cry of "Help! help!" greeted her. At the third she was informed that
there was standing-room only.
"Don't you believe it, Juliet!" called a gay voice from the chiffonier,
where an earlier visitor was perched. "There's always room at the top.
I've discovered where Min keeps her butter-scotch. Come in and have
some."
"No, I'm going the rounds to see what everybody is about," she answered.
"You're all in such a mess now, I'd rather look in later. I'm one of the
early settlers, and have been in order for ages."
"What's the odds so long as you're happy?" called the girl on the
chiffonier. "Besides, it's no better next door. They'll invite you to
make yourself at home under the bed, as they did me. Come on back and
tell us your summer's experiences. Min has had one dizzy whirl of
adventures after another."
But Juliet kept on down the hall. She wanted to find what rooms had been
assigned to the girls whom she had met the day before on the boat, and
to hear their first impressions of Warwick Hall. Presently, through a
half-open door, she caught sight of Betty, sitting at an open window
overlooking the river. With chin in hand and elbows resting on the sill,
she was gazing dreamily out at the willow-fringed banks, so absorbed in
her thoughts that she did not hear Juliet's first knock. But at the
second she started up and called cordially: "Oh, I'm so glad to see you!
Come in!"
"Why, you're all unpacked and put away, too!" exclaimed Juliet, in
surprise, looking around the orderly room. "I thought that I was the
only one, but I see you've even hung your pictures."
"Yes, we don't know any of the other girls yet, so we didn't lose any
time running back and forth to their rooms, as everybody else is doing.
We've been through ever so long. Lloyd is out exploring the grounds
with Allison, but I was too tired after all the sightseeing we have
done. I'd be glad not to stir out of my room for a week."
She pushed a rocking-chair hospitably toward her guest, and leaned back
in the opposite one.
"I don't want to sit down," said Juliet. "I'm just exploring. I think
it's so much fun to poke around the first day and see how everybody is
fixed. You don't mind, do you, if I walk around and look at your
pictures?"
"No, indeed!" answered Betty, cordially. "Help yourself."
Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she sat up straight in her
chair, and adjusted the side-combs which were slipping out of her curly
hair. It was a pleasing reflection that the mirror showed her, of a slim
girl in a linen shirt-waist and a dark brown skirt just reaching to her
ankles. But it held her gaze only long enough for her to see that her
belt was properly pulled down and her stock all that could be desired.
The friendly brown eyes and the trusting little mouth never needed
readjustment. They always met the world with a smile, and thus far the
world had always smiled back at them.
"Last year," said Juliet, as she wandered around, "the girl who had this
room simply plastered the walls with posters. It was so sporty-looking.
She had hunting scenes between these windows, and there was a frieze of
hounds and a yard of puppies where you have that panel of photographs.
Oh, what perfectly beautiful places!" she cried, moving nearer. "Do tell
me about them. Is that where you live?"
"Yes, this is our Lloydsboro Valley corner--the Happy Valley we call
it," answered Betty, crossing the room to point out the various places:
"Locust," her home and Lloyd's, a stately white-pillared mansion at the
end of a long locust avenue; "The Beeches," where the Waltons lived; the
vine-covered stone church; the old mill; the post-office, and a row of
snap shots showing Lloyd and her mounted on their ponies, Tarbaby and
Lad.
"What good times you must have there!" sighed Juliet, presently.
Betty opened a drawer in the writing-desk and took out six little books,
bound in white kid, her initials stamped in gold on each cover.
"Just see how many!" she exclaimed. "I started to keep a record of all
my good times when I went to Lloyd's first house-party. When godmother
gave me this volume, number one, I thought it would take a lifetime to
fill it, but so many lovely things happened that summer that it was
full in a little while. Then I went abroad in the fall, and that trip
filled a volume. Now I am beginning the seventh."
Juliet stared at the pile of white books in amazement. "What a lot of
work!" she cried. "Doesn't it take every bit of pleasure out of your
good times, thinking that you'll have to write all about it afterward? I
tried to keep a diary once, but it looked more like the report of a
weather bureau than anything else, and my small brother got hold of it
and mortified me nearly to death one night when we had company, by
quoting something from it. It sounded dreadfully sentimental, although
it hadn't seemed so when I wrote it. That's the trouble in keeping a
journal, don't you think so? You'll often put down something that seems
important at the time, but that sounds silly afterward."
"No," said Betty, hesitatingly. "I always enjoy going back to read the
first volumes. It's interesting to see how one changes from year to year
in opinions as well as handwriting. See how little and cramped the
letters are in this first volume. It's good exercise, and, as I expect
to write a book some day, every bit of practice helps."
Betty made the announcement as simply as if she had said she intended
to darn a stocking some day, and Juliet looked at her in open-mouthed
wonder. She had never encountered a girl of that species before, and
more than ever she felt that her friendship would be worth cultivating.
When she finally took her departure, there was no time for any further
tour of inspection, but she ran into several rooms on the way back to
her own to say, hastily: "Girls, do all you can to get that Kentucky
quartette into our sorority! I'll tell you about them later. We must
give them a grand rush to-morrow night at the old girls' welcome to the
new. I hope I'll get to take Elizabeth Lewis. My _dears_, she's a
perfect genius! She's written poems and plays that have been published,
and she's at work on a _book_!"
As Juliet closed the door behind her, Betty took up the new volume in
the series of little white records, and began turning the blank pages.
Like the new school year, it lay spread out before her, white and fair,
hers to write therein as she chose.
"And I'll try my hardest to make it the best and happiest record of them
all," she said to herself. As she dipped her pen into the ink, there was
a knock at the door, and a white-capped maid looked in.
"Madam Chartley would be pleased to see you at once in the pink room,
miss," she announced, and Betty, much surprised, rose to answer the
unexpected summons.
CHAPTER II.
"THE OLD GIRLS' WELCOME TO THE NEW"
AS Betty opened the door, she ran into Kitty Walton, who at sight of her
struck an attitude on the threshold, crossing her hands on her breast,
and rolling her eyes upward until only the whites were visible.
"What new pose is this, you goose?" laughed Betty, shaking her gently by
one shoulder.
"Don't laugh," was the solemn answer. "This is pious resignation to
fate." Then her hands dropped and she turned to Betty tragically.
"I've just come from an interview with Madam Chartley," she explained.
"And what do you think? That blessed old soul expects me to live up to
the motto on her teacups! But how can I give Hawkins his just due _if_ I
do? I had the loveliest things planned for his tormenting, but I'd be
ashamed to look her in the face if she ever found me out after this
interview.
"Oh, Betty, I don't want to renounce the world and the flesh and all the
other bad things this early in the term, but I'm afraid that I've
already done it. She's laid a spell on all of us."
"Has she sent for Lloyd and Allison, too?"
"Yes, Allison was the first victim. She came back in a regular
dare-to-be-a-Daniel mood, and announced that she intended to start in,
heart and soul, for the studio honours this year. Then Lloyd had her
turn, and she came back looking like Joan of Arc when she'd been
listening to the voices. I vowed she shouldn't have that effect on me,
but here I am, perfectly docile as you see, fangs drawn and claws cut. I
tremble for the effect on you, sweet innocent. Your wings will sprout
before you get back."
Betty laughed and hurried past her down the stairs. Evidently it was
Madam's custom to make the acquaintance of her new girls in this way,
one at a time. Only fifteen freshmen were admitted each year, so it was
possible for her to take a personal interest in every pupil.
Betty's heart fluttered expectantly as she paused an instant in the door
of the pink room. Madam Chartley had looked very imposing and dignified
as she presided at the lunch-table that noon, with the stately Hawkins
behind her chair and the stately portraits looking down from the walls.
She looked now as if she might be the original of one of these old
portraits herself, as she sat there in the high-backed chair, with the
griffins carved on its teakwood frame. Her gray gown trailed around her
in graceful folds. There was a soft fall of lace at wrists and throat,
and her white hair had a sheen like silver against the pink brocade with
which the chair was upholstered.
With a smile which seemed to take Betty straight into her confidence,
she held out her hand and drew her to a seat beside her. An
old-fashioned silver tea-service stood on a table at her elbow, and when
the maid had brought hot water, she busied herself in filling a cup for
Betty.
"There!" she said, as she passed it to her. "There's nothing like a cozy
chat over a cup of tea for warming acquaintances into friends."
Betty wondered, as she took a proffered slice of lemon, if Madam began
all her interviews in this way, and if she was to hear the same little
sermon about the crest on the ancestral teacups that Kitty had heard. It
certainly was an interesting crest. She lifted the fragile bit of china
for a closer survey. A mailed arm, rising out of a heart, clasped a
spear in its hand, and under it ran the motto, "I keep tryst."
[Illustration: "MADAM'S CONVERSATION LED FAR AWAY FROM THE CREST AND ITS
LESSON"]
But Madam's conversation led far away from the crest and its lesson. At
first it was about a quaint old English inn, where is served delicious
toasted scones with five o'clock tea. When she mentioned that, it was as
if they had discovered a mutual friend, for Betty cried out joyfully
that she had been there, and had spent a long rainy afternoon in one of
its rooms, where Scott had written many chapters of "Kenilworth." Betty
remembered afterward that not a word was said about school and its
obligations. It was of the Old Curiosity Shop they spoke, and the House
of Seven Gables. Madam promised to show her the autographs of Dickens
and Hawthorne, which she had in her collection, and a pen which had once
belonged to George Eliot.
Then Betty found that Madam had known Miss Alcott, and, before she
realized what she was doing, she had thrown herself down impulsively on
the stool at her feet, and, with both hands clasping the griffin's head
on the arm of the high-backed chair, was asking a dozen eager questions
about "Little Women" and the author who had been her first inspiration
to write.
Nearly an hour later, when she went back to her room, it was with
something singing in her heart that made her very solemn and very happy.
It was the immortal music of the Choir Invisible. She had been in the
unseen company of earth's best and noblest, and felt in her soul that
some day she, too, would have a right to be counted in that chorus,
having done something really great and worth while.
That evening after dinner Kitty bounced into the room where Allison sat
talking with Lloyd and Betty during recreation hour.
"To-morrow night there's to be the Old Girls' Welcome to the New!" she
cried. "Come on in, Juliet, and tell them about it."
Juliet thrust her head through the half-open door.
"Haven't time to stop," she answered, "but I'll tell this much. It's the
first of the great social functions. Everybody wears her party clothes
and a sweet smile. It's the first lesson of the year in How to attain
Ease under New and Exacting Conditions. No matter how the seniors snub
you later on, in order to teach you your proper place, you'll all be
birds of a feather that one time, and flock together as peaceably as pet
hens.
"Each new girl has an escort appointed by the entertaining committee,
who sends her flowers and calls for her and sees that her programme is
filled. So there are never any wallflowers the first night. No, Allison,
it isn't a dance. The programmes are for progressive conversation.
Somewhere in the background there's a piano playing waltzes and
two-steps, and so forth, but you talk out the numbers instead of dancing
them. Changing partners so often keeps you from getting bored, and
strangers can tell who is talking to them, for there are the names on
their programmes. You can refer to that when anybody comes up to claim
you. I'm to take Lloyd, and Sybil Green is to take Kitty. I haven't
found out the other assignments yet. I'll let you know as soon as I do.
Continued in our next."
With an airy wave of the hand she withdrew, leaving them to an animated
discussion of what to wear.
"You must remember that this isn't the only time you're to appear in
public, Katherine Walton," said Allison, severely, when Kitty proposed
her best array. "There's to be a reception at the White House next week,
and Friday night we're to go in to Washington to see Jefferson in 'Rip
Van Winkle,' and there's to be a studio tea soon, and a recital, and
all sorts of things. I saw the bulletin of the term's entertainments in
the hall this evening."
"_We_'ll never be seen at those things," insisted Kitty.
"We'll scarcely be a drop in the bucket. But to-morrow night, isn't the
whole affair for us? We'll be the whole show. We'll be _it_, Allison,
and 'it's my night to howl.' I intend to wear my rose-pink mull and a
rosebud in my raving tresses, and carry the gorgeous spangled fan that
the dear old admiral gave me in Manila. So there!"
"Then don't come near me," said Allison, with a warning shake of her
head, "for I am going to wear my cerise crêpe de chine. It's lovely by
itself, but by the side of anything the shade of your pink mull it's the
most hideous, sickly colour you ever saw. I _wish_ you'd wear that pale
green dress, Kitty. You look sweet in that, and it goes so well with
mine."
"But, my dear sister," laughed Kitty, "I don't expect to spend any time
getting acquainted with _you_. I'll probably not be near you the whole
evening. It's not expected that, just because we are from Kentucky, we
have to pose as those two devoted creatures on the State seal,--stand
around with our hands clasped, exclaiming 'United we stand, divided we
fall!' to every one that comes up."
"Nevah mind, Allison," said Lloyd, laughing at Kitty's dramatic gestures
and her sister's worried expression. "I'll play 'State seal' with you. I
have a pale green almost the shade of Kitty's, and I'll wear the coral
clasps and chains that were Papa Jack's mothah's. He gave them to me
just before I left home. I'll show them to you."
She began to rummage through her trunk. Betty sat looking at the
ceiling, trying to decide the momentous question of dress for herself.
Finally she announced: "I'll just wear white, then I'll harmonize with
everybody, and can run up to the first one of you I happen to see when I
need a spark of courage. I know I'll be terribly embarrassed. It makes
me cold right now to think of meeting so many strangers."
But Betty's courage needed no reinforcing next evening, when Maria
Overlin, one of the seniors, took her in charge. The reception took
place in what had been the ballroom, in the days when Warwick Hall was
noted for its brilliant entertainments. Even its first hostess could not
have received her distinguished guests with courtlier grace than Madam
Chartley received her pupils, when, to the music of a stately minuet,
they filed past her down the long line of teachers.
For once, each of the new girls, no matter how timid or inexperienced in
social ways, tasted the sweets of popularity, and the four whom Juliet
Lynn had dubbed the Kentucky quartette were overwhelmed with attentions.
Juliet, who had hoped to escort Betty, was glad that Lloyd had fallen to
her lot when she saw what an admiring little court flocked around her
wherever she turned. In the pale green dress, with its clasps of pink
coral carved in the shape of tiny butterflies, she looked more
princess-like than ever. She wore a bracelet of the coral butterflies
also, and a slender circlet of them about her throat. They gave a soft
pink flush to her cheeks.
No sooner had she passed the receiving line than she was surrounded by a
group of white-gowned girls clamouring for an introduction and a place
on her programme.
"Whose initials are these?" she whispered to Juliet presently when the
card was all filled and there were still several girls asking to be
allowed to write their names on it.
"Couldn't I give Miss Bartlett this line where there's nothing but G. M.
scrawled on it?"
"Mercy, no!" exclaimed Juliet. "That's for Gabrielle Melville. It would
never do for you two to miss each other to-night. I put them down for
her, as she's to play later in the evening on the violin, you know, and
I knew she'd never get here in time to do it herself. She always has
such frantic times dressing. Just struggles into her things, never can
find half her clothes, and what she does manage to fall into catches and
rips in the struggle. Her hat is always over one ear, and her belts
never make connection in the back, but she's so adorable that nobody
minds her wild toilets. They laugh and say, 'Oh, it's just Gay.' That's
her nickname, you know. Here's Emily Chapman coming to claim you. Emily,
you can tell Lloyd some things about Gay, can't you?"
"I rather think so," laughed Emily. "We roomed together last year, and I
got her again this term. It took a fight, though, for she's the most
popular girl in school."
"Is she pretty?" asked Lloyd.
"We think so, don't we, Juliet? If she had any enemies, they might say
that she has red hair and a pug nose. But that would be exaggerating.
Her hair is that beautiful bronzy auburn that crinkles around her face
and blows in her eyes till she always seems to be bringing a breeze with
her."
"And her nose isn't pug exactly," chimed in Juliet. "There's just a
darling, saucy little tip to it, that seems to suit her. She wouldn't be
half as pretty with the approved Gibson girl kind, no matter how perfect
it was."
"And her complexion is so lovely," Emily resumed, enthusiastically. "And
her eyes are a jolly, laughing kind of brown, with an amber sparkle in
them, except when she gets into one of her intense, serious moods. Then
they are almost black, they're so deep and velvety. She's never twice in
the same mood. Oh! There she comes now."
A side door opened, and a slim little thing all in white, with a violin
under her arm and a distracted pucker on her face, hurried up to the
piano. Nervously feeling her belt to make sure that she was presentable
before turning her back on the audience, she whispered to the girl who
was to play her accompaniments, and began tuning the violin. Then,
tucking it under her chin as if she loved it, she listened an instant to
the piano prelude, and drew her bow softly across the strings.
"Good!" whispered Emily. "It's that Mexican swallow song. She always
has such a rapt expression on her face when she plays that. She makes me
think of St. Cecilia. She's so earnest in all she does. If it's no more
than making fudge, she throws her whole soul into it, just that way.
She's as intense as if the fate of a nation depended on whatever she
happens to be doing."
As Lloyd joined loudly in the applause which followed the performance,
another girl came up to claim her attention. It was Myra Carr, the
senior who had taken Allison under her wing.
"Doesn't Gay play splendidly?" she exclaimed, not knowing that she had
been the previous topic of conversation. "We think she's a genius. She
improvises little things sometimes in the twilight that are so sweet and
sad they make you cry. Then she's unconventional enough to be a genius.
She's always shocking people without meaning to, and so careless, she'd
lose her head if nature hadn't attended to the fastenings.
"We all love her dearly, but we vowed the last time we went sightseeing
that she should never go with us again unless she let us tie her up in a
bag, so that nothing could drop out by the way. First she lost her hat.
It blew off the trolley-car, one of those 'seeing Washington' affairs,
you know. She had to go bareheaded all the rest of the way. Then she
lost her pocketbook, and such a time as we had hunting that. The time
before, she lost a locket that had been a family heirloom, and we missed
our train and got caught in a shower looking for it."
"Where does she live?" asked Lloyd, watching the bright face that was
making its way toward them across the crowded room.
"At Fort Sam Houston, down in San Antonio. Her father is an army officer
at that post."
There was no time for further discussion, for Gabrielle was coming
toward her with outstretched hand.
"This is Juliet's Princess, isn't it?" she asked, with a smile that
captivated Lloyd at once, flashing over the whitest of little teeth.
"You're getting all sorts of titles to-night. I heard a girl speak of
you as a mermaid in that pale sea-green gown and corals, but I've come
over here on purpose to call you the 'Little Colonel.' You don't know
how much good it does me to hear a military title once more. Out at the
fort it's all majors and captains and such things."
Then, dropping her grown-up society manner, she suddenly giggled,
turning to include Emily in the conversation.
"Oh, girls, I had the worst time getting dressed this evening that I
ever had in my life. When I unpacked my trunk yesterday, everything was
so wrinkled that there was only one dress I could wear without having it
pressed; this white one. So I laid it out, but, when I went to put it on
to-night, I found that mamma had made a mistake in packing, and put in
Lucy's skirt instead. Lucy is my older sister," she explained to Lloyd.
"We each had a dotted Swiss this summer, made exactly alike, but Lucy is
so much taller than I that her skirts trail on me. Just look how
imposing!"
She swept across the floor and back to show the effect of her trail.
"Of course there was nothing to do at that late hour but pin it up in
front and go ahead. I'm afraid every minute that I'll trip and fall all
over myself, but I do feel so dignified when I feel my train sweeping
along behind me. The pins keep falling out all around the belt, and I
can't help stepping on the hem in front. I love trains," she added,
switching hers forward with a grand air that was so childlike in its
enjoyment that Lloyd felt impelled to hug her. "It gives you such a
dressed-up, peacocky feeling."
Then she looked up in her most soulful, intense way, as if she were
asking for important information. "Do you know whether it's true or not?
_Does_ a peacock stop strutting if it happens to see its feet? My old
nurse told me that, and said that it shows that pride always goes before
a fall. I never was where they kept peacocks before I came to Warwick
Hall, and I've spent hours watching Madam's to see if it is true. But
they are always so busy strutting, I've never been able to catch them
looking at their feet."
She glanced at her own feet as she spoke, then gasped and, covering her
face with her hands, sank limply into a chair in the corner behind her.
"What's the matter?" cried Juliet, alarmed by the sudden change.
"Look! Oh, just _look_!" was the hysterical answer, as she thrust out
both feet, and sat pointing at them tragically, with fingers and thumbs
of both hands outspread.
"No wonder they felt queer. I was so intent on getting my dress pinned
up, and in rushing out in time to play, that I couldn't take time to
analyze my feelings and discover the cause of the queerness. Madeline
blew in at a critical point to borrow a pin, and that threw me off, I
suppose."
From under the white skirt protruded two feet as unlike as could well be
imagined. One was cased in dainty white kid, the other in an old red
felt bedroom slipper, edged with black fur.
"And it would have been all the same," sighed Gay, "if I had been going
to an inaugural ball to hobnob with crowned heads. And I had hoped to
make _such_ a fine impression on the Little Colonel," she added, in a
plaintive tone, with a childlike lifting of the face that Lloyd thought
most charming.
If the mistake had been made by any other girl in the school, it would
not have seemed half so ridiculous, but whatever Gay did was
irresistibly funny. A laughing crowd gathered around her, as she sat
with the red slipper and the white one stretched stiffly out in front of
her, bewailing her fate.
"Anyhow," she remarked, "I'll always have the satisfaction of knowing
that I put my best foot foremost, and if they had been alike I couldn't
have done that. Now could I?" And the girls laughed again, because it
was Gay who said it in her own inimitable way, and because the old felt
slipper looked so ridiculous thrust out from under the dainty white
gown. As others came crowding up to see what was causing so much
merriment in that particular corner, Gay attempted to slip out and go to
her room to correct her mistake. But Sybil Green, pushing through the
outer ring, came up with Allison and Kitty.
"Gay," she began, "here are the girls that you especially wanted to
meet: General Walton's daughters."
Gay's face flushed with pleasure, and, forgetting her errand, she
impulsively stretched out a hand to each, and held them while she
talked.
"Oh, I'm so glad to meet you!" she cried. "I wish that I had known that
you girls were here yesterday before papa left. He is Major Melville,
and he was such a friend of your father's. He was on that long Indian
campaign with him in Arizona, and I've heard him talk of him by the
hour. And last week"--here she lowered her voice so that only Allison
and Kitty heard, and were thrilled by the sweet seriousness of it. "Last
week he took me out to Arlington to carry a great wreath of laurel. When
he'd laid it on the grave, he stood there with bared head, looking all
around, and I heard him say, in a whisper, 'No one in all Arlington has
won his laurels more bravely than you, my captain.' You see it was as a
captain that papa knew him best. He would have been so pleased to have
seen you girls."
Kitty squeezed the hand that still held hers and answered, warmly: "Oh,
you dear, I hope we'll be as good friends as our fathers were!" And
Allison answered, winking back the tears that had sprung to her eyes:
"Thank you for telling us about the laurel. Mother will appreciate it so
much."
While this conversation was going on at Lloyd's elbow, Betty came up to
her on the other side. "Please see if my dress is all right in the
back," she whispered. "It feels as if it were unfastened." Then, as
Lloyd assured her it was properly buttoned, she added, in an undertone:
"Have you met Maud Minor? She's one of the new girls."
Lloyd shook her head.
"Then I'm going to introduce you as soon as I can. She knows Malcolm
MacIntyre."
"Knows Malcolm!" exclaimed Lloyd, in amazement. "Where on earth did she
ever meet him?"
"At the seashore last summer. She can't talk about anything else. She
thinks he is so handsome and has such beautiful manners and is so
adorably romantic. Those are her very words. She has his picture.
Evidently he has talked to her about you, for she's so curious to know
you. She asked a string of questions that I thought were almost
impertinent."
"Where is she?" asked Lloyd.
"There, that girl in white crossing the room with the fat one in
lavender."
Lloyd gave a long, critical look, and then said, slowly: "She's the
prettiest girl in the room, and she makes me think of something I've
read, but I can't recall it."
"I know," said Betty, "but you'll laugh at me if I say Tennyson again.
It's from 'Maud'--
"'I kissed her slender hand.
She took the kiss sedately.
Maud is not seventeen,
But she is tall and stately.'
"But she is not as sedate as she looks," added Betty, truthfully. "I'd
like her better if she didn't gush. That's the only word that will
express it. And it seemed queer for her to take me into her confidence
the minute she was introduced. Right away she gave me to understand that
she'd had a sort of an affair with Malcolm. She didn't say so in so many
words, but she gave me the impression that he had been deeply
interested in her, in a romantic way, you know."
Lloyd looked at Maud again, more critically this time, and with keener
interest. Then her thoughts flew back to the churchyard stile where they
had paused in their gathering of Christmas greens one winter day. For an
instant she seemed to see the handsome boy looking down at her, begging
a token of the Princess Winsome, and saying, in a low tone, "I'll be
whatever you want me to be, Lloyd."
Juliet's voice broke in on her reverie. "Miss Sherman, allow me to
present Miss Minor."
Maud was slightly taller than Lloyd, but it was not her extra inches
alone which seemed to give her the air of looking down on every one. It
was her patronizing manner. Lloyd resented it. Instinctively she drew
herself up and responded somewhat haughtily.
"My dear, I've been simply _dying_ to meet you," began Maud, effusively.
"Ever since I found out that you were the girl Malcolm MacIntyre used to
be so fond of."
Lloyd responded coldly, certain that Malcolm had not discussed their
friendship in a way to warrant this outburst from a stranger.
"Do you know his brothah Keith, too?" she asked. "We're devoted to both
the boys. You might say we grew up togethah, for they visited in the
Valley so much. We've been playmates since we were babies. You must meet
the Walton girls. They are Malcolm's cousins, you know."
Before Maud realized how it came about, Lloyd had graciously turned her
over to Allison and Kitty, and made her escape with burning cheeks and a
resentful feeling. Maud's words kept repeating themselves: "So adorably
romantic. The girl Malcolm _used to be_ so fond of!" They made her
vaguely uncomfortable. She wondered why.
For another hour she went on making acquaintances and adding to her
store of information about Warwick Hall. They couldn't have
chafing-dishes in their rooms, one frivolous sophomore told her. The
insurance companies objected after one girl spilled a bottle of alcohol
and set fire to the curtains. But once a week those who pined for candy
could make it over the gas-stove in the Domestic Science kitchen. Those
who were too lazy to make it could buy it Monday afternoons from Mammy
Easter, an old coloured woman who lived in a cabin on the place. She was
famous for her pralines, the sophomore declared. "We have jolly charades
and impromptu tableaux up in the gymnasium sometimes. Oh, school at the
Hall is one grand lark!"
"Don't you believe it," said the spectacled junior who monopolized Lloyd
next. "It's a hard dig to keep up to the mark they set here. But I must
say it is an agreeable kind of a dig," she added.
"It's good just to wake up in the morning and know there's going to be
another whole day of it. The classes are so interesting, and the
teachers so interested in us, that they bring out the very best in
everybody. Even a grasshopper would have its ambition aroused if it
stayed in this atmosphere long."
She peered at Lloyd through her glasses as if to satisfy herself that
she would be understood, and then added, confidentially: "I can fairly
feel myself grow here. I feel the way I imagine the morning-glories do
when they find themselves climbing up the trellis. They just stretch out
their hands and everything helps them up,--the sun and the soil, the
wind and the dew. And here at Warwick Hall there's so much to help. Even
the little glimpses we get over the garden wall into the outside world
of Washington, with its politics and great men. But those two people
over there help me most of all." She nodded toward Madam Chartley and
Miss Chilton, the teacher of English, who were now seated together on a
sofa near the door.
"When I look at them I feel that the morning-glory vine must climb just
as high as it possibly can, and shake out a wealth of bells in return
for all that has been given toward its growth. Don't you?"
"Yes," answered Lloyd, slightly embarrassed by the soulful gaze turned
on her through the spectacles. "Betty would enjoy knowing you," she
exclaimed. "She is always saying and writing such things."
"Oh, I thought that you were the one that writes," answered the junior.
"Aren't you the one the freshmen are going to elect class editor for
their page of the college paper?"
"No, indeed!" protested Lloyd, laughing at the idea. "Come across the
room with me and I'll find Betty for you."
"There won't be time to-night," responded the junior, "for there goes
the music that means good night. They always play 'America' as a signal
that it's time to go."
"What makes you so quiet?" asked Betty, a little later, as they slowly
undressed. She had chattered along, commenting on the events of the
evening, ever since they came to their room, but Lloyd had seemed
remarkably unresponsive.
"Oh, nothing," yawned Lloyd. "I was just thinking of that fairy-tale of
the three weavers. I'll turn out the light."
As she reached up to press the electric button, she thought again, for
the twentieth time, "I wonder what it was that Malcolm told Maud Minor."
Then she nestled down among the pillows, saying, sleepily, to herself:
"Anyway, I'm mighty glad that I nevah gave him that curl he begged
for."
CHAPTER III.
AN EXCURSION
IT was a Sabbath afternoon in October, sunny and still, with a purple
haze resting on the distant woodlands across the river. A warm odour of
ripe apples floated across the old peach orchard, for a few rare
pippin-trees stood in its midst, flaunting the last of their fruitage
from gnarled limbs, or hiding it in the sear grass underneath.
Here and there groups of bareheaded girls wandered in the sun-flecked
shade, exchanging confidences and stooping now and then to pounce
joyfully upon some apple that had hitherto evaded discovery. Betty, who
had been reading aloud for nearly an hour to a little group under one of
the largest trees, closed her book with a yawn. Lloyd and Kitty leaned
lazily back against the mossy trunk, and Allison, with her arms around
her knees, gazed dreamily across the river. The only one who did not
seem to have fallen under the drowsy spell of the Indian summer
afternoon was Gay. Up in the tree above them, she lay stretched out
along a limb, peering down through the leaves like a saucy squirrel.
"What a Sleepy Hollow tale that was!" she exclaimed. "It just suits the
day, but it has hypnotized all of you. Do wake up and be sociable."
She began breaking off bits of twigs and dropping them down on the heads
below. One struck Lloyd's ear, and she brushed it off impatiently,
thinking it was a bug. Gay laughed and began teasingly:
"There was a young maiden named Lloyd,
Whom reptiles always annoyed.
An innocent worm would cause her to squirm,
And cloyed--toyed--employed--
I'm stuck, Betty. Come to the rescue with a rhyme."
"So with germicide she's overjoyed," supplied Betty, promptly.
"That's all right," said Kitty, waking up. "Let's each make a Limerick.
Five minutes is the limit, and the one that hasn't his little verse
ready when the time is up will have to answer truthfully any question
the others agree to ask."
"No," objected Lloyd. "I'd be suah to be it. I can make the rhymes, but
the lines limp too dreadfully for any use."
"We won't count that," promised Kitty, looking at her chatelaine watch.
"Now, one, two, three! Fire away!"
There was silence for a little space, broken only by the soft cooing of
a far-away dove. Then Betty looked up with a satisfied smile. The
anxious pucker smoothed out of Lloyd's forehead, and Allison nodded her
readiness.
"Lloyd first," called Kitty, looking at her watch again.
A mischievous smile brought the dimples to the Little Colonel's face as
she began:
"There's a girl in our school called Kitty,
Evidently not from the city.
With screeches and squawkin's
She upset the nerves of poah old Hawkins.
Oh, her behaviour was not at all pretty."
A burst of laughter greeted Lloyd's attempt at verse-making, for the
subject which she had chosen recalled one of Kitty's outbreaks the first
week of school, when the temptation to upset Hawkins's dignity was more
than she could resist. No one of them who had seen Hawkins's wild exit
from the linen closet the night she hid on the top shelf, and raised
his hair with her blood-curdling moans and spectral warnings (having
blown out his candle from above), could think of the occurrence without
laughing till the tears came to their eyes.
"Now, Allison," said Kitty, when the final giggle had died away. "It's
your turn." Allison referred to the lines she had scribbled on the back
of a magazine:
"There is a young maiden, they say,
Who grows more beloved every day.
When we talk or we ramble, there's always a scramble
To be next to the maid who is _Gay_."
"Whew! Thanks awfully!" came the embarrassed exclamation from the boughs
above, and Betty cried, in surprise: "Why, I wrote about her, too. I
said:
"Like the bow on the strings when she plays,
So she crosses with music our days.
Our hearts doth she tune to the gladness of June,
And the smile that brings sunshine is Gay's."
"My dear, that's no Limerick, that's poetry!" exclaimed Kitty, and Gay
called down: "It's awfully nice of you, girls, but please change the
subject. I'm so covered with confusion that I'm about to fall off this
limb."
"Well, here's something mean enough to brace you up," answered Kitty.
"It's about Maud Minor. It's hateful of me to write it, but I happened
to see her going down the terrace steps and it just popped into my head:
"There is a young lady named Maud,
Whose manners are overmuch thawed.
She'll beat an oil-well. When they'd gushed for a spell
_It_ would take a back seat and applaud."
"What's the matter, Kitty?" asked Betty, "I thought you admired her
immensely."
"I did that first week, but it's just as I say. She gushes over me so,
simply because I am Malcolm's cousin. I know very well that I am not the
dearest, cutest, brightest, most beautiful and angelic being in the
universe, and she isn't sincere when she insists that I am. She overdoes
it, and is so dreadfully effusive that I want to run whenever she comes
near me. I wish she wasn't going on the excursion to-morrow."
"She doesn't worry me," said Gay. "I meet her on her own ground and fire
back her own adjectives at her, doubled and twisted. She has let me
alone for some time."
The discussion of Maud led their thoughts away from Gay's Limerick, and
Kitty forgot to ask for it. They sat in silence again, and the
plaintive calling of the dove sounded several times before any one
spoke.
"It's so sweet and peaceful here," said Betty, softly. "It makes me
think of Lloydsboro Valley. I could shut my eyes and almost believe I
was back in the old Seminary orchard."
"I'm glad we're not," said Allison. "For then we'd miss to-morrow's
excursion. And I like having our holiday on Monday instead of Saturday,
as we did there."
"What excursion are you talking about?" asked Gay, lazily swinging her
foot over the limb.
Betty explained. "We're going to see some rare old books and illuminated
manuscripts. Miss Chilton has a friend in Washington who has one of the
finest private collections in the country, and she offered to take any
of the freshman class who cared to go. Ten of us have accepted the
invitation. We're going to the Congressional Library in the morning,
take lunch at some restaurant, and then call on this lady early in the
afternoon. It will be the only chance to see them, as she is going
abroad very soon, and the house will be closed for the winter."
"There are other things in the collection besides books," said Allison
"Some queer old musical instruments,--a harpsichord and a lute, and an
old violin worth its weight in gold. Some of the most noted violinists
in the world have played on it."
"Oh, I know!" cried Gay, raising herself to a sitting position and
throwing away the core of the apple she had been eating. "That's the
excursion I missed last year when I sprained my ankle. I never was so
disappointed in my life. I'm going right now to ask Miss Chilton to take
me, too. I'm wild to get my fingers on that violin."
Swinging lightly down from the limb to the ground, she twisted around
like a contortionist in a vain attempt to see her back.
"There!" she exclaimed, feeling her belt with a sigh of relief. "For a
wonder there's nothing torn or busted this trip. I must be reforming
Girls, what do you think! I haven't lost a single thing for a whole
week."
"Don't brag," warned Lloyd. "Mom Beck would say you'd bettah scratch on
wood if you don't want yoah luck to change."
Gay shrugged her shoulders at the superstition, but she reached over and
lightly scratched the pencil thrust through Betty's curly hair.
"There goes the first bell for vespers," said Kitty, as they strolled
slowly back toward the Hall, five abreast and arm in arm. With one
accord they began to hum the hymn with which the service always
opened,--"Day is dying in the west."
"It's going to be a fair day to-morrow," prophesied Gay, pausing an
instant on the chapel steps. "There's Miss Chilton. I'll run over and
ask her now."
"It's all right," she whispered several minutes later, when she slipped
into the seat next Lloyd. "I can go. It'll be the greatest kind of a
lark."
As Sybil Green passed through the hall next morning, where the
excursionists were assembling, Gay stopped her and began slowly
revolving on her heels. "Now view me with a critic's eye," she
commanded. "Gaze on me from chapeau to shoe sole, and bear witness that
I am properly girded up for the occasion. See how severely neat and
plain I am. See how beautifully my belts make connection in the back.
Three big, stout safety-pins will surely keep my skirt and shirt-waist
together till nightfall, and there's not a thing about me that I can
possibly lose."
She was still turning around and around. "Not a watch, ring, pin, or
bangle! Not even a pocketbook. Miss Chilton is carrying my car-fare,
and my handkerchief is up my sleeve."
"You might lose your balance or your presence of mind," laughed Sybil.
"You'll have to watch her, girls. How spick and span you all look," she
added, as they trooped past, behind Miss Chilton, most of them in
freshly laundered shirt-waist suits, for the Indian summer day was as
warm and sunny as June.
"It would be just about Gay's luck to run into a watering-cart or lean
up against a freshly painted door, in that pretty pongee suit," she
thought, watching them out of sight.
But for once Gay's lucky star was in the ascendant. The trip to the
library left her without spot or wrinkle, and as she followed Miss
Chilton into the restaurant she could not help smiling at her reflection
in the mirror. It looked so trim and neat.
The restaurant was crowded. The waiters rushed back and forth, balancing
their great trays on their finger-tips in a reckless way that made Gay
dodge every time they passed.
"Oh, you needn't laugh," she exclaimed, when some one jokingly called
attention to her. "I'm born to trouble; and I have a feeling that
something is going to happen before the day is over."
Something did happen almost immediately, but not to Gay. Two of the
pompous coloured men collided just as they were passing Miss Chilton's
table. One tray dropped to the floor with a tremendous crash of breaking
dishes. The other was caught dexterously in mid-air, but not before its
contents had turned a somersault and wrought ruin all around it. A bowl
of tomato soup splashed over Lloyd's immaculate shirt-waist and ran in
two long red streaks across the shoulders of her duck jacket, which she
had hung on her chair-post. Her little gasp of dismay was followed by
one from Maud Minor, whose dainty gray silk waist was spattered
plentifully with coffee.
There was a profusion of apologies from the waiters and a momentary
confusion as the wreck was cleared away. In the midst of it, Miss
Chilton was pleased and gratified to hear a low-pitched voice at the
table behind her say: "Those are Warwick Hall girls. I recognize their
chaperon, but I would have known them anywhere from the ladylike way
they treated the affair. So quiet and self-controlled, not a bit of fuss
or excitement, and it probably means that the day's outing will be
spoiled for two of them."
The girls proceeded with their dessert, but Miss Chilton sat
considering.
"If you girls were only familiar with the city," she said at last,
looking at her watch, "I could let you go to some shop and get new
shirt-waists, and you could meet me at my friend's afterward. But even
if you could find your way to the shop, I would be afraid to risk your
finding her house. You would have to change cars and walk a block after
leaving the last one. I must keep my engagement with her promptly, for
she is an extremely busy woman, and has granted this view of her library
as a personal favour to me."
"Do let me take them, Miss Chilton," urged Gay, eagerly. "I'm the only
old girl in the crowd. I learned my way all about town during last
Christmas vacation. We could meet you in time to see part of the things.
All I care for is that violin. _Please_ say yes. I'll be the strictest,
most dignified chaperon you ever heard of."
Miss Chilton laughed at the expression of ferocity which Gay's face
suddenly assumed to convince her that she could play the part she begged
for.
"Really that seems to be the only way out of the difficulty," she
answered. "I'll give you a note to the department store which Madam
Chartley always patronizes, so that you can have your purchases
charged."
"What if we can't find anything to fit," suggested Maud, "and it should
take such a long time to alter them that we'd be too late to meet you?"
Miss Chilton considered again. "It's almost preposterous to imagine
that, but it is always well to provide for every emergency. If anything
unforeseen should happen to delay you, or you can't find the proper
things to make yourselves presentable, just go to the station and take
the first car back to the school. I'll inquire of the ticket agent, and
if you've left a card saying 'gone on,' I'll know that you are safe. If
you've left no word, I'll put these girls on the car for home, and come
back and institute a search for you."
While the others busied themselves with finger-bowls, she wrote a hasty
note on a leaf torn from her memorandum book, which she gave to Maud.
Then she handed a card to Gay.
"You are the pilot, so here is my friend's address on this card. I've
marked the line of cars you're to take, and the avenue where you
change."
"Better let Lloyd take it," suggested Kitty. But, with a saucy grimace,
Gay folded it and slipped it under her belt.
"There!" she said, fastening it with a big black pin she borrowed from
Allison. "I've woven that pin in and out, first in the ribbon and then
through the card, till it's as tight as if it had grown there."
"Can't you take us down an alley?" asked Lloyd. "It mawtifies me
dreadfully to have to go down the street looking like this."
"The car-line that passes this door goes directly to the department
store," answered Gay. "It's only a few blocks away, but we'll take it.
That tomato soup on you certainly does look gory."
Maud had taken the veil from her hat and thrown it over her shoulders in
a way to hide the coffee stains. "Never mind," she said, carelessly, as
they left the restaurant. "Just hold your head up and sail along with
your most princess-like air, and people will be so busy admiring you
that they won't have time to look at your soupy waist."
"Ugh! It smells so greasy and horrid," sniffed the Little Colonel,
ignoring Maud's remark. "It's just like dishwatah and bacon rinds. I
want to get away from it as soon as possible."
"Misses' white shirt-waists?" repeated the saleswoman in the big
department store, when they reached it a few minutes later. "Certainly.
Here is something pretty. The newest fall goods."
She led them to a counter piled high with boxes, and they made a hasty
selection. Some alteration was needed in the collar of the one Lloyd
chose, and in the sleeves of Maud's. While they waited in the
fitting-room, turning over some back numbers of fashion-plates and
magazines, Gay amused herself by wandering around the millinery
department, trying on hats. Presently she found one so becoming that she
ran back to them, delighted.
"It isn't once in a thousand years that I find a picture hat that looks
well with my pug nose!" she cried. "But gaze on this!"
She revolved slowly before them, so radiantly pleased over her discovery
that she looked unusually pretty. Both girls exclaimed over its
becomingness. Then Lloyd's gaze wandered from the airy structure of
chiffon and flowers down Gay's back to her waist-line.
"Mercy, child!" she exclaimed. "You've lost your belt. Every one of
those three safety-pins is showing, and they each look a foot long!"
Gay's hand flew wildly to the back of her dress, but she felt in vain
for a belt under which to hide the pins. She turned toward them with a
hopeless drooping of the shoulders.
"_How_ did I lose it?" she demanded, helplessly. "It had the safest,
strongest kind of a clasp. When do you suppose I did it, and where? I
must have been a sight parading the street this way like an animated
pincushion."
She passed her hand over the obtrusive pins again. "I certainly had it
on when we left the restaurant. Yes, and after we got on the car to come
here, for I remember just after you paid the fare I ran my fingers down
inside of it to make sure that Miss Chilton's card was still safely
pinned to it."
Then she rolled up her eyes and fell limply back against the wall.
"Girls!" she exclaimed, in a despairing voice, "the card is lost with
it, too. I've no more idea than the man in the moon where Miss Chilton's
friend lives, or what her name is, or what car-line to take to get
there. Do either of you remember hearing her say anything that would
throw any light on the subject?"
Neither Lloyd nor Maud could remember, and the three stood staring at
each other with startled faces.
"Maybe you dropped your belt coming up in the elevator," suggested Maud.
"You might inquire. As soon as we get our clothes on, we'll help you
hunt."
Gay flew to lay aside the picture hat for her own, and, with her hands
clutching her dress to hide the unsightly safety-pins, started on her
search through the store.
"We came straight past the ribbon counter and the embroideries to the
silks, and then we turned here and took the elevator," she said to
herself, retracing her steps. But inquiries of the elevator boy and
every clerk along the line failed to elicit any information about the
lost belt.
"No, it was only an ordinary belt that no one would look at the second
time," she explained to those who asked for a description. "Just dark
blue ribbon with a plain oxidized silver clasp. But there was an address
pinned to it that is very important for me to find."
The floor-walker obligingly joined in the search, going to the door and
scanning the pavement and the street-crossing at which they had left the
car, but to no purpose.
"I can buy a new belt and have it charged," she said to Lloyd, when she
came back to report, "but there is no way to get the lost address. If I
could only remember the name, I could look for it in the directory, but
I never heard it. Miss Chilton always spoke of the lady as 'my friend.'"
"I heard her speak it once," said Lloyd, "but I can't remembah it now."
"Go over the alphabet," suggested Maud. "Say all the names you can think
of beginning with A and then B, and so on. Maybe you will stumble across
one that you recognize as the right one."
Lloyd shook her head. "No, it was an unusual name, a long
foreign-sounding one. I wondahed at the time how she could trip it off
her tongue so easily."
"Then we're lost! Hopelessly, helplessly undone!" moaned Gay. "All our
lovely outing spoiled! You won't get to see the books, nor I the violin.
I know you are hating me horribly. There's nothing to do but go back to
Warwick Hall, and leave a note with the ticket agent for Miss Chilton."
The tears stood in her eyes, and she looked so broken-hearted that Lloyd
put her arms around her, insisting that it didn't make a mite of
difference to her. That she didn't care much for the old books, anyhow,
and for her not to grieve about it another minute.
Maud's face darkened as she listened. Presently she said: "I don't care
particularly about the books, either, but I don't see any use of our
losing the entire holiday. You know your way about the city, Gay; I have
some car-fare in my purse, and so has Lloyd. We can go larking by
ourselves."
The dressmaker came back with Maud's waist. She put it on, and Gay went
for her belt. While Lloyd was still waiting for her waist, Maud
sauntered out of the fitting-room, and asked permission to use the
telephone. She was still using it when Gay joined them.
"Wait a minute," Maud called to her invisible auditor, and, still
holding the receiver, turned toward the girls.
"Such grand luck!" she exclaimed, in a low tone. "I just happened to
think of a young fellow I know here in town--Charlie Downs. He is always
ready for anything going, and, when I telephoned him the predicament we
are in, he said right away he would meet us down here and take us all to
the matinée."
"Charlie Downs," echoed Gay. "I never heard of him."
"That doesn't make any difference," Maud answered, hurriedly. Then, in a
still lower tone, with her back to the telephone: "He's all right. He's
a sort of a distant relative of mine,--that is, his cousin married into
our family. I can vouch for Charlie. He's a young medical student, and
he's in old Doctor Spencer's office. Everybody knows Doctor Spencer, one
of the finest specialists in the country."
She turned toward the telephone again, but Gay stopped her. "It's out of
the question, Maud, for us to accept such an invitation. It's kind of
him to ask us, but you're in my charge, and I'll have to take the
responsibility of refusing."
"Well, I never heard the like of that!" said Maud, angrily, looking down
on Gay in such a scornful, disgusted way that Lloyd would have laughed
had the situation not been so tragic. Gay, trying to be commanding,
reminded her of an anxious little hen, ruffling its feathers because the
obstinate duckling in its brood refused to come out of the water.
"Madam Chartley wouldn't like it," urged Gay.
"Then she should have made rules to that effect. You know there's not a
single one that would stand in the way of our doing this."
"Yes, there is. It's an unwritten one, but it's the one law of the Hall
that Madam expects every one to live up to."
"May I ask what?" Maud's tone was freezingly polite.
"The motto under the crest. It's on everything you know, the old earl's
teacups, the stationery, and everything--'Keep tryst.'"
"Fiddlesticks for the old earl's teacups!" said Maud, shrugging her
shoulders. "It's unreasonable to expect us to keep tryst with Miss
Chilton now."
"Not that," said Gay, ready to cry. "We're to keep tryst with what she
expects of us. She expects us to do the right thing under all
circumstances, and you know the right thing now is to go home. We were
recognized at the restaurant as Warwick Hall girls, and we might be
again at the matinée. What would people think of the school if they saw
three of the girls there with a strange young man without a chaperon?"
"You're the chaperon. If you'd do to take us shopping, you'd do for
that."
"Oh, Maud, don't be unreasonable," urged Gay. "It's entirely different.
Don't be offended, please, but we can't go. It's simply out of the
question."
"Indeed it isn't," answered Maud, turning again to the telephone. "Go
home if you want to, but Lloyd and I will do as we please. I'll accept
for us."
This time Lloyd stopped her. "Wait! Let's telephone out to the Hall and
ask Madam."
Maud shrugged her shoulders. "You know very well she'd say no if you
asked her beforehand." Then the two heard one side of her conversation
over the telephone.
"Hello, Charlie! Sorry to keep you waiting so long."
"The girls are afraid to go."
"What's that?"
"I don't suppose so."
"I'm perfectly willing. I'll ask them."
Then turning again, with the receiver in her hand: "He says that the
matinée will probably be over before the second train out to the Hall,
and, if it isn't, we can leave a little earlier and be at the station
before Miss Chilton gets there, and she need never know but what we've
just been streetcar riding, as we first planned."
"Then that settles it!" exclaimed Lloyd. "If he said that, I wouldn't go
with him for anything in the world."
"Why?" demanded Maud. Her eyes flashed angrily.
"Because--because," stammered Lloyd. "Well, it'll make you mad, but I
can't help it. Papa Jack said one time that an honourable man would
never ask me to do anything clandestine. And it would be sneaking to do
as he proposes."
Maud was white with rage, and the hand that held the receiver trembled.
"Have the goodness to keep your insulting remarks to yourself in the
future, Miss Sherman."
"Please don't go," begged Gay. "I feel so responsible for getting you
home safely, and it _would_ be sneaking, you know, to pretend we'd been
simply trolley-riding when we'd been off with him."
"You're nasty little cats to say such things!" stormed Maud. "I don't
want to have anything more to do with either of you. Go on home and
leave me alone. Hello! Hello, Charlie!"
They heard her make an engagement to meet him at the drug-store on the
next corner. Then she sailed out of the store past them, without a
glance in their direction. Gay began fumbling up her sleeve for her
handkerchief. The tears were gathering too fast to be winked back.
"It's all my fault," she sobbed. "Oh, if I hadn't lost that unlucky
belt. To think that I begged to be a chaperon, and then wasn't fit to be
trusted."
Lloyd tried vainly to comfort her. A little later two
disconsolate-looking girls took the first afternoon train out to Warwick
Hall, and stole up to Lloyd's room. As Betty was with Miss Chilton, no
one knew of their arrival, and they spent several uncomfortable hours
agonizing over the question of what they should say when they were
called to account. They decided at last that they would give no more
information about Maud than that a distant relative had called for her.
At five o'clock, Miss Chilton reached the ticket-office with her little
brood, and found Lloyd's card with the words "gone on" scribbled in one
corner. Lloyd and Gay, watching at the window for their arrival, saw
with sinking hearts that Maud was not with them. They hoped that she
would come on the same train, and would be forced to make her own
explanations. But they were not called upon to explain her
disappearance. Miss Chilton, almost distracted with an attack of
neuralgic headache, went to her room immediately, and sent down word
that she would not appear at dinner.
"She'll surely come on the next train," Gay whispered to Lloyd, but the
whistle sounded at the station, and they watched the clock in vain.
Ample time passed for one to have walked the distance twice from the
station to the Hall, but no one came.
It was half-past six when they filed down to dinner. The halls were
lighted, and all the chandeliers in the great dining-room glowed.
As they passed the window on the stair-landing, Lloyd pressed her face
against the pane and peered out into the darkness. Gay, just behind her,
paused and peered also.
"What do you suppose has happened?" she whispered. "It's as dark as a
pocket, and Maud hasn't come yet."
CHAPTER IV.
"KEEP TRYST"
LLOYD and Betty were starting to undress when there was a light tap at
the door, and Gay's head appeared. In response to their eager call, she
came in, and, shutting the door behind her, stood with her back against
it.
"No, I can't sit down," she answered. "It's too late to stop. I only ran
in to tell you that Maud got home about five minutes ago. 'Charlie' came
with her as far as the door and Madam has just sent for her to demand an
explanation. She told her roommate that she knew she was in for a
scolding, and that, as one might as well be killed for a sheep as a
lamb, she made her good time last as long as she could. After the
matinée they had a little supper at some roof-garden or café or
something of the kind, where there was a band concert. Then he brought
her out on the car, and they strolled along the river road home. The
moon was just beginning to come up. She's had a beautiful time, and
thinks she has done something awfully cute, but she'll think differently
by the time Madam is through with her."
"Will she be very terrible?" asked Lloyd, pausing with brush in hand.
"I don't know," answered Gay. "Nothing like this has happened since I
have been at the Hall, but I've heard her say that this is not a reform
school, and girls who have to be punished and scolded are not wanted
here. If they can't measure up to the standard of good behaviour, they
can't stay. As long as this is the first offence, she'll probably be
given another trial, but I'd not care to be in her shoes when Madam
calls her to judgment."
No one ever knew what passed between the two in the up-stairs office,
but Maud sailed down to breakfast next morning as if nothing had
happened. The only difference in her manner was when Lloyd and Gay took
their places opposite her at the table. They glanced across with the
usual good morning, but she looked past them as if she neither saw nor
heard.
"Cut dead!" whispered Lloyd. Gay giggled, as she unfolded her napkin.
"I'm very sure she has no cause to be angry with us. We are the ones
who ought to act offended."
Soon after breakfast they were called into Miss Chilton's room, but to
their great relief found that she already knew what had happened, and
that they were to be questioned only about their own part in the affair.
So presently Gay passed out to her Latin recitation, and Lloyd wandered
around the room, waiting for the literature class to assemble.
Miss Chilton's room was the most attractive one in the Hall. It looked
more like a cheerful library than a schoolroom. Low book-shelves lined
the walls, with here and there a fine bust in bronze or Carrara marble.
Pictures from many lands added interest, and the wicker chairs, instead
of being arranged in stiff rows, stood invitingly about, as if in a
private parlour. There were always violets on Miss Chilton's desk, and
ferns and palms in the sunny south windows. The recitations were carried
on in such a delightfully informal way that the girls looked forward to
this hour as one of the pleasantest of the day.
This morning, to their surprise, instead of questioning them about the
topic they had studied, Romance of the Middle Ages, she announced that
she had a story which Madam Chartley had requested her to read to them,
and she wished such close attention paid to it that afterward each one
could write it from memory for the next day's lesson.
"I have a reason for wishing to impress this little tale indelibly on
your minds," she said, "so I shall offer this inducement for
concentrating your attention upon it: five credits to each one who can
hand in a full synopsis of the story, and ten to the one who can
reproduce it most literally and fully."
There was a slight flutter of expectancy as the class settled itself to
listen, and, opening the little green and gold volume where a white
ribbon kept the place, she began to read:
"Now there was a troubadour in the kingdom of Arthur, who, strolling
through the land with only his minstrelsy to win him a way, found in
every baron's hall and cotter's hut a ready welcome. And while the
boar's head sputtered on the spit, or the ale sparkled in the shining
tankards, he told such tales of joust and journey, and feats of brave
knight errantry, that even the scullions left their kitchen tasks, and,
creeping near, stood round the door with mouths agape to listen.
"Then with his harp-strings tuned to echoes of the wind on winter moors,
he sang of death and valour on the field, of love and fealty in the
hall, till those who listened forgot all save his singing and the noble
knights whereof he sang.
"One winter night, as thus he carolled in a great earl's hall, a little
page crept nearer to his bench beside the fire, and, with his blue eyes
fixed in wonderment upon the graybeard's face, stood spellbound. Now
Ederyn was the page's name, an orphan lad whose lineage no man knew, but
that he came of gentle blood all eyes could see, although as vassal
'twas his lot to wait upon the great earl's squire.
"It was the Yule-tide, and the wassail-bowl passed round till boisterous
mirth drowned oftentimes the minstrel's song, but Ederyn missed no word.
Scarce knowing what he did, he crept so close he found himself with
upturned face against the old man's knee.
"'How now, thou flaxen-haired,' the minstrel said, with kindly smile.
'Dost like my song?'
"'Oh, sire,' the youth made answer, 'methinks on such a wing the soul
could well take flight to Paradise. But tell me, prithee, is it possible
for such as _I_ to gain the title of a knight? How doth one win such
honours and acclaim and reach the high estate that thou dost laud?'
"The minstrel gazed a little space into the Yule log's flame, and
stroked his long hoar beard. Then made he answer:
"'Some win their spurs and earn the royal accolade because the blood of
dragons stains their hands. From mighty combat with these terrors they
come victorious to their king's reward. And some there be sore scarred
with conquest of the giants that ever prey upon the borders of our fair
domain. Some, who have gone on far crusades to alien lands, and there
with heart of gold and iron hand have proved their fealty to the Crown.'
"Then Ederyn sighed, for well he knew his stripling form could never
wage fierce combat with a dragon. His hands could never meet the brawny
grip of giants. 'Is there no other way?' he faltered.
'I wot not,' was the answer. 'But take an old man's counsel. Forget thy
dreams of glory, and be content to serve thy squire. For what hast such
as thou to do with great ambitions? They'd prove but flames to burn away
thy daily peace.'
"With that he turned to quaff the proffered bowl and add his voice to
those whose mirth already shook the rafters. Nor had he any further
speech with Ederyn. But afterward the pretty lad was often in his
thoughts, and in his wanderings about the land he mused upon the
question he had asked.
"Another twelvemonth sped its way, and once again the Yule log burned
within the hall, and once again the troubadour knocked at the gate, all
in the night and falling snow. And as before, with merry jests they led
him in and made him welcome. And as before, was every mouth agape from
squire's to scullion's, as he sang.
"Once more he sang of knights and ladyes fair, of love and death and
valour; and Ederyn, the page, crept nearer to him till the harp-strings
ceased to thrill. With head upon his hands, he sat and sighed. Not even
when the wassail-bowl was passed with mirth and laughter did he look up.
And when the graybeard minstrel saw his grief, he thought upon his
question of the Yule-tide gone.
"'Ah, now, thou flaxen-haired,' he whispered in his ear. 'I bear thee
tidings which should make thee sing for joy. There is a way for even
such as thou to win the honours thou dost covet. I heard it in the royal
court when last I sang there at the king's behest.'
"Then all aquiver with his eagerness did Ederyn kneel, with face
alight, beside the minstrel's knee to hear.
"'Know this,' began the graybeard. ''Tis the king's desire to 'stablish
round him at his court a chosen circle whose fidelity hath stood the
utmost test. Not deeds of prowess are required of these true followers,
with no great conquests doth he tax them, but they must prove themselves
trustworthy, until on hand and heart it may be graven large, "_In all
things faithful._"
"'To Merlin, the enchanter, he hath left the choice, who by some strange
spell I wot not of will send an eerie call through all the kingdom. And
only those will hear who wake at dawn to listen in high places. And only
those will heed who keep the compass needles of their souls true to the
north star of a great ambition. The time of testing will be long, the
summons many. To duty and to sorrow, to disappointment and defeat, thou
may'st be called. No matter what the tryst, there is but one reply if
thou wouldst win thy knighthood. Give heed and I will teach thee now
that answer.'
"Then smiting on his harp, the minstrel sang, so softly under cover of
the noise, that only Ederyn heard. Through all the song ran ever this
refrain. It seemed a brooklet winding in and out through some fair
meadow:
"''Tis the king's call. O list!
Thou heart and hand of mine, keep tryst--
Keep tryst or die!'
"Then Ederyn, with his hand upon his heart, made solemn oath. 'Awake at
dawn and listening in high places will I await that call. With the
compass needle of my soul true to the north star of a great ambition
will I follow where it leads, and though through fire and flood it take
me, I'll make but this reply:
"''Tis the king's call. O list!
Thou heart and hand of mine, keep tryst--
Keep tryst or die!'
"Pressing the old man's hand in gratitude (he could say no word for the
strange fulness in his throat that well-nigh choked him), he rose from
his knees and left the hall to muse on what had passed.
"That night he climbed into the tower, and, with his face turned to the
east, kept vigil all alone. Below, the rioters waxed louder in their
mirth. The knife was in the meat, the drink was in the horn. But he
would not join their revels, lest morning find him sunk in sodden
sleep, heavy with feasting and witless from wine.
"As gray dawn trailed across the hills, he started to his feet, for far
away sounded the call for which he had been waiting. It was like the
faint blowing of an elfin horn, but the words came clearly.
"'Ederyn! Ederyn! One awaits thee at nightfall in the shade of the
yew-tree by the abbey tower! Keep tryst!'
"Now the abbey tower was the space of forty furlongs from the domain of
the earl, and full well Ederyn knew that only by especial favour of his
squire could he gain leave of absence for this jaunt. So, from sunrise
until dusk, he worked with will, to gain the wished-for leave. Never
before did buckles shine as did the buckles of the squire entrusted to
his polishing. Never did menial tasks cease sooner to be drudgery,
because of the good-will with which he worked. And when the day was
done, so well had every duty been performed, right willingly the squire
did grant him grace, and forthwith Ederyn sped upon his mission.
"The way was long, and, when he reached the abbey tree, he fell
a-trembling, for there a tall wraith stood within the shadows of the
yew. No face had it that he could see, its hands no substance, but he
met it bravely, saying: 'I am Ederyn, come to keep the king's tryst.'
"And then the spectre's voice replied: 'Well hast thou kept it, for 'tis
known to me the many menial tasks thou didst perform ere thou couldst
come upon thy quest. In token that we two have met, here is my pledge
that thou may'st keep to show the king.'
"He felt a light touch on the bosom of his inner vestment, and suddenly
he stood alone beside the gruesome abbey. Clammy with fear, he knew not
why, he drew his mantle round him and sped home as one speeds in a
fearsome dream. And that it was a dream he half-believed, when later, in
the hall, he served at meat those gathered round the old earl's board.
But when he sought his bed, and threw aside his outer garment, there on
his coarse, rough shirt of hodden gray a pearl gleamed white above his
heart, where the wraith's cold hand had touched him. It was the token to
the king that he had answered faithfully his call.
"Again before the dawn he climbed into the tower, and, listening when
the voices of the world were still, heard clear and sweet, like
far-blown elfin horn, another summons.
"'Ederyn! Ederyn! One awaits thee at the midnight hour beside black
Kilgore's water. Keep tryst!'
"Again to gain his squire's permission he toiled with double care. This
time his task was counting all the spears and halberds, the battle-axes
and the coats of mail that filled the earl's great armament. And o'er
and o'er he counted, keeping careful tally with a bit of keel upon the
iron-banded door, till the red lines that he marked there made his eyes
ache and his head swim. At last the task was finished, and so well the
squire praised him, and for his faithfulness again was fain to speed him
on his way.
"It was a woful journey to the waters of Kilgore. Sleep weighed on
Ederyn's eyelids, and haltingly he went the weary miles, footsore and
worn. But midnight found him on the spot where one awaited him, another
wraith-like envoy of the king, and it, too, left a touch upon his heart
in token he had kept the tryst. And when he looked, another pearl
gleamed there beside the first.
"So many a day went by, and Ederyn failed not in his homely tasks, but
carried to his common round of duties all his might, as if they were
great feats of prowess. Thus gained he liberty to keep the tryst with
every messenger the king did send.
"Once he fared forth along a dangerous road that led he knew not where,
and, when he found it crossed a loathly swamp all filled with slime and
creeping things, fain would he have fled. But, pushing on for sake of
his brave oath, although with fainting heart, he reached the goal at
last. This time his token made him wonder much. For when he wakened from
his swoon, a shining star lay on his heart above the pearls.
"Now it fell out the squire to whom this Ederyn was page was killed in
conflict with a robber band, and Ederyn, for his faithfulness, was taken
by the earl to fill that squire's place. Soon after that, they left the
hall, and journeyed on a visit to a distant lord. 'Twas to the Castle of
Content they came, where was a joyous garden. And now no menial tasks
employed the new squire's time. Here was he free to wander all the day
through vistas of the joyous garden, or loiter by the fountain in the
courtyard and watch the maidens at their tasks, having fair speech with
them among the flowers. And one there was among them, so lily-like in
face, so gentle-voiced and fair, that Ederyn well-nigh forgot his oath,
and felt full glad when for a space the king's call ceased to sound. And
gladder was he still, when, later on, the earl's long visit done, he
left young Ederyn behind to serve the great lord of the castle, for so
the two friends had agreed, since Ederyn had pleased the old lord's
fancy.
"Yet was he faithful to his vow, and failed not every dawn to mount to
some high place, when all the voices of the world were still, and listen
for the sound of Merlin's horn. One morn it came:
"'Ederyn! Ederyn! One waits thee far away. By the black cave of Atropos,
when the moon fulls, keep thy tryst!'
"Now 'twas a seven days' journey to that cave, and Ederyn, thinking of
the lily maid, was loath to leave the garden. He lingered by the
fountain until nightfall, saying to himself: 'Why should I go on longer
in these foolish quests, keeping tryst with shadows that vanish at the
touch? No nearer am I to a knight's estate than, when a stripling page,
I listened to the minstrel's tales.'
"The fountain softly splashed within the garden. From out the
banquet-hall there stole the sound of tinkling lutes, and then the lily
maiden sang. Her siren voice filled all his heart, and he forgot his
oath to duty. But presently a star reflected in the fountain made him
look up into the jewelled sky, where shone the polar constellation. And
there he read the oath he had forgotten: 'With the compass needle of my
soul true to the north star of my great ambition, I will follow where it
leads.'
"Thrusting his fingers in his ears to silence the beloved voice of her
who sang, he madly rushed from out the garden into the blackness of the
night. The Castle of Content clanged its great gate behind him. He
shivered as he felt the jar through all his frame, but, never taking out
his fingers, on he ran, till scores of furlongs lay between him and the
tempting of that siren voice.
"It was a strange and fearsome wood that lay between him and the cave.
All things seemed moaning and afraid. He saw no forms, but everywhere
the shadows shuddered, and moans and groans pursued him till nameless
fears clutched at his heart with icy chill. Then suddenly the earth
slipped way beneath his feet, and cold waves closed above his head. He
knew now he had fallen in the pool that lies upon the far edge of the
fearsome wood,--a pool so deep and of such whirling motion that only by
the fiercest struggle may one escape. Gladly he would have allowed the
waters to close over him, such cold pains smote his heart, had he not
seemed to hear the old minstrel's song. It aroused him to a final
effort, and he gasped between his teeth:
"''Tis the king's call! O list!
Thou heart and hand of mine, keep tryst--
Keep tryst or die!'
"With that, in one mighty struggle he dragged himself to land. A
bow-shot farther on he saw the cave, and by sheer force of will crept
toward it. What happened then he knew not till the moon rose full and
high above him. A form swathed all in black bowed over him.
"'Ederyn,' she sighed. 'Here is thy token that the king may know that
thou hast met me face to face.'
"He thought it was a diamond at first, that sparkled there beside the
star, but when he looked again, lo, nothing but a tear.
"Then went he back unto the joyous garden by slow degrees, for he was
now sore spent. And after that the summons came full often. Whenever all
the world seemed loveliest and life most sweet, then was the call most
sure to come. But never once he faltered. Never was he faithless to the
king's behest. Up weary mountain steps he toiled to find the sombre face
of Disappointment there in waiting, and Suffering and Pain were often at
his journey's end, and once a sore Defeat. But bravely as the months
went by he learned to smile into their eyes, no matter which one handed
out to him the pledge of Duty well performed.
"One day, when he no longer was a beardless youth, but grown to pleasing
stature and of great brawn, he heard the hoped-for call of which he long
had dreamed: 'Ederyn! Ederyn! The king himself awaits thee. Midsummer
morn at lark-song, keep tryst beside the palace gate.'
"As travellers on the desert, spent and worn, see far across the sand
the palm-tree's green that marks life-giving wells, so Ederyn hailed
this summons to the king. The soul-consuming thirst that long had urged
him on grew fiercer as the well of consummation came in sight. Hope shod
his feet with wings, as thus with every nerve a-strain he pushed toward
the final tryst. So fearful was he some mishap might snatch the cup away
ere it had touched his thirsty lips, that three full days before the
time he reached the Vale of Avalon, and sat him down outside the
entrance to the palace.
"Now there came prowling through the wood that edged the fair domain the
gnarled dwarfs that do the will of Shudderwain. And Shudderwain, of all
the giants thereabouts, most cruel was and to be feared. Knowing full
well what pleasure it would give the bloody monster, these dwarfs laid
evil hands on Ederyn. Sleeping they found him, and bound him with hard
leathern thongs, and then with gibes and impish laughter dragged him
into a dungeon past the help of man.
"Two days and nights he lay there, raging at fate and at his
helplessness, till he was well-nigh mad, bethinking him of all his
baffled hopes. And like a madman gnawed he on the leathern thongs till
he was free, and beat his hands against the stubborn rock that would not
yield, and threw himself against the walls that held him in.
"The dwarfs from time to time peered through the slatted window overhead
and mocked him, pointing with their crooked thumbs.
"'Ha! ha! Thou'lt keep no tryst,' they chattered. 'But if thou'lt swear
upon thy oath to go back to the joyous garden, and hark no more for
Merlin's call, we'll let thee loose from out this Dungeon of thy
Disappointment.'
"Then was Ederyn tempted, for the dungeon was foul indeed, and his heart
cried out to go back to the lily maiden. But once more in his ears he
thrust his fingers and cried:
"'To the king's call alone I'll list!
Oh, heart and hand of mine, keep tryst--
Keep tryst or die!'
"On the third night, with the quiet of despair he threw him prone upon
the dungeon floor and held his peace, no longer gnawing on his thongs or
beating on the rock. A single moonbeam straggled through the slatted
window, and by its light he saw a spider spinning out a web. Then,
looking dully around, he saw the dungeon was hung thick with other webs,
foul with the dust of years. Great festoons of the cobweb film shrouded
his prison walls. As up and down the hairy creature swung itself upon
its thread, the hopeless eyes of Ederyn followed it.
"All in a twinkling he saw how he might profit by the spider's teaching,
and clapped his hand across his mouth to keep from shouting out his joy,
so that the dwarfs could hear. Now once more like a madman rushing at
the walls, he tore down all the dusty webs, and twisted them together in
long strands. These strands he braided in thick ropes and tied them,
knotting them and twisting and doubling once again. All the while he
kept bewailing the stupid way in which he wasted time. 'Three days ago I
might have quit this den,' he sighed, 'had I but used the means that lay
at hand. Full well I knew that heaven always finds a way to help the man
who helps himself. No creature lives too mean to be of service, and
even dungeon walls must harbour help for him who boldly grasps the first
thing that he sees and makes it serve him.'
"So fast and furiously he worked that, long before the moonbeam faded,
his cobweb rope was strong enough to bear his weight, and long enough to
reach twice over to the slatted window overhead. By many trials he at
last succeeded in throwing it around a spike that barred the window,
and, climbing up, he forced the slats apart and clambered through. Then
tying the rope's end to the window, he slid down all the dizzy cliffside
in which the dwarfs had dug the dungeon, and dropped into the stream
that ran below.
"Lo, when he looked around him it was dawn. Midsummer morn it was, and,
plunging through the wood, he heard the lark's song rise, and reached
the palace gate just as it opened to the blare of trumpets for the
king's train to ride forth. When Ederyn saw the royal cavalcade, he
shrunk back into the wayside bushes, so ill-befitting did it seem that
he should come before the king in tattered garments, with blood upon his
hands where the sharp rocks had cut, and with foul dungeon stains.
"But that the king might know he'd ever proven faithful, he sank upon
his knees and bared his breast at his approach. There all the pledges
glistened in the sunlight, in rainbow hues. There Pain had dropped her
heart's blood in a glittering ruby, and Honour set her seal upon him in
a golden star. A diamond gleamed where Sorrow's tear had fallen, and
amethysts glowed now with purple splendour to mark his patient meeting
with Defeat. But mostly were the pledges little pearls for little duties
faithfully performed; and there they shone, and, as the people gazed,
they saw the jewels take the shape of letters, so that the king read out
before them all, '_Semper fidelis_.'
"Then drew the king his royal sword and lightly smote on Ederyn's
shoulder, and cried: 'Arise, Sir Knight, Sir Ederyn the Trusty. Since I
may trust thee to the utmost in little things as well as great, since
thou of all men art most worthy, henceforth by thy king's heart thou
shalt ride, ever to be his faithful guard and comrade.'
"So there before them all he did him honour, and ordered that a prancing
steed be brought and a good sword buckled on his side.
"Thus Ederyn won his sovereign's favour. Soon, by his sovereign's grace
permitted, he went back to the joyous garden to woo the lily maiden.
When he had won his bride and borne her to the palace, then was his
great reward complete for all his years of fealty to his vow. Then out
into the world he went to guard his king. Henceforth blazoned on his
shield and helmet he bore the crest--a heart with hand that grasped a
spear, and, underneath these words:
"_'I keep the tryst!'_"
Slipping the white ribbon back between the pages to mark the place, Miss
Chilton laid the little green and gold volume on the table, and smiled
at the circle of attentive faces.
"I am sure you understand why I have read this story," she said. "It is
the motto of the school. Tradition has it that Sir Ederyn was an ancient
member of Madam Chartley's family. At any rate, it has borne his crest
for many, many generations, and there could be no better motto for a
school. The world expects us to do certain things. We must keep tryst
with these expectations. You all know what happened yesterday. Madam
looks for a certain course of conduct from her girls. She does not make
rules. She only expects what the inborn instinct of a true lady would
prompt you to do or to be. I am sure that after this explanation none
of you will fail to keep tryst with her expectations."
That was the only public reference to Maud's escapade. She left the room
with a very red face when the class was dismissed. The little story put
her so plainly in the wrong before the other girls that it made her
cross and uncomfortable.
Every member of the class had five marks to her credit, and Betty was
the lucky one whose almost literal reproduction of the story gave her
ten. She copied it all down in her white record afterward, adding a
verse that she had once seen in an autograph album:
"Life is a rosary
Strung with the beads of little deeds,
Done humbly, Lord, as unto thee."
She repeated the verse aloud to Lloyd. "I'd like to make that kind of a
rosary. I'd like to act out that story. It just strikes my fancy. It
would be such a satisfaction to lay aside a token each night, as Ederyn
did, that I had kept tryst with duty,--had perfect lessons, or lived
through a day just as nearly right as I possibly could."
She went on writing after she had made the remark, but Lloyd, pleased by
the thought, sat staring at the lamp. It was nearly bedtime, and
presently, putting aside her book, she rose and crossed over to the
bureau. In a sandalwood box in the top drawer was a broken fan-chain of
white beads--tiny Roman pearls that she had bought in a shop in the Via
Crucia. She had intended to string them sometime, mixing with them here
and there some curious blue beads she had seen made at a glass-blower's
in Venice--large blue ones with tiny roses on the sides.
Betty, busy with her diary, did not notice how long Lloyd stood with her
back toward her, pouring the little Roman pearls from one hand to the
other.
"It seems almost babyish," Lloyd was saying to herself. "But othah girls
keep memory-books and such things, and this is such a pretty idea. No
one need know. Yes, I'll begin the rosary this very night, for every
lesson was perfect to-day, and I truly tried my best in everything."
Hesitating an instant longer, she rummaged through the drawer for a
piece of fine white silk cord which she remembered having placed there.
When she found it, she knotted one end securely, and then slowly slipped
one little pearl bead down against the knot.
"There!" she thought, with a hasty glance over her shoulder at Betty, as
she dropped the string back into its box. "There's one token that I've
kept tryst, even if I nevah earn any moah. I'm going to have that string
half-full by vacation."
CHAPTER V.
A MEMORY-BOOK AND A SOUVENIR SPOON
THE string of white beads grew steadily, but work went hand in hand with
play at Warwick Hall, as Kitty's memory-book testified. She brought it
out to liven the recreation hour one rainy afternoon, late in the term,
when they were house-bound by the weather. Its covers, labelled "Gala
Days and Bonfire Nights," were bulging with souvenirs of many memorable
occasions. She sat on the floor with it spread open on her lap. Betty
was on one side and Lloyd on the other, while Gay leaned against her
back and looked over her shoulder.
Kitty opened her treasure-house of mementos with a giggle, for on the
first page was a water-colour sketch of Gay as she had appeared on the
welcoming night. She had painted her with two enormous feet protruding
from her flowing skirts, one cased in a party slipper with an
exaggerated French heel, the other in a down-trodden bedroom slipper
painted a brilliant crimson.
"You mean thing!" cried Gay, laughing over the ridiculous caricature of
herself.
"That isn't a circumstance to some of them," remarked Allison, who was
virtuously spending her recreation hour in sewing buttons on her gloves
and mending a rip in the lining of her coat-sleeve. "Wait till you come
to the programme of the recital given by the students of voice, violin,
and piano. The pictures she made all around the margin of it are some of
the best she has done. The sketch of Susie Tyndall, tearing her hair and
shrieking out the 'Polish Boy,' is simply killing."
"Kitty Walton," exclaimed Gay, as she bent over the grotesquely
decorated programme, "where do you keep this book o' nights? I'll surely
have to steal it. Think what it will be worth to us when we are old
ladies. There's one thing certain, you could never pose as a saintly old
grandmother with such a record for mischief as this to bear witness
against you."
Kitty looked up with a startled expression. "You know, it never occurred
to me before that I'd ever look at this book through spectacles. I
wonder if I'll find it as amusing then, when I'm dignified and
rheumatic, as I do now."
"I'm sure _that_ will be pleasant to recall," said Betty, pointing to a
withered rose pinned to the next page. "That will properly impress your
grandchildren."
Underneath the rose was written the date of a private reception granted
the Warwick Hall girls at the White House.
"I had such a lovely time that afternoon," sighed Betty. "It was so much
nicer to go as we did, for a friendly little visit under Madam's wing,
than to have pushed by in a big public mob. Wasn't Cora Basket funny?
She was so overawed by the honour that she fairly turned purple. Her
roommate vows that, when she wrote home, she began, 'Preserve this
letter! The hand that is now writing it has been shaken by the President
of the United States of America!'"
"Cordie Brown was funnier than Cora," said Allison. "She wanted to
impress people with the idea that the affair was nothing to her. That it
rather bored her, in fact. She went around with her nose in the air,
trying to appear so superior and indifferent, as if crowned heads and
their ilk made her tired."
"What's this?" demanded Lloyd, as they turned the next leaf, through
which a single long black hair had been drawn. Underneath was the
gruesome legend, "Dead men tell no tales."
"Oh, that's only a 'hair from the tail of the dog of the child of the
wife of the wild man of Borneo,'" laughed Kitty, attempting to turn the
page; but Lloyd, laying both palms across it, held it fast.
"You know it's not, you naughty thing. You've been up to some prank."
"It a p. j. A private joke," explained Kitty, bending over the book and
laughing till her forehead touched her knees. "I'm dying to tell you,
for it's the funniest thing in the collection. It happened at the
Hallowe'en party, and I promised not to tell."
"Promised whom?" demanded Betty.
"Can't tell that, either," was all that Kitty would say. She flipped
over the next leaf. A gilded wishbone was fastened to the page by the
bit of red ribbon run through it.
"That's 'In Memoriam' of the grand spread at the Thanksgiving Day feast.
And this button pasted on just below it, popped off the glove of
Mademoiselle La Tosto the afternoon she came to the Studio Tea and Art
reception. You know how the girls buzzed around her like a swarm of
bees, begging for her autograph. I'd rather have this button than a
dozen autographs, for it dropped off her glove as she clapped her hands
in that vivacious Frenchy way of hers, when she saw my caricature of
Paderewski that the girls stuck up on the wall. Understand, young
ladies, she was _applauding_ it. I walked on air all afternoon."
"Why undah the sun have you saved this tea leaf?" asked Lloyd, pointing
to one pasted carefully in the corner of the next page.
"Don't you remember the day that we went down to Mammy Easter's cabin,
and her old black grandmother was there, and told our fortunes? She was
a regular old hag, Gay. I wish you could have seen her,--teeth all gone;
skin puckered as a dried apple; she looked more monkey than human. But
she's a fine fortune-teller. I made a few hieroglyphics to recall what
she said. This mark is supposed to be a coach and four. She said that
Allison was to wed wid de quality and ride in a car'age, but sorrow
would be her po'shun if she walked proud. She said that I'm bawn to
trouble as de spah'ks fly upwa'd, case I won't hah'k to counsel, and
that I mustn't marry the first man that axes me, and I mustn't marry the
second man that axes me, but the third man that axes me, him I can
safely marry. This tea leaf stands for the third man. I'm to have three
sons and one daughter, and my luck will come to me through running water
when the weather-vane points west."
Kitty pointed to several pencil scratches beside the tea leaf, intended
to signify a brook and a weather-vane on a steeple.
"What did she say about Betty?" asked Gay.
Kitty studied the next line of hieroglyphics a moment. "Oh, I see now. I
intended this for a ship. She said there was a veil done hanging ovah
her future, so she couldn't rightly tell, but she could see ships coming
and going and crowds of people, and she could see that her fortune was
mixed up with a great many other persons. She said that the teacup held
gold for her, and the signs all 'pinted friendly.'"
"And Lloyd?" queried Gay, trying to decipher the next line of pencil
marks. "Surely that's not a cat I see."
"A cat, a teapot, and a ball of knitting," laughed Kitty. "I supposed
that Lloyd's fortune would be something thrilling, but according to the
old darky, it's to be the tamest of all. She said, 'I see a rising sun,
and a row of lovahs, but I don't see you a-taking any of 'em, honey. Yo'
ways am ways of pleasantness and all yo' paths am peace, but I'se
powahful skeered dat you'se gwine to be an ole maid. I sholy is.'"
"Is that so, Lloyd?" asked Gay, leaning over Kitty's shoulder to laugh
at the Little Colonel's teased expression. Kitty answered for her.
"Not if we can help it. We want her for a cousin, and we think that she
ought to marry Malcolm just for the sake of being able to claim us as
her dear relations. Look how she's blushing, girls."
"I'm not!" was the indignant answer. "You're just trying to make me get
red, because you know I do it so easily."
She turned the page hastily and began to talk about its contents to
change the subject. There were scraps of ribbon, as they went farther
on, a burnt match, a peacock feather, a tiny block of wood with a hole
shot through it, a strand of embroidery silk, a faded pansy,--a hundred
bits of worthless rubbish which an unknowing hand would have swept into
the waste-basket; but to Kitty each one was a key to unlock some happy
memory of her swiftly passing school-days. As the four heads, brown and
golden, black and auburn, bent over the book, the rain beat against the
windows in torrents.
With needle in air, Allison sat a moment watching the water stream down
the pane. "This makes me think of that afternoon in old Lloydsboro
Seminary," she said, musingly, "when Ida Shane read the 'Fortunes of
Daisy Dale' aloud to us. I wonder what has become of Ida. She was living
in a little country town up in the mountains the last time I heard of
her, taking in sewing and doing her own work."
"She's the girl who caused so much excitement at the Seminary," Betty
explained to Gay. "The one who got our Shadow Club into disgrace. She
tried to elope one night, but the teachers found it out and sent her
home. It didn't do any good, for she ran away with Ned Bannon the next
summer, and they were married by a justice of the peace. I don't see how
Ida could do it when she'd always been so romantic, and planned to have
her wedding just like Daisy Dale's, in cherry blossom time, and in the
little stone church at Lloydsboro, with the vines over the belfry. It's
so quaint and English looking, just like the one that Daisy was married
in. Instead of being all in white, she was married in the dress she
happened to have on when she ran away,--just an old black walking skirt
and plaid shirt-waist. No veil, no trail, and no orange-blossoms, and
she had counted on having all three. It was so prosy and commonplace
after the grand things she had planned."
"She's had it prosy enough ever since, too," remarked Allison. "Ned
drinks so hard that he can't keep a position. She didn't reform him one
single bit, and I reckon she understands now why her aunt objected so
strongly to her marrying him. Poor Ida, to think of her having to take
in sewing to keep her from actual starvation! It's awful!"
"Poah Ida!" echoed Lloyd. "I don't see how she does it. When she was in
the Seminary, she couldn't do anything with her needle but embroidah. I
used to have Mom Beck do her mending and darning when she did mine."
"Thank fortune _my_ mending is done!" exclaimed Allison, dropping her
thimble into her work-bag, and throwing her coat across a chair. "It's
almost time for the bell. I must take Juliet Lynn the papers I promised
her."
Lloyd and Betty, looking at the clock, scrambled to their feet, and a
moment after only Gay and Kitty were left on the rug with the
memory-book open between them.
"Do you think that Lloyd really cares for your cousin?" asked Gay.
"No," was the emphatic answer. "You can make her blush that way about
anybody, and I love to tease her. When she first came back from Arizona,
I used to think she liked Phil Tremont, a boy she met out there, and
then I thought maybe it was Joyce's brother Jack. She talked so much
about the duck hunts they had together, and what a splendid fellow he
was, and how much her father admired him. But the Princess is so
particular that I believe the old darky told her fortune truly. If she's
so particular at fifteen, 'I'se powahful skeered she's gwine to be an
old maid. I sholy is.' For what will she be at twice fifteen?"
Gay laughed at the imitation of the old coloured woman, then asked: "But
doesn't your cousin come up to her standard? According to Maud Minor he
is as handsome as a Greek god, as accomplished as all the Muses put
together, and as entertaining as a four-ring circus."
"Oh, Malcolm's all right," answered Kitty. "We're awfully fond of him,
but we're not so crazy about him as to think all that. I have a picture
of him somewhere in my box of photographs, if you'd like to see it."
Climbing on a chair to reach the box on the top of the wardrobe, she
took it down and began rummaging through it. In a moment she tossed a
photograph to Gay, who still sat on the floor, Turk fashion.
[Illustration: "STUDYING THE FACE OF THE HANDSOME YOUNG FELLOW WITH
INTEREST"]
"Here is one he had taken years ago when he and Keith used to play they
were two little Knights of Kentucky, and went around trying to set the
wrongs of the world to rights."
While Gay was still exclaiming over it, she threw down another. "Here's
the one I was looking for. It was taken this summer at Narragansett Pier
on his polo pony."
Gay seized it, studying the face of the handsome young fellow with
interest. "Why, he's almost grown!" she cried.
"Yes, he's nearly eighteen, and he is even better looking than that
picture. And here's Keith, the one I'm so fond of. We always have so
much fun when they come out to grandmother's for the holidays."
The box slipped and the entire contents showered over the floor. Gay
helped her to put them back into the box, glancing at each one as she
did so. One in a cadet uniform attracted her attention.
"Who's this? Now _he's_ the one I'd like to know. I suppose it's because
I've lived at an army post always that I adore anything military. _He_
looks interesting."
Kitty leaned over to look. "Oh, that's my brother Ranald. He's away at
military school. Won't he be teased when I tell him what you said? He's
dreadfully bashful with girls, though you'd think he oughtn't to be. He
was under fire ever so many times with papa in the Philippines when he
was a little chap. You know he was the youngest captain in the army, at
one time, and was on General Grant's staff when he was still in short
trousers."
"Why, of course, I know," cried Gay, enthusiastically. "I heard some
officers talking about it one night at dinner just after it happened.
Papa toasted 'The Little Captain' in such a pretty speech that the
officers who had fought with your father cheered. But I never dreamed
then that I'd ever know his sister, or be sitting here holding his
picture, talking about him. I'm going to take possession of this," she
added, when all the other photographs were back in the box.
"You don't care, do you? I'd like it to add to my collection of heroes.
I'll put it in a frame made of brass buttons and crossed guns and all
sorts of ornaments that the officers have given me off of their
uniforms."
"No, I don't care," answered Kitty. "Allison has one like it, and I can
get another any time by writing home for it. I wish you would take it,
for that would give me such a fine thing to tease him about. I could
worry him nearly distracted."
"I don't care how much you tease him so long as I may keep the picture,"
laughed Gay. "I'm a thousand times obliged to you."
As she sat looking at it, she exclaimed, suddenly: "Kitty Walton, you're
an awfully lucky girl to have such nice boys in your family. I wish I
knew them. I haven't a brother or even a forty-second cousin."
"Well, you can know them if you'll come home with me to spend the
Christmas vacation. Ranald always brings a boy home with him for the
holidays, and mother said Allison and I might bring a friend. I'm sure
she'd rather have you than anybody else, she knows your father and
mother so well."
The amber lights in Gay's brown eyes deepened. "Oh, I'd _love_ to!" she
cried. "I'd dearly love to! It's too far to go away back to San Antonio
for such a short time, and I hated to think of the holidays, knowing
I'd have to stay here at the Hall, with all you girls gone. Are you sure
your mother won't object?"
"You wait and see," advised Kitty. "You don't know mammy! You'll not
have any doubt of your welcome when her letter comes."
"Oh, it would be too lovely for anything!" exclaimed Gay, listening with
a far-away look in her eyes, as Kitty began outlining plans for the
coming holidays. Presently, in sheer joy at the prospect, they pulled
each other up from the floor, and, springing on to the bed, danced a
Highland fling in the middle of it, till a slat fell out with a
terrifying crash.
* * * * *
With the coming of December the holiday gaieties began. A spirit of
festivity lurked in the very air. A mock Christmas tree was one of the
yearly features of the school, when each pupil's pet fad or peculiarity
was suggested by appropriate gifts. Preparations for the tree began
early in the month, and whispered consultations were carried on in every
corner, with much giggling and profound assurances of secrecy.
The practising of Christmas carols went on in the music-rooms, and
snatches of them floated down the halls and through the building, till
the blithe young hearts were filled to overflowing with the cheer and
good-will of the sweet old melodies. Now the usual Monday sightseeing
gave way to shopping, and every moment that could be snatched from
school work was given to crochet-needles and embroidery-hoops, to the
finishing of an endless variety of gifts, and the wrapping of same in
mysterious packages.
One Monday Betty did not join the others in their weekly shopping
expedition. Her few purchases had been made, and she wanted the day to
work on unfinished gifts. She was making most of them with her needle.
She was glad afterward that she had decided to stay when a slow winter
rain began to fall. It melted the light snow-fall which whitened the
ground into a disagreeable compound of slush and mud.
It was almost dark when Kitty and Allison burst into the room, their
arms full of bundles, and began displaying their purchases. Lloyd
followed more slowly, and, dropping her packages on the floor by the
radiator, stood trying to warm her fingers through her wet gloves.
Presently, in the midst of the exhibition, with her hat still on, she
flung herself across her bed, piled up as it was with strings and
crumpled wrapping-paper. "Excuse me if I mash your bargains, Kitty," she
said, weakly, closing her eyes. "But I'm as limp as a rag! So ti'ahed--I
feel as if I were falling to pieces. We tramped around in the wet so
long, and then inside the stores there were such crowds that we were
pushed and jammed and stepped on everywhere we turned. It seemed to me
we waited hours for our change. Then the car we came out on was so
ovah-heated that we almost stifled. I'm suah I caught cold when the icy
wind struck us aftah we left the station."
She shivered as she spoke. Betty sprang up and began tugging at her wet
wraps.
"Don't lie there that way," she begged. "Let me help you get into some
dry clothes, and ask the housekeeper for a glass of hot milk."
At first Lloyd protested that she was too tired to move. Betty could be
as persistent as a mosquito at times. She insisted until Lloyd finally
allowed her to have her way, and got up wearily to put on the dry skirts
and stockings which she brought to her. A hot dinner made her feel
somewhat better, but her face was flushed when they went up-stairs for
the study hour. Betty saw her wipe her eyes as she took out her Latin
grammar, and instantly forgave the petulant way in which Lloyd had
answered her several times during the evening.
"Don't try to study, Lloyd," she urged. "I know you don't feel well."
"No," acknowledged the Little Colonel, "every bone in my body aches, and
my head is simply splitting."
"Let me run down to the sanitarium and ask Miss Gilmer to come up and
see if she can't do something for you," began Betty, but Lloyd
interrupted her, stamping her foot with a touch of her old childish
imperiousness.
"You sha'n't go! I'm not sick! I've just caught a plain cold."
"But people don't catch just plain colds nowadays," persisted Betty.
"They always catch microbes at the same time, that are apt to turn into
la grippe and pneumonia and all sorts of dreadful things. 'A stitch in
time saves nine,' you know," she added, wisely, quoting from the motto
embroidered on her darning-bag, which happened to be hanging on a
chair-post in the corner. "'An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of
cure' every time."
"Oh, for mercy's sake, Betty," cried Lloyd, impatiently, "let me alone
and don't be so preachy. I'm not going to repoa't a little thing like a
headache and a soah throat to the nurse. She'd put me to bed and keep me
there for a week. I'd get behind with my lessons, and lose all the
holiday fun. Like as not mothah and Papa Jack would come straight aftah
me, and take me home befoah we'd had the mock Christmas tree or any of
the things I've been looking forward to so long."
Betty picked up her algebra again without an audible reply, but inwardly
she was saying: "I know she is sick, or she wouldn't be so cross."
The next day found Lloyd with such high fever that she was installed at
once in the sanitarium. "It is la grippe that she has," the nurse told
Betty. "It is the real thing, and not what people always claim to have
with an ordinary cold. The worst will probably be over in a few days,
but it will leave her so exhausted and so susceptible to other things
that I shall keep her with me for a week at least."
Lloyd rebelled at first, but she had to submit as her fever mounted
higher, and the world grew, to her blurred fancy, one great, throbbing
ache. She was glad to give herself up to Miss Gilmer's soothing touches.
Mrs. Sherman did not come, for a letter from the school physician
assured her that Lloyd was receiving every care and attention that she
could have had at home, and the case was quite a simple one.
Miss Gilmer, the nurse, was a big motherly woman, who seemed to radiate
comfort and cheer, as a stove does heat. After the first few days, Lloyd
would have enjoyed the time spent with her in the cheerful room assigned
her had she not been haunted by the thought that she was falling behind
her classes.
"It's a pretty good sawt of a world, aftah all," she said one day, as
she sat propped up among the pillows, enjoying a dainty mid-afternoon
lunch Madam Chartley had personally prepared and sent in hot from the
chafing-dish. Bouillon in the thinnest of fragile china, and a toasted
scone which recalled delightfully the little English inn she had visited
near Kenilworth ruins. By some oversight, no spoon had been sent in on
the tray, and Miss Gilmer supplied the deficiency by bringing one of her
own from a little cabinet in the next room.
"It has a history," Miss Gilmer said, and Lloyd looked at it with
interest before dipping it into the cup.
"Why, the handle is a May-pole!" she exclaimed, with pleasure. "And the
date down among the garlands is the queen's birthday, isn't it? I
remembah we were up in the Burns country that day, when we saw the
school-children celebrating it."
"To think of an American girl remembering that date!" cried Miss Gilmer,
in a pleased tone. "It is a great day on my calendar, for it was then
that I met Madam Chartley, for the first time, on the queen's birthday.
She has been my good angel ever since. It was she who sent me that
May-pole spoon, as a souvenir of that meeting."
"Oh, would you tell me about it?" asked Lloyd. "It sounds so
interesting."
Taking up some needlework from a basket on the table, Miss Gilmer leaned
back as if to begin a long story.
"There isn't so much to tell, after all," she said, pausing to thread
her needle. "It was long ago, when Madam Chartley was Alicia Raeburn,
and I was a bashful little English schoolgirl at St. Agnes Hall. Alicia
had come from America to visit her uncle, who was proctor of the
cathedral. His grounds joined the school premises on the south, and I
often used to peep through the hedge and watch her strolling around the
garden. She was older than I, and the difference in our ages seemed
greater then than now, for I was still wearing short frocks, and she
had just put on long ones. I had heard that she was to be presented at
court next season. That, and the fact that she was an American, and very
beautiful, and that she looked lonely strolling around the old proctor's
garden by herself, threw a glamour of romance about her.
"I would have given a fortune to have made her acquaintance, and I spent
hours down by the brook dreaming innocent little day-dreams in which I
pictured such meetings. Suddenly heliotrope became my favourite flower
instead of roses, because she so often wore a bunch of it tucked in the
belt of her gray dress. Indeed, because she so often wore it, I grew to
regard it as sacred to her alone, and felt that no one else had a right
to wear it. Fortunately, at that season of the year it grew only in the
proctor's conservatory, so that the schoolgirls could not obtain it. I
would have inwardly resented it, if any one of them had taken such a
liberty as to wear her flower. She seemed to me the most beautiful and
perfect creature I had ever seen, and I worshipped her from afar, and
imitated her in every way possible. I don't suppose you can understand
such an infatuation."
"Indeed I do undahstand," interrupted Lloyd, eagerly. She was thinking
of Ida Shane, and the way she had fallen under the spell of her
charming personality. Even yet the odour of violets brought back the
same little thrill it had awakened when violets seemed made for Ida's
exclusive wearing. Miss Gilmer's feeling for the beautiful Alicia
Raeburn was no deeper than hers had been for Ida. She could readily
understand about the heliotrope.
"Well, then," Miss Gilmer went on, "you can imagine my state of mind
when at last I actually met her. It was on the queen's birthday. At our
school, instead of having the May-pole dance on May-day, we waited until
the queen's birthday, and on that occasion Alicia was one of the invited
guests. It was quite by accident she spoke to me. She dropped her
handkerchief, and I sprang to pick it up. But she must have seen the
adoration in my poor little embarrassed face, for I went quite red I am
sure. I could fairly feel the hot blood surge over me. She said
something pleasant to cover my confusion, and then swept her skirts
aside for me to share her seat. She wanted to ask some questions about
the customs of the school, she said.
"That was the beginning of our acquaintance. Next day she waved her
handkerchief over the hedge to me, and the next called me over for a
little chat. She was lonely in the great garden. After awhile I plucked
up courage to tell her how I had watched her through the hedge, and
dreamed about meeting her. I could not put it into words, but she could
readily see that the good Victoria and the queen of the May were not the
sovereigns who claimed my dearest allegiance. It was the 'Queen Rose of
the rosebud garden of girls,' the beautiful Alicia Raeburn.
"She went away that summer, but we had grown to be such friends that she
promised to write to me once a year, in order that I might not lose her
entirely out of my life. She knew what a lonely little orphan I was, and
she never denied me the joy of that yearly letter. They were full of her
travels and the interesting experiences of her life, for she married a
young English officer and went to India.
"They came back to England once. I saw her then. It was at a great ball
given for the Prince of Wales when he honoured the little cathedral town
with a visit. She could hardly believe that I was the little schoolgirl
who had eyed her so adoringly through the hedge. I had grown so large.
But she found from others what a lonely life I had, and, knowing how
much her friendship meant, she still gave me the pleasure of that yearly
letter, written on the queen's birthday. That she should remember
through all her busy years shows one of the finest traits of her
character.
"Once she was too ill to write, but the message came just the same. She
sent this spoon with the May-pole handle, and on her card was scrawled
the one line, 'I keep the tryst.' She had told me the story of their
family crest. You don't know how many times in the next few years the
sight of that card and the souvenir spoon helped me. Her fidelity to a
promise made me rely on her and her friendship when all others failed
me. My guardian died and left my property in such shape that I found I
would have to support myself, and I began to take training for a
professional nurse. When she heard of it, she wrote and told me that
she, too, had been obliged by her husband's death to earn her own
living, and that she had established this school in her
great-grandmother's old mansion. She offered me the position of
professional nurse here. I came on the next steamer, and have been here
ever since.
"You don't know how many times I've thought how different my life would
have been if she had failed in that one little matter of sending a
yearly letter. No doubt it was a bore to her oftentimes, but it was the
line that kept us in touch and finally drew me to this happy anchorage.
Alicia Chartley is a great woman, my dear. She has left her imprint on
every girl who has passed through this school, and there'll be a long
line of them to rise up and call her blessed. Not so much for the fine
ladies she has made of them with her high-bred ways and ideals, but for
the example she has set them always in that one thing. No matter in how
small a duty, she has never once failed to keep the tryst."
Lloyd would have liked to ask some questions about Madam's girlhood, but
some one called Miss Gilmer into the office just then, so, taking the
tray with its empty cup and plate, she passed out. Lloyd thumped her
pillows and lay looking out of the window at the sparrows on the balcony
railing. All the ache was gone, and, with a delightful sense of
drowsiness and of well-being, she began slipping into a little doze.
Even illness had its bright side, she thought, languidly. She liked Miss
Gilmer's reminiscences. They opened into a world so delightfully
English. When she came back she would ask for more stories. Down from
the distant music-room stole the faint echo of one of the carols. She
opened her eyes to listen.
"God rest you, merry Christians,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Christ our Lord and Saviour
Was born on Christmas Day."
Lloyd liked that carol. "'Let nothing you dismay,'" she repeated,
softly. "No, it doesn't really make any difference what happens," she
thought, closing her eyes again and curling up like a sleepy kitten. "It
will all come right in the end, as it did with Miss Gilmer. I'll not
worry about missing so many lessons and so many pearls on my rosary.
I'll just be thankful for Christmas and all it brings."
Again through her drowsy senses echoed the refrain, and she dropped to
sleep, repeating, slowly, "'Let--nothing--you--dismay!'"
CHAPTER VI.
CHRISTMAS CAROLS
"THIS is the worst time of all the yeah to be sick," fretted the Little
Colonel, pausing in her restless journey around the room. She had been
pacing from window to fireplace in the nurse's office, and from
fireplace to window again, watching the clock and the slowly westering
sun, as if watching would hasten the day to its close.
Miss Gilmer, who was placidly knitting, changed needles without looking
up. "That is what people always say. I've never yet found one whose
calendar had a time when illness would be convenient."
"But now, just befoah the holidays, a thousand things are waiting to be
done. I'm behind a whole week with my studies, and my Christmas presents
that I'm going to make are scarcely begun. You haven't even let me look
at the material. I feel like a caged lion, and I'd like to roah and claw
and ramp around till I'd smashed my bah's."
"You'll have your liberty soon," laughed Miss Gilmer. "I think it will
be safe to let you go down to the dining-room this evening, and I'll
give you your honourable discharge in the morning. But, if I were in
your place, I would make no attempt to catch up with the classes this
term. I would lock the unfinished presents away in a drawer, and not
give any this Christmas. You ought to spend the holidays as quietly as
possible, doing nothing but rest."
Lloyd turned toward her with an exclamation of dismay.
"Oh, Miss Gilmer! That's impossible! We've planned for a gayer Christmas
vacation than we've evah had befoah. Every day will be full to the brim.
And I _must_ make up the recitations I have missed. I've had such good
repoah'ts all term that I can't beah to spoil everything right at the
end. When I was in bed, feeling so bad, I made up my mind I wouldn't
worry about them, but now I feel as good as new, only a little weak, and
one always feels weak aftah fevah. It's to be expected. You know I
wasn't dangerously ill."
"No," admitted Miss Gilmer, "but your little illness has left you with
less strength than you think you have. You are like an ice-pond that is
just beginning to freeze over. A very light weight will break it
through at that stage, but if there is no strain until it has frozen
properly, it can bear the weight of the most heavily loaded wagons."
Lloyd slipped into a chair and stared dismally at the fire.
"But I am strongah than you think, Miss Gilmer. Except one time when I
had the measles, I'd never been sick in my life till last week. I don't
believe it's good for people to coddle themselves and worry all the time
for feah they are going to be ill."
"Oh," answered the nurse, "I fully agree with you in that, still I
should not be doing my duty if I did not put up a warning signal when I
see danger ahead. I do see it now. You are getting on very nicely, but
the ice is very thin,--far too thin for any such extra weights as double
study hours and holiday dissipations. If you don't walk lightly,
there'll be a nervous breakdown."
Some one called Miss Gilmer away before she could finish her warning,
and Lloyd sat facing the fire and this unpleasant bit of counsel for
nearly half an hour. A verse from her favourite carol came echoing
through the halls from the distant music-room, for it was practice hour
again, but this time it did not fit her mood, and it brought no cheer.
It was all well enough for those girls up-stairs, happy and well and
able to do as they pleased, to be singing "Let _nothing_ you dismay,"
but she couldn't help being dismayed at Miss Gilmer's opinion of her
condition. She was ready to cry, thinking how all her holidays would be
spoiled should she follow the nurse's advice.
With her chin in her hand and her elbow on the arm of the chair, she sat
picturing her doleful Christmas if she could have no part in the giving,
and must be left out of all the merrymaking they had planned. Tears
welled up into her eyes, and her miserable reverie might have ended in a
downpour had it not been interrupted by the entrance of Gay and Betty.
Having taken a hasty run across the terraces, they had obtained
permission to spend the rest of the recreation hour with Lloyd.
"We can't waste a minute now," exclaimed Gay, as she pulled out her
knitting-work and began clicking her ivory needles through a rainbow
shawl she was making. "I believe Betty sleeps with her embroidery hoops
under her pillow, and I know that Allison paints in her sleep."
"What would you do if you were in my place?" mourned Lloyd. She repeated
the nurse's dismal warning.
"Boo! She magnifies her office," said Gay, glancing over her shoulder to
make sure that they were alone. "I suppose it is perfectly natural that
she should. When you're with Miss White, she makes you feel that there's
nothing in life to live for but Latin. When you're with Miss Hooker,
mathematics is the chief end of man. With Professor Stroebel the violin
is the one and only. So of course a professional nurse is in duty bound
to make hygiene the first consideration. Don't listen to them, listen to
me. I change my mind a dozen times a day, and have a new fad every
fortnight, so it stands to reason that my advice is more broad-minded
than the advice of a person who rides only one hobby, and rides that in
a rut."
Lloyd laughed at Gay's foolishness, but groaned when Betty told her how
far the classes had advanced during her absence from recitations.
"I'll have to work like a beavah this next week to catch up. I stah'ted
out to have perfect repoah'ts, and I feel that I must stick to it, as
Ederyn did when he heard the king's call. It is an obligation that I
_must_ meet. I must keep tryst or die."
Gay looked at her admiringly. "I knew you were like that," she
exclaimed. "If there is anything I envy it is strength of character."
The admiring glance and Gay's remark carried greater weight than all the
nurse's warning. There was another reason now for persevering in her
determination. Gay expected it of her, and she could not fall below
Gay's expectation of what a strong character should accomplish.
Gay, having finished a white stripe across the shawl, opened the
sweet-grass Indian basket hanging on her chair-post, and took out
several skeins of zephyr of a delicate sea-shell pink.
"Let me hold it while you wind," begged Lloyd. "It's such an exquisite
shade, like the heart of a la France rose. It makes me think of the
stories mothah used to tell me. Everything in them had to be pink, from
the little girl's dress to the bow on her kitten's neck. Her slippahs,
parasol, flowahs in the garden, papah on the wall, icing on the cake,
everything had to be pink."
"What a funny little creature you must have been," laughed Gay, secretly
making note of Lloyd's favourite colour, and resolving to change the
names on two packages laid away in her trunk. The blue sachet-bag with
the forget-me-nots should go to Betty instead of Lloyd, as she had
originally intended. Lloyd should have the one with the garlands of pink
rosebuds.
"My room at home is furnished in pink," Lloyd went on. "Oh, Gay, I'm
wild for you to see Locust. I'm going to have you and the Walton girls
and Katie Mallard, one of our neighbahs, spend two days and nights with
us. While I've been cooped up heah getting well, I've planned some of
the loveliest things to do that you evah dreamed of. It's going to be
the gayest vacation that evah was."
When Miss Gilmer returned at the end of the hour, Lloyd looked so much
brighter and better that she gave her an unexpected furlough.
"There, run along to your room with the other girls. I'll expect you
back at bedtime, for I want to keep you under my wing one more night,
but you're at liberty till then on one condition,--you're not to look
into a book."
"I'll promise! Oh, I'll promise!" cried Lloyd, impetuously throwing her
arms around the nurse. "You're _such_ a deah! Not that I'm anxious to
get away from you," she added, fearing that her delight might be
misunderstood. "But I just want to get _out_!"
True to her promise, Lloyd opened no books, but, flying to her room, she
took out one of the uncompleted Christmas gifts, a pair of bedroom
slippers, and worked with feverish haste until dinner was ready. It was
good to be at the table again with the other girls after her week of
solitary meals in the nursery. Afterward it was a temptation to linger
in the library talking with them, but the thought of the many tasks
undone sent her hurrying back to her room.
Betty followed presently with the Walton girls, and they all worked
steadily on their various gifts until the bell rang for the evening
study hour. Then Allison and Kitty reluctantly departed, and Betty took
out her algebra. Lloyd crocheted in silence for half an hour longer, her
fingers flying faster and faster in her eagerness to complete the task.
Finally she laid it down with a sigh of relief.
"There!" she exclaimed aloud. "That's done. They're all ready for the
bows. Now, thank fortune, I can check them off my list."
Betty looked up with an absent-minded smile, nodded approvingly at the
finished slippers standing on the table, and then went on with her
problems. Lloyd opened her bureau-drawer to search for the ribbon which
she had bought for the bows. As she rummaged through it, her hand
touched the little sandalwood box that held the unfinished rosary. She
glanced over her shoulder. Betty was deep in her algebra. So, taking out
the string of beads, she passed it slowly through her fingers. Then she
held it up, and, looping it around her throat, looked in the mirror.
"I suppose it's mighty childish of me," she said to herself, "but I
can't enjoy my vacation if I go home with a single one of this term's
pearls missing. I've _got_ to make up those lessons, no mattah what the
nurse says. I can rest aftahward."
A few minutes later she presented herself at Miss Gilmer's door with the
announcement that she would go to bed an hour earlier than usual, in
order to get a good start for the next day.
All that week she worked with a restless energy that kept her keyed to
the highest pitch of effort. She scarcely ate, and her sleep was broken,
but her eyes were so bright and her manner so animated, that Betty wrote
home that Lloyd's little spell of illness seemed to have done her good.
By studying before breakfast, and snatching every minute she could spare
from other duties, she managed to have perfect recitations in each
study, and at the same time to make up the lessons she had missed. Five
o'clock Saturday afternoon found her with the last task done. She
slipped ten more little Roman pearls over the silken cord; five for the
week's advance work, and five for the days she had missed. Then with a
sigh of relief she put the sandalwood box into her trunk, already partly
packed for home-going, and flung herself wearily across the bed.
The mock Christmas tree had been lighted the evening before, and the
gifts distributed. She had not enjoyed it as she had expected to,
although some of the jokes were excruciatingly funny, and the girls had
laughed until they were limp. She was too tired to laugh much. She was
glad that Sunday was coming before the day of leave-taking. She made up
her mind that she would skip dinner, and ask Betty just to slip her
something from the table.
Then she remembered that this was the night the carols were to be sung
in the chapel. She could not miss that. It was the prettiest service of
all the year, the old girls said. Some one had told her it was a custom
for everybody to wear white to the carol-singing, but it was hard to
remember things, maybe she had only dreamed it. She wished that she did
not have to remember things, but could lie there without moving, until
morning. What was it her mother used to sing to her? "Asleep in the arms
of the slow-swinging seas." Oh! The white seal's lullaby. That was what
she wanted. How good it would feel to be rocked by the restful motion
of the waves, to be caught in that long sleepy sweep of the
slow-swinging seas.
When she opened her eyes again it was to find the room lighted, and
Betty dressing for the carol service. She had slept an hour.
"It'll never do to miss the carols," Betty assured her, when she
suggested skipping dinner. "Come on, I'll help you dress. Just tell me
what you want to wear, and I'll lay out your things while you're shaking
your wits together. You'll feel better after you've had a hot dinner."
So struggling with the weariness which nearly overpowered her, Lloyd
forced herself to follow Betty's example, and go down to the dining-room
when the bell rang. An hour later she fell into line with the other
girls, as, all in white, they filed into the chapel.
"How Christmasey it looks and smells," she whispered to Allison, as the
doors swung open and a breath from the pine woods greeted them. The
chancel was wreathed and festooned with masses of evergreen. To-night
tall white candles furnished the only light. Far down the dim aisles
they twinkled like stars against the dark background of cedar and
hemlock.
Betty was glad that they had entered early. The deep silence of those
moments of waiting, the dim light of the Christmas tapers, and the
fragrance of the pine seemed as much a part of the service as anything
which followed. In the expectant hush that filled the little chapel, she
pictured the three kings riding through the night, until she could
almost see the shadowy desert and hear the tread of the camels who bore
the wise men on their starlit quest. She saw the hillside of Judea,
where the shepherds kept their night-watch by their flocks, and all the
mystery and wonder of the first great Christmastide seemed to vibrate
through her heart, as the deep organ prelude suddenly filled the air
with the jubilant chords of "Joy to the world, the Lord has come."
Presently the music changed, and the girls looked around expectantly.
From far down distant halls and corridors came a chorus of girlish
voices: "Oh, little town of Bethlehem." So sweet and far away it was,
the audience in the chapel involuntarily leaned forward to listen.
Across the campus it sounded, gradually drawing nearer and clearer,
until, with a triumphant burst of melody, the doors swung open and the
white-robed choir swept in.
Only the best voices in the school had been chosen for this choir, and
weeks of training preceded the service. One after another they sang the
sweet old tunes of the Christmas waits until they reached Lloyd's
favourite, "Let nothing you dismay." She listened to it with pleasure
now, since her greatest cause for dismay had been removed. She had kept
tryst with the term's obligations, as the last pearl on the rosary could
testify.
In the hush that followed that carol, an old man, with silvery hair and
benign face, rose under the tall candles of the chancel.
"It's the bishop," whispered Gay to Lloyd. "Old Bishop Chartley. He is
Madam's uncle, and he always comes down for this service."
Then even her irrepressible tongue grew still, for, in a deep voice that
filled the chapel, he began to read the story of the three wise men who
followed the star with their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh,
until it led them to Bethlehem's manger. An old, old story, but it
bloomed anew once more, as it has bloomed every year since first the
wondering wise men started on their quest.
The bishop closed the Book. "How shall we keep the King's birthday?" he
asked. "What gifts shall we bring? To-day in a quaint old tale, beloved
in boyhood, I found the answer. It is the story of a strange country
called Cathay, and this is the way it runs:
"'The ruler thereof is one Kublan Khan, a mighty warrior. His government
is both wise and just, and is administered to rich and poor alike,
without fear or favour. On the king's birthday the people observe what
is called the White Feast. Then are the king and his court assembled in
a great room of the palace, which is all white, the floor of marble and
the walls hung with curtains of white silk. All are in white apparel,
and they offer unto the king white gifts, to show that their love and
loyalty are without a stain. The rich bring to their lord pearls,
carvings of ivory, white chargers, and costly broidered garments. The
poor present white pigeons and handfuls of rice. Nor doth the great king
regard one gift above another, so long as all be white. And so do they
keep the king's birthday.'"
Lloyd, leaning forward, listened with such breathless interest that it
attracted Gay's attention. "That's just like your pink story," she
whispered. Lloyd gave her fingers a responsive squeeze, but never took
her eyes from the benign old face. The bishop was applying the story to
the audience before him.
"As these pagans of Cathay kept the feast of Kublan Kahn, so we may make
of Christmas a White Feast, whose offerings are without stain. We need
make no weary pilgrimages across the trackless sands, as did those
Eastern sages. 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my
brethren' (these are the King's own words), 'ye have done it unto me.'
At our very doors we may give to Him, through His poor and needy.
"But there is another way. You are all familiar with the motto of this
house, and the legend which gave rise to it. Clad in the white garments
of Righteousness, we may keep the tryst as Ederyn kept it, and bring to
the King the white pearls of a well-spent life. Days unstained by
selfishness, days filled up with duties faithfully performed. It matters
not how small and commonplace our efforts seem, the rice and the pigeons
of the poor showed Kublan Kahn his subjects' loyalty as fully as the
ivory carvings and the costly broidered garment. Nor doth the great King
regard one gift of ours above another, so long as all be white. If only
on our breasts the tokens Duty gives us spell out the words, '_semper
fidelis_,' then ours will be the royal accolade: 'Well done, thou good
and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.' To give
_ourselves_, unstained and gladly, thus may we keep the White Feast on
the birthday of the King."
Then the choir stood again, but Lloyd scarcely noticed what it sang. She
was thinking of the bishop's story, and her secret hidden away in the
sandalwood box. She was so glad now that she had strung the pearls. She
had begun it because it pleased her fancy to act out the story of
Ederyn, but now the sacred meaning the old bishop gave the story
thrilled her through and through. The King's call suddenly seemed very
sweet and personal. Henceforth she would string the pearls in answer to
that call.
When they all knelt in the closing prayer, she fervently echoed the
bishop's petition: "Grant that we make of this Christmastide a White
Feast, and that all our days may be worthy of thy acceptance, unstained
by selfishness and full of deeds to show our love and loyalty."
The white-robed choir filed slowly out, their music sounding fainter and
fainter until it died away across the campus, and the white-robed
audience was left kneeling in silence. There were tears in Gay's eyes
when she arose. Such music always stirred her to the depths. Kitty went
back to her room humming one of the carols, and Betty stole away to
write the bishop's sermon in her little white record, while the memory
of it was still warm in her heart.
At Miss Gilmer's request, Lloyd waited a moment in the vestibule. At
first she wished that Miss Gilmer had not detained her. She wanted to go
on with Allison, who had her by the arm. Afterward, however, she was
glad of the waiting. It gave her an opportunity to meet the venerable
bishop.
"So you are going home to-morrow for the holidays," he said, genially,
as he held out his hand. "Godspeed, daughter. May you keep the White
Feast with joy."
It seemed to Lloyd that that "Godspeed" followed her like a
benediction.
CHAPTER VII.
HOMEWARD BOUND
"O Warwick Hall, dear Warwick Hall,
Thy happy hours we'll oft recall!
No time or change can break thy tie,
Though for awhile we say good-bye--
Good-bye! Good-bye!"
AMID a flutter of handkerchiefs and a babel of parting cries, each
'bus-load of girls departed from the Hall to the station singing the
farewell song of the school.
A dozen times on the way home Allison, humming it unconsciously, found
the rest of the party joining in. It was an uneventful journey, but a
merry one to the five girls, travelling for the first time without a
chaperon. For the first few hours they had the observation car to
themselves. Even the porter mysteriously disappeared.
"He's curled up asleep somewhere, rest his soul," said Gay, when she had
rung for him several times.
"All the better," answered Kitty. "We don't really need the table, and
it's nice to have him out of the way. This is as good as travelling in
a private car. We can 'stand on our head in our little trundle-bed, and
nobody nigh to hinder.' Oh, girls, I'm so crazy glad that we're on our
way home that I'm positively obliged to do something to let off steam.
I've exhausted my vocabulary trying to express my delight, so there's
nothing left but to howl."
"Or to wriggle," suggested Gay. "Why not try facial expression? How is
this for transcendent joy?"
The grotesque smile which she turned upon them was so ridiculous that
they screamed with laughter.
"Oh, Gay, do stop!" begged Betty. "You're as bad as a comic valentine."
"I'd like to see you do any better," retorted Gay.
"Let's all try," suggested Kitty. "Line up in front of this mirror,
girls. Now all look pleasant, please. Now let your smiles express
rapture. Now, frenzied delight!"
Fascinated by their own ugliness, the five girls stood in a row
distorting their pretty faces with hideous grins and grimaces until they
were weak from laughing. The banging of the car door sent them scuttling
into their seats. A portly old gentleman passed through the car to the
rear platform, and, slamming the door behind him, stood looking down
the rapidly vanishing track. Evidently it was too breezy a view-point
for the old gentleman, even with his coat-collar turned up and hat
pulled down to meet his ears, for in a moment he came in and passed back
to his seat in a forward car. The girls sat demurely looking out of the
windows until he was gone, then they faced each other, giggling.
"Suppose he had caught us making those idiotic faces," exclaimed
Allison. "He would have taken us for a lot of escaped lunatics."
"No, he wouldn't," insisted Gay. "He was a real benevolent-looking old
fellow, the kind that understands young people, and he'd know that it
was just that Christmas has gone to our heads, and made us a little
flighty. I'm sure that his name is James, and that he has six old maid
daughters. He lives out West, and he's taking home a trunk full of
presents for them."
"Let's guess what he has for them," said Kitty. "I'll say that the
oldest one is named Emmaline, and he is taking her a squirrel fur muff."
"And the next one is Agnes Dorothea," said Betty, taking her turn, as if
it were a game. "She's the delicate one of the family, and a sort of
invalid. So he bought her a lavender shoulder shawl that caught his
fatherly eye in a show window, because it was so soft and fluffy. But it
will shrink and fade the first time it is washed till Agnes Dorothea
will look like a homeless cat if she wears it. Still she will persist in
putting it on because dear father brought it to her from Washington."
"He'd certainly think you all were crazy if he could heah yoah
remah'ks," laughed Lloyd.
"Speaking of shawls," cried Gay, "that reminds me of that rainbow shawl
in my bag. I haven't taken a stitch in it since we started, and I
intended to knit all the way home. I simply have to, if I'm to get it
done in time."
Taking out the square of linen in which the fleecy zephyr was wrapped,
she settled herself by the rear window in a big arm-chair, with her feet
drawn up under her, and fell to work with all her might.
"It's so nice and cosy to have the car all to ourselves," sighed
Allison, stretching out luxuriously on the sofa. Betty, bending over her
embroidery, smiled tenderly at a picture that her memory showed her just
then. She was comparing this journey with the first one she had ever
taken. And she saw in her thoughts a little brown-eyed girl of eleven,
setting forth on her first venture into the wide world, with a
sunbonnet tied over her curls, and an old-fashioned covered basket on
her arm. What a dread undertaking that journey had been from the
Cuckoo's Nest to the House Beautiful. She remembered how frightened she
was, and how she had studied the picture of Red Ridinghood, printed in
colours on the border of her handkerchief, until she was afraid to speak
even to the conductor. She saw a possible wolf in every stranger.
Somehow her thoughts kept going back to that time, even in the midst of
Gay's most amusing nonsense, and Kitty's brightest repartee. Even when
Allison began to sing "O Warwick Hall," and she chimed in with the
others, "Dear Warwick Hall," she was not thinking of school, but of the
Cuckoo's Nest, and Davy, and the old weather-beaten meeting-house, in
whose window she had passed so many summer afternoons, reading the musty
dog-eared books she found in the little red bookcase.
"What are you smiling about, Betty, all to yoahself?" asked Lloyd. "You
look as if you are a thousand miles away."
Betty glanced up with a little start. "Oh, I was just thinking about the
Cuckoo's Nest, and wishing that I could see Davy's face when they open
the Christmas box I sent. There are only trifles in it, but the box will
mean a lot to them, for Cousin Hetty never has time to make anything of
Christmas."
Lloyd sat up with a sudden exclamation. "Oh, Betty, I _beg_ yoah
pah'don. There's a lettah for you in my bag from some of them that I
forgot to give you. Hawkins came up with it just as we drove off, and
there was so much excitement and confusion I nevah thought of it again
till this minute. I'm mighty sorry I forgot."
"It doesn't make any difference," Betty assured her. "Good news can
afford to wait, and, if it's bad news, it would have spoiled all the
first part of this trip."
She tore open the envelope and glanced down the page. Lloyd, looking up,
saw a distressed expression cross her face and the brown eyes fill with
tears.
"Oh, it's poor little Davy that's in trouble," said Betty, answering
Lloyd's anxious question. "He had his leg badly hurt last week, broken
in two places. He was riding one of those heavy old farm horses,
hurrying home to get out of a storm. Going down a steep, slippery hill,
it stumbled and fell on him. He'll have to lie in bed for weeks, with
his knee in plaster, and he's so tired of it already, and _so_ lonesome.
Nobody has any time to sit with him. I know how it is. I was sick myself
once at the Cuckoo's Nest. Oh, I'd give anything if I could spend my
vacation there with him."
"And give up all your good times at home?" cried Kitty. "He surely
couldn't expect such a sacrifice as that."
"But it wouldn't be any sacrifice. Not a mite! I haven't seen him for
such a long time, and I'd love to go. He used to be the dearest little
fellow, never out of my sight a moment during the day. They used to call
him 'Betty's shadow.'"
"Why don't you go if you wish it so much?" was on the tip of Gay's
tongue, but she stopped the question just before it slipped off,
remembering Betty's dependence on her godmother. Kitty had told her all
about it one time. Naturally she wouldn't want to ask for the money,
even for such a short journey, when so much was being spent to keep her
at school with Lloyd; and naturally she would not want to ask to leave
Locust at Christmas, when that was the time of all the year when she
could be of service, and in many ways add greatly to the pleasure of the
entire household.
The nonsense stopped for a few minutes. No one knew what to say to
comfort Betty, although they were genuinely sorry, and glanced from time
to time at the brown head turned away from them toward the window. She
was looking at the flying landscape through a blur of tears, recalling
the way little Davy's dimpled fingers had clung to hers, his chubby feet
followed her. Of course he was much larger and older, she told herself,
not at all like the little fellow she had left so long ago. He was big
enough to stand pain now, and probably the worst of his suffering was
over. Still, she saw only a solemn baby face when she pictured him, and
heard only the lisping voice, saying as he used to say when stumped toe
or bruised finger brought the tears: "It hurth your Davy boy. Tie a wag
on it, Betty." How he had loved her stories! What a pleasure they would
be to him now in the long days he would be forced to spend in bed.
Suddenly conscious of the silence around her, Betty turned, realizing
that her depression had cast a shadow on the spirits of all the rest.
"Don't think about my bad news any more," she said, brightly. "It
probably isn't half as bad as I have been picturing it. My imagination
always runs away with me. It isn't Davy the baby that's had such an
awful accident. It was that thought that hurt me so at first. I keep
forgetting that it's five years since I left there. I'm going to drop
him a postal card at the next station. I can write to him every day, and
make a sort of game of the letters with riddles and suggestions of
things for him to do, and that will help the time pass."
"First call to dinnah in the dinah," called a coloured waiter, passing
through the car in white jacket and apron.
"Now we'll have to stop all our foolishness," said Allison, sedately, as
she rose to lead the way to the dining-car. They followed as decorously
as grandmothers, each realizing the responsibility that devolved on her,
since they were travelling without a chaperon.
To be sure, Gay choked on an olive when Kitty made some wicked remark
about the fussy old woman across the aisle, who wouldn't be pleased with
anything the waiter brought her; and it was too much for their gravity
when an excessively dignified man at the next table, who had been
staring at the wall like a wooden Indian, suddenly sneezed so violently
that his eye-glasses dropped into his soup with a splash.
Otherwise they were models of propriety, and more than one head turned
to look at the bright girlish faces, and smile at the keen, unspoiled
enjoyment which they evidently found in life and in each other.
They did not stay long in the observation-car when they went back to it
after dinner. Other people had come in, and it was not so attractive as
when they occupied it alone. The lamps had been lighted so early that
short December day that it seemed much later than it really was, and
they were all tired. At nine o'clock, when they went to their berths in
the forward end of the car, they found several sections already made up
for the night, and the porter was moving on down toward theirs.
The fussy old woman, who had been so hard to please at the table, came
squeezing her way through the valises that blocked the aisle, and took
possession of the section opposite Betty and Lloyd.
"Oh, my country!" whispered Lloyd. "I wondah if she's going to keep up
that grumbling and scolding all night. I'm glad that I am not that poah
henpecked maid of hers. She certainly makes life misahable for her."
It was nearly two hours before Jenkins, the long-suffering maid,
succeeded in settling her mistress to her satisfaction behind the
curtains of her berth. The girls made no attempt to get into the
dressing-room until the little comedy was over. They laughed until they
were hysterical over each scene as it occurred. A comedy in three acts,
Betty called it--the losing of the cold-cream bottle and the finding of
same in madam's overshoe. The unavailing search for a certain black silk
handkerchief in which madam was wont to tie her head up in of nights,
and the substitution of a towel instead, which the porter obligingly
brought.
Next there was a supposed case of poisoning, Jenkins in her trepidation
having administered three pink pellets from a bottle instead of two
white ones from a box. Five minutes' reign of terror after that mistake
brought the poor maid to a witless state that left her almost helpless.
Various trips were made to the dressing-room, at which times the old
lady's face was massaged, her grizzly hair rolled on crimping-pins, and
her shoulders rubbed with an evil-smelling liniment which permeated the
whole car. She seemed as oblivious to the presence of the other
passengers as if she were on a desert island, and, being somewhat deaf,
made Jenkins repeat her timid replies louder and louder until they were
almost screaming at each other.
Every one on the car was smiling broadly when at last she subsided
behind the curtains. The smiles grew to audible mirth when she confided
in a loud voice to Jenkins, stowed away in the berth above her, that she
hoped to goodness nobody on board would snore and keep her awake.
Jenkins's answer, floating tremulously down, convulsed the sleepy girls:
"Hi 'ope not, ma'am. Hit's a bad 'abit, ma'am, halmost, you might say,
han haffliction."
"What?" came in a thunderous voice from the lower berth, and Jenkins,
craning her head turtle-wise over the edge of her bed, called back in a
tremulous squeak: "Hi honly said as 'ow hit were a bad 'abit, ma'am!"
"Hump!" was the answer. "See that you don't do it yourself. I've got my
umbrella here ready to punch you if you do."
A titter ran from seat to seat. The girls, unable to stifle their
amusement any longer, seized their bags and hurried down the aisle to
the dressing-room, where, under cover of the rattle of the train, they
could laugh as freely as they pleased.
When Lloyd and Betty stole back to their berths a few minutes later,
they looked at each other with an amused smile. From the opposite
section came an unmistakable sound, long-drawn and penetrating as a
cross-cut saw. Madam was evidently asleep. Betty giggled, as from
Jenkins's perch came a gentle echo.
"'Hi honly said as 'ow hit were a bad 'abit, ma'am,'" whispered Lloyd.
"Wouldn't you love to jab the old lady herself with an umbrella?"
Gay, in the dressing-room, was carefully counting over her toilet
articles, as she put them back into her bag. "Soap-box, comb, nail-file,
tooth-powder--I haven't lost a thing this trip, Allison. I'm beginning
to feel proud of myself. Here's my watch and here's my tickets, buttoned
up in this pocket. Mamma had it made on purpose, so in case of a wreck
at night I'd have them on me. She patted the pocket sewed securely in
the dark blue silk robe she wore, made in loose kimono fashion.
"Now I'm all ready," she added, dropping her shoes into her bag and
closing it. In her soft Indian moccasins, beaded like a squaw's, she
executed a little heel and toe dance in the narrow passage outside,
while she waited for Allison to gather up her clothes and follow. She
thought every one else was in bed, and when suddenly the outside door
opened and she heard some one coming in from the next car, she flew
down the aisle like a frightened rabbit.
It was only a brakeman who stood just inside the door a moment with his
lantern, and then went out again. All the lights had been turned down in
the car, and Gay stumbled several times over shoes and valises
protruding in the aisle. But finally, with a bound, she made her escape,
as she supposed, from whoever it was that had caught her dancing in her
moccasins in the passage.
She gave a headlong dive into her berth. Just then the car lurched
forward, sending her bag banging against the window, but she did not
loosen her hold of it, and she was still clinging to it five minutes
later.
For, with a scream of terror, she rolled out of the berth far faster
than she had rolled in. It was madam's fat body that writhed under her,
and her stern voice that yelled "Murder! murder!" in a voice calculated
to wake the dead.
"'Elp! 'elp!" screamed Jenkins from the upper berth, afraid to look out
between the curtains, but bravely pushing the button of the porter's
bell till some one, wakened by the cries and persistent ringing, wildly
called "Fire!"
"It's train robbahs!" gasped Lloyd, sitting up. Little cold shivers ran
up and down her back, but she was conscious of a pleasant thrill of
excitement. Heads were thrust out all up and down the aisle. The bell
and the cries of murder and 'elp never stopped until the porter and
Pullman conductor came running to the rescue.
But there was nothing for them to see. At the first yell, Gay had
tumbled hastily out, still clinging to her bag. Before the old lady had
sufficiently recovered from her surprise enough to wonder what sort of a
wild beast had pounced in upon her, Gay was safe in her own berth, drawn
up in a knot, and trembling behind her closely buttoned curtains. Her
heart beat so loud that she thought it would certainly betray her.
"You must have had the nightmare," said the conductor, politely, trying
not to smile as the angry face, under its towel turban, glared out at
him.
"Nightmare!" blazed the irate old lady. "I'm no fool. Don't you suppose
that I know when I'm hit? I tell you somebody was trying to sandbag me.
I thought a Saratoga trunk had fallen in on me. It's your business to
take care of passengers on this train, and I intend to hold the company
responsible. I shall certainly sue the railroad for this shock to my
nervous system as soon as I get home. I have a weak heart and I can't
stand such performances as this."
[Illustration: "'I TELL YOU SOMEBODY WAS TRYING TO SANDBAG ME'"]
It took a long time to pacify her. Gay lay in her berth, shaking first
with fright and then with laughter. She could not go to sleep without
sharing her secret with the other girls, but she was afraid to trust
herself to speak. She had grown almost hysterical over the affair.
Finally she crept in beside Lloyd to whisper, brokenly: "_I_ am the
nightmare that sandbagged the old lady. _I_ am the Saratoga trunk that
fell on her. Oh, Lloyd, I'll never brag again. I had just told Allison I
hadn't lost a single thing this trip, and then I turned around and lost
myself. I got into the wrong berth. Oh! oh! It was so funny to see her,
all done up in that towel. It'll kill me if I can't stop laughing."
She crept back to her own side of the aisle again, and Lloyd got up to
repeat it to Betty and Allison, who passed it on to Kitty. It was nearly
half an hour before they stopped giggling over it, and then Kitty
started them all afresh by leaning out to say, in a stage whisper, as a
certain duet was renewed by Jenkins and her mistress, "'Hi honly said as
'ow hit were a bad 'abit.'"
It was snowing next morning, just a few flakes against the window-pane,
as they sat in the dining-car at breakfast, but the landscape grew
whiter as they whirled on toward home.
"Just as it ought to be for Christmas," declared Allison. "Oh, The
Beeches will look so lovely in the snow, and the big log fire will seem
so good, I can hardly wait to get there!"
"I know just how it's all going to be," exclaimed Kitty, wriggling
impatiently in her seat. "It will be this way, Gay. They'll all be down
at the station to meet us, mother and little Elise and Uncle Harry and
his dog. Aunt Allison will probably be there, too, and grandmother, if
she feels well enough. And old black fat Butler will be standing by the
baggage-room door with his wheelbarrow, waiting to take our trunks. And
we'll all talk at once. Everybody along the road will be calling
'Howdy!' to us, and at the post-office Miss Mattie will come out to
shake hands with us, and tell us how glad she is to see us back. Then
it'll be just a step, past the church and the manse and the Bakewell
cottage, and we'll turn in at The Beeches, _and the fun will begin_."
Betty turned to Gay. "That doesn't sound very exciting or especially
interesting to a stranger, but, oh, Gay, the Valley is so _dear_ when
you once get to know it. And when you go back, you feel almost as if
everybody were related to you, they're all so friendly and cordial and
glad to welcome you home."
Even to impatient schoolgirls homeward bound, the journey's end comes at
last, so by nightfall it all happened just as Kitty had predicted. Such
a royal welcome awaited Gay that she felt drawn into the midst of things
from the moment she stepped from the car.
"You're right, Betty," she whispered as she left her. "It _is_ a dear
Valley, and I feel already as if I belong here."
The two groups separated when the checks had been sorted out and the
baggage disposed of. Then, still laughing and talking, Kitty led one on
its merry way toward The Beeches, and the other whirled rapidly away in
the carriage toward the lights of Locust.
CHAPTER VIII.
A PICNIC IN THE SNOW
"WHAT a good gray day this is!" exclaimed Betty next morning, turning
from the window to look around the cheerful breakfast-room, all aglow
with an open wood-fire. "It's so bleak outside that there is no
temptation to go gadding, and so cosy indoors that we'll be glad of the
chance to stay at home and finish tying up our Christmas packages."
"Yes," assented Lloyd, who, having finished her breakfast, was standing
on the hearth-rug, her back to the fire and her hands clasped behind
her. "And for once I intend to have mine all ready the day befoah, so I
need not be rushed up to the last minute. For that reason I am glad that
mothah had to take the early train to town this mawning, to finish her
shopping. If she'd been at home, I should have talked all the time,
without accomplishing a thing."
"I think your tissue-paper and ribbon was put into my trunk," said
Betty, drumming idly on the window-pane. "I'll go and unpack it in a
minute, and have it off my mind, as soon as I see who this is coming up
the avenue."
A tall young fellow had turned in at the gate, and was striding along
toward the house as if in a great hurry.
"It's Rob Moore!" she exclaimed, in surprise. "I thought he wasn't
coming home until Christmas eve."
"So did I," answered Lloyd, crossing the room to look over Betty's
shoulder. "I'll beat you to the front doah, Betty."
There was a wild dash through the hall. Both slim figures bounced
against the door at the same instant. There was a laughing scuffle over
the latch, and then the two girls stood arm in arm between the white
pillars of the porch, gaily calling a greeting.
Rob waved a pair of skates in reply, and quickened his stride until he
came within speaking distance. One would have thought from his greeting
that they had seen each other only the day before. Rob never wasted time
on formalities.
"Hurry up, girls! Get your skates. The ice is fine on the creek, and
there's a crowd waiting for us down at the depot."
"Who?" demanded Lloyd.
"Oh, the MacIntyre boys and the Walton girls and that little red-headed
thing that they brought home from school with them. Kitty's going to
have a picnic on the creek bank for her."
"A picnic in Decembah!" ejaculated Lloyd.
"That's what she said," Rob answered, clicking his skates together as he
followed the girls into the house. "They telephoned over to me to hustle
up here and get you girls. They're on their way to the station now.
We're to meet them in the waiting-room."
"They should have let us know soonah," began Lloyd, "so that we could
have had a lunch ready. There'll be nothing cooked to take this time of
day."
"They didn't know it themselves," he interrupted. "Kitty proposed it at
the breakfast-table, and they just grabbed up whatever they could get
their hands on and started off."
"We have so much to do to-day," said Betty. "I don't see how we can ever
get through if we stop for this."
"Let everything slide!" begged Rob. "Do your work to-morrow. This will
be lots of fun. The ice may not last more than a day or so, and the
MacIntyre boys are not going to be out here all vacation."
"I suppose we could tie up those packages to-night," said Lloyd, with an
inquiring look at Betty.
"Of course," Rob answered for her. "And I'll help you with anything you
have to do. Come on."
"Well, then, you run out to the kitchen and ask Aunt Cindy to give you
something for a lunch,--anything in sight, and we'll get ready while Mom
Beck finds our skates."
Rob rubbed his ears apprehensively. "I'd as soon beard the lion in his
den as Aunt Cindy in her kitchen. She's never forgiven my early thefts."
"Go on, goosey," laughed Lloyd. "Don't you know that since you're
'growed up,' as Aunt Cindy says, she swears by you? I heard her tell Mom
Beck last night she reckoned she'd have to make a batch of little sugah
hah't cakes right away, for Mistah Rob would be coming prowling round
her cooky jah."
"Am I growed up?" asked Rob gravely, throwing back his shoulders and
looking into the mirror at the tall reflection it showed him.
"You are in inches and ells," laughed Lloyd, "but you're not always six
feet tall in yoah actions."
"It's only when I am in your society that I appear so juvenile,"
retorted Rob. "When I'm away at school with the other fellows, I feel
and act as old as Daddy, but when I'm back home, where you all seem to
expect me to be a kid, I naturally adjust myself to that role just to be
companionable and obliging. You would be afraid of me if I were to turn
out my whiskers and stand back on my dignity. You know you would."
"Don't try it, Bobby," advised Lloyd. "It wouldn't be becoming. Trot out
to Aunt Cindy and get the lunch. That's a good little man. We'll be
ready in just a few minutes."
Even in her baby days, Lloyd had been patronizing at times to her
good-natured playmate, ordering him about with a princess-like right
that always seemed part of the game. So now he laughingly shrugged his
shoulders and started to the kitchen, while Lloyd followed Betty
up-stairs to change her slippers for heavy-soled walking-boots.
A few minutes later the three were hurrying down the avenue to the gate,
under the bare windswept branches of the locusts.
"Aunt Cindy had disappeared temporarily," said Rob. "There wasn't a soul
in the kitchen, so I rummaged around till I found this old basket, and
filled it with a little of everything in sight. It is a long way to the
creek. We'll be ready to eat nails by the time we tramp over there in
this snappy weather."
"It is snappy," agreed Lloyd. "Betty, yoah cheeks are as red as fiah."
The rosy face under the brown tam-o'-shanter smiled back at her. "So are
yours. Aren't they, Rob? They are as red as her coat."
"Hello!" exclaimed Rob, noticing for the first time the long red coat
that Lloyd wore. "That's something new, isn't it? I thought you looked
different, but I couldn't tell exactly what it was. That's a stunner,
sure enough, Princess. It sort of livens up the landscape."
"I'm glad you like it," laughed Lloyd, "but I don't believe you would
have seen it at all if Betty hadn't called yoah attention to it. You'll
nevah get on in society, Bobby, if you don't learn to notice things.
You'll miss all the chances most boys take advantage of to pay
compliments and make pretty little speeches."
Rob scowled. "You know I don't go in for that sort of stuff."
"But you ought to," persisted Lloyd, who was in a perverse mood. "I
considah it my duty to take you in hand and teach you. You may practise
on Betty and me. Now we've been talking to Gay all term about our
friends in Lloydsboro Valley, and naturally we want everybody to put
their best foot foremost and show off their prettiest. Malcolm and Keith
will leave a charming impression of themselves, because they will make
her feel in such an easy graceful way that she has made that sawt of an
impression on them. If she wears an especially pretty dress, or says an
especially bright thing, or plays unusually well, they will notice it in
some way so that she will know that they noticed it, and that they were
pleased. Naturally that will please her, and she will like them bettah
for it."
Rob faced her with a whimsical expression. "Look here, Lloyd Sherman,
I've played every kind of a game that you've asked me to ever since I
learned to walk. I've been your man Friday when you wanted to be
Robinson Crusoe, and played B'r Fox to your B'r Rabbit. You've scalped
me and buried me and dug me up. You've made me be Pharaoh with the ten
plagues of Egypt, or a Christian martyr thrown to the wild beasts, just
as it pleased your fancy. I've even played dolls with you week at a
time, but I swear I draw the line at this. I'll do anything in reason to
help entertain your chum,--ride or dance or skate or get up private
theatricals,--but I'll _not_ make a ninny of myself trying to be flowery
and get off complimentary speeches. It comes natural to some people, but
I'm not built that way. I'd be as awkward at it as a fish out of water."
Lloyd turned her head with a despairing gesture. "Oh, Rob, you're
hopeless! You don't undahstand at all! Nobody wants you to be flowery,
and nobody likes flat-footed, out-and-out compliments. They're not nice
at all. I just meant--well--I scarcely know what I _did_ mean, but you
know how Malcolm does. It isn't that he says a thing in so many words,
but he has a way of somehow making you feel that he has noticed nice
things about you, and that he is _thinking_ compliments."
"Gee whiz!" exclaimed Rob, in a teasing tone. "Say that again, won't you
please, and say it slowly, so that I can take it all in. Do I get the
thought? To be agreeable one must not say things, but must cultivate an
air of having noticed that you are agreeable, and stand off and think
compliments so hard that you can actually feel them flying through the
air. Is that your idea?"
"Oh, Rob! Stop your teasing."
"Well, that is what you said, or words to that effect. Didn't she,
Betty?"
The brown eyes flashed an amused smile at him. They walked along in
silence for a few minutes, then he said, humbly, but with a twinkle in
his eye which boded mischief: "Well, I'll do the best I can to please
you, Lloyd. I'll watch Malcolm till I get the hang of it, then I'll
stand off and think compliments about your friend till her ears burn and
she is duly impressed. Grandfather is always saying, 'Who does the best
his circumstance allows, does nobly. Angels could do no more.'"
"I wish I had never mentioned the subject," pouted Lloyd, as they walked
on down the frozen pike. "I simply meant to give you a little advice for
yoah own good, and you've gone and made a joke of it. I am suah you'll
say or do something befoah the mawning is ovah that will make Gay think
you are perfectly dreadful."
Rob only laughed in answer, leaving her to infer that she had good
reason for her fears. As they passed the only store which the Valley
boasted, Kitty came rushing out, a bright new tin saucepan dangling at
her side like a drum. It was tied by a piece of twine, and she was
beating a tattoo upon it with a long-handled iron spoon. Keith
followed, his overcoat pockets bulging with parcels.
"Are you playing Santa Claus this early?" cried Betty, as he hurried
across to shake hands with them.
"No; Kitty decided that no social function in the woods was properly a
picnic without a fire and some kind of a mess to cook. So we stopped at
the store, and she's loaded me down with stuff for fudge. Malcolm and
the girls are on ahead in the waiting-room."
"Where's Ranald?" asked Lloyd, as they crossed the railroad track and
walked along the platform toward the door of the station.
"He's gone hunting with John Baylor, the boy he brought home from school
with him," answered Kitty. "We can't get him within a stone's throw of
Gay. I teased him so unmercifully in my letters about the girl who had
asked for his picture to put in her group of heroes that he won't even
look in her direction."
As Lloyd greeted Malcolm, whom she had not seen since the close of the
summer vacation, and then stood talking with him while Allison
introduced Rob to her guest, she was conscious that Rob was watching
every motion, and making note of it, to tease her afterward. A few
moments later, when they were all discussing a choice of places for the
picnic-grounds, he edged over to her.
"Now I understand what you mean," he said, in a low voice. "Malcolm
didn't say anything about that red coat. He just gave a sort of quick,
pleased glance at it, as if it had hit him hard, and made some gallant
speech about a Kentucky cardinal. I tried my best to follow suit. So
when I was introduced, I gave the same kind of a glad start when I saw
her hair, and was about to make a similar reference to a Texas redbird,
when my courage failed me. So I just stood off and fired the name at her
in thought till I'm sure she understood."
"You mean thing!" exclaimed Lloyd, under her breath. "Her hair isn't
red. It's just a deep, rich, bronzy auburn, and perfectly lovely. I do
wish I'd nevah said anything. Now you'll not act natural, and you won't
like each othah as I had hoped you would."
A gayer picnic party never started down the pike than the one that went
laughing along the road that winter morning, under barbed-wire fences,
through pasture gates, across bare woodlands, and over frozen
corn-fields. It was a still gray morning, with the chill of snow in the
air, and presently the snow began to fall in big feathery flakes.
Gay was delighted. She held up her face to let the cold, star-shaped
crystals settle on it. She caught them on her sleeve to marvel over
their airy beauty. "It's like frozen thistle-down!" she cried. "I hope
it will snow all day and all night until everything is covered. I never
saw a white Christmas."
"This will stop the skating," said Allison, "unless we had a broom to
sweep the ice as it falls."
Rob offered to go back for one, but they were so far on their way they
all protested it would not be worth while.
"How much farthah is it?" asked Lloyd, presently. For the last half-mile
she had had nothing to say, and had fallen behind the others.
"I'm so tiahed I can hardly take another step."
Rob looked at her curiously. It seemed strange for Lloyd to admit that
she was tired. He had known her to tramp nearly all day after nuts, and
then be ready for a horseback ride afterward.
"We'll stop just over this hill," he replied. "There's a good place to
camp. Here! Catch hold of my skate-strap, and I'll help pull you up."
"It helps some," she said, clinging to the strap swung over his
shoulder, "but I don't believe I'll evah get ovah this hill."
"It looks like a grove of Christmas trees!" cried Gay, as they started
down the other side toward the creek. Little cedars from two to five
feet high dotted the hillside, and the snow had drifted across them till
the branches drooped with the soft white burden. It began blowing
faster, and coming down like a thick white sheet between them and the
creek.
Rob, who had often picnicked here on his hunting trips, led the way
farther down the hill to a cavelike opening under an overhanging ledge
of rocks.
"This will keep the wind off your backs," he said. "Huddle down here a
few minutes until we build a fire. Then you'll be all right."
Some charred sticks and ashes between two flat rocks, with an old piece
of sheet iron laid on top, marked the spot where many meals had been
cooked. The boys began at once foraging for firewood. There was plenty
of it all around,--dead limbs and broken twigs,--and soon they had a big
heap ready to light.
"Now if somebody can donate a piece of paper to start a blaze, we'll
have you warm in a jiffy," said Rob.
Keith slapped his pockets. "I haven't a scrap," he declared. "Malcolm,
you might be able to spare that bunch of letters you carry around in
your pocket. You've read them enough to know them by heart, I should
think."
"Oh, keep still, can't you?" muttered Malcolm, in an aside. "Don't get
funny now."
"See him get red!" whispered Keith to Betty. "They're from a girl he met
at the first college hop last fall. She's older than he is, but he
thinks she's the one and only."
Then he turned to Malcolm again. "You might at least spare the envelopes
when it's to keep us from freezing. It would be a big sacrifice, but to
save your own blood and kin, you know--"
Malcolm stole a quick glance at Lloyd, but she was leaning wearily
against the ledge of rocks, paying no attention to Keith's remarks.
Kitty solved the difficulty by diving into Keith's pockets after the
packages, and emptying the brown sugar and chocolate into the saucepan.
She handed the wrapping-paper and bag to Rob, saying if that was not
enough she would scratch the label off the can of evaporated cream.
Carefully holding his hat over the pile of twigs to shield it from the
wind, Rob applied a match to the paper. It blazed up and caught the
wood at once, and in a few moments a comfortable fire was crackling in
front of them. Back in the cavelike hollow, under the rocks, the boys
found a big, dry log, which other campers had put there for a seat. They
rolled it forward toward the fire. Some flat stones were soon heated for
the girls to put their feet on, and, warmed and rested, they began to
investigate the contents of the baskets.
"Oh, Rob!" groaned Lloyd. "What a lunch you did pick up for a wintah
day! These slabs of cold pumpkin pie would freeze the teeth of a polah
beah, and there's nothing else but pickles and cheese and apples and raw
eggs."
"That's fine!" exclaimed Allison. "We can roast the eggs in the ashes,
and I've brought bacon to broil over the fire on switches. And here's
crackers and gingersnaps and salmon--"
"And peanuts," added Kitty, "don't forget them. Or the fudge. We will
have that ready in a little while."
"Now what could be jollier than this?" cried Gay, as she took the long,
pointed switch that Rob cut for her, and held a piece of bacon over the
fire to broil. "It's a thousand times nicer than a picnic in the summer,
when you get so hot, and the mosquitoes and redbugs and spiders swarm
all over you."
Lloyd, with a sigh of relief, saw that Rob was "acting natural" at last,
and he and Gay were showing off to mutual advantage. She was enjoying
the novel experience so fully that she was in her brightest spirits, and
he was talking to her with the familiar ease with which he talked to
Lloyd and Betty, even scolding her with brotherly frankness when she
dripped bacon grease around too promiscuously.
The eggs were saltless, the bacon smoked and black, because, held in the
flame as often as against the embers, nearly every piece caught fire and
had to be blown out. Smoke blew in their eyes, and the snow fell thicker
and thicker. But, with their feet on the hot stones, their backs to the
sheltering ledge of rocks, and the fire crackling in front of them, they
sang and laughed and ate with a zest which no summer picnic could have
inspired.
No one had remembered to bring a pail for water, and rather than tramp
over another hill to a distant spring, they quenched their thirst with
handfuls of snow. The fudge boiled over, and more than half of it was
lost in the ashes.
"It's a good thing that it did," Allison declared, tossing the empty
salmon box and a bag of peanut shells into the fire. "Ugh! The mixture
we've already eaten is enough to kill us! I think we ought to start back
home now. I'm sure that I heard the one o'clock train whistle."
But Kitty protested. They hadn't been out half long enough, she said. If
the ice on the creek had been free from snow, they would have skated for
hours, and she thought as long as that sport had been spoiled, they
ought to do something to make up for it. Gay had never gathered any
mistletoe. She thought it would be fun for them all to go around by
Stone Hollow, and get some off the big trees that grew in the
surrounding pastures.
Lloyd listened to the ready assent of the others with a sinking heart.
She had been leaning back against the rocks for some time, taking no
part in the conversation. She had grown so tired that she dreaded the
long tramp home, and had been vainly wishing that Tarbaby could suddenly
appear on the scene, or some one with a conveyance. Even a wheelbarrow
or a go-cart would have been welcome. She could not remember that she
had ever felt so exhausted before in all her life.
"But I won't be the one to hang back and spoil every one's fun," she
said to herself, "They wouldn't let me go home the shorter way by
myself. It would only break up the pah'ty if I proposed it. But I do not
see how I can evah drag myself all the way around by Stone Hollow."
At another time they might have noticed that she lagged behind, that she
had little to say, and that she looked white and tired. But Gay, her
spirits rising in the wintry air, was in her most rollicking mood. Even
Kitty had never known her to say so many funny things or to tell so many
amusing experiences. She followed on behind with Lloyd, watching
admiringly as Gay's bright face was turned first toward Malcolm, then
toward Rob, jubilant to see that her guest was captivating them as she
did every one else who fell under the charm of her vivacious manner.
Betty and Allison were on ahead with Keith, keeping a sharp lookout for
mistletoe. Lloyd scarcely heard what any one said. She plodded along
like one in a dream. It was an effort just to lift her feet. Only one
thing in life seemed desirable just then, that was her warm soft bed at
home. If she could only creep into that and shut her tired eyes and lie
there, she wouldn't care if she didn't waken for a month. She felt that
it would be bliss to sleep through Christmas and the entire vacation.
The long walk came to an end at last. The roundabout route through Stone
Hollow led them near Locust, and, with their arms full of mistletoe, the
merry picnickers parted from Lloyd and Betty at the gate. Gay exclaimed
enthusiastically over the beautiful old avenue, leading under the
snow-covered locusts to the house, but to Lloyd's relief her invitation
to come in was refused. There were a dozen reasons why they could not
stop, but they promised to be over early next morning.
"It has been the very loveliest picnic I ever went to in my whole life,"
declared Gay, as they turned away. "I'd like to turn around and do it
all over again."
"So would I," echoed Betty, warmly. "I'm not at all tired."
Lloyd looked at her in vague wonder as they plodded up the avenue. "I
don't know what's the mattah with me," she said, "that I couldn't keep
up with you all, unless it's true what Miss Gilmer said. The ice is too
thin for holiday dissipations, and this picnic was too great a weight
for it."
Betty glanced at her white face anxiously. "Go and lie down the rest of
the afternoon," she said. "I'll tie up your packages."
"Oh, if you only would!" exclaimed Lloyd, gratefully. "But it seems too
much to ask of any one. Don't tell mothah that I got so woh'n out. I'll
be all right by evening."
"She hasn't come home yet," said Betty, looking ahead of them at the
smooth expanse of newly fallen snow. "There isn't a track either of foot
or wheel."
"Then maybe I'll have time for a nap, and be all rested when she comes,"
said Lloyd. "I don't want her to get any of Miss Gilmer's notions about
me."
CHAPTER IX.
A PROGRESSIVE CHRISTMAS PARTY
LLOYD stood at the window in the falling twilight and looked out across
the snow. It had been an ideal Christmas Day. She could feel the chill
of the white winter world outside as she leaned against the frosty pane,
but in her scarlet dress, with the holly berries at her belt and in her
hair, she looked the embodiment of Christmas warmth and cheer, and as if
no cold could touch her.
The candles had not yet been lighted, but the room was filled with the
ruddy glow of the big wood fire. It shone warmly on the frames of the
portraits and the tall gilded harp with its shining strings, and gave a
burnishing touch to Betty's brown hair, as she stood by the piano,
fingering for the hundredth time the presents she had received that day.
Her dress of soft white wool suggested, like Lloyd's, the Yule-tide
season, for in the belt and shoulder-knots of dull green velvet were
caught clusters of mistletoe, the tiny waxen berries gleaming like
pearls.
"Everything is _so_ lovely!" she sighed, happily, picking up her camera
to admire it once more. It was her godmother's gift, and the thing she
had most longed to own.
She focussed it on Lloyd, who, in her scarlet dress, stood vividly
outlined by the firelight against the curtains. "I took three pictures
this morning while Rob was here, all snow scenes. The house, the locust
avenue, and a group of little darkies running after your grandfather,
calling out, 'Chris'mus gif', Colonel!' I think I'd better carry my
things all up to my room," she added, presently. "There'll be so many
people here soon, and so much moving around when the hunt begins, that
they'll be in the way."
"You'll need a wheelbarrow to take them in," answered Lloyd, turning
from the window to watch her gather them up. "You'd bettah call Walkah
to help you."
"Santa Claus certainly was good to me," answered Betty, picking up Mr.
Sherman's gift, a beautiful mother-of-pearl opera-glass. It was like the
one he had given Lloyd, except for the difference in monograms. She
rubbed it lovingly with her handkerchief, and laid it beside the camera
to be carried up-stairs. There were books from the old Colonel, an
ivory photograph-frame exquisitely carved from Lloyd. Dozens of little
articles from the girls at school, and remembrances from nearly every
friend in the Valley. There was more than her arms could hold, and,
bringing a large tray from the dining-room, she made two trips up and
down stairs with it before her treasures were all lodged safely in her
room.
Left alone for the first time that busy day, Lloyd stood a moment longer
peering out into the snowy twilight, and then crossed the room to the
table where her gifts were spread out. There had never been so many for
her since her days of dolls and dishes and woolly lambs. The
opera-glasses like Betty's were what she had wished for all year. The
purse her grandfather had slipped into the toe of her stocking was the
prettiest little affair of gray suède and silver she had ever seen. She
had thought of a dozen delightful ways to spend the gold eagle which it
held.
The book-rack which Betty had burnt for her, with her initials on each
end, was already nearly filled with the books that different friends had
sent her. Rob's gift had been a book. So had Miss Allison's and Mrs.
MacIntyre's and the old family doctor's. Malcolm had sent a great bunch
of American Beauties. She drew the vase toward her and buried her face
a moment in the delicious fragrance. Then she nibbled a caramel from
Keith's box of candy. The rosebud sachet-bag which Gay made lay in the
box of handkerchiefs that good old Mom Beck had given her.
She patted the thick letter from Joyce that told so much of interest
about Ware's Wigwam. She intended to have the water-colour sketch of
Squaw's Peak framed to take back to school with her. Mary's fat little
fingers had braided the Indian basket which came with Joyce's picture,
and Jack himself had killed the wildcat, whose skin he sent to make a
rug for her room. Lloyd was proud of that skin. As she stood smoothing
the tawny fur, the diamond on her finger flashed like fire, and she
stood turning her hand this way and that, that the glow of the flames
might fall on her new ring.
It was a beautifully cut stone in an old-fashioned setting, with the
word "_Amanthis_" engraved inside; but not for a fortune would Lloyd
have had the little circlet changed to a modern setting. For just so had
it been slipped on her grandmother's finger at her fifteenth Christmas.
She had worn it until her daughter's fifteenth Christmas, and now she,
in turn, had given it to Lloyd. All day it had been a constant joy to
her. Aside from the pleasure of possessing such a beautiful ring, she
had a feeling that in its flashing heart was crystallized a triple
happiness,--the joy of three Christmas days: hers, her mother's, and the
beautiful young girl with the June rose in her hair, who smiled down at
her from the portrait over the mantel.
She smiled up at it now in the same confiding way she had done as a
child, saying, in a low tone: "And when you played on the harp, it
flashed on yoah hand just as it does on mine." Pleased by the fancy, she
crossed the room and struck a few chords on the harp, watching the
firelight flash on the ring as she did so.
"'Sing me the songs that to me were so deah,
Long, long ago, long ago!'"
There was a step in the hall, and the portières were pushed aside as the
old Colonel came in. She did not stop, for she knew he loved the old
song, and that she was helping to bring back his happy past, when he
threw himself into a chair before the fire, and sat looking up at
Amanthis.
When she had finished the song, she perched herself on the arm of his
chair, and began ruffling up his white hair with the little hand which
wore the diamond.
"Well, has it been a happy day for grandpa's little Colonel?" he asked,
fondly, passing his arm around her.
"Oh, yes, grandfathah! Brim full and running ovah with all sawts of
lovely surprises. I'm mighty glad I'm living. And the best of it is,
although the day is neahly ovah, the fun isn't. There's still so much to
come."
"What kind of a performance is this one on the programme for to-night?"
he asked. "Betty said I had to go the whole round, but I haven't been
able to gather a very good idea of what's expected of me."
"It's just a progressive Christmas pah'ty, grandfathah," she explained,
tweaking his ear as she talked. "We couldn't agree about the celebration
this yeah. Judge Moore wanted us all to go to Oaklea. Mrs. Walton
thought they had the best right on account of their guests, so we
arranged it for everybody to take a turn at entahtaining. At five
o'clock they're all to come heah for a Christmas hunt. They ought to be
coming now, for it's neahly that time. At half-past six we'll have
dinnah at Oaklea. At half-past eight we'll go to The Beeches and finish
the evening with a general jollification. Then we'll come home by
moonlight."
"What is a Christmas hunt?" asked the Colonel. "You'll have to enlighten
my ignorance."
"It's a game that mothah and Betty thought of. Betty has worked like a
dawg to get the rhymes ready. She scarcely took time to eat yestahday,
and she gave up going to the charade pah'ty that Miss Allison gave for
Gay in the aftahnoon. It's this way. We've hidden little gifts all ovah
the house, from attic to cellah. When the guests come, each one will be
given a card with a rhyme on it, like this."
Slipping from the arm of the chair, she went out into the hall a moment,
and came back with a Christmas stocking, trimmed with holly and hung
with tiny sleigh-bells. "Little Elise Walton is to distribute the cards
from this. Heah is a sample. Miss Allison happens to be on top."
Adjusting his eye-glasses the Colonel turned so that the firelight shone
on the card, and read aloud:
"Seek where bygone summers
Have dropped their roses fair.
A little Christmas package
Is waiting for you there."
"Now where would you look if that cah'd were for you?" she demanded.
"In the conservatory?" he replied, inquiringly.
"That is what Miss Allison will do, probably," answered Lloyd, her
cheeks dimpling at the thought. "But aftah awhile she will remembah the
old dragon that mothah always keeps full of rose-leaves just as
Grandmothah Amanthis did. See?"
She lifted the lid of a rare old cloisonné rose-jar that had stood on
the end of the mantel for a longer time than Lloyd's memory could reach,
and took out a small box. Taking off the cover, she disclosed what
appeared to be a ripe cherry with a bee clinging to its side.
"Take the bee in yoah thumb and fingah and pull," she ordered. "See?
It's a cunning little tape-measuah for her work-basket."
A sound of sleigh-bells jingling rapidly toward the house made her clap
the lid on the box and drop it hastily back into the rose-jar.
"There they come!" she cried, "and the candles haven't been lighted.
Hurry, grandfathah! We can't wait to call Walkah! Throw open the front
doah!"
Flying to the hall closet for the long taper kept for the purpose, she
held it an instant toward the blazing logs, and then darting around the
room, passed from one candelabrum to another, till every waxen candle
was tipped with its star of light. In her scarlet dress and the holly
berries, her cheeks glowing and the taper held above her head as she
tiptoed to reach the highest one, she looked like some radiant acolyte
of Joy.
Betty, rushing breathlessly down-stairs at the sound of the
sleigh-bells, paused an instant between the portières at sight of her.
"Oh, Lloyd!" she cried, clasping her hands. "You've given me the
loveliest idea! I've only got it by the tail feathers now, but I'll find
words for it all some day." Then, without waiting to explain, she ran
out to the porch, where, between the tall pillars, the old Colonel
waited with elaborate courtesy to receive the coming guests.
As the sleighs glided nearer, Betty looked back through the door swung
hospitably open to its widest, and saw Lloyd hastily thrusting the taper
back into the closet.
"She lighted it at the Christmas fire," thought Betty, struggling with
the tail feathers of her lovely idea, in an effort to grasp all that
Lloyd's act suggested. "And red is the emblem of joy. It might go this
way: 'She touched the Christmas tapers with the Yule log's heart of
flame.' No, it ought to start,--
"Lighting the candles of Christmas joy,
With a spark from the Yule log's fire."
But there was no time for making poetry, with so many voices calling
"Merry Christmas," and so many outstretched hands grasping hers. In
another instant the house seemed filled to overflowing, and the dim old
mirrors were flashing back from every side one of the gayest scenes the
hospitable old mansion had ever known.
The hunt began almost immediately. As soon as Elise had emptied the
stocking of its contents, up-stairs and down-stairs and in my lady's
chamber went old and young at the bidding of the rhymes.
"I feel like a 'goosey gander,' sure enough," said Allison presently.
"For I've been all over the house, and there's no place left to wander.
Where would you go if you had this card?"
She thrust hers out toward Gay, who read:
"Standing with reluctant feet
Where Brooks and Little Rivers meet."
Gay puzzled over it a moment, and then suggested that she try the
library. "I have," answered Allison. "Keith found his package in there,
behind the picture of a Holland windmill and canal, but there is
nothing else in the room that suggests water that I have been able to
find."
"Who wrote 'Little Rivers'?"
Allison stood thinking a moment, and then cried out: "Well, of course!
Why didn't I think to look among the books?" Flying down-stairs, she
began glancing along the library shelves until she found the book she
sought and Brooks's sermons standing side by side. Between them was
wedged a thin package which proved to contain a picture which she had
long wanted, a photograph of Murillo's painting of the Madonna.
To Betty's surprise the Christmas stocking held a card for her. She had
supposed her part of the game would be only making the rhymes and
helping to hide the gifts. There was no rhyme on her card, simply the
statement, "Some little men are keeping it for you."
Remembering Allison's experience, she ran up-stairs to Lloyd's room,
where in a low bookcase were all the juvenile stories that her childhood
had held dear. A set of Miss Alcott's books stood first, and, taking out
the well-thumbed copy of "Little Men," she shook it gently, fluttering
the leaves, and turning it upside down. But the volume held nothing
except a four-leaf clover, which Lloyd had left there to mark the place
one summer day. Betty turned away, as puzzled as any of the others whom
she had helped to mystify.
Then she remembered two little wooden gnomes carved on the Swiss
match-box and ash-tray in the Colonel's den. She dashed in there, but
the gnomes kept guard over nothing but a few burnt matches. Nearly half
an hour went by of bewildered wandering from place to place, until she
happened to stray into Mr. Sherman's room. She stood by the desk,
letting her eyes glance slowly over its handsome furnishings. Then, with
a start of surprise that she had not thought of it before, she bent over
a paper-weight. It was a crystal ball supported by two miniature bronze
figures. The tiny Grecian athletes were evidently the little men who
were keeping something for her, for the toy suit-case standing between
them bore a tag on which was printed her initials.
The suit-case was not more than two inches long. She supposed it
contained bonbons. One of the girls had used a dozen like them for place
cards at a farewell luncheon just before they went away to school. It
did not open at the first pull, and when, at the second, it came
forcibly apart, there was no shower of pink and white candies, as she
had expected. Only a bit of folded paper fell out. Smoothing it on the
desk, Betty read:
"Dear little girl, you have helped all the rest
To a happy time with your patient hands.
Now fly for a week to the Cuckoo's Nest,
With godmother's love, for she understands."
Then Betty was glad that she was all alone in the room when she found
the suit-case, for the tears began to brim up into her eyes and spill
over on to the paper that had a crisp new greenback pinned to it. The
tears were all happy ones, but she hardly knew what they were for.
Whether she was happier because her heart's desire was granted, and she
could spend her vacation with Davy, or whether it was because of that
last line, "With godmother's love, _for she understands_."
"Lloyd must have told her what I said that day on the train," she
thought. It was the crowning happiness of the day for Betty. She was
singing under her breath when she danced out into the hall to join the
others.
Some of the articles were so cleverly hidden that she had to give an
occasional hint to the bewildered seekers. In the seats of chairs, over
the deer's antlers in the hall, high up in the candelabra, strapped
inside of umbrellas, poked into glove fingers, all of them were in
unexpected places. Yet the directions of the verses seemed so plain when
once understood that the hunters laughed at their own stupidity.
Even Judge Moore and the old Colonel were swept into the game, and Mrs.
MacIntyre's silvery hair bent just as eagerly as Elise's dark curls over
each suspected spot and out-of-the-way corner until she found the volume
of essays that had been hidden for her.
By quarter-past six every one's search had been successful except Rob's.
"It would take a Christopher Columbus to find this place," he said,
scowling at his verse. "And I'd be willing to bet anything that it isn't
the bank that Shakespeare had in mind. Give me a hint, Lloyd." He held
out the card:
"I know a bank where the wild thyme grows.
Unseen it lies, unsung by bard.
Something keeps watch there, no man knows,
And over your gift it's standing guard."
"I haven't the faintest idea what it is," she said. "Betty wrote so many
of them yestahday aftahnoon while I was at the pah'ty, and she wouldn't
tell me this one. She said she thought you'd suahly guess it, but she
didn't want you to have a hint from any one. Come ovah to-morrow, and
we'll find it if we have to turn the house upside down."
The sleighs had made one trip to Oaklea and returned for another load,
when Rob finally gave up the search. Lloyd and Gay climbed into the same
seat, and, as they cuddled down among the warm robes, Gay caught Lloyd's
hand in an impetuous squeeze.
"Oh, I'm having such a good time!" she exclaimed. "I've been in a dizzy
whirl ever since five o'clock this morning. I never had a sleigh-ride
before to-day. I don't wonder that Betty calls this the House Beautiful.
Look back at it now. It's fairy-land!" A light was streaming from every
window, and the snow sparkled like diamonds in the moonlight.
The drive to Oaklea was so short that the Judge and Mrs. Moore were
welcoming them at the door before Gay had fairly begun her account of
the day's happening. Dinner was announced almost immediately, and she
was ushered into one of the largest dining-rooms she had ever seen, and
seated at the long table. Such a large Christmas tree formed the
centrepiece that she could catch only an occasional glimpse through its
branches of Lloyd, seated on the other side between Malcolm and John
Baylor.
Gay was between Ranald and Rob. While she kept up a lively chatter,
first with one and then the other, a sentence floating across the table
now and then made her long to hear what was being said on the other side
of the Christmas tree. She heard Malcolm say, in a surprised tone: "Maud
Minor! No, indeed, I didn't! Why, I scarcely mentioned you. Don't you
believe--"
A general laugh at one of the old Colonel's stories drowned the rest of
the sentence, and left Gay wondering which one of Maud's many tales was
not to be believed.
"I'll ask her after dinner," thought Gay. But it was a long time till
all the courses that followed the turkey gave way in slow succession to
plum pudding and the trifles on the Christmas tree. Then Gay had no
opportunity to ask her question, for Malcolm still stayed by Lloyd's
side when the company broke up into little groups in the hall and the
adjoining parlours.
"The children are growing up, Jack," said the old Judge, laying his hand
on Mr. Sherman's shoulder, as several couples passed on their way to the
music-room. "There's Rob, now, the young rascal, taller than his
father; and it seems only yesterday that he was riding pickaback on my
shoulders, and tooting his first Christmas trumpet in my ears. And young
MacIntyre there is nearly a full-fledged man. He'll soon be eighteen, he
tells me. Why, at his age--"
The Judge rambled off into a series of reminiscences which would have
been very entertaining to the younger man had his eyes not been
following Lloyd. He did not like to think that she was growing up. He
wanted to keep her a child. In his fond eyes she was always beautiful,
but he had never seen her look as well as she did to-night. The scarlet
dress and the holly berries gave her unusual colour. He fancied that
there was a deeper flush on her face when Malcolm leaned over her chair
to say something to her. Then he told himself that it was only fancy.
Looking up, Lloyd caught sight of her father in the doorway, and flashed
him a smile so open and reassuring that he turned away, thinking, "My
honest little Hildegarde! She asked for her yardstick, and I can surely
trust her to use it as she promised."
Presently Malcolm, hunting through his pockets for a programme he was
talking about, took out a bunch of letters. As he hastily turned them
over, several unmounted photographs fluttered out and fell at Lloyd's
feet. An amused smile dimpled her mouth as her hasty glance showed her
that they were all of the same girl,--evidently kodak shots he had taken
himself. Probably that was the girl and these were the letters that
Keith had teased him about at the picnic.
Neither spoke, and he reddened uncomfortably at her amused smile, as he
put them back into his pocket. At that moment, Rob turned toward them,
holding his new watch in his hand.
"I have just been showing Ranald the present Daddy gave me," he said to
Lloyd. "It reminded me that I hadn't told you,--I've put that same old
four-leaf clover into the back of this watch that I had in my silver
one. I wouldn't lose my luck by losing your hoodoo charm for anything in
the world."
At the sight of the clover Lloyd blushed violently. But it was not the
little dried leaf that deepened the quick colour in her cheeks. It was
the thought of the last time he had shown it to her, and the scene it
recalled at the churchyard stile, when Malcolm had begged for the tip of
a curl to carry with him always as a talisman; as a token that he was
really her knight, as he had been in the princess play, and that he
would come to her on some glad morrow.
"He'll have a pocket full of such talismans by the time he's through
college," she thought, recalling the kodak pictures she had just seen.
"I'm _mighty_ glad that I didn't give him one."
Over at The Beeches, Elise and her little friends had arranged to give a
Christmas play, so promptly at the hour agreed upon the party
"progressed" in Mrs. Walton's wake. There they found the third royal
welcome, and the gayest of entertainments. It had been an exciting day
for all of them, and, as Kitty expressed it, they were all wound up like
alarm-clocks. They would go off pretty soon with a br-r-r and a bang,
and then run down.
The play passed off without a hitch in the performance, and ended in a
blaze of spangles and red light, when the fairy queen, trailing off the
stage, went through the audience showering on her guests Christmas
roses, supposed to have been called to life by her magic wand, and
distributed as souvenirs of her skill.
Then somebody came up to Gay with her violin. With Allison to play her
accompaniments, she chose her sweetest pieces, and threw her whole soul
into the rendering of them. She was so grateful to these dear people
who had taken her in like one of themselves, and given her such a happy,
happy holiday-time that she did her best, and Gay's best on the violin
was a treat even to the musical critics in the company. Kitty was so
proud of her she could not help expressing her pleasure aloud, much to
Gay's embarrassment. To hide her confusion, she started a merry jig
tune, so rollicking and irresistible that hands and feet all through the
rooms began to pat the time. Keith seized his Aunt Allison around the
waist and waltzed her out into the floor.
"Come on, everybody!" he cried.
Lloyd was standing in the doorway, talking to Doctor Shelby, the
white-haired physician of the village, one of her oldest and dearest
friends.
"Go on, Miss Holly-berry," he said. "If I wasn't such a stiff old
graybeard, I'd be at it myself. There's Ranald wanting to ask you."
Lloyd waltzed off with Ranald, as light on her feet as a bit of
thistle-down, and the old doctor's eyes followed her fondly.
"She's like Amanthis," he said to himself. "And she will grow more like
her as the years go by, so spirited and high-strung. But they'll have to
watch her, or she'll wear herself out."
Presently he missed the flash of the scarlet dress, in and out among
the others, and he did not see it again until the music had stopped and
the revel was ending with the chimes, rung softly on the Bells of Luzon.
As he stepped back to allow several guests to pass him on the way up to
the dressing-room, he caught sight of Lloyd in an alcove in the back
hall. She was attempting to draw a glass of ice-water from the cooler.
Her hands shook, and her face was so pale that it startled him. "What's
the matter, child?" he exclaimed.
"Nothing," she answered, trying to force a little laugh. "It's just that
I felt for a minute as if I might faint. I nevah did, you know. I reckon
it's as Kitty said. We've been wound up all day, and we've run so hah'd
we've about run down, and we have to stop whethah we want to or not."
He looked at her keenly and began counting her pulse. "You are not to
get wound up this way any more this winter, young lady," he said,
sternly. "Go straight home and go to bed, and stay there until day after
to-morrow. The rest cure is what you need."
"And miss Katie Mallard's pah'ty?" she cried. "Why, I couldn't do it
even for you, you bad old ogah."
She made a saucy mouth at him, and then, with her most winning smile,
held out her hand to say good night, for the guests were beginning to
take their departure. "_Please_, Mistah _My_-Doctah,"--it was the pet
name she had given him years ago when she used to ride on his
shoulder,--"please don't go to putting any notions into Papa Jack's head
or mothah's. I'm just ti'ahed. That's all. I'll be all right in the
mawning."
"Come, Lloyd," called Mrs. Sherman. "We're ready to start now." She saw
with a sigh of relief that her mother was bringing her coat toward her,
so she would not have to climb the stairs for it. She was tired,
dreadfully tired, she admitted to herself. But it had been such a happy
day it was worth the fatigue.
As she drove homeward in the sleigh, she slipped her hand out of her
muff, and turned it in the moonlight to watch the sparkle of the new
ring. She wondered if the two girls who had worn it in turn before her
had had half as happy a fifteenth Christmas as she.
CHAPTER X.
THE DUNGEON OF DISAPPOINTMENT
IT was nearly noon when Lloyd wakened next morning. Her head ached, and
she wondered dully how anybody could feel lively enough to sing as Aunt
Cindy was doing, somewhere back in the servants' quarters. The sound of
a squeaking wheelbarrow had wakened her. Alec was trundling it around
the house, with the parrot perched on it. The parrot loved to ride, and
its silly laugh at every jolt of the squeaking barrow usually amused
Lloyd, but to-day its harsh chatter annoyed her.
"Oh, deah!" she groaned, sitting up in bed and yawning. "I feel as if I
could sleep for a week. I wouldn't get up at all if it wasn't for Katie
Mallard's pah'ty. I hate this day-aftah-Christmas feeling, as if the
bottom had dropped out of everything."
She dressed slowly and went down-stairs. "Where's mothah, Mom Beck?" she
asked, pausing in the dining-room door. The old coloured woman was
arranging flowers for the lunch-table.
"She's done gone ovah to Rollington, honey, with the old Cun'l. Walkah's
mothah is sick, and sent for 'em. I'm lookin' for 'em to come home any
minute now. Come right along in, honey. I've kep' yoah breakfus' good
and hot."
"I don't want anything to eat. I'm not hungry now. I'd rathah wait till
lunch. Where's Betty, Mom Beck?"
"Now listen to that!" ejaculated the old woman, sharply. "Don't you
remembah? She went off on the early train this mawning to that place you
all calls the Cuckoo's Nest. I packed her satchel befoah daylight."
"I had forgotten she was going," exclaimed Lloyd, turning to the window
with a discontented expression, which only the snowbirds on the lawn
could see. She had come down-stairs expecting to talk over all the
happenings of the previous day with Betty, and to find her gone gave her
a vague sense of injury. She knew the feeling was unreasonable, but she
could not shake it off.
The flash of the new ring gave her a momentary pleasure, but she was in
a mood that nothing could please her long. When she strolled into the
drawing-room, everything was in spotless order, and so quiet that the
stillness was oppressive. Even the fire burned with a steady, noiseless
glow, without the usual crackle, and the ashes fell on the hearth with
velvety softness.
Some of her new books lay on a side table. She picked them up and
glanced through them, catching at a paragraph here and there. But one
after another she laid them down. She was not in a mood for reading.
Then she took a candied date from the bonbon dish, but it seemed to lack
its usual flavour. After nibbling each end, she threw it into the fire.
Slipping her new opera-glass from its case, she went to the window and
turned the lens on the distant entrance gate. The road in each direction
seemed deserted. So she put the glass back in its case, and, after
strolling restlessly around the room, walked over to the harp and struck
a few chords.
"It's all out of tune!" she exclaimed, fretfully, thrumming the faulty
string with impatient fingers. "Everything seems out of tune this
mawning!"
As she spoke, the string broke with a sudden harsh twang that made her
jump. She was so startled that the tears came to her eyes, and so
nervous that she flung herself face downward on the pillows of the
long-Persian divan, and began sobbing hysterically. The strain of the
last few weeks had been too much for her. Miss Gilmer's prophecy had
come true. The ice had given away under the extra weight put upon it.
She was sobbing so hard that she did not hear the sound of carriage
wheels rolling softly up the avenue through the snow, and when the front
door banged shut she started again, and began trembling as she had done
when the harp-string broke. She was crying convulsively now, so hard
that she could not stop, although she clenched her fists and bit her
lips in a strong effort to regain self-control.
Mrs. Sherman, her face all aglow from the cold drive, and looking almost
girlishly fair in her big hat with the plumes, and her dark furs,
hurried in to the fire. The Colonel, throwing back his scarlet lined
cape, pushed aside the portière for her to enter. He was the first to
catch sight of the shaking form on the divan.
"Why, Lloyd, child, what's the matter?" he demanded, anxiously. "What's
the matter with grandpa's little girl?"
Mrs. Sherman, with a frightened expression, hurried to her, and, bending
over her, tried to get a glimpse of the tear-swollen face buried so
persistently in the cushions.
"Nothing's happened! No, I'm not sick," came in smothered tones from the
depths of the pillows. "It's j-just crying itself, and I--I--I c-can't
stop-p-p!"
A long shiver passed over her, and Mrs. Sherman, stroking her forehead
with a soothing hand, waited for her to grow quiet before plying her
with questions. But the old Colonel paced impatiently back and forth.
"The child _must_ be sick," he declared. "She'll be coming down with a
fever or something if we don't take vigorous measures to prevent it. I
shall telephone for Dick Shelby this minute."
He started toward the hall, but a wild wail from Lloyd stopped him.
"I won't have the doctah! I'm not sick, and you sha'n't send for him! I
j-just cried because the harp-string b-broke so suddenly that it
s-scared me!"
The Colonel paused and looked at her in amazement. Not since the time
when she, a five-year-old child, had flung a handful of mud over his
white clothes had she spoken to him in such a defiant tone. He answered
soothingly, as if she were still that little child, to be coaxed into
good behaviour. "Oh, yes, you won't mind the doctor's coming if grandpa
wants him to. He'll keep you from getting down sick, and spoiling all
the rest of your vacation. I'll just ask him to step up and look at
you."
"No, don't!" demanded Lloyd, as he started again toward the hall. "No,
you sha'n't!" she insisted, springing up and stamping her foot. "I won't
have the old doctah, and I won't take any of his nasty old medicine!
He'll make me stay home from Katie's pah'ty this aftahnoon and from the
matinée to-morrow--and there's nothing the mattah, only I'm cross and
nervous, and the moah you bothah me the hah'dah it is to stop crying!"
Then ashamed of her petulant outburst, she threw her arms around his
neck, and sobbed on his shoulder. In the end she had her own way, for
the glass of hot milk which her mother sent for, as soon as she found
Lloyd had eaten no breakfast, soothed her overstrung nerves. A brisk
walk to the post-office in the bracing December air gave her an appetite
for luncheon. Then she slept again until time to dress for Katie's
party, so that when the old Colonel watched her start off, she looked so
bright and was in such buoyant spirits that he wondered vaguely if her
crying spell could have been the remnant of some childish tantrum
instead of the forerunner of an illness.
He banished the thought instantly from his loyal old heart, ashamed of
having applied such a word as tantrum to anything Lloyd might choose to
do. Of course she had felt ill, he told himself. So wretched that she
hadn't known what she was saying when she stormed at him so angrily. He
resolved to watch her closely, and take matters in his own hands if she
showed any more alarming symptoms.
There was a matinée next day in Louisville, to which Mrs. Sherman took
all the girls in the neighbourhood. That was the end of the Christmas
gaieties for Lloyd. Doctor Shelby was at Locust on her return. He came
out of the old Colonel's den, where he had been sitting for several
hours, deep in a game of chess, and found her shivering in front of the
fire with a nervous chill, sobbing hysterically.
She stormed at him almost as she had done at her grandfather, protesting
that she was only tired and nervous, and that she would be all right as
soon as she had had her cry out. But she submitted meekly when he
ordered her mother to put her to bed. The old doctor had always indulged
her, but there was a sternness in his manner now that made her obey
him.
He called to see her the next day, and the next. But his visits did not
seem like professional ones. There was nothing said about medicine or
symptoms. He only asked her about school and the good times she had been
having, and the extra studying she had been doing. Then he sat and joked
and talked with her and her mother, as had been his habit ever since
Lloyd could remember. The third afternoon she was down in the
drawing-room when he came.
"We'll soon be having Miss Holly-berry back again," he said, playfully
pinching her pale cheek.
"And without taking any nasty old medicine," she answered. "I don't mind
doctahs when they can cure people without giving them pills and
powdahs."
The Colonel looked up sharply. "What's that?" he asked. "Haven't you
been giving her anything, Dick? It seems to me the child would get along
faster if she had a good tonic."
"I am going to prescribe one this morning," the doctor answered. "That's
what I came up for." He laughed at the look of disgust on Lloyd's face.
"It isn't bad," he assured her, with an indulgent smile. "Why, I know
dozens of girls who would say that the tonic I am going to prescribe is
the most agreeable that could be given. I've even had them beg for it.
This is it, simply to lengthen your Christmas vacation. Didn't I hear a
certain young lady wishing the other night that she could stretch hers
out indefinitely?"
Lloyd's dimples deepened. "How much longah will you make it? A week? If
I stay out much longah than that, it will be such hah'd work to catch up
with my classes that the game won't be worth the candle."
"But I would make it so long that there would be no necessity of having
to catch up, as you call it. You could simply make a fresh start in a
new class."
Lloyd looked up in alarm. "When?" she demanded.
"Um--well, next fall, let us say," he answered, deliberately. "Yes,
surely by that time you'll be well and sound as a new dollar."
"Next fall!" she gasped, her face growing white and her eyes strangely
big and dark. "You don't mean--you _couldn't_ mean that I must leave
school."
"Yes, that's exactly what I mean. You are overtaxing yourself and must
stop--"
"Oh, I can't!" interrupted Lloyd, speaking very fast. "I _won't_! It's
cruel to ask it when I've worked so hard to keep from falling behind
Betty and the girls. Oh, you don't _know_ what it means to me!"
The old doctor looked up in amazement at this unexpected outburst.
"No," he answered, slowly, after a moment's silence. "I don't suppose I
do. I had no idea it would be a disappointment to you. I would gladly
save you from it if I could. But listen to me, my little girl, and try
to be reasonable. You are on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Nothing
can mean as much to you as your health. What will keeping up with the
other girls amount to if the strain and the overtaxing makes an invalid
of you for life, perhaps?
"Mind you, I am not saying that the work itself is too great a tax.
Madam Chartley's is one of the best regulated schools I have ever
inquired into. Ordinarily a girl ought to be able to take the course
with perfect ease. But you see that little spell of la grippe left you
weak and unfit for any extra strain, and, instead of easing up a bit,
you went on piling on all that extra load of lessons and Christmas
preparations and vacation dissipations. It was like trying to walk on a
broken foot. The more you tried, the worse it got. The mischief is done
now, and there is no remedy but to stop short off."
Lloyd sat very still for a moment, staring out of the window in a dazed,
unseeing way, as if not fully understanding all he said. Then she turned
with a piteous appeal in her face to Mrs. Sherman.
"Mothah, it isn't so, is it? I won't have to give up school now! You
wouldn't make me, would you, when you know how I love it? Oh, it will
neahly _kill_ me if you do! Please say no, mothah! _Please_!"
Mrs. Sherman's eyes were full of tears. "My poor little girl," she
exclaimed as Lloyd threw herself into her arms. "I'm afraid we must do
as the doctor says. He would not ask such a sacrifice if it were not
necessary. You know how dearly he has always loved you."
Without waiting to hear any more, Lloyd sprang up and ran out of the
room. Rushing up-stairs, she bolted her door behind her, and threw
herself across the bed.
"It is the first great disappointment she has ever had in her life,"
said her mother, looking after her with a troubled face. "Couldn't you
make the sentence a little easier, doctor? Couldn't she go back and take
one study, just to be with the girls?"
He shook his head. "No, Elizabeth. She is too ambitious and high-strung
for that. One study wouldn't satisfy her. She'd chafe at not being able
to keep up in everything. She has nothing serious the matter with her
now, but it would not take long to make a wreck of her health at the
gait she has been going. There must be no more parties, no more regular
school work, and even no more music lessons this winter. She must have
the simplest kind of a life. Keep her out-of-doors all you can. A little
prevention now will be worth pounds of cure after awhile."
"I suppose you are right, Dick," said the old Colonel, huskily, "but I
swear I'd give the only arm the Yankees left me to save her from this
disappointment."
Lying across the bed up-stairs, Lloyd cried and sobbed until she was
exhausted. The handkerchief clutched in her hand in a damp little ball
had wiped away the bitterest tears she had ever shed. In her inmost
heart she knew that the doctor was right. It had been weeks since she
had felt strong and well. She remembered the way she had lagged behind
at the picnic, and what an effort it had been to talk and make herself
agreeable lately. Recalling the last few weeks, it seemed to her that
she had been in tears half the time. She admitted to herself that she
would rather be dead than to be an invalid for life like her great-aunt
Jane. To sit always in a darkened room that smelled of camphor, and to
talk in a weak, complaining voice that made everybody tired. Of course
if there was danger of her growing to be like _her_, she would rather
leave school than run such a risk. But why, oh, _why_ was she forced to
make such a choice? The other girls didn't have to. She had done no more
than they to bring about such a state of affairs.
They could go back to dear old Warwick Hall, but she would have to stay
behind. And she would always be behind, for, even if she went back with
them another year, it couldn't be the same. They would have done so much
in the meantime,--gone on so far ahead, made new friends and found new
interests, and she would have to drop back in the class below, and
never, never stand on the same footing with them again. It was so hard,
so cruel, that she should have to face a blighted life at only fifteen.
She unlocked the door presently at her mother's knock, but she didn't
want to be comforted. Nothing anybody could say could change things, she
sobbed, or make the disappointment any easier to bear. So Mrs. Sherman
wisely withdrew, and left her to fight it out alone.
The next time she peeped into the room, Lloyd was asleep, worn out with
the violence of her grief, so she tiptoed down-stairs, leaving the door
ajar behind her. The Colonel was pacing up and down the library.
"I declare I can't think of anything but that child's disappointment!"
he exclaimed, as she came in. "I can't read! I can't settle down to
anything. I have been trying to think of some pleasure we could give her
to make up for it in a way. A winter in Florida, maybe. Poor baby! if I
could only bear it for her, how glad I would be to do it!"
Mrs. Sherman picked up a bit of needlework from the table where she had
left it, and, sitting down by the window, began to hemstitch.
"I don't know, papa," she said, slowly, "but I'm beginning to fear that
we have done too much of that for Lloyd; smoothed the difficulties out
of her way too much; made things too easy. We've fairly held our arms
around her to shield her not only from harmful things, but from even
trifling unpleasantness. Maybe if she had had to face the smaller
disappointments that most children have to bear, the greater ones would
not seem so overwhelming. She could have met this more bravely."
The Colonel sniffed impatiently. "All foolishness, Elizabeth! All
foolishness! That may be the case with ordinary children, but not with
such a sweet, unspoiled nature as Lloyd's."
It was nearly dark when Lloyd wakened. She heard Kitty's voice down in
the hall, asking to see her, and Gay's exclamation of surprise and
regret at something her mother said in a low voice. She knew that she
was telling them the doctor's decision. Then Mom Beck tapped at the door
to ask if she would see the girls awhile, but she sent her away with a
mournful shake of the head. She was too miserable even to speak.
The low murmur of voices went on for some time. It grew loud enough for
her to distinguish the words when the girls came out into the hall again
to take their departure. Lloyd raised herself on her elbow to listen.
Kitty was telling something that had happened that afternoon at the
candy-pull from which they were just returning. A wan smile flitted
across Lloyd's face, in sympathy with the merry laugh that floated up
the stairs. But it faded the next instant as she whispered, bitterly:
"That's the way it will always be. They will go on having good times
without me, and they'll get so they'll nevah even miss me. I'll be left
out of everything. There's nothing left to look forward to any moah. Oh,
it's all so dah'k and gloomy--I know now how Ederyn felt, for I'm just
like he was, walled up in a dreadful Dungeon of Disappointment."
The fancy pleased her so that she went on making herself miserable with
it long after the door closed behind Kitty and Gay. Over and over she
pictured Warwick Hall, which just then seemed the most desirable place
in all the world. She could see the shining river, as she had watched it
so many times from her window, flowing past the stately terraces between
its willow-fringed banks. She could hear the breezy summons of the
hunter's horn, calling the girls to rambles over the wooded hills or
through the quaint old garden. She could see the sun streaming into the
south windows of the English room, with the class gathered around Miss
Chilton, eager and interested. All the dear, delightful round of
inspiring work and play would go on day after day for the others, but it
would go on without her. Henceforth she would be left out of everything
pleasant and worth while.
She would not go down to dinner. She could not take such a puffed,
tear-swollen face to the table to make everybody else unhappy, and she
couldn't throw off her despondent mood. Maybe in a few days, she
thought, she might be able to hide her feelings sufficiently to appear
in public, but it would always be with a secret sorrow gnawing at her
heart. Just now she shrank from sympathy, and she didn't want any one to
cheer her up. It did not seem possible that she could ever smile again,
and she wasn't sure that she wanted to.
Mom Beck brought up the daintiest of dinners on a tray, but carried it
back almost untasted. As soon as she was gone, Lloyd undressed and crept
into bed.
Sleep was far from her, however, and she lay with her eyes wide open.
The room was full of soft shadows and the flicker of firelight on the
furniture. She could think of only one thing, and she brooded over that
until it seemed to her feverish, disordered fancy that her
disappointment was the greatest that any one had ever been forced to
bear.
"Why couldn't it have happened to some girl who didn't care?" she
thought, bitterly. "Some girl like Maud Minor, who doesn't like school,
anyhow. It doesn't seem fair when I've tried my best to do exactly
right, to leave a road of the loving hah't in everybody's memory, to
keep the tryst--"
That thought brought a fresh reason for grief. There was the string of
pearls. Now she could not finish her little white rosary. The fire
flared up and shone brilliantly for a few moments, lighting a group of
pictures over her bed. They were the photographs she had taken in
Arizona. There was Ware's Wigwam. The firelight was not bright enough to
enable her to read the lines Joyce had written under it, but she knew
the inscription was the Ware family's motto, taken from the "Vicar of
Wakefield": "Let us be inflexible, and fortune will at last change in
our favour." A shadow of a smile actually came to her lips as she
remembered Mary Ware gravely explaining it.
"Why, even Norman knows that if you'll swallow your sobs and _stiffen_
when you bump your head or anything, it doesn't hurt half as bad as if
you just let loose and howl."
And there was the photograph of old Camelback Mountain, bringing back
the story of Shapur, left helpless on the sands of the Desert of
Waiting, while the caravan passed on without him to the City of his
Desire. She remembered that when she hung it over her bed she had
thought, "If ever _I_ come to such a place, this will help me to bear
it patiently."
Then she thought of Joyce, how bravely and uncomplainingly she had met
her disappointment. Not only had she left school and given up her
ambition to be an artist, but she had had to give up the old home she
loved, all her friends, and everything that made her girlhood bright, to
go out into the lonely desert and work like a squaw.
The thought of Joyce brought back all the lessons she had learned in the
School of the Bees. But she sighed presently: "Oh, deah, all those
things sounded so nice and comforting when they seemed meant for othah
people. They don't seem so comforting now that I'm in trouble myself.
It's like the poultice Aunt Cindy made for Walkah's toothache. She was
disgusted because he didn't stop complaining right away, and said it
ought to have cured him if it didn't. But it wasn't such a powahful
remedy when she had the toothache herself. She grumbled moah than
Walkah. It's all well enough to say that I'll seal up my troubles as the
bees seal up the things that get into the cells to spoil their honey,
but now the time is heah, I simply can't!"
Nevertheless, what the School of the Bees taught did help. So did the
sight of the patient old Camelback Mountain, that had inspired the
legend of Shapur. And more than all the little group in front of the
Wigwam helped, as she remembered how bravely they had met their
troubles.
One by one her happy Arizona days came back to her. After all, it was
something to have lived fifteen beautiful years untouched by trouble.
She was thankful for that much, even if the future held nothing more for
her. If she couldn't be happy, she could at least take Mary's advice and
"not let loose and howl" about it any more. If she couldn't be bright
and cheerful, she could "swallow her sobs and stiffen." With the
resolution to try Mary's remedy for her woes in the morning, she lay
drowsily watching the firelight flicker across the picture of the
Wigwam.
CHAPTER XI.
IN THE ATTIC
IF the sun had been shining next morning, it would have been easier for
Lloyd to keep her resolution, and face the family bravely at breakfast.
But the rain was pouring against the windows; a slow, monotonous rain
that ran in little rivers over the lawn, melting the snow, and turning
the white landscape into a dreary scene of mud and bare branches.
Twice on the way down-stairs she paused, thinking that she could not
possibly sit through the meal without crying, and that it would be
better to go back and breakfast alone in her room than to be a damper on
the spirits of the family. Even so slight a thing as the tone of
sympathy in her grandfather's "good morning" made the tears spring to
her eyes, but she winked them back, and answered almost cheerfully his
question as to how she felt.
"Oh, just like the weathah, grandfathah. All gray and drippy; but I'll
clean up aftah awhile."
She could not smile as she said it, but the effort she made to be
cheerful made the next attempt easier, and presently she acknowledged to
herself that Mary was right. It did help, to swallow one's sobs.
After breakfast she stood at the window, watching her father drive away
to the station in the rain. As the carriage disappeared and there was
nothing more to watch, she wondered dully how she could spend the long
morning.
"Some one wants you at the telephone, Lloyd," called the Colonel, on his
way to his den.
"Oh, good! I hope it is Kitty," she exclaimed, anticipating a long visit
over the wire.
But it was Malcolm MacIntyre who had rung her up, to bid her good-bye.
He and Keith were about to start home. They had intended to go up to
Locust, he told her, for a short call before train time, but it was
raining too hard. Would she please make their adieus to her mother and
the rest of the family. He had heard that she was not going back to
school. Was it true? She was in luck. No? She was disappointed? Well,
that was too bad. He was awfully sorry. But she mustn't worry over
missing a few months of school. It wouldn't amount to much in the long
run. For his part, if he were a girl and didn't have to fit himself for
a profession, he would be glad to have such a postscript added to his
Christmas vacation. He'd noticed that usually the postscript to a girl's
letter had more in it than the letter itself. Possibly it would be that
way with her vacation. He hoped so.
Although it was in the most cordial tone that he expressed his regret at
her disappointment, and bade Princess Winsome good-bye until the "good
old summer-time," it was with a vague feeling of disappointment that
Lloyd hung up the receiver and turned away from the telephone.
"He doesn't undahstand at all!" she thought. "He hasn't the faintest
idea how much it means to me to give up school. He thinks that, because
I'm a girl, I haven't any ambition, and that it doesn't hurt me as it
would him. Maybe it wouldn't have sounded quite the same if I could have
seen him say it, but ovah the telephone, somehow--although he was mighty
nice and polite--it sounded sawt of patronizing."
She went into the library to deliver Malcolm's farewell messages to her
mother. "He seems so much moah grown up this time than he evah has
befoah," she added. "I don't like him half as much that way as the way
he used to be."
Mrs. Sherman was busy about the house all morning, so Lloyd found
entertainment following her from room to room, as she inspected the
linen closet, superintended the weekly cleaning of the pantry, and
rearranged some of the library shelves to make room for the Christmas
books. But in the afternoon she had a number of letters to write,
acknowledging the gifts which had been sent her by distant friends, and
Lloyd was left to her own amusement.
[Illustration: "ONE OF THE BOYS HAD DARED HIM TO CARRY IT."]
The doctor did not want her to read long at a time. The rain was pouring
too hard for her to venture out-of-doors, and about the middle of the
afternoon the silence and loneliness of the big house seemed more than
she could endure.
"I could scream, I'm so nervous and ti'ahed of being by myself," she
exclaimed. "If just a piece of a day is so hah'd to drag through as this
has been, how can I stand all the rest of the wintah?"
She was counting up the weeks ahead of her on the big library calendar,
when, through the window, she caught sight of Rob coming toward the
house. The rain was running in streams from the bottom of his
mackintosh, and from a huge umbrella that spread over him like a tent.
It was an enormous advertising umbrella, taken from one of the delivery
wagons at the store. One of the boys had dared him to carry it.
"_Groceries, Dry Goods, Boots and_" appeared in black letters on the
yellow side turned toward Lloyd. "_Shoes. Jayne's Emporium_," she
called, supplying the rest of the familiar advertisement from memory.
"What on earth are you doing with that wagon-top ovah you?" she asked
from the front door, where she stood watching his approach. He was
striding along whistling as cheerily as if it were a midsummer day. He
looked up and smiled in response to her call, and twirled the umbrella
till the rain-drops flew in every direction in a fine spray. Lloyd felt
as if the sun had suddenly come out from behind the clouds.
"I've come to finish my Christmas hunt," he said, as he stepped up on
the porch and shook himself like a great water-spaniel.
"Oh," cried Lloyd, "I intended to ask Betty befoah she went away where
she had hidden yoah present, and she left next mawning so early that I
was still asleep. Maybe mothah knows."
But Mrs. Sherman, busy with her letters, shook her head. "I haven't the
faintest idea," she answered. "But I remember she said something about
Rob's being the hardest one of all to find, so you'll probably be kept
busy the rest of the day. Don't you children bother either Mom Beck or
Cindy to help you hunt," she called after them. "They have all they can
attend to to-day."
"Let's see that verse again, Rob," said Lloyd, as they went out of the
library into the drawing-room. He fumbled in several pockets and finally
produced the card.
"I know a bank where the wild thyme grows.
Unseen it lies, unsung by bard.
Something keeps watch there, no man knows,
And over your gift it's standing guard."
As on Christmas Day, the only bank the verse suggested was in the
conservatory, a long, narrow ledge of ferns and maidenhair, green with
overhanging vines and graceful fronds. For nearly half an hour they
poked around in it, lifting the ferns from the warm, moist earth to see
if anything lay hidden at their roots. It was like April in the
conservatory, steamy and warm, and the fragrance of hyacinths and white
violets made it a delightful place in which to linger.
"Bank--bank--" repeated Lloyd, puzzling over the verse again, when they
had given up the search in the conservatory and gone back to the
drawing-room. "It might mean a savings-bank, but there hasn't been one
in the house since that little red tin one of mine that you dropped into
the well with my three precious dimes in it. I've felt all these yeahs
that you owed me thirty cents."
"Now, Lloyd Sherman, there's no use in bringing up that old quarrel
again," he laughed. "You know we were playing that robbers were coming,
and we had to lower our gold and jewels into the well, and you tied the
fishing-line around the bank your own self. So I am not to blame if the
knot came untied at the very first jerk. We've wasted enough breath
arguing that point to start a small cyclone."
They laughed again over the recollection of their old quarrel, then Rob
read the verse once more. Presently he stopped drumming on the table
with his thumbs, and said, slowly, as if trying to recall something long
forgotten: "Don't you remember,--it seems ages before we dropped your
red bank in the well,--that I had a remarkable penny savings-bank? It
was some sort of a slot machine in the shape of a little iron dog. Daddy
brought it to me from New York. There was some kind of an indicator on
the side of it that looked like the face of a watch. That was my
introduction to puns, for Daddy said it was a _watch_ dog, made to guard
my pennies. Surely you haven't forgotten old Watch, for after the
indicator was broken I brought the safe over here, and we kept it on
the door-mat in front of your playhouse, to guard the premises."
"I should say I do remembah!" answered Lloyd. "Probably it's up in the
attic now. But what has that to do with the rhyme?"
"Don't you see? That must be the 'bank' where the wild thyme grows. I
don't know whether Betty refers to the wild time we used to have playing
in the attic, or the wild time that the watch kept. But I'm certain that
that is the bank she means."
"Come on, then," cried Lloyd. "Let's go up to the attic and hunt for it.
I haven't been up there for ovah a yeah."
Rob led the way to the upper hall, and then up the attic stairs, taking
the steep steps two at a time in long leaps.
"That isn't the way you used to climb these stairs," laughed Lloyd.
"Don't you know you had to weah little long-sleeved aprons when you came
ovah to play with me, to keep yoahself clean? You always stepped on the
front of them and stumbled going up these steps."
A headless and tailless hobby-horse of Rob's, on which they had ridden
many imaginary miles, stood in one corner, and he crossed over to
examine it, with an amused smile.
"It certainly didn't take much to amuse us in those days," he said,
touching the rockers with his foot, and starting the disabled beast to
bobbing back and forth. "How long has it been since we used to ride this
thing? Is my hair white? I declare I never had anything make me feel so
ancient as the sight of this old hobby-horse. I feel older than
grandfather."
Lloyd had opened a dilapidated hair-covered trunk, and was bending over
a family of dolls stowed away inside. "Heah is old Belinda!" she
exclaimed. "And Carrie Belle May, and Rosalie, the Prairie Flowah! 'And,
oh, Rob! Look at poah Nelly Bly, all wah-paint and feathahs, just as you
fixed her up for a squaw that day we had an Indian massacre in the grape
arbour. I had forgotten that we left her in such a fix!"
"I'll never forget that day," answered Rob. "Don't you remember how sore
I made my arm, trying to tattoo an anchor on it with a darning-needle
and clothes bluing? What else have you buried in that old trunk?"
Despite his six feet and seventeen years, Rob dropped down on a roll of
carpet beside the trunk, and watched with interest as Lloyd lifted out
one article after another over which they had quarrelled, or in whose
pleasure they had shared in what now seemed a dim and far-away playtime.
Don't you remember this? Don't you remember that? they asked each other,
finding so many things to laugh over and recall that they quite forgot
the object of their search.
Lloyd was sitting with her back against the warm chimney, which ran up
through the middle of the attic, but presently she began to feel chilly,
and sent Rob over to a chest, away back under the eaves, for something
to put around her. It was packed full of old finery they had used on
various occasions for tableaux and plays. The first thing he pulled out
was a gorgeous red velvet cloak covered with spangles.
"That will do," she said, as he held it up inquiringly. "It's good and
warm."
He pushed the chest back into place. Then, straightening up, his glance
fell on the discarded playhouse, standing back in a dim corner. With a
whoop he pounced upon it.
"Here's old Watch!" he exclaimed, holding up the little iron dog. "And
he is the bank where the wild time grows, for here is the gift he is
standing guard over." Throwing the spangled cloak over Lloyd's
shoulders, he seated himself again on the roll of carpet, and began to
untie the little package fastened to the dog's neck with a bit of
ribbon. Inside many layers of tissue-paper, he came at last to a
memorandum-book, small enough to fit in his vest-pocket. It was bound in
soft gray kid, and on the back Betty had burned in old English letters,
with her pyrography-needle, the motto of Warwick Hall: "I keep the
tryst." Over it was the crest, a heart, out of which rose a mailed arm,
grasping a spear.
"Betty did that," said Lloyd. "She traced the letters on first with
tracing-papah, and then burnt them. I remembah now, she made it a few
days befoah we came home. She thought we would have our usual tree, and
she intended to hang this on it for you. Then when we had the hunt
instead of a tree, she took this way of giving it to you. That is an
appropriate motto for a memorandum-book, isn't it? You'll appreciate it
moah when she tells you the story about it. Miss Chilton read it to the
English class one day, and had us write it from memory for the next
lesson."
"Then what's the matter with your telling it to me?" asked Rob, eying
the mailed hand and the spear with interest. "I'll be gone before Betty
gets back. Go on and tell it. This is an ideal time and place for
story-telling."
He leaned comfortably back against the warm chimney and half-closed his
eyes. The patter of the rain on the roof made him drowsy.
"Well," assented Lloyd, "I can't tell it with as many frills and
flourishes as Betty could, but I remembah it bettah than most stories,
because I had to write it from memory." Drawing the glittering cloak
closer around her, she began as if she were reading it, in the very
words of the green and gold volume:
"'Now there was a troubadour in the kingdom of
Arthur, who, strolling through the land with only
his minstrelsy to win him a way, found in every
baron's hall and cotter's hut a ready welcome.'"
Here and there she stumbled over some part of it, or told it
hesitatingly in her own words, but at last she ended it as well as Betty
herself could have done:
"So Ederyn won his sovereign's favour, and, by his
sovereign's grace permitted, went back to woo the
maiden and win her for his bride. Then henceforth
blazoned on his shield and helmet he bore the
crest, a heart with hand that grasped a spear,
and, underneath, the words, 'I keep the tryst.'"
"That's a corking good motto," said Rob as she paused. "I like that
story, Lloyd, and I'll remember it when I keep the engagements that I
put down in this little book."
He sat a moment, flipping the leaves and whistling a bar from "The Old
Oaken Bucket."
"Stop!" commanded Lloyd, suddenly, clapping her hands over her ears, and
making a wry face. "You're off the key. Haven't I told you a thousand
times that it doesn't go that way? This is it."
Puckering up her lips, she whistled the tune correctly, and he joined
in. At the end of the chorus he looked at his watch.
"It's been like old times this afternoon," he said. "I'll tell you what,
Lloyd, let's come up here once a year after this, just to keep tryst
with our old playtimes. I'll put that down as the first engagement in my
memorandum-book. A year from to-day we'll take another look at these
things."
"All right," assented Lloyd, cheerfully. Then a wistful expression crept
into her eyes as she peered through the tiny attic window. Twilight was
falling early on account of the rain. A deep gloom began to settle over
her spirits also.
"Rob," she said, slowly, "I haven't told you yet. I didn't want to spoil
our aftahnoon by thinking about it any moah than I could help, and you
made me almost forget it for a little while. I couldn't talk about it
when you first came without crying,--this yeah is going to be _such_ a
long, hah'd one. They aren't going to let me go back to school aftah the
holidays. The doctah says I am not strong enough, and it is such an
awful Dungeon of Disappointment that it just breaks my hah't to think
about it."
To Rob's consternation she laid her head down on old Belinda, who still
lay limply across her lap, and began to sob. He sat in embarrassed
silence for a moment, scarcely knowing her for the same little companion
whom he had taught to meet hurts like a boy. He remembered the many
times she had winked back the tears over the bruises and bumps and cuts
she had encountered in following his lead. He was bewildered by the
unfamiliar mood, and it hurt him to see her so grieved.
"There! there! Don't cry, Lloyd!" he begged, hurt by the sight of the
fair head bowed so dismally over the old doll. "I know how it would
knock me out to have to stop now, just when I've got into the swing of
things, so I know just how you feel. I'm mighty sorry."
Then, as the sobs continued: "I'd go off and whip somebody if it would
do any good, but it won't. You'll have to brace up as Ederyn did, and
you'll get out of your dungeon all right."
There was no answer. School was so very dear, and the disappointment so
very bitter. It had all surged over her again in a great wave. He tried
again.
"It's tough, I know, but it will be easier if you take it as all the
Lloyds have taken their troubles, with your teeth set and your head up.
Somehow, that's the way I've always thought you would take things. Don't
cry, Lloyd. Don't! It breaks me all up to see you this way, when you've
always been so game."
She straightened up and wiped her eyes, announcing suddenly: "And I'm
going to be game now. If there's one thing I nevah could beah, it was
for you to think I was a coward, and I can't have you thinking it now.
It's a sawt of tryst I've kept all these yeahs, unconsciously, I
suppose. Ever since I was a little thing, if I thought 'Bobby expects it
of me,' I'd do it, no mattah what it was, from jumping a fence to
climbing on the chimney. I've lived up to yoah expectations many a time
at the risk of killing myself."
"Indeed you have," he answered, in a tone of hearty admiration. There
was a tender light in his gray eyes which she did not see, she was so
busy wiping her own.
"I'm done crying now," she announced, springing to her feet and
thrusting Belinda back into the trunk. "Come on, let's go down and pop
some cawn ovah the library fiah. Put this cloak away first."
He pushed the chest back to its place under the eaves and started after
her, pulling out his handkerchief as he went, to wipe away a stray
cobweb into which he had thrust his hand. It reminded him of the story.
"You know," he suggested, consolingly, "there's bound to be some way out
of your dungeon. I'll spend all the rest of the vacation helping you
twist cobwebs for your rope, if you like."
She made no answer then to his offer of assistance. She felt that she
could not steady her voice if she tried to speak her appreciation of
his sympathy.
So she called out, as she dashed past him: "As Joyce used to say at the
house pah'ty, 'the last one down is a jibbering Ornithorhynchus!'"
Away they went in a mad race, whose noisy clatter made it seem to the
old Colonel in his den that the rafters were falling in. But on the
landing she paused an instant.
"It--it helps a lot, Rob," she said, wistfully, "to have you
undahstand,--to know that you know how it hurts."
"I wish I could really help you," he answered, earnestly. "You're a game
little chum!"
She flashed back a grateful smile from under her wet eyelashes, and led
the race on down the next flight of stairs.
CHAPTER XII.
HUMDRUM DAYS
ALL through the rest of that week, and through New Year's Day, Lloyd
managed to keep her resolution bravely. Even when the time came for the
girls to go back to school without her, she went through the farewells
like a little Spartan, driving down to the station with tearful Betty,
who grieved over Lloyd's disappointment as if it had been her own.
When the train pulled out, with the four girls on the rear platform, she
stood waving her handkerchief cheerily as long as she could see an
answering flutter. Then she turned away, catching her breath in a deep
indrawn sob, that might have been followed by others if Rob had not been
with her. He saw her clench her hands and set her teeth together hard,
and knew what a fight she was making to choke back the tears, but he
wisely gave no sign that he saw and sympathized. He only proposed a
walk over to the blacksmith shop to see the red fox that Billy Kerr had
trapped and caged. But a little later, when she had regained her
self-control and was poking a stick between the slats of the coop where
the fox was confined, to make it stretch itself, he said, suddenly:
"By cricky, you were game, Lloyd! If it had been me, I couldn't have
gone to the station and watched the fellows go off without me, and joke
about it the way you did."
Lloyd went on rattling the stick between the slats and made no answer,
but Rob's approval brightened her spirits wonderfully. It was not until
the next day, when he, too, went back to school, that she fully realized
how lonely her winter was going to be. She strolled into her mother's
room, and threw herself listlessly into a chair by the window.
"What can I do, mothah? I mustn't read long, I mustn't study, Tarbaby is
lame, so I can't ride, and I've walked as far as I care to this
mawning."
"What would you like to do?" asked Mrs. Sherman, who was dressing to go
out.
"Nothing but things that I can't do," was the fretful answer. "It would
be lots of fun if I could go out in the kitchen and beat eggs, and make
custah'd pies and biscuits and things. I'd love to cook. I haven't had
a chance since I was at Ware's Wigwam. But Aunt Cindy scolds and
grumbles if anybody so much as looks into the kitchen. She says she
won't have me messing around in her way."
"I know," sighed Mrs. Sherman. "Cindy is getting more fussy and exacting
every year. But she has cooked for the family so long that she seems to
think the kitchen is hers. If she were not such a superior cook, I
wouldn't put up with her whims, but in these days, when everybody is
having so much trouble with servants, we'll have to humour her. She's a
faithful old creature. You might cook on the chafing-dish in the
dining-room. There are all sorts of things you could make on that."
Lloyd shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "But not bread and pies and
things you do with a rolling-pin. That's the pah't I like."
She sat a moment, swinging her foot in silence, and then broke out:
"If I were a girl in a story-book, this disappointment would turn me
into such a saintly, helpful creatuah that I'd be called 'The Angel of
the Home.' I've read about such girls. They keep things in ordah, and
mend and dust and put flowahs about, and make the house so bright and
cheerful that people wondah how they evah got along without them. Every
time they turn around, there are lovely, helpful things for them to do.
But what can _I_ do in a big house like this moah than I've always tried
to do? I've tried to be considerate of everybody's comfo't evah since I
stah'ted out to build a road of the loving hah't in everybody's memory.
The servants do everything heah, and don't want to be interfered with. I
wish we were dead poah, and lived in a plain little cottage and did our
own work. Then I wouldn't have time to get lonesome. I'd be lots
happiah.
"One day, when Miss Gilmer and I were talking about Ederyn in his
Dungeon of Disappointment, she said that we could always get out of our
troubles the same way that he did; that the cobwebs he twisted into
ropes were disagreeable to touch. Nobody likes to put their hands into
dusty cobwebs, and that they represent the disagreeable little tasks
that lie in wait for everybody. She said that, if we'll just grapple the
things that we dislike most to do, the little homely every-day duties,
and busy ourselves with them, they'll help us to rise above our
discontent. I've been trying all mawning to think of some such cobwebs
for me to take hold of, and there isn't a single one."
Mrs. Sherman smiled at the wobegone face turned toward her. "Fancy any
one being miserable over such a state of affairs as that!" she laughed.
"Actually complaining because there's nothing disagreeable for her to
do! Well, we'll have to look for some cobwebs to occupy you. Maybe if
you can't find them at home, you can do like the old woman who was
tossed up in a basket, seventy times as high as the moon. Don't you
remember how Mom Beck used to sing it to you?
"'Old woman! Old woman! Old woman, said I,
O whither, O whither, O whither so high?
_To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky_,
But I'll be back again, by and by.'"
She trilled it gaily as she fastened her belt, and took out her hat and
gloves.
"Fate must have given her just such a cobwebless home as you have, and
she had to soar high to rise above her troubles. Come on, little girl,
get your hat and coat, and we'll go in search of something disagreeable
for you to do; but I hope your quest won't take you seventy times as
high as the moon."
They drove down to the store to attend to the day's marketing. While
Mrs. Sherman was ordering her groceries, Lloyd went to the back of the
store, where one of the clerks was teaching tricks to a bright little
fox-terrier. She was so interested in the performance that she did not
know when Miss Allison came in, or how long she and her mother stood
discussing her.
"Yes," said Mrs. Sherman, "she has been brave about it. She never
complained but once, and that to me this morning. But we know how
unhappy she is. Jack and papa worry about her all the time. They want me
to take her to Florida. They think she must be given some pleasure that
will compensate in a way for this disappointment. But it is not at all
convenient for me to leave home now, and I feel that for her own good
she should learn to meet such things for herself. It would be far
easier, I acknowledge, if there was anything at home to occupy her, but
I cannot allow her to interfere with Mom Beck's work, or Cindy's. They
resent her doing anything." She repeated the conversation they had had
that morning.
"Loan her to me for the rest of the day," said Miss Allison. "I can show
her plenty of cobwebs, the kind she is pining for."
So it happened that a little later, when Miss Allison crossed the road
to the post-office, and started up the path toward home, Lloyd was with
her, smiling happily over the prospect of spending the day with the
patron saint of all the Valley's merrymakings. From Lloyd's earliest
recollection, Miss Allison had been the life of every party and picnic
in the neighbourhood. She was everybody's confidante. Like Shapur, who
gathered something from the heart of every rose to fill his crystal
vase, so she had distilled from all these disclosures the precious attar
of sympathy, whose sweetness won for her a way, and gained for her a
welcome, wherever she went.
As they turned in at the gate, Lloyd looked wistfully across at The
Beeches, and her eyes filled with tears. Miss Allison slipped her arm
around her and drew her close with a sympathetic clasp, as they walked
around the circle of the driveway leading to the house.
"I know just how you feel, dear. Like the little lame boy in that story
of the 'Pied Piper of Hamelin.' Because he couldn't keep up with the
others when they followed the piper's tune, he had to sit and watch them
dance away without him, and disappear into the mountainside. He was the
only child left in the whole town of Hamelin. It _is_ lonely for you, I
know, with all the boys and girls of your own age away at school. But
think how much lonelier Hamelin would have been without that child.
You'll find out that old people can play, too, though, if you'll take a
hand in their games. I want to teach you one after awhile, which I used
to enjoy very much, and still take pleasure in."
Miss Allison led the way up-stairs to her own room. As they passed the
door leading to the north wing, Lloyd exclaimed: "I'll nevah forget that
time, the night of the Valentine pah'ty, when Gingah and I went into the
blue room, and the beah that Malcolm and Keith had tied to the bed-post
rose up out of the dah'k and frightened us neahly to death."
"We had some lively times that winter with Virginia and the boys,"
answered Miss Allison. "I kept a record of some of their sorriest
mishaps. Wait a minute until I speak to the housemaid, and I'll see if I
can find it."
Miss Allison had been wondering how she could best entertain Lloyd, but
the problem was solved when she found the journal, in which she had
written the history of the eventful winter when her sister's little
daughter Virginia and her brother's two boys had been left in her
charge. Lloyd had taken part in many of the mischievous adventures, and
she sat smiling over the novelty of hearing herself described with all
the imperious ways, naughty temper, and winning charm that had been hers
at the age of eight.
"It is like looking at an old photograph of oneself," she said, after
awhile. "It seems so strange to be one of the characters in a book, and
listen to stories about oneself."
"That reminds me of the game I spoke of," said Miss Allison. "I invented
it when I was about your age. I had just read 'Cranford,' and the story
of life in that simple little village seemed so charming to me that I
wished with all my heart I could step into the book and be one of the
characters, and meet all the people that lived between its covers. Then
I heard some one say that there were more interesting happenings and
queer characters in Lloydsboro Valley than in Cranford. So I began to
look around for them. I pretended that I was the heroine of a book
called 'Lloydsboro Valley,' and all that summer I looked upon the people
I met as characters in the same story.
"It happened that all my young friends were away that summer, and it
would have been very lonely but for my new game. The organist went away,
and, although I was only fifteen, I took her place and played the little
cabinet organ we used then in church and Sunday school. That threw me
much with the older people, for I had to go to choir-practice to play
the organ, and also attend the missionary teas. Gradually they drew me
into a sewing-circle that was in existence then, and a reading club. I
found it was true that my own little village really had far more
interesting people in it than any I had read about, and I learned to
love all the dear, cranky, gossipy old characters in it, because I
studied them so closely that I found how good at heart they were despite
their peculiarities and foibles.
"That's what I want you to do this winter, Lloyd. Join the little choir,
and meet with the King's Daughters, and learn to know these interesting
neighbours of yours. And," she added, smiling, "I promise you that
you'll find all the cobwebs you need to help haul you out of your
dungeon."
"Oh, Miss Allison!" exclaimed Lloyd, looking horrified at the thought.
"_I_ couldn't sing in the choir and join the King's Daughtahs and all
that. They're all at least twice as old as I am, and some of them even
moah."
"Yes, you can," insisted Miss Allison. "We need your voice in the choir,
and you need the new interest these things would bring into your life.
So don't say no until after you've given my game a trial. The King's
Daughters' Circle is to meet here this afternoon, and I want you to help
me. I'm going to serve hot chocolate and wafers, and, as long as it is
such a cold, blowy day, I believe I'll add some nut sandwiches to make
the refreshments a little more substantial."
Privately, Lloyd looked forward to the afternoon as something stupid
which she must face cheerfully for Miss Allison's sake, but she found
her interest aroused with the first arrival. It was Libbie Simms, whom
she had known all her life, in a way, for she could scarcely recall a
Sabbath when she had not looked across at the dull, homely face in the
opposite pew, and pitied her because of her queer nose and
mouse-coloured hair. In the same way she had known Miss McGill, who came
with Libbie. She had simply been one of the congregation who had claimed
her attention for a moment each week, as she minced down the aisle like
an animated rainbow. All she knew about Miss McGill was that she usually
wore so many shades of purple and pink and blue that the clashing
colours set one's teeth on edge.
But in five minutes Lloyd had forgotten their peculiarities of feature
and dress, and was listening with interest to their account of a call
they had just made in Rollington. They had been to see a poor
washerwoman who had five children to support. The youngest, a baby who
had fits, was very ill, about to die. At the mention of Mrs. Crisp,
Lloyd recalled the forlorn little woman in a wispy crêpe veil, who had
enlisted her sympathy to such an extent one Thanksgiving Day that she
and Betty had walked over to Rollington from the Seminary to carry the
greater part of the turkey and fruit that had been sent them in their
box of Thanksgiving goodies.
There was so little poverty in the Valley that, when any real case of
suffering was discovered, it was taken up with enthusiasm. Lloyd
wondered how she could have thought Libbie Simms so hopelessly ugly,
when she saw her face light up with unselfish interest in her poor
neighbours, and heard her suggestions for their relief. And her
conscience pricked her for making fun of Miss McGill's taste when she
saw how generous she was, and listened to her humourous description of
several things that had happened in the Valley. She was certainly
entertaining, and looked at life through spectacles as rose-coloured as
her necktie.
The library filled rapidly, and soon a score of needles were at work on
the flannel garments intended for the Crisp family. Lloyd, on a stool
between Katherine Marks and Mrs. Walton, sewed industriously, interested
in the buzz of conversation all around her.
"This is not malicious gossip," explained Mrs. Walton, in an amused
undertone, smiling with Lloyd and Katherine at a remark which
unintentionally reached their ears. "But in a little community like
this, where little happens, and our interests are bound so closely
together, the smallest details of our neighbours' affairs necessarily
entertain us. It _is_ interesting to know that Mr. Rawles and his
great-aunt are not on speaking terms, and it is positively exciting to
hear that Mr. Wolf and Mrs. Cayne quarrelled over the leaflets used in
Sunday school, and that she told him to his face that he was a hypocrite
and no better than an infidel. It doesn't make us love these good people
any the less to know that they are human like ourselves, and have their
tempers and their spites and feuds. We know their good side, too. Wait
till calamity or sickness touches some one of us, and, see how kind and
sympathetic and tender they all are; every one of them."
"You'll hear more gossip here in one afternoon than at all the Cranford
tea-tables put together," said Katherine Marks. "But it is a mild sort,
like the kind going on behind us."
Miss McGill, with her head close to Abby Carter's, was saying: "Oh, but,
my dear, he gets more suspicious and foxy every day of his life. I don't
see how Emma Belle puts up with such a cranky old father."
"I know," responded Abby. "They say he drives the cook nearly
distracted, going into the kitchen every day and lifting the lids off
all the pots and pans to smell what's cooking for dinner. Then he makes
a fuss if it's not to his liking."
"Yes," responded Miss McGill, "but that isn't a circumstance to some of
his ways. I ran in there last night a few minutes, to show Emma Belle a
pattern she wanted. He got it into his head we were hiding something
from him, and he actually climbed up on the dining-room table and peeped
through the transom at us. I nearly fainted when I happened to look up
and saw that old monkey-like face, with its dense, gloomy whiskers,
looking down at me. I just screamed and sat jibbering and pointing at
the transom. I couldn't help it. He gave me such a turn, I didn't get
over it all night. Emma Belle was so mortified she didn't know what
to do. It isn't as if he was crazy. He's just mean. That girl has the
patience of a saint."
[Illustration: "'I NEARLY FAINTED WHEN I HAPPENED TO LOOK UP'"]
Before the afternoon was over, Lloyd decided that Miss Allison was
right. The Valley held a number of interesting characters, whose
acquaintance was well worth cultivating if she wanted to be entertained.
Part of the time, while the needles were flying, Mrs. MacIntyre read
aloud. Miss Allison called Lloyd into the dining-room when it was time
to serve the refreshments.
"I'm going to ask a favour of you, dear," she said. "I want you to sing
for us presently. No, wait a minute," she added, hurriedly, as Lloyd
drew back with an exclamation of dismay. "Don't refuse till you have
heard why I ask it. It is on account of Agnes Waring. These meetings are
the great social events of the winter to her. She never gets to go
anywhere else except to church. She's passionately fond of music, and I
always make it a point to prepare a regular programme when the Circle
meets here. But all my musicians failed me this time, and I cannot bear
to disappoint her. I know you are timid about singing before older
people, but this is one of the cobwebs I promised to find for you. It
will be disagreeable, but I have a good reason for thinking that you
will find it the first strand of the rope that is to lift you out of
your dungeon. I'll tell you some things about Agnes after awhile that
will make you glad you have had such an opportunity."
When Lloyd went back to the library, bearing a pile of snowy napkins,
she stole several glances at Agnes Waring in her journey around the room
to distribute them. All that she knew of her was that she was the
youngest of three sisters who sewed for their living. She was almost as
slim and girlish in figure as Lloyd, although she was nearly twice as
old. She had kept the timid, shrinking manner that she had when a child.
That and her appealing big blue eyes, and almost babyish complexion,
made her seem much younger than she was. It was a sensitive, refined
face that Lloyd kept glancing at, one that would have been remarkably
pretty had it not been so sad.
Lloyd had sung in public several times, but always in some play, when
the costume which she wore seemed to change her to the character she
personated. That made it easier. It was one of the hardest things she
had ever done, to stand up before these twenty ladies who had been
exchanging criticisms so freely all afternoon, on every subject
mentioned, and sing the songs which Miss Allison chose for her from the
Princess play: The Dove Song, with its high, sweet trills of "Flutter
and fly," and the one beginning:
"My godmother bids me spin,
That my heart may not be sad.
Sing and spin for my brother's sake,
And the spinning makes me glad."
It was with a very red face that she slipped into her seat after it was
over, surprised and pleased by the applause she received. They were all
so cordial in their appreciation, that presently she was persuaded into
doing what Miss Allison had suggested. When the circle broke up she had
consented to join the choir, and to meet with them the next Friday
night, when they went to the Mallards' to practise.
The carriage came for her soon after the last guest departed, and Miss
Allison stepped in beside her to take the finished garments over to
Rollington. It was the quaintest of little villages, settled entirely by
Irish families. Only one lone street straggled over the hill, but it was
a long one with little whitewashed cabins and cottages thickly set along
each side. Mrs. Crisp's was the first one on the street, after they left
the Lloydsboro pike. It was clean, but not half so large or comfortable
as the negro servants' quarters at Locust.
It was so late that Miss Allison did not go in, only stopped at the door
to leave the bundle and inquire about the baby, promising to come again
next morning. Lloyd had a glimpse of the two children next in age to the
baby. They were playing on the floor with a doll made of a corn-cob
wrapped in a towel, and a box of empty spools.
"Just think!" she exclaimed as she climbed into the carriage again. "A
cawn-cob doll! And the attic at home is full of toys that I don't care
for! I'm going to pick out a basketful to-morrow and bring them down to
these children. And did you see that poah little Minnie Crisp? Only
eight yeahs old, and doing the work of a grown woman. She was getting
suppah while her mothah tended to the sick baby. Oh, I wondah," she
cried, her face lighting up with the thought. "I wondah if Mrs. Crisp
would mind if I'd come down to-morrow and cook dinnah for them. That's
what I've been crazy to do,--to cook. I could bring eggs and sugah and
all the materials, and make lemon pie and oystah soup and potato
croquettes. I know how to make lots of things. Oh, do you suppose she
would be offended?"
"Not in the least," responded Miss Allison, heartily. "She is a very
sensible little woman who is nearly worn out in her struggle with
poverty and sickness. She has been too proud and brave to accept help
before, when she was able to stagger along under her own burden, but now
she will be very grateful. And the children will look upon you as a
wonderful mixture of Santa Claus, fairy godmother, and Aladdin's lamp."
Then she turned to peer into the happy face beside her.
"Here are your cobwebs!" she exclaimed, gaily. "A whole skyful, and you
can sweep away to your heart's content. You need have no more humdrum
days unless you choose."
Lloyd looked back at the cottage where four towheads at the window
watched the departing carriage. Then with a smile she leaned out and
waved her hand.
CHAPTER XIII.
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF AMANTHIS
LLOYD hurried down the road to the post-office, her cheeks almost as red
as her coat from her brisk walk in the wintry air. It was too cold to
saunter, or she would have made the errand last as long as possible.
There would be nothing to do after she had called for the mail. The day
before she had had her visit to Mrs. Crisp to fill the morning. It
brought a pleasant thrill now to think of the little woman's gratitude
and the children's pleasure in the dinner she had cooked in the clean
bare kitchen. She wished she could go every day and repeat the
performance, but her family would not allow it. They said it was just as
injurious for her to waste her strength in charity as it was in study,
and she must be more temperate in her enthusiasms.
She wished that Miss Mattie would invite her into the tiny office behind
the rows of pigeonholes and letter-boxes, and let her sit by the window
awhile. Just watching people pass would be some amusement, more than she
could find at home.
She was passing the Bisbee place as she made the wish. It was a white
frame house standing near the road, and commanding a view of both
station and store, as well as the approach to the post-office. To her
surprise, some one tapped on the pane of an up-stairs window. Then the
sash flew up, and Mrs. Bisbee called in her thin, fluttering voice:
"Lloyd! Lloyd Sherman! If you're going to the post-office, I wish you'd
ask if there is anything for me. I don't dare set foot out-of-doors this
cold weather."
Then, fearful of draughts, she banged the window down without waiting
for a reply. Lloyd smiled and nodded, glad of an opportunity to be of
service. As she hurried on, she remembered that Miss Allison had spoken
of this gentle little old lady, with her fluttering voice and placid
smile, as one of the most interesting and "Cranfordy" characters in the
Valley, and that, while she never went out in the winter, and seldom in
the summer, except to church, she kept such a sharp eye on the
neighbourhood happenings from the watch-tower of her window that Mrs.
Walton laughingly called it the "Window in Thrums."
It was with the feeling that she was stepping into a story that Lloyd
opened the gate five minutes later and started up the path. A vigorous
tapping on the window above, and a beckoning hand motioned her to come
up-stairs. Hesitating an instant on the porch, she opened the front door
and stepped into the hall.
"Do come up!" called the old lady, plaintively, from the head of the
stairs. "I've been wishing so hard for company that I believe my wishing
must have drawn you. Now that daughter is married and gone, I get so
lonesome, with Mr. Bisbee in town all day, that I often find myself
talking to myself just for the sake of sociability. Not a soul has been
in for the last two days, and usually I have callers from morning till
night. This is such a good dropping-in place, you know. So central that
I see and hear everything."
She ushered Lloyd into a room, gay with big-flowered chintz curtains,
and quaint with old-fashioned carved furniture. There was a high
four-poster bed in one corner, with a chintz valance around it, and pink
silk quilled into the tester. The only modern thing in the room was a
tiled grate, piled full of blazing coals. It threw out such a
summer-like heat that Lloyd almost gasped. She was glad to accept Mrs.
Bisbee's invitation to take off her coat and gloves. She moved her chair
back as far as possible into the bay-window.
"I reckon you feel it's pretty warm in here," said Mrs. Bisbee. "I have
to keep it that way so that I can sit over here against the window
without catching cold. I couldn't afford to miss all that's going on in
the street. It's my only amusement."
She drew her work-basket toward her and picked up the quilt pieces she
had laid down when she went to welcome Lloyd. She was making a silk
quilt of the tea-chest pattern, and the basket was full of bright silk
scraps and pieces of ribbon.
"It's like a panorama, I tell Mr. Bisbee. Oh, by the way, I've been
aching to find out. Where did you all go that day just before Christmas
when you started off, a whole party of you, traipsing down the road with
a new saucepan and baskets and things? I heard you had a picnic in the
snow. Is that so?"
Lloyd really gasped this time, but not from the heat. She was so
surprised that Mrs. Bisbee should have taken such an interest in her
affairs, or in any of the unimportant doings of their set, as to
remember them longer than the passing moment. Mrs. Bisbee was
associated in Lloyd's mind with solemn churchly things, like the
Gothic-backed pulpit chairs or the sombre brown pews. Lloyd had never
seen her before, except when she was singing hymns, or sitting with
meekly folded hands through sermon-time. It was almost as surprising to
find that she was inquisitive and interested in human happenings as it
would have been to discover that the ivy-covered belfry kept an eye on
her.
In the midst of her description of the picnic, Mrs. Bisbee leaned
forward and peered eagerly out of the window over her spectacles.
"I don't want to interrupt you," she said; "I just wanted to make sure
that that was Caleb Coburn out again. He has been house-bound with
rheumatism ever since Thanksgiving."
Lloyd looked out in time to see a tall, stoop-shouldered man with a
bushy beard go slowly across the road. He was buttoned up in a heavy
overcoat, and limped along with the aid of two canes.
"He's the queerest old fellow," commented Mrs. Bisbee, looking after
him, with a gentle shake of the head. "Lately he has taken to knitting,
to pass the time."
"To knitting!" echoed Lloyd, in amazement. "That big man?"
"Yes. He calls it hooking. He has a needle made out of a ham bone. Fancy
now! Daughter said it was the funniest thing in life to see him propped
up in bed with a striped skull-cap on, hooking his wife a shawl."
Lloyd laughed, but she followed the stooped figure with a glance of
sympathy. She knew from experience how hard it was to spend the time in
enforced idleness. Old Mr. Coburn had always been a familiar figure to
her. She recognized him on the road as she did the trees and the houses
which she passed daily, but he had never aroused her interest any more
than they. Now the knowledge that he was lonely like herself, so lonely
that, big, bearded man as he was, he had learned to knit in order to
occupy the dull days, seemed to put them on a common footing.
Lloyd took a long step forward out of her childhood that morning when
she wakened to the fact that some things are as hard to bear at fifty as
at fifteen. With a dawning interest she watched the people of the Valley
go by, one by one,--people whom she had passed heretofore as she had
passed the fence-posts on the road. It could never be so again, for
henceforth she would see them in a new light,--the light of
understanding and sympathy shed on them by Mrs. Bisbee's choice bits of
gossip or scraps of personal history.
She had watched the procession for nearly an hour, when Agnes Waring
suddenly turned the corner, and went into the store with a bundle in her
arms. Mrs. Bisbee, pausing in the act of threading a needle, looked out
again over her spectacles.
"There goes a girl I'm certainly sorry for. She is a born lady, and
comes of as good a family as anybody in the Valley, but she has to work
harder than any darkey in Lloydsboro. She's up at four o'clock these
winter mornings, milks the cow, chops wood, gets breakfast, and maybe
walks two or three miles with a big bundle like that, taking home
sewing, or going out to fit a dress for somebody."
Miss Allison had already awakened Lloyd's interest in Agnes, and she
leaned forward to watch her, while Mrs. Bisbee went on.
"She's never had any of the pleasures that most girls have. To my
certain knowledge she's never had a beau or been to a big party or
travelled farther than Louisville. I suppose you could count on the
fingers of one hand the times she has been on a train. She's wild about
music, but she's never had any advantages. By the way, she was in here
the day after the King's Daughters met at Allison MacIntyre's, to fit a
wrapper on me. Knowing how few outings she has, I encouraged her to talk
it all over, as I knew she was glad to do. I declare she made as much of
it as if it had been the governor's ball. She told me how much she
enjoyed your singing. She said that, if there was any one person in the
world whom she envied more than another, it was Lloyd Sherman. Not for
your looks or the handsome things you have (for the Valley is full of
pretty girls, and many of them are wealthy), but for the advantages you
have had in the way of music and travel.
"They have an old piano, about all that was saved out of the wreck when
their father lost his fortune. She'd give her eyes to be able to play on
it. But she wasn't much more than a baby when her father died, so she
missed the advantages the older girls had. You see she is twenty years
younger than Marietta, and nearly twenty-five years younger than Sarah.
Poor Agnes! I suppose she will never know anything but work and poverty.
It's too bad,--such a sweet, refined girl, and as proud as she is
poor."
Lloyd echoed Mrs. Bisbee's sympathetic sigh, as she looked after the
hurrying figure in its worn jacket and shabby shoes. She was just coming
out of the store again.
"I feel so sorry for her sistahs, too," she ventured. "I nevah knew till
the othah day that Miss Marietta has been an invalid so long. Miss
Allison told me she had been in bed for fifteen yeahs! It's awful! Why,
that is as long as my whole lifetime has been."
"She was to have been married," began Mrs. Bisbee, pouring out the
romance at which Miss Allison had only hinted. "She was engaged to
Murray Cathright, one of the finest young lawyers I ever knew, steady as
a meeting-house. He had the respect and confidence of everybody. Well,
Marietta had her trousseau all ready, and a beautiful one it was. Her
father had sent to Paris for the wedding-gown, and all her linen was
hand-embroidered by the nuns in some French convent.
"They certainly had all that heart could wish in those days. It is a
pity that Agnes was too young to enjoy her share of luxuries. Well, just
a week before the time set for the wedding, Murray Cathright
mysteriously disappeared. He had gone away on a short business trip. His
family traced him to a hotel in Pittsburg, and then lost all clue,
except that just before leaving the hotel he had asked the clerk for the
time-tables of an Eastern railroad. There was a terrible wreck on that
road that same night. The entire train went through a bridge into the
river, and they thought he must have been swept away with the
unidentified dead. But it was months before Marietta would believe it.
"She acted as if her mind were a little touched all that summer. Used to
dress up every evening in the clothes he had liked best, with a flower
in her hair, and go down to the honeysuckle arbour to wait for him.
She'd sit there and wait and wait all alone, until her father'd go down
and lead her in. The next day she'd go through the same performance. It
ended in a spell of brain fever. She came out of that with her mind all
right, but she never was strong again. After all the rest of their
troubles came, she had a stroke of paralysis. It's left her so she can't
walk. But she can lie there and make buttonholes and pull basting
threads. She's a perfect marvel, she's so patient and cheerful. People
like to go there just on that account. You'd never know she had a
trouble to hear her talk. But I know what she's suffered, and I know
that she still keeps the wedding-gown. It's laid away in rose leaves
for her to be buried in."
Mrs. Bisbee paused and spread out the finished quilt-piece on her knee,
patting it approvingly before choosing the scraps for another block.
Then she wiped her spectacles. "Sometimes I don't know which I'm the
sorriest for, Marietta, who had such a good man for a lover as Murray
Cathright was, and lost him, or Agnes, who's never had anything."
"Why don't people invite her out and give her a good time?" asked Lloyd.
"Her being a seamstress oughtn't to make any difference to old family
friends, when she's such a lady."
"It doesn't," answered Mrs. Bisbee. "People used to be nice to those
girls, and they were always invited everywhere at first. But after
awhile there was Marietta always in bed, and Agnes a mere baby, and poor
Miss Sarah with the burden of their support. She had only her needle to
keep the wolf from the door. She couldn't accept invitations then. There
was no time. Gradually people stopped asking her. She dropped out of the
social life of the Valley so completely that Agnes grew up without any
knowledge of it. All she has known has been hard work. Miss Allison has
tried to draw her into things, but the older sisters are proud, as I
said. Agnes cannot dress suitably, and they can make no return of
hospitalities, so she has never ventured into anything more than the
King's Daughters' Circle."
"There's Alec with the carriage!" exclaimed Lloyd. "He's stopping at the
stoah. If I hurry, I can ride back home. I've stayed so long that mothah
will wondah what has become of me."
"Don't go!" begged Mrs. Bisbee, as Lloyd began drawing on her coat. "I
don't know when I've enjoyed a morning so much. Since daughter's married
and gone I miss her young friends so much. She used to have the house
full of them from morning till night. Now I fairly pine for the sight of
a fresh young face sometimes. You've livened me up more than you can
know. _Do_ come again!"
Lloyd went away highly pleased by her cordial reception. She had enjoyed
being talked to as if she were grown, and these glimpses into the lives
of her neighbours were more interesting than any her books could give
her. When she passed the lane leading up to the house where the three
sisters lived, she wished that she could turn over a leaf and read more
about them. She wondered if Miss Marietta ever took out the beautiful
wedding-dress that was to be her shroud. She mused over the newly
discovered romance all the way home.
If it had not been for that morning's call, and the interest it aroused
in her neighbours, several things might not have happened, which
afterward followed each other like links in a chain. Probably Miss Sarah
would have walked up to Locust just the same, to take home a wrapper she
had finished, and not finding Mrs. Sherman at home would have stepped
inside the door a moment to warm by the dining-room fire; and Lloyd,
with the courtesy that never failed her, would have been as graciously
polite as her mother could have been. But if it had not been for the
interest in her that Mrs. Bisbee's story gave, several other happenings
might not have followed.
As Lloyd looked at the gray-haired woman on whom toil and poverty and
care had left their marks, and remembered there had been a time when
Miss Sarah had been as tenderly cared for as herself, a sudden pity
surged up into her heart. She longed to lighten her load in some way,
and to give back to her for a moment at least the comforts she had lost.
With a quick gesture she motioned her away from the dining-room door.
"No, come in heah!" she exclaimed, leading the way into the
drawing-room, and pushing a big armchair toward the fire.
Blue and cold from her long walk against the wind, Miss Sarah sank down
among the soft cushions and leaned back luxuriously.
"It's so ti'ahsome walking against the wind," exclaimed the Little
Colonel. "When I came in awhile ago, I was puffing and blowing. I'm
going to make you a cup of hot tea. That's what mothah always takes. No!
It won't be any _trouble_," she exclaimed, as Miss Sarah protested. "It
will be the biggest kind of a pleasuah. It will give me a chance to use
mothah's little tea-ball. I deahly love to wiggle it around in the cup
and see the watah po'ah out of all the little holes. I've been wishing
somebody would come, or that I had something to do. Now you have granted
both wishes. I can have a regulah little tea-pah'ty. Excuse me just a
minute, please."
Left to herself, Miss Sarah sat looking around at the handsome
furnishings: the thick Persian rugs, the old portraits, the tall,
burnished harp in the corner, the bowl of hothouse violets on the table
at her elbow, until Lloyd returned, bearing a toasting fork and a plate
of thinly sliced bread. Miss Sarah turned toward her with wistful eyes.
"I have always loved this old room," she said. "This is the first time I
have been in it for twenty years. It is an old friend. I have spent many
happy hours here in your grandmother's day. She was always entertaining
the young people of the Valley. Sometimes that time seems so far away
that I wonder if it was not all a dream. It was a very beautiful dream,
at any rate. I often wish Agnes could have had a share in it. She has
missed so much in not having _her_ friendship."
She nodded toward the portrait over the mantel. "Amanthis Lloyd was my
ideal woman when I was a young girl like yourself," she added, softly,
with her eyes on the beautiful features above her.
"I have missed so much, too," said Lloyd, following Miss Sarah's gaze.
"And yet it seems to me I must have known her. The portrait has always
seemed alive to me. I used to talk to it sometimes when I was a little
thing, and I nevah could beah to look at it when I had been naughty. I
wish you would tell me about her."
She knelt on the hearth-rug as she spoke, and held the long
toasting-fork toward the fire. "Mothah and grandfathah often talk about
her, but they don't tell the same things that one outside of the family
might."
By the time the toast was delicately browned and buttered, Mom Beck came
in with the tea-tray, and placed it on the table beside the bowl of
violets.
"Good!" exclaimed Lloyd, seating herself on the other side of the table
as the old woman left the room. "I didn't think to tell her to bring
cold turkey and strawberry preserves and fruit cake, but she remembered
that I didn't eat much lunch, and she is always trying to tempt my
appetite. She's the best old soul that evah was. Oh, Miss Sarah, I'm so
glad you came. I haven't had a pah'ty like this for ages. Heah! I'll let
you wiggle the tea-ball in yoah own cup, so that you can make it as
strong as you like, because you're company."
The dimples deepened playfully in her cheeks as she passed the tea-ball
across the table. Miss Sarah smiled, although her eyes felt misty. "You
dear child!" she exclaimed. "That was Amanthis Lloyd all over again. She
never reached out and gave pleasure to other people as if she were
bestowing a favour. She always made it seem as if it were only her own
pleasure which you were enhancing by sharing. You don't know what an
interest I have taken in you for her sake, as I've watched you growing
up here in the Valley. I used to hear remarks about your temper and your
imperious ways, and day after day, as I've watched you ride past the
house beside your grandfather, sitting up in the same straight, haughty
way, I've thought she's well named. She's the Colonel over again.
"But to-day, in this old room, you are startlingly like her in some way,
I can hardly tell what." She glanced up again at the portrait. "Your
eyes look at me in the same understanding sort of way. They almost
unseal the silence of twenty years. I have never said this to any one
else. But I used to look at her sometimes and think that George Eliot
must have meant her when she wrote in her 'Choir Invisible' of one who
could 'be to other souls the cup of strength in some great agony.' She
was that to me. People always used to go to her with their troubles."
Lloyd bent over her cup, her face flushing. "Then I'm so glad you think
I'm even a little bit like her," she said, softly. "Nobody evah told me
that befoah. I've always wanted to be."
The thought gave her a glow of pleasure all through the meal. Long after
Miss Sarah went away, warmed and quickened in heart as well as body, it
lingered with her. Afterward it prompted her to pause before the
portrait with a questioning glance into the clear eyes above her.
"'The cup of strength to other souls in some great agony,'" she
repeated. "And you were that! Oh, I would love to be, too, if I didn't
have to suffer too much first to learn how to sympathize and comfort.
Maybe that is what I am to learn from this wintah's disappointment,--a
way to help othah people beah their disappointments. If I could do
that," she whispered, looking wistfully at the face above her, "if only
one person in the world could remembah me as Miss Sarah remembahs _you_,
you beautiful Grandmothah Amanthis, it would be worth all the misahable
time I have had."
Then she turned suddenly and went into the library to look for the poem
Miss Sarah had quoted. She had never taken the volume from the shelves
before. She did not care for poetry as Betty did, and it took her some
time to find the lines she was looking for. But when she found them, she
took the book back to the drawing-room, and read the page again and
again, with a quick bounding of the pulses as she realized that here in
words was the ambition which she had often felt vaguely stirring within
her. Even if she could not reach the highest ones, and be "the cup of
strength," or "make undying music in the world," she could at least
attempt the other aims it held forth. She could at least try "to ease
the burden of the world." She could live "in scorn for miserable aims
that end with self."
With the book open on her lap, and her hands clasped around her knees,
she sat looking steadily into the fire. She did not know what a long,
long step she was taking out of childhood that afternoon, nor that the
sweet seriousness of her new purpose shone in her upturned face. But
when the old Colonel came into the room and found her sitting there in
the firelight, he paused and then glanced up at the portrait. He was
almost startled by the striking resemblance,--a likeness of expression
that he had never noticed before.
CHAPTER XIV.
"CINDERELLA"
LLOYD sat on the window-seat of the stair-landing, looking out on the
bare February landscape. She was thinking of the poem she had learned
three weeks before, on the afternoon of Miss Sarah's visit, and it made
her dissatisfied. When one was all a-tingle, as she had been, with a
high purpose to help ease the burden of the world and make undying music
in it, and when one longed to do big, heroic deeds and had ambitions
high enough to reach the stars, it was hard to be content with the
commonplace opportunities that came her way.
The things she had been doing seemed so paltry. To carry a glass of
jelly to the Crisps, a pot of pink hyacinths to Miss Marietta, to write
a letter for Aunt Cindy, to sit for an hour with Mrs. Bisbee,--these all
were so trivial and pitifully small that she felt a sense of disgust
with herself and her efforts. Yawning and swinging her foot, she sat in
the window-seat several minutes longer, then started aimlessly
up-stairs to her room. In the upper hall the door leading into the attic
stairway stood open, and for no reason save that she had nothing else to
do, she began to mount the steps. She had not been up in the attic since
Christmas week, when she and Rob had gone to finish his Christmas hunt.
She stood looking around her an instant, then, moved by some
unaccountable impulse, drew out the chest containing the fancy-dress
costumes they had used in so many plays and tableaux. One by one she
shook them out and hung them over Rob's headless hobby-horse, when she
had finished examining them. There were the velvet knickerbockers and
blouse she had worn as Little Boy Blue at the Hallowe'en party at the
Seminary. There was Betty's Dresden Shepherdess dress, and the
godmother's gown, and the long trailing robe of the Princess Winsome.
Even the little tulle dress she had worn as the Queen of Hearts at
Ginger's Valentine party, years ago, came out of the chest as she dived
deeper into its contents, and a star-spangled costume of red, white, and
blue, in which she had fluttered as the Goddess of Liberty one Fourth of
July.
Slippers and buckles and plumes, fans and gloves and artificial
flowers, were piled up all around her. The hobby-horse was hidden under
a drapery of velvet and lace and silk. Still the chest held a number of
old party gowns that had never been cut down to fit their childish
revels.
As Lloyd shook them out, thinking of the gay scenes they had been a part
of, the picture of Agnes Waring in her worn jacket and shabby shoes
flashed across her mind, followed by Mrs. Bisbee's remark: "She's never
had any of the pleasures that most girls have. Twenty-five years old,
and to my certain knowledge she's never had a beau or been to a big
party, or travelled farther than Louisville."
Lloyd pressed her lips together and stood staring at the old finery
around her, thinking hard. A sudden vision had come to her of this
modern Cinderella, and of herself as the fairy godmother. Her eyes shone
and her cheeks grew pink as she stood pondering. If she could only make
an occasion, it would be easy enough to provide the coach and the
costume, even the glass slippers. There lay a pair of white satin ones,
beaded in tiny crystal beads that shone like dewdrops. Suppose she
should play godmother and send Agnes to a ball. Suppose the shy, timid
girl should look so fine in her fine feathers that people would stare
at her and wonder who that beautiful creature was. Suppose a prince
should be there who never would have noticed her but for the magic glass
slippers, and then suppose--
Lloyd did not put the rest of the delightful daydream into words, but
just stood thinking about it a long time, until her expression grew very
sweet and tender over a little romance which she dreamed might grow out
of her plan to give Agnes pleasure.
"If I only had thought of it in time to have had a Valentine pah'ty,"
she exclaimed aloud, "that would have been the very thing. But it is too
late now. This is the seventeenth." Then she clasped her hands
delightedly as that date suggested another. "It is five days till
Washington's Birthday. Maybe there will be time to get up a Martha
Washington affair. I'll ask Miss Allison about it this very night at
choir practice. She always has so many new ideas."
Tumbling the costumes back into the trunk, helter-skelter, she danced
down the stairs, impatient to tell her mother about it. But there were
guests in the library who had been invited to spend the afternoon and
stay to dinner, and Lloyd had no opportunity to speak of the subject
that was uppermost in her thoughts. Immediately after dinner she
excused herself, to slip into her red coat and furs, while Mom Beck
lighted the lantern they were to carry.
It was only a short distance to the Mallard place, where the choir was
to meet that week, so they did not need Alec's escort this time. The
wind flared their lantern as they went along the quiet country road.
They could see other lights bobbing along toward them, and, as they
neared the gate, Lloyd recognized Mrs. Walton's voice. She and Miss
Allison were coming up with their brother Harry.
"Is that you, Lloyd?" called Mrs. Walton, as they drew nearer. "I hoped
you would come early, for I have a letter from the girls that I know you
will want to read. They are full of preparations for a grand affair to
be given on the twenty-second,--a Martha Washington reception. As usual,
Kitty wants to depart from the accustomed order of things, and have a
costume in George's honour, instead of Martha's. She says why not, as
long as it is his birthday. She's painted a picture of the dress she has
concocted for the occasion. It is green tarlatan dotted all over with
little silver paper hatchets, and trimmed with garlands and bunches of
artificial cherries."
"Oh, I'm so glad you brought the pictuah with you to-night!" exclaimed
Lloyd. "And I'm wild to see the lettah. Kitty always writes such funny
ones. And I'm glad I met you out heah befoah the choir practice begins.
I want to ask you about a celebration I have been planning. It's for
Agnes Waring," she explained, catching step with them as they turned in
at the gate. "So of co'se I can't talk about it befoah all the othah
people.
"I happened to be looking ovah a chest of old costumes to-day, thinking
of all the fun we'd had in them, when I remembahed her and what Mrs.
Bisbee had told me about her nevah having good times like othah girls.
She said she'd nevah had any attention, and nevah been to a big pah'ty.
I thought I'd like to give her one on the twenty-second, because I could
offah her a costume then without hurting her feelings. I was suah that
you and Miss Allison could suggest something moah than I had thought of.
I don't know exactly how to begin. People will think it strange, and
Agnes might, too, if I gave a pah'ty just for her, when all her friends
whom I would want to invite are so much oldah than I."
Miss Allison and her sister exchanged glances in the lantern-light, then
Mrs. Walton said, hesitatingly: "Why--I don't know--I'm sorry, Lloyd,
that we didn't know before. We've already made plans which I am afraid
will interfere with yours. The King's Daughters' Circle has arranged to
have an oyster supper at my house on the afternoon and evening of the
twenty-second. Most of the people you would want to ask will be busy
there, for everybody in the Valley lends a hand at these
entertainments."
They could not see the disappointment that shadowed Lloyd's face as she
listened to this announcement in silence. But Miss Allison knew it was
there, and, as they walked on up the path together, she slipped her arm
around Lloyd's waist.
"Never mind, dear," she said. "You shall not have your beautiful plan
spoiled by the old oyster supper. We'll combine forces. As Agnes is a
member of the Circle, maybe you can bring about what you want more
naturally and easily this way than in any other. The girls who are to
wait on the table are to powder their hair and wear white kerchiefs and
Martha Washington caps. But we had intended to ask you to take charge of
the fancy-work table, as you have more time for getting up elaborate
costumes. We wanted to ask you to dress in as handsome a costume of that
period as you could find. We remember what lovely brocade gowns and
quilted petticoats and old-fashioned fol-de-rols used to be laid away in
your grandmother's attic that belonged to _her_ grandmother. If you
like, you may give your place to Agnes, and let her be the belle of the
ball."
Lloyd returned the pressure of the arm about her with an impulsive hug.
"Oh, I _knew_ you'd think of something perfectly lovely," she cried.
"That would be much the best way, for she is so timid and quiet you
couldn't keep her from being a wall-flowah at an ordinary pah'ty. But
this way she will have something to do, and she'll have to talk when
people come to buy things. I wish it were not so long till to-morrow! I
want to tell her about it this minute."
Usually the choir practice was a bore to Lloyd. She was one of the few
members who sang by note, and Mrs. Walton, the leader, had to take them
through the simple anthems over and over again, until they caught the
tune by ear. Lloyd, knowing that her strong young voice was needed, sang
dutifully through the tiresome repetitions, but sometimes she wanted to
put her fingers in her ears to shut out the sound. To-night she did not
chafe inwardly at the false starts and the monotonous chant, "Oh, be
thankful! Oh, be thankful!" which had to be sung over numberless times
in order that the bass and alto singers might learn to come in at the
proper places with their responsive refrain. She was so absorbed in
thinking of the pleasure in store for Agnes, and imagining what she
would say, that she sang the three measures over and over, unheeding how
long the choir stuck there, or uncaring how many times they seesawed up
and down on the same tiresome notes.
The excitement began for Agnes next day, when Lloyd delivered Miss
Allison's invitation, and bore her away in the carriage to search
through the attic for a costume. She had never been farther than the
door at Locust. Her journeys thither had been to carry home some
finished garment. But many an hour of patient sewing had been brightened
by her sisters' tales of the place. Both Miss Sarah and Miss Marietta
remembered it affectionately, for the sake of the woman who had welcomed
them there on so many happy occasions in the past.
Agnes thought she knew just how the interior of Locust would look,
especially the stately old drawing-room, with its portraits and candles,
its harp and the faint odour of rose-leaves; and really there was
something familiar to her in its appearance as she caught a glimpse of
it on her way up-stairs to Lloyd's room. But she had never imagined such
a dainty rose of a room as the pink and white bower Lloyd led her into.
There might have been a throb of resentment that all such beauty and
luxury had been left out of her life, if there had been time for her to
look around and compare it with her own scantily furnished room at home.
Lloyd hurried over to the bed, eager to display a gorgeous brocade gown
of rose and silver laid out there, which Mrs. Sherman had brought down
from the attic in her absence, and from which Mom Beck had pressed all
the wrinkles.
"It's as good as new," said Lloyd. "I'm glad that mothah wouldn't let us
cut it up last yeah, when we wanted to make it fit Katie. There are pink
slippahs to match, but I hoped you'd rathah weah these. They make me
think of Cinderella's glass ones, and they're twice as pretty."
She tossed the crystal beaded slippers over to Agnes for her inspection.
"Try them on," she urged. "I want to see how you'll look."
In a few moments the shabby shoes and the old brown dress lay in a heap
on the floor like a discarded chrysalis, and Agnes stepped out, a
dazzled butterfly, in her gorgeous robes of rose and silver.
Lloyd clasped her hands ecstatically. "Oh, Agnes, it's _lovely_! And
it's almost a perfect fit. If Miss Sarah can just take it up a little on
the shouldahs, and change the collah a tiny bit, it will look as if it
were made for you. When yoah hair is powdahed and you have this little
bunch of plumes in it, you'll be simply perfect. It doesn't mattah if
the slippahs do pinch a little. They look so pretty you can stand a
little thing like that for one evening."
Lloyd walked around and around her, till she had admired her to her
heart's content, and then led her away to show to Mrs. Sherman. "You
ought to carry yoah head that way all the time," she said. "It's
becoming to you to 'walk proud,' as old Mammy Easter used to say."
It was with the air of a duchess that Agnes sailed into the
drawing-room, and with the feeling that at last she had come into her
own. On every side the dim old mirrors flashed back the reflection of
the slender figure with its head proudly high. She looked at it
curiously, scarcely recognizing the delicate, high-bred features for her
own. There was colour in her face for one thing. The dull browns and
grays, which she wore for economy's sake, were apt to make her look
sallow. But this wonderful rose-pink lent a glow to her cheeks, and
pleasure and expectancy brightened her eyes, and left her a-tingle with
these new sensations.
"You'll be the feature of the occasion," Mrs. Sherman assured her. "Come
up to lunch with us Thursday. We'll powder your hair and help you dress,
and take you down in the carriage with us. Tell your sisters that we'll
see that you get home safely that night."
So to the other pleasures of the twenty-second was added the
undreamed-of delight of being invited out to lunch, and forgetting for
awhile that there were such tiresome things in the world as
sewing-machines and endless ruffling for other people. Although she wore
her old brown dress, darned at the elbows, and, with her usual timidity,
scarcely ventured a remark at the table unless directly questioned, she
was all aglow with the new experience.
Afterward it was easy to talk and laugh with Lloyd, as they went through
the conservatory cutting the flowers which were to decorate the tables
at The Beeches. Hyacinths and lilies-of-the-valley made a spring-time of
their own under the sheltering skylight. Agnes bent over them with a cry
of delight. "They make you forget the calendar, don't they?" she said,
looking shyly up at Lloyd. She wanted to add, "And so do you. You make
me forget that I am ten years older than you. It seems only pussy-willow
time by my feelings to-day." But their friendship was too new as yet for
such personal speeches.
As they went back to the drawing-room with a basket piled full of
hothouse blooms, Mrs. Sherman called to Lloyd that she needed her
up-stairs a few moments. Hastily excusing herself, she left Agnes with a
new magazine for her entertainment. When she came down later, the
magazine was lying uncut on the table, and Agnes, seated in front of the
piano, was fingering the keys with light touches which made no sound,
they pressed the ivory so gently. She started guiltily as Lloyd came in.
"I couldn't help it!" she stammered. "It drew me over here like a
magnet. It has been the dream of my life to know how to play, but it is
all such a mystery. I've puzzled over the music in the hymn-book many a
time, the little notes flying up and down like birds through a fence,
and then watched Miss Allison's fingers on the organ keys, going up and
down the same way."
"It is just as easy as reading the alphabet," said Lloyd. "I'll show
you. Wait till I find my old music primer. It is somewhere in this
cabinet."
Hastily turning over the exercise books and worn sheets of music that
filled one of the lower shelves, she dragged out an old dog-eared
instruction book, which she propped up on the rack in front of Agnes.
"Heah," she said, pointing to a note. "When one of those little birds,
as you call them, perches on this place on the fence, then you're to
strike the A key on the piano. If it lights on the line just above it,
then you strike the next key, B. See?" She ran her fingers lightly up
the octavo and began again with A. Agnes leaned hungrily over the page,
reading the printed directions below each simple measure, where the
fingering was plainly marked.
"Oh, I could learn to do it by studying this!" she cried, her face all
alight. "I am sure I could. I don't mean that I could ever learn to play
as you do, or Miss Allison, but I could learn simple things and the
accompaniments to old songs that Marietta loves. It would be almost as
great a joy to her and sister Sarah as it would to me, for my learning
to play has always been one of our favourite air-castles. If you could
loan me this instruction book for awhile--" She hesitated.
"Of co'se!" cried Lloyd, thrilled by the eagerness of the eyes which met
hers. "I'll give you a lesson right now, if you like. I'll teach you a
set of chords you can use for an accompaniment. They are so easy you can
learn them befoah you go home, and you can surprise Miss Marietta by
singing and playing for her. They fit evah so many of the ballads."
Turning the leaves of the instructor, she found the simple chords of
"Annie Laurie," and wrote beside each note the letters that would enable
Agnes to find them on the keyboard. "This isn't the right way to begin,"
she said, with a laugh, "but we'll take this short cut just to surprise
Miss Marietta. You can come back aftahward and learn about time and all
the othah things that ought to come first. I'll give you a lesson every
week for awhile, if you like."
The eyes that met hers now were brimming with happy tears.
"If I like," Agnes repeated, with a tremulous catch of the voice. "As if
I wouldn't jump at the chance to have the key to paradise put into my
hands. It's the happiest thing that ever happened to me."
With her heart as well as her whole attention given to the effort, it
was not long before Agnes found her fingers falling naturally into
place, and she played the chords over and over, humming the tune softly,
with a pleasure that was pathetic to Lloyd.
"Oh, I could keep on all day and all night!" exclaimed Agnes, when Mrs.
Sherman called to them that it was time to dress. "I've never been so
happy in all my life! You don't know what it means to me!" she cried,
turning a radiant face to Lloyd's. "You've lifted me clear off the
earth. I wish I could run home before the reception begins and play this
for Marietta. I want to see her face when I open the old piano."
Lloyd followed her up the stairs, wondering at the girl's uplifted mood.
She did not see how such a trifle could bring about such a
transformation in any one's spirits, not realizing that this bit of
knowledge which Agnes had picked up was to her a veritable key which
would open the door she had longed for years to enter.
When Agnes swept into the house at The Beeches, she was in such high
spirits that people looked twice to be sure that they knew the radiant
girl presiding so gaily over the fancy-work table.
"She is actually talking," Miss McGill whispered to Libbie Simms.
"Talking and laughing and making jokes like other girls. Somebody has
surely worked a hoodoo charm on her."
But happiness was the only hoodoo, and, under its expanding influence,
she fairly bloomed that night. Lloyd, hovering near her, jubilant over
the success of her popular Cinderella, beamed and dimpled with pleasure,
and stored away the many compliments she overheard, to repeat to Agnes
next day. Once she darted into the butler's pantry, where Miss Allison
was slicing cake, to announce, in an excited whisper: "Agnes has
actually had three invitations to suppah. She's gone in now with Mistah
John Bond. I must run back and take charge of the sales, but I just had
to tell you. Do peep in and see her there at the cawnah table, eating
ice-cream and talking away as if she'd been used to such attentions all
her life. Isn't it great? Now people can't shake their heads and say
poah girl, she's nevah had any attentions like othah girls. Nobody takes
any interest in her."
Miss Allison turned to give Lloyd's cheek a playful pinch. "You dear
little fairy godmother! All Cranford will take an interest in her, now
that she has blossomed out so unexpectedly. Even old Mr. Wade, who never
says nice things about any one, asked me who our distinguished-looking
guest was, and, when I told him Agnes Waring, he fairly gasped and
dropped his eye-glasses. Then he gave his usual contemptuous sniff that
always makes me want to shake him, and walked away, saying: 'Who'd have
thought it! Well, well, fine feathers certainly do make fine birds!'"
Lloyd hurried back to her place behind the fancy-work table. Nearly
every one was out in the room where supper was being served, and except
for an occasional question from some one who strolled by to ask the
price of a laundry-bag or a hemstitched centrepiece, no one disturbed
her. To the music of mandolin, guitar, and piano, played softly behind
the palms in one corner, she went on with her pleasing day-dreams for
Agnes. She would make other opportunities for her next week, take her in
town to a concert or a matinée. She wished she could offer her clothes,
but she dared not take that step. There would be the Waring pride to
reckon with if she did.
In the midst of this reverie, Agnes came up all a-flutter, saying,
shyly: "Lloyd, would you mind if I didn't go back in the carriage with
you? Your mother wouldn't think it strange, would she? It was because I
had no other way to get home that she invited me. But Mr. Bond has
asked to take me home behind his new team. He wants me to see what fine
travellers his horses are."
"Of co'se mothah wouldn't think it strange!" exclaimed Lloyd.
"Especially if it is Mistah Bond who wants to take you. She and Papa
Jack are so fond of him."
"He wants me to join the choir," Agnes went on, in a lower tone, as a
group of people crowded around the table. "Mrs. Walton and Mrs. Mallard
and Miss Flora Marks have asked me also. I've pinched myself black and
blue this evening, trying to make sure that I am awake. Oh, Lloyd,
you'll never, never know how I have enjoyed it all."
There was no time for further conversation then. People were beginning
to leave, and were crowding around the table to claim the articles they
had purchased earlier in the evening. But it was not necessary for Agnes
to repeat that she was radiantly happy. It showed in every word and
laugh and gesture. Lloyd went home that night nearer to the Castle of
Content than she had been for many weeks.
CHAPTER XV.
A HARD-EARNED PEARL
THE reaction came next day, however, when a budget of letters from the
girls turned her thoughts back to all that she was missing. Betty was
rooming with Juliet Lynn now, and they were writing a play together in
spare minutes. Allison had had honourable mention three times in the
Studio Bulletin, and a number of her sketches had been chosen for
display on the studio walls. Kitty had surprised them all by the
interest she had suddenly taken in French, and had translated a poem so
cleverly that Monsieur Blanc had sent it home for publication in a Paris
paper. The work was so interesting now, Betty wrote, and the time so
full, Warwick Hall grew daily more inspiring and more dear.
The old ache came back to Lloyd as she read. She felt that she had
fallen hopelessly behind the others. She was so utterly left out of all
their successes. The little efforts she had made to fill her days with
things worth while suddenly shrivelled into nothing, and she sat with
the letters in her lap, staring moodily into vacancy.
"What's the use?" she sobbed. "All that I can do heah doesn't amount to
a row of pins. I am out of it."
Thinking of Warwick Hall and the girls and all that she was missing, she
sat pitying herself until the tears began to come. She let them trickle
slowly down her face without attempting to wipe them away or fight them
back. Nobody was there to see, and she could be as miserable as she
chose. In the midst of her gloomy reverie she heard the door-bell ring.
Dabbing her handkerchief over her eyes, she started across the room to
make her escape up-stairs before Mom Beck could open the front door. But
she was too late. As she pushed aside the portières, she heard Agnes
Waring ask if she were at home, and Mom Beck immediately ushered her in.
"I came to bring the costume back," she began, hurriedly. "No, I must
not sit down, thank you. I am on my way to Mrs. Moore's to fit a lining.
But I just had to stop by and tell you what a lovely time I had
yesterday and last night. You should have seen Marietta's face this
morning when I opened the piano and played and sang for her. The tears
just rolled down her face, but it was because we were so happy.
"She said she had been afraid that I would grow morose and bitter
because I had so few pleasures, and she is so glad about the music
lessons and my joining the choir. Mr. Bond is going to come by for me
next Friday night. Sister Sarah said she had no idea that colours could
make such a difference in one till she saw me in that costume. She has
been looking over the silk quilt pieces your mother sent Marietta, and
she recognized two pieces that are parts of dresses your grandmother
used to wear. One is a deep rich red,--a regular garnet colour, and the
other is sapphire blue. She said that if they had belonged to any one
else but Amanthis Lloyd she couldn't do it,--but instead of cutting them
up into quilt pieces she--she is going to make them into shirt-waists
for me."
The colour deepened in Agnes's face as she made the confession, with an
unconscious lifting of the head that made Lloyd remember Mrs. Bisbee's
remark about the Waring pride. She hastened to say something to cover
the awkward pause that followed.
"Grandmothah Amanthis and Miss Sarah were such good friends, even if
there was so much difference in their ages. I know she would be glad for
you to use the silk that way. Looking pretty in it and having good times
in it seems a bettah way to use it as a remembrance of her than putting
it into a quilt, doesn't it?"
Then, to change the subject, which disconcerted her more than it did
Agnes, she held up the package of letters.
"I heard from the girls to-day, and they are all getting on so
beautifully, and making such good records, that it neahly breaks my
hah't to think I can't be with them." She laughed nervously. "I suppose
you wondahed what made my eyes so red, when you came in. I've been
regularly howling. I couldn't help it. I sat heah thinking about deah
old Warwick Hall, and all that I had to give up, till I was so misahable
I _had_ to cry."
Agnes, turning toward the window so that her face could not be seen,
looked out at the bare branches of the locusts.
"I wonder," she began, slowly, "if it would make any difference to
you--if it would make your disappointment any easier to bear--to know
how much your being in the Valley this winter has meant to me. Fifty
years from now one term more or less in your studies won't amount to
much. It will not count much then that you've solved a few more problems
in algebra, or learned a little more French, or fallen behind the others
in a few credit marks, but it will make all the difference in the world
to me that you were here to open a door for me.
"If you've done nothing more than give me that one music lesson, it has
showed me the possibility of all that I may accomplish, and started me
on the road to my heart's desire. If you've done no more than prove to
me that I can conquer my timidity and be like other girls, and accept
the little pleasures just at hand for the taking, don't you see that you
have opened up a way for me that I never could have found alone? And to
do that for any one, why, it's like teaching him a song that he will
teach to some one else, and that one will go on repeating, and the next
and the next, until you've started something that never stops. If I were
making up the accounts in the Hereafter, I am very sure I'd count it
more to your credit,--the unselfish way you are helping people than all
the lessons you could learn in a term at school. I am not saying half
what I feel. I couldn't. It is too deep down. But, oh, I do want you to
know that your disappointment has not all been in vain."
The voice that uttered the last sentence was tremulous with feeling.
Tears were very near the surface now. Before Lloyd could think of any
reply to her impetuous speech, she had started toward the door.
"Mrs. Moore will wonder what is keeping me," she said, as she turned the
knob. "Good-bye!"
With a lighter heart than Lloyd could have believed possible half an
hour earlier, she went up to her room. Dropping the damp little ball of
a handkerchief into her laundry-bag, she opened a drawer for a fresh
one. By mistake she drew out, not her handkerchief-box, but one that in
some previous haste had been pushed into its place,--the sandalwood box
containing the pearl beads. She took up the uncompleted rosary and began
slipping the beads back and forth over the string,--the string that
would have been two-thirds full by this time if she could have gone on
with school work. Suddenly she looked at it with widening eyes.
"I wondah," she said aloud, "I wondah if I couldn't slip one moah on for
yestahday. She said herself that it ought to count for moah than school
work. In a way she said it was like making 'undying music in the
world.' And what was it old Bishop Chartley said at the carol service?"
She stood with a little pucker on her forehead, trying to recall his
words about keeping the White Feast.
"So may we offer our pearls, days unstained by selfishness." That was
it. She could go on with her rosary then, and, instead of perfect
lessons at school, she could fill the string in token of days spent
unselfishly at home. Days not stained by regrets and tears and idle
repining for what could not be helped.
With a deep sigh of satisfaction, she slipped one more pearl bead down
the string, and laid it back in the box.
"That is for yestahday. I can't count to-day, for I sat for an houah
thinking about my troubles and pitying myself and making myself just as
misahable as possible."
So the little string began to grow again, and, though she was
half-ashamed of the childish pleasure it gave her, it did help when she
could see every night a visible token that she had tried to live that
'day through unselfishly and well,--that she had kept tryst with the
duty of cheerfulness which we all owe the world.
[Illustration: "SHE RODE OVER TO ROLLINGTON"]
But not all her pearls were earned as easily as the one that marked her
efforts for Agnes. One day, when she rode over to Rollington with some
illustrated magazines for the Crisp children, she was met by an
announcement from Minnie, the oldest one, who had charge of the family
in her mother's absence.
"Mis' Perkins said I was to tell you she didn't see why folks passed her
by when she liked wine jelly and good things just as well as some other
people she knew."
"Who is Mrs. Perkins?" asked Lloyd, astonished by such a message.
Minnie nodded her towhead toward a weather-beaten house of two rooms
across the street. "She lives over there. She's sick most of the time.
She saw you cooking in our kitchen that day that you came and got
dinner, and ma sent her over a piece of the pie you made, and she's been
sort of sniffy ever since, because nobody does such things for her."
Minnie seemed so anxious that Lloyd should include Mrs. Perkins in her
visit that finally Lloyd agreed to be escorted over to see her. Wrapping
the baby in a shawl, and staggering along under its weight, Minnie
ordered the other children to stay where they were, and led the way
across the street.
The tilt of Lloyd's dainty nose, as she went in, said more plainly than
words, "Poah white trash!" For the house had a stuffy smell of liniment
and bacon grease. An old woman came forward to meet them in her stocking
feet and a dirty woollen wrapper. Her uncombed gray hair straggled
around her ears, and her wrinkled face was unwashed and grimy. Lloyd was
thankful that she did not offer to shake hands. She sat down on the edge
of a chair, breathing the stuffy air as sparingly as possible.
She had always been taught that old age must be respected, no matter how
unlovely, and as Mrs. Perkins counted her aches and pains in a weak,
whining voice, pity got the better of Lloyd's disgust. She began to feel
sorry for this poor old creature, for whom no one else seemed to have
any sympathy. She complained bitterly of her neighbours and the
church-members who professed to be so charitable, but who left her to
suffer.
Then she praised the lemon pie that Lloyd had made, until Lloyd gladly
promised to make one for her. "I'll bring it down the last of the week,"
she promised, later, when she rose to go, and Mrs. Perkins introduced
the subject again. But that was not what the old woman wanted.
"Why can't you come down here and make it in my kitchen?" she whined,
"same as you did in Mrs. Crisp's. I get dreadful lonesome setting here,
and it would be so much company to see you whisking around beating eggs
and rolling out the crust. Then I could smell it baking, and eat it hot
out of the oven. It's been many a long day since I've done a thing like
that. It makes my mouth water, just thinking of it."
"Certainly I could do it heah, if you would like it bettah," promised
Lloyd, rashly. "Is there anything I can do for you befoah I go?"
"Yes, there is," was the ready answer. "I didn't eat much dinner, and
I'm that weak and faint I'd like if you'd make me a cup of tea."
"Certainly," answered Lloyd again. "If you'll just tell me where to find
things."
"I'll be going on," said Minnie Crisp, beginning to wrap the baby up in
its shawl again. "Those kids will be turning the house upside down if
I'm not there to watch them."
Nobody paid any attention to her departure, for Lloyd, hanging her coat
over the back of a dusty chair, had gone into the kitchen before Minnie
finished making a woollen mummy of the baby.
"The tea is in a paper bag in the corner cupboard," called Mrs. Perkins.
"Mrs. Moore sent it to me. It's green tea, and I never did care for any
kind but black. I'd pretty nigh as soon have none as green. You might
poach me an egg, too, if you feel like it, and make a bit of toast."
With a shiver of disgust, Lloyd looked around her. Everything was dirty.
She wished she dared run across the street and prepare the lunch in Mrs.
Crisp's immaculate kitchen. There everything shone from repeated
scrubbings with soft soap and sand. She enjoyed cooking over there. As
she opened the cupboard door a roach ran out, and she jumped aside with
another shiver of disgust. She wanted a pan in which to poach the egg,
but nothing looked clean enough to use. Finally she chose a battered
saucepan, but dropped it when she discovered that a spider had woven a
web inside.
Spiders had always been an abomination to Lloyd. It made her feel cold
and creepy to touch a cobweb. But the story of Ederyn flashed through
her thoughts, and she grasped the pan, determined to use it or die in
the effort. She had started and she would not turn back. It was plainly
her duty to minister to the wants of this complaining old invalid whom
others neglected, and she would keep tryst at any cost. With many an
inward shudder she went on with her task. As the water in the kettle was
already steaming, it was not long before the lunch was ready, and she
carried it in.
"It's simply impossible for me to come and make the pie in this dirty
kitchen," thought Lloyd, "and I can't tell her so. Maybe I could ask
Mrs. Crisp to invite her ovah and she could see it done there."
While she worried over the problem of introducing the subject tactfully,
Mrs. Perkins herself opened the way. She hadn't been well enough to do
any cleaning for several weeks, she said. If she could get a little
stronger, she intended to do two things: to slick up the place a bit,
and to go on a visit to Jane O'Grady's up near the black bridge. She had
been wanting to spend the day with Jane all winter, but didn't have any
way to get there. It was too far to walk. Lloyd saw her opportunity and
seized it.
"Why, mothah will send the carriage for you, Mrs. Perkins, any day you
set. She'd be glad to. Alec can drive you ovah early in the mawning,
when he is out for the marketing, and go for you befoah dah'k."
"Then you may send to-morrow," said Mrs. Perkins, ungraciously. "I don't
want to risk putting it off. Folks usually forget such promises
overnight. So I'd best make sure of it."
Lloyd flushed angrily, but the next instant excused the old woman's
rudeness on the score of her ill health. She had a plan that she was
anxious to carry out, and she hurried home to begin, all a-tingle with
her charitable impulses. She was surprised that her mother should treat
it so lightly.
"Of course you can have the carriage," said Mrs. Sherman. "But, my good
little Samaritan, I must warn you. That old woman is a pauper in spirit.
She hasn't a particle of proper pride. People have done too much for
her. She'll take all she can get, and grumble because it isn't more. So
you mustn't be disappointed if, instead of thanks, you get only
criticism."
But Lloyd, full of the zeal of a true reformer, danced down to the
servants' quarters to find May Lily, one of the cook's grandchildren.
May Lily, a neat-looking coloured girl of seventeen, had been one of
Lloyd's most loyal followers since they made mud pies together on the
Colonel's white door-steps, and the readiness to serve her now was
prompted not so much by the promised dollar as the desire to still
follow her lead. So next morning, soon after Mrs. Perkins's departure in
the Sherman carriage, a mighty revolution began in the house she left
behind her.
May Lily, strong and willing, went to work like a small cyclone. Under
Lloyd's direction, she swept and scrubbed and scoured. The bed was
aired, the stove was blacked, the windows washed, the tins polished till
they shone like new. By four o'clock not a cobweb or a speck of dust was
to be seen in either room. Lloyd sat down to wait for Mrs. Perkins's
return. She felt that it was safe to breathe now, and she did not have
to sit gingerly on the edge of the chair. Every piece of furniture had
been washed and rubbed. She could keep her promise about the pie very
comfortably now. Everything smelled so clean and wholesome to her that
she was sure that Mrs. Perkins would notice the change at once and be
pleased.
Mrs. Perkins did notice the change the moment she entered the door, but
it was with a displeased face. "Hm! Hm!" she sniffed. "Smells mightily
of soft soap in here. What have you been doing? I never could bear the
smell of soft soap or lye. Hm! Hm!"
Then she turned accusingly on Lloyd. "Didn't you know better than to put
stove-blacking on that stove? When it gets het up, it will smoke to
fare-ye-well, and start my asthma to going again full tilt. Some folks
are mighty thoughtless, never have no consideration for other people."
Lloyd shrank back, almost overcome by such a reception. It was like a
dash of cold water in her face. She was angry and indignant.
"Well," continued Mrs. Perkins, still sniffing around the room, as she
put her bonnet and shawl away. "Now you're here I'd like it if you would
put on the teakettle and make me a good strong cup of coffee. Jane
O'Grady gave me a pound, all parched and ground. I haven't had any
before to-day for weeks. I'm plumb tuckered out with the visit."
Lloyd hurried to build up the fire, thankful that May Lily had spent
much time scouring the old coffee-pot. Otherwise she could not have
brought herself to touch it. It shone like new now. As she poured the
water into it, three tiny streams spurted out of the side, hissing and
sputtering over the stove.
"Now just see what you done!" scolded Mrs. Perkins. "You hadn't ought to
have scoured that coffee-pot so. You'd ought to have let well enough be,
for you might have known you'd rub holes in it and make it leak."
"I'll get you a new one in place of it at once," said Lloyd, stiffly,
her indignation rising till she could hardly speak calmly. "I'll go this
minute."
There was a small grocery store farther up the hill, where a little of
everything was kept in stock, and Lloyd dashed out bareheaded, glad of
an excuse to cool her temper. By the time she had made the coffee in the
new pot, Alec drove up to the door for her.
"You'll come again to-morrow to make that lemon pie, won't you?" asked
Mrs. Perkins, anxiously.
"No, I can't come till the day aftah."
"What? Thursday?" was the impatient answer. "Time drags awful slow for a
body that can only sit and wait."
"I have an engagement to-morrow," said Lloyd, stiffly, remembering it
was the day for Agnes Waring's music lesson. "But you can depend on me
Thursday."
Mrs. Sherman only laughed when Lloyd repeated her day's adventure at
home, but the old Colonel fairly snorted with indignation.
"Poor white trash!" he exclaimed. "Don't go near her again!"
"But I promised," answered Lloyd, dolefully. "I must keep my promise."
"Then tell Cindy to make a pie, and let Alec take it down," he
suggested.
"No, she said she wanted to smell it cooking, and to eat it hot out of
the oven, and I promised her she might."
The Colonel glared savagely at the fire. "Beggars shouldn't be
choosers," he muttered, then turned to Mrs. Sherman. "Little daughter,
are you going to let that poor child of yours be imposed on by that
creature?"
"I can't interfere with her promise, papa," she answered. "It may be a
disagreeable experience, but it will not hurt her any more than it hurt
the old woman to sweep the cobwebs out of the sky. Hers was a thankless
job, too, but no doubt she was better for the exercise, and she must
have learned a great deal on such a trip."
It was in the same spirit in which Ederyn cried, "Oh, heart and hand of
mine, keep tryst! Keep tryst or die!" that Lloyd gathered up the
necessary materials and started off on Thursday to Mrs. Perkins's
cottage. This time there was no admiring audience of little towheads
tiptoeing around the table, as there had been at Mrs. Crisp's. But
everything was clean, and, with her recipe spread out before her, Lloyd
followed directions to the letter.
Mrs. Perkins, watching the beating of eggs and stirring of the golden
filling, the deft mixing of pastry, grew cheerful and entertaining. She
forgot to complain of her neighbours, and was surprised into the telling
of some of her girlish experiences that actually brought an amused
twinkle to her sharp old eyes. Lloyd was vastly entertained. She had,
too, a virtuous feeling that in keeping her promise she had given
pleasure to one who rarely met kindness. It gave her a warm inward glow
of satisfaction.
To her mortification, when she finally drew the pie from the oven, the
meringue, which had been like a snowdrift a moment before, and which
should have come out with just a golden glow on it from its short
contact with the heat, was all shrivelled and brown.
"The nasty little oven was too hot!" cried Lloyd, in disgust.
"Just my luck," whined Mrs. Perkins. "I might have known that I'd never
get anything I set my heart on. But you can scrape off the meringue, and
I'll try and make out with the plain pie."
Although she ate generously, she ate grumblingly, disappointed because
of the scorched meringue, and it wasn't as sweet as she liked.
That night, Lloyd, mortified over her failure, stood long with the white
rosary in her hand. "Maybe I ought to count the poah pie as I would an
imperfect lesson," she thought, hesitating, with a bead in her fingers.
Then she said, defiantly: "But I did my best, and the day has certainly
been disagreeable enough to deserve two pearls."
After another moment of conscientious weighing of the matter, she
slipped the bead slowly down the string. "There!" she exclaimed. "I
suahly went through the black watahs of Kilgore to get that one."
Next day when she stopped in Rollington to pay for the coffee-pot, and
drove by the Crisps' to ask about the baby, Minnie Crisp told her
several things. Mrs. Perkins was sick all night, and had told her ma
that it was the lemon pie that was the cause of the trouble; that it
would have made a dog sick. "Them was her words," said Minnie,
solemnly.
"I don't wondah!" cried Lloyd. "The greedy old thing! There was enough
for foah people, and it was very rich, and she ate it all."
"And she didn't like it because you had May Lily scrub and clean while
she was gone," added Minnie, with childlike lack of tact. "She talked
about you dreadful after you went away. Didn't she, ma?"
"Shoo, Minnie!" answered Mrs. Crisp, with a wave of her apron. "Don't
tell all you know."
"I didn't," answered the child. "I didn't say a word about the names she
called her,--meddlesome Matty, and all that."
Lloyd took her leave presently, with a flushed face and a sore heart. On
the way home she stopped at The Beeches, and Mrs. Walton, who saw at a
glance that something was wrong, soon drew out the story of her
grievance.
"Don't pay any attention to that old creature," she said, laughing
heartily, "and forgive my laughing. Everybody in the Valley has had a
similar experience. The King's Daughters long ago gave her up in
disgust. She's one of those people who doesn't want to be reformed and
won't stay helped. Her house will be just as dirty next week as when
you first went there."
"I didn't suppose there were such people in the world," said Lloyd, in
disgust.
"You'll find out all sorts of disagreeable things as you get older,"
sighed Mrs. Walton. "It is one of the penalties of growing up. But still
it is good to have such experiences, for the wiser we grow the better we
know how to 'ease the burden of the world,' and that is what we are here
for."
Lloyd's eyes widened with surprise. Here was another person quoting from
the poem she had learned. She was glad now that she had committed it to
memory, since on three occasions it had made people's meaning clearer to
her.
"Yes," she answered, the dimples stealing into her smile. "But the next
time I'll find out first if they really want their burden eased, and if
that burden is dirt, like Mrs. Perkins's, I'll suahly let it alone."
CHAPTER XVI.
"SWEET SIXTEEN"
THE red coat Lloyd wore that winter was long remembered in the Valley,
for wherever it went it carried a bright face above it, a cheery
greeting, and some pleasant word that made the day seem better for its
passing.
Mrs. Bisbee and the little Crisps were not the only ones who learned to
watch for it. As all the lonely town of Hamelin must have felt toward
the one child left to it after the Pied Piper had passed through its
streets, so all the Valley turned with tender regard to the young girl
left in its midst. Mothers, whose daughters were away at school, stopped
to talk to her with affectionate interest. The old ladies whom she
regularly visited welcomed her as if she were a part of their vanished
youth. The young ladies took her under their wing, glad to have her in
the choir and the King's Daughters' Circle, for she was bubbling over
with girlish enthusiasm and a sincere desire to help.
So she found the cobwebs in the neighbourhood sky, and disagreeable
enough they were at times, even more disagreeable than her experience
with Mrs. Perkins. But she swept away with praiseworthy energy, till
gradually she found that the accumulation of outside interests, like the
cobweb strands which Ederyn twisted, made a rope strong enough to lift
her out of herself and her dungeon of disappointment.
After the novelty of giving music lessons had worn off, it grew to be a
bore. Not the lessons themselves, for Agnes's delight in them never
flagged. It was the tied-up feeling it gave her to remember that those
afternoons were not her own. It happened so often that the afternoons
devoted to Agnes were the ones which of all the week she wanted to have
free, and she had to give up many small pleasures on account of them.
It grew to be a bore, also, calling on some of the people who claimed a
weekly visit. She never tired of Mrs. Bisbee's lively comments on her
neighbours and her interesting tales about them. But there was old Mr.
and Mrs. Apwall, who, with nothing to do but sit on opposite sides of
the fire and look at each other, were said to quarrel like cat and dog.
It mortified Lloyd dreadfully to have them quarrel in her presence, and
have them pour out their grievances for her to decide which was in the
wrong.
She always rose to go at that juncture, flushed and embarrassed, and
vowing inwardly she would never visit them again. But they always
managed to extract a promise before she got to the door that she would
drop in again the next time she was passing.
"Somehow you seem to get husband's mind off himself," Mrs. Apwall would
whisper at parting. "He isn't half so touchy when you've cheered him up
a spell."
And Mr. Apwall would follow her out through the chilly hall to open the
front door, and say, huskily: "Come again, daughter. Come again. Your
visits seem to do the madam a world of good. They give her something to
talk about beside my fancied failings."
So inwardly groaning, Lloyd would go again, painfully alert to keep the
conversation away from subjects that invariably led to disputes. And
inwardly groaning, she went dutifully to the Coburns' at their repeated
requests. The first few times the garrulous old couple were interesting,
but the most thrilling tale grows tiresome when one has heard it a
dozen times. She could scarcely keep from fidgeting in her chair when
the inevitable story of their feud with the Cayn family was begun. They
never left out a single petty detail.
No one will ever know how often the thought of the little rosary in the
sandalwood box helped Lloyd to listen patiently, and to keep tryst with
the expectations of those about her, so that at nightfall there might be
another pearl to slip on the silken cord, in token of another day
unstained by selfishness.
There was rarely time for envying the girls at school now. The days were
too full. Almost before it seemed possible, the locusts were in bloom
and it was mid-May by the calendar. In that time perfect health had come
back to her. There were no more crying spells now, no more hours of
nervous exhaustion, of fretful impatience over trifles. She went singing
about the house, with a colour in her cheeks that rivalled the pink of
the apple blossoms.
"Spring has come indoors as well as out," said Mrs. Sherman one morning.
"I think that we may safely count that your Christmas vacation is over,
and you may go back to your music lessons whenever you choose."
The night before her birthday, Lloyd sat with her elbows on her
dressing-table, peering into the mirror with a very serious face.
"You'll be sixteen yeahs old in the mawning, Lloyd Sherman," she told
the girl in the glass. "'Sweet sixteen!' You've come to the end of lots
of things, and to-morrow it will be like going through a gate that
you've seen ahead of you for a long, long time. A big, wide gate that
you have looked forward to for yeahs, and things are bound to be
different on the othah side."
Next morning, just in fun, she trailed down to breakfast in one of her
mother's white dresses, with her hair piled on the top of her head. It
was very becoming so, but it made her look so tall and womanly that she
was sure her grandfather would object to it.
"He'll nevah let me grow up if he can help it," she said, half-pouting,
as she gave a final glance over her shoulder at the mirror, vastly
pleased with her young ladylike appearance. "He'll say, 'Tut, tut!
That's not grandpa's Little Colonel.' But I can't stay his Little
Colonel always."
She was standing by the window looking down the locust avenue when he
came in to breakfast, so she did not see his start of surprise at sight
of her. But his half-whispered exclamation, "_Amanthis!_" told her why
he failed to make the speech she expected to hear. With her hair done
high, showing the beautiful curve of her head and throat as she stood
half-turned toward him, he had caught another glimpse of her startling
resemblance to the portrait. He could not regret losing his Little
Colonel if that loss were to give him a living reminder of a beloved
memory.
After breakfast, when an armful of birthday gifts had been duly admired
and the donors thanked, and she had spent nearly an hour enjoying them,
she strolled down the avenue, feeling very much grown up with the long
dress trailing behind her. She wandered down to the entrance gate,
hoping to meet Alec, who had gone for the mail. She was sure there would
be a letter from Betty, for Betty never forgot people's birthdays. Then
she trailed back again under the white arch of fragrant locust blooms.
At the half-way seat she sat down and tucked a spray of the blossoms
into her hair and fastened another at her belt. She had not long to wait
there, enjoying the freshness of the sweet May morning, for in a few
minutes Alec came up the avenue with a handful of letters and papers.
She sorted out her own eagerly, six letters and a package.
She opened Betty's first. It was a long one, ending with a birthday
greeting in rhyme, and enclosing a handkerchief which she had made
herself, sheer and fine and daintily hemstitched, with her initials
embroidered in one corner in the smallest letters possible.
The letters from Allison and Kitty were profusely illustrated all around
the margins, and by the time Lloyd had read them, and Gay's ridiculous
summary of school news, she felt as if she had been on a visit to
Warwick Hall, and had seen all the girls. The next letter was from
Joyce, a good thick one. But before she read it, curiosity impelled her
to open the package, which was a flat one, bearing a foreign postmark
and several Italian stamps. There were two photographs inside. She
slipped the uppermost one from its envelope.
"Why, it is Eugenia Forbes!" she exclaimed aloud. "But how she has
changed!"
The picture was not at all like the Eugenia whom Lloyd remembered, the
thin slip of a girl who had raced up and down the avenue five years
before at her house-party. She had blossomed into a beautiful young
woman.
"A regulah Spanish beauty!" Lloyd thought, as she looked at the picture,
long and admiringly,--the picture of a patrician face with great dark
eyes and a wealth of dusky hair. The old self-conscious, dissatisfied
expression was gone. It was a happy face that smiled back at her. It had
been nearly a year since Lloyd had had a letter from Eugenia. She had
written from the school near Paris that her father was on his way over
from America to join her and take her home immediately after her
graduation. Lloyd had sent a reply addressed to her cousin Carl's
office, but had heard nothing more.
Thinking that the other photograph was her cousin Carl's, Lloyd
unwrapped it, wondering if he had changed as much as Eugenia. To her
surprise, it was not a middle-aged man she saw, with gray moustache and
kindly tired eyes. It was the handsome boyish face of a stranger, yet so
startlingly familiar that she looked at it with a puzzled frown.
"Why should Eugenia be sending me this?" she thought. "And where have I
seen that man befoah?" Then, "Phil Tremont!" she exclaimed aloud the
next instant. "That's who it reminds me of. It is almost exactly like
him, only it is oldah-looking, and the nose isn't quite like his."
She turned the picture over. There on the back was written in Eugenia's
hand the word Venice, and a date underneath the name, Stuart Tremont.
"Phil's brother!" gasped Lloyd, in astonishment. "How strange that she
should know him!"
Tearing open the envelope lying on the bench beside her, Lloyd unfolded
a twenty-page letter from Eugenia, written on thin blue foreign
correspondence paper. Before her glance had travelled half-way down the
second page, she gave another gasp, and sat staring at an underscored
sentence in open-mouthed amazement. Then, never waiting to gather up the
other letters which fluttered into the grass at her feet, as she sprang
up, she rushed off toward the house as hard as she could go, waving
Eugenia's letter in one hand and the photographs in the other.
"Mothah!" she called, as she reached the end of the avenue. She was
tripping over her long skirt, and scattering hairpins at every step, as
her reckless flight sent her hair tumbling down over her shoulders.
"Mothah!" she shrieked again, as she stumbled up the porch steps.
"Here in my room, dear," came the answer from an upper window. Falling
all over herself in her undignified haste, Lloyd tore up the stairs. A
final tangling of skirts sent her headlong into her mother's room, where
she half-fell in a breathless, laughing heap, and sat at Mrs. Sherman's
feet with her hair almost hiding her eager face.
"Guess what's happened!" she demanded, breathlessly. "_Eugenia is
engaged!_ And to Phil Tremont's brother Stuart!"
Then she sat enjoying her mother's surprise, which was almost as great
as her own. "And she isn't much moah than eighteen," Lloyd exclaimed,
rocking back and forth on the floor, with her arms clasped around her
knees, while her mother examined the pictures.
"She looks twenty at least in this picture," answered Mrs. Sherman,
"even more than that. Eugenia was always old for her years. If you
remember, she was wearing long dresses when we left her the summer we
were in Europe together."
"Yes, but it doesn't seem possible that Eugenia is old enough to be
_married_," insisted Lloyd. "I can hardly believe it is true."
She sat staring dreamily out of the window until a slight breeze
fluttering the sheets of paper still clutched in her fingers reminded
her that she had read only two of the twenty pages.
"Heah is what she says about it," began Lloyd, reading slowly, for the
closely written sheets were hard to decipher.
"'I know you are going to wonder how it all came
about, so I'll begin at the beginning. Last summer
papa came on to Paris in time for Commencement. He
was so pleased because I took first honours, when
he hadn't expected me to take any, that he said he
would do as fathers sometimes did in
fairy-tales,--grant me three wishes, anything in
reason; for he had had an unusually successful
year and could well afford it.
"'Well, I thought and thought, but I couldn't
think of anything I really wanted, as I just had
an entire new outfit in clothes, so I told him
finally I'd like to stop in London long enough to
have a tailor make me a riding-habit, and I'd
think of the other two wishes sometime during the
year. So we went to London. Papa is such an old
darling, and we've grown to be real chums. After
the tailor had taken my measure, we drove to our
banker's for the mail, and who should papa meet
there but Doctor Tremont, an American physician
whom he knew years ago when they were young men.
They belonged to the same college fraternity.
"'They forgot all about poor little me, sitting
over in the corner of the office, and stood and
talked about old times, and asked each other about
Tom, Dick, and Harry, until I was thoroughly tired
of waiting. But after awhile the handsomest young
man came into the room, and Doctor Tremont
introduced him to papa as his oldest son, Stuart.
Then they remembered my humble existence, and papa
brought them both over to me. In about two minutes
we all felt as if we had known each other always.
"'Doctor Tremont said he had had a very hard
winter in Berlin, making some study of microbes
with a noted scientist,--I forget his name. He
said Stuart had been closely confined also (he was
taking a medical course), and they were off on a
hard-earned holiday. They were going coaching up
in the lake regions, first in England, then in
Scotland, and maybe later would go over to the
Isle of Skye.
"'Would you believe it, before we left the bank,
Doctor Tremont had persuaded papa that he needed a
vacation also, and almost in no time it was
arranged that we should join them on their
coaching trip. We had a perfectly ideal time, and
Stuart and I got to be the best of friends. We
corresponded all summer and fall after that. I
didn't expect to see him again for two years,
because he intended to stay abroad until he had
finished his medical course. But along in the
winter papa's health broke down, and the doctor
told him he must keep away from business for a
year, and ordered him to Baden-Baden for the
water.
"'He was horribly ill after we got there, and I
was so frightened and inexperienced that I thought
he was going to die, and I telegraphed for Doctor
Tremont. It isn't far from Berlin, you know, as we
Americans count distances. But the doctor had gone
to Paris for several weeks, and Stuart came at
once in his place. Of course he wasn't an
experienced physician like his father, but he was
such a comfort, for he cheered papa up so much,
and assured us that the doctor in charge was doing
everything that his father could do. And he helped
nurse papa, and boosted up my spirits mightily,
and was so dear and thoughtful and considerate
that, when he went away, I felt as if the bottom
had dropped out of everything. You can't imagine
how kind and lovely he was all that week. Papa
fairly swore by him.
"'We wrote to each other every week after he went
back to Berlin. Early this March papa and I went
down into Italy. We shifted about from place to
place,--Naples, Sorrento, Rome, Florence, and
finally to Venice. I don't know why I never wrote
to you those days. You were often in my thoughts,
but you know how it is when one is constantly on
the wing.
"'I used to wish daily that Stuart could be with
us. He is the most satisfactory of travelling
companions, but I didn't know how very much I
wished it until one day in Venice. Papa was asleep
at the hotel, and I was so lonely that I started
out by myself to explore. I left a message with
the clerk that I had gone to vespers at Saint
Mark's Cathedral. There was a crowd of tourists in
the square in front of the cathedral, feeding the
pigeons. Hearing their English speech after so
many months of nothing but foreign tongues made me
homesick. In the whole plaza, no one but myself
seemed to be alone. They were walking in groups or
couples, and everybody seemed so gay and happy
that I was glad to cross over to the cathedral to
get out of sight.
"'The vesper service had just begun, and I stood
inside the door listening to the chanting of the
monks' voices, and getting more homesick every
moment. Just as the tears were ready to brim over,
I looked up, and there in the dim light beside me
stood Stuart. I thought I must be dreaming, but it
was a very happy dream, for I felt that I could
never be homesick or unhappy again when he looked
down and smiled.
"'I couldn't believe that I was awake and that he
was really there, until we got outside the
cathedral and he began to talk. Then he told me
that he had gone to the hotel, and they had given
him the message I had left for papa. It never
occurred to me to wonder why he had come to
Venice. It just seemed so natural and lovely that
he should be there that I never even asked him
why. He called a gondola, and we got in and went
drifting down the canals under the bridges and
past the old palaces, with the sunset turning
everything around us to rose-colour and gold. Oh,
I can't begin to tell you how perfectly heavenly
it all was. There was a new moon in the sky when
we turned back to the hotel, and, though Stuart
_hadn't_ proposed in the same way that Laurie did
to Amy in "Little Women," he had told me why he
came so far to find me, and I liked his way a
great deal better than Laurie's.
"'Wasn't it all romantic? Papa was awfully
surprised to see him, and nearly as glad as I, and
I told him that now I'd claim the other wishes he
had promised me at Commencement, and take the two
in one. I wished that he would say yes to the
question Stuart had come to ask him. Dear old dad,
he always keeps his promises, so he said yes after
awhile. After Stuart had explained that he didn't
intend to ask him to give me up. When he finishes
his medical course here next year, he has a
position waiting for him near New York City. We're
to have a little home on the Hudson, and papa is
to live with us. So is Doctor Tremont, when he
gets through with his microbe business. We are
done with hotels for ever.
"'I cannot remember ever having had a home, Lloyd.
I have always lived either in a hotel or at
boarding-school. And Stuart says the only one he
can remember distinctly was the one presided over
by his great-aunt Patricia, and she never did
understand boys. This summer I shall spend with
papa in Switzerland. He is about well now. Then in
the fall, when he goes back to New York, I am
going to a delightful school near Berlin which I
have just heard of. It is a school where none but
the daughters of the German nobility are
received, as a rule. They make an exception
sometimes in the case of Americans like myself.
There they are taught all the housewifely arts
that delight a good frau's soul. Don't laugh at
me, Lloyd. I'm going to learn how to broil and
brew and conduct a well-regulated establishment
from attic to cellar.
"'A year from this June, Cousin Jack and Cousin
Elizabeth are to bring you and Betty on to New
York to be my bridesmaids. I'd love to have Joyce,
too, if it were possible for her to leave home.
She has been so good to Stuart's brother Phil.
Isn't it strange that we should all be so linked
together? I'd like to have all of you girls that I
met at your never-to-be-forgotten house-party.
That was where I had my first taste of a real
home, and found out that there is something to
live for besides the things that money can buy.
"'I have looked so often lately at my little
Tusitala ring. I have been a better girl because
of that ring, Lloyd, and I intend it shall be the
inspiration of all my married life,--to help me
leave a road of the loving heart in the memory of
every one around me.
"'I wish everybody in the world could be as happy
as I am. I am sending Stuart's picture, so that
you can see for yourself what a fine, splendid
fellow you are to have for a cousin some day. Give
my love to your father and mother and Betty, and
do write soon and tell me that you are glad.
"'Your loving cousin,
"'EUGENIA.'"
Lloyd looked up from the reading of the letter, wondering what sort of
an expression she would find on her mother's face. To her surprise, it
was one of approval, and there were tears in her eyes.
"Poor motherless child!" said Mrs. Sherman, softly. "I shall write to
her to-day. I don't approve of early marriages, but Eugenia has always
been more mature than most girls of her age, and she does need a home
sadly. The care and pleasure of one will develop her character in a way
that nothing else will. Let me see. She will be nearly twenty next June.
Yes, I have no doubt but that, with this next year's training in
housekeeping which she intends to take, she will be far better fitted
for home-making than many an older woman."
"And may Betty and I be bridesmaids?" interrupted Lloyd, eagerly, a
starlike expectancy shining in her eyes.
Mrs. Sherman considered a moment, then answered, slowly: "There is no
reason why you should not be, so long as you are willing to go as little
maids, and not young ladies. I am very jealous for your girlhood, Lloyd
dear. I must guard against anything that would shorten it in the least.
Mother's baby must not grow up too fast."
"I don't want to grow up fast, honestly!" cried Lloyd, scrambling to her
feet and tripping over the long skirts again as she threw her arms
around her mother's neck. "I'm not dignified enough yet to fit yoah
dresses, and my hair simply won't stay up. Sweet sixteen doesn't seem
half as old when you really get there as you think that it is going to.
I'll do my hair down and weah short skirts as long as you want me to,
but, oh, I'm so glad that I'm going to be a bridesmaid! It will be
_such_ fun. I must write to Betty this minute to tell her that you are
willing."
That night Lloyd sat before her dressing-table again, this time with the
new photographs propped up in front of her. Stuart's picture almost
seemed to bring Phil before her eyes, and for a moment, instead of the
familiar walls of her room, she saw the moonlighted desert, and smelled
the orange-blossoms, and heard a strong young voice ringing out across
the silence of the sandy cactus plains:
"Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold."
"Wouldn't it be strange," she thought, "if he were really the one
written for me in the stars, as Betty said in the beginning, and that we
should meet at Eugenia's wedding again, and that some day, a long time
after, I should find that he is the prince? But it couldn't be Phil,"
she said to herself after another glance. "He doesn't measuah up to Papa
Jack's yardstick. Neithah does Malcolm now, for that mattah," she mused,
with her chin in her hand. "Jack Ware might, or Rob, but they seem moah
like brothahs than anything else, and would not fit my ideal of a prince
at all."
"'As the falcon's feathahs fit the falcon,'" she quoted, dreamily. "It
would have to be some strangah that I've nevah yet seen, to do that. Or,
maybe Mammy Easter's grandmothah was right when she read my fortune in
the teacups. Maybe I'll be an old maid. I wish I knew. I _wish_ I knew!"
She peered wistfully into the mirror, as if she half-expected to see a
shadowy hand stretch out of its dim background, and lift the veil of the
future to her eager gaze. "The thoughts of youth are long, long
thoughts." Lloyd's flew back to Eugenia's romance for an instant, then
drifted far beyond the two in the gondola, with the Venetian sunset
turning all their little world to rose-colour and gold.
[Illustration: "'NO MATTAH WHAT LIES AHEAD . . . I'LL NOT DISAPPOINT
THEM'"]
One is a mariner at sixteen, sailing toward an undiscovered country,
with seaweed and driftwood on the crest of every wave beginning to
whisper, "Land ahead." Toward the dim outline of that untried shore,
Lloyd drifted now in her reverie.
"I _wish_ I could know what the next sixteen yeahs hold for me," she
whimpered. "I hope it will be something bettah than I could choose for
myself. Mothah and Papa Jack expect so much of me."
Then her glance fell on the unfinished rosary, and, picking up the
string of tiny pearls, she looped it around her throat, and faced the
girl in the mirror with resolute eyes.
"No mattah what lies ahead," she said, bravely, "I'll not disappoint
them. I'll keep the tryst!"
THE END.
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"'Asa Holmes; or, At the Cross-Roads' is the most
delightful, most sympathetic and wholesome book
that has been published in a long while."--_Boston
Times._
=The Rival Campers=; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF HENRY BURNS. By RUEL PERLEY
SMITH. Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, $1.50
Here is a book which will grip and enthuse every boy reader. It is the
story of a party of typical American lads, courageous, alert, and
athletic, who spend a summer camping on an island off the Maine coast.
"The best boys' book since 'Tom Sawyer.'"--_San
Francisco Examiner._
=The Rival Campers Afloat=; OR, THE PRIZE YACHT VIKING. By RUEL PERLEY
SMITH.
Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, $1.50
This book is a continuation of the adventures of "The Rival Campers" on
their prize yacht _Viking_. An accidental collision results in a series
of exciting adventures, culminating in a mysterious chase, the loss of
their prize yacht, and its recapture by means of their old yacht,
_Surprise_.
=The Rival Campers Ashore.= By RUEL PERLEY SMITH, author of "The Rival
Campers," "The Rival Campers Afloat," etc.
Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, $1.50
"The Rival Campers Ashore" deals with the adventures of the campers and
their friends in and around the town of Benton. Mr. Smith introduces a
new character,--a girl,--who shows them the way to an old mill, around
which the mystery of the story revolves. The girl is an admirable
acquisition, proving as daring and resourceful as the campers
themselves.
=The Young Section-Hand=; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF ALLAN WEST. By BURTON E.
STEVENSON, author of "The Marathon Mystery," etc.
Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by L. J. Bridgman, $1.50
Mr. Stevenson's hero is a manly lad of sixteen, who is given a chance as
a section-hand on a big Western railroad, and whose experiences are as
real as they are thrilling.
=The Young Train Dispatcher.= By BURTON E. STEVENSON, author of "The
Young Section-hand," etc.
Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, $1.50
The young hero has many chances to prove his manliness and courage in
the exciting adventures which befall him in the discharge of his duty.
=Captain Jack Lorimer.= By WINN STANDISH.
Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by A. B. Shute, $1.50
Jack is a fine example of the all-around American high-school boy. He
has the sturdy qualities boys admire, and his fondness for clean, honest
sport of all kinds will strike a chord of sympathy among athletic
youths.
=Jack Lorimer's Champions=; or, sports on Land and Lake. By WINN
STANDISH, author of "Captain Jack Lorimer," etc.
Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, $1.50
All boys and girls who take an interest in school athletics will wish to
read of the exploits of the Millvale High School students, under the
leadership of Captain Jack Lorimer.
Captain Jack's Champions play quite as good ball as do some of the teams
on the large leagues, and they put all opponents to good hard work in
other summer sports.
Jack Lorimer and his friends stand out as the finest examples of
all-round American high school boys and girls.
=Beautiful Joe's Paradise=; OR, THE ISLAND OF BROTHERLY LOVE. A sequel
to "Beautiful Joe." By MARSHALL SAUNDERS, author of "Beautiful Joe."
One vol., library 12mo, cloth, illustrated, $1.50
"This book revives the spirit of 'Beautiful Joe'
capitally. It is fairly riotous with fun, and as a
whole is about as unusual as anything in the
animal book line that has seen the light. It is a
book for juveniles--old and young."--_Philadelphia
Item._
='Tilda Jane.= By MARSHALL SAUNDERS.
One vol., 12mo, fully illustrated, cloth decorative, $1.50
"It is one of those exquisitely simple and
truthful books that win and charm the reader, and
I did not put it down until I had finished
it--honest! And I am sure that every one, young or
old, who reads will be proud and happy to make the
acquaintance of the delicious waif.
"I cannot think of any better book for children
than this. I commend it unreservedly."--_Cyrus
Townsend Brady._
=The Story of the Graveleys.= By MARSHALL SAUNDERS, author of "Beautiful
Joe's Paradise," "'Tilda Jane," etc.
Library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by E. B. Barry, $1.50
Here we have the haps and mishaps, the trials and triumphs, of a
delightful New England family, of whose devotion and sturdiness it will
do the reader good to hear.
=Born to the Blue.= By FLORENCE KIMBALL RUSSEL.
12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, $1.25
The atmosphere of army life on the plains breathes on every page of this
delightful tale. The boy is the son of a captain of U. S. cavalry
stationed at a frontier post in the days when our regulars earned the
gratitude of a nation.
=In West Point Gray.= By FLORENCE KIMBALL RUSSEL.
12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, $1.25
West Point forms the background for the second volume in this series,
and gives us the adventures of Jack as a cadet. Here the training of his
childhood days in the frontier army post stands him in good stead; and
he quickly becomes the central figure of the West Point life.
=The Sandman: His Farm Stories.= By WILLIAM J. HOPKINS. With fifty
illustrations by Ada Clendenin Williamson.
Large 12mo, decorative cover, $1.50
"An amusing, original book, written for the
benefit of very small children. It should be one
of the most popular of the year's books for
reading to small children."--_Buffalo Express._
=The Sandman: More Farm Stories.= By WILLIAM J. HOPKINS.
Large 12mo, decorative cover, fully illustrated, $1.50
Mr. Hopkins's first essay at bedtime stories met with such approval that
this second book of "Sandman" tales was issued for scores of eager
children. Life on the farm, and out-of-doors, is portrayed in his
inimitable manner.
=The Sandman: His Ship Stories.= By WILLIAM J. HOPKINS, author of "The
Sandman: His Farm Stories," etc.
Large 12mo, decorative cover, fully illustrated, $1.50
"Mothers and fathers and kind elder sisters who
put the little ones to bed, and rack their brains
for stories, will find this book a
treasure."--_Cleveland Leader._
"Children call for these stories over and over
again."--_Chicago Evening Post._
=Pussy-Cat Town.= By MARION AMES TAGGART.
Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in
colors, $1.00
"Pussy-Cat Town" is a most unusual delightful cat story. Ban-Ban, a pure
Maltese who belonged to Rob, Kiku-san, Lois's beautiful snow-white pet,
and their neighbors Bedelia the tortoise-shell, Madame Laura the widow,
Wutz Butz the warrior, and wise old Tommy Traddles, were really and
truly cats.
=The Roses of Saint Elizabeth.= By JANE SCOTT WOODRUFF, author of "The
Little Christmas Shoe."
Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in
colors by Adelaide Everhart, $1.00
This is a charming little story of a child whose father was caretaker of
the great castle of the Wartburg, where Saint Elizabeth once had her
home.
=Gabriel and the Hour Book.= By EVALEEN STEIN.
Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in
colors by Adelaide Everhart, $1.00
Gabriel was a loving, patient, little French lad, who assisted the monks
in the long ago days, when all the books were written and illuminated by
hand in the monasteries.
=The Enchanted Automobile.= Translated from the French by MARY J.
SAFFORD.
Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in
colors by Edna M. Sawyer, $1.00
The enchanted automobile was sent by the fairy godmother of a lazy,
discontented little prince and princess to take them to fairyland, where
they might visit their story-book favorites.
=The Red Feathers.= By THEODORE ROBERTS, author of "Brothers of Peril,"
etc.
Cloth decorative, illustrated, $1.50
"The Red Feathers" tells of the remarkable adventures of an Indian boy
who lived in the Stone Age, many years ago, when the world was young,
and when fairies and magicians did wonderful things for their friends
and enemies.
=The Wreck of the Ocean Queen.= By James Otis, author of "Larry Hudson's
Ambition," etc.
Cloth decorative, illustrated, $1.50
This story takes its readers on a sea voyage around the world; gives
them a trip on a treasure ship; an exciting experience in a terrific
gale; and finally a shipwreck, with a mutineering crew determined to
take the treasure to complicate matters.
But only the mutineers will come to serious harm, and after the reader
has known the thrilling excitement of lack of food and water, of attacks
by night and day, and of a hand-to-hand fight, he is rescued and brought
safely home again,--to realize that it's only a story, but a stirring
and realistic one.
=Little White Indians.= By FANNIE E. OSTRANDER.
Cloth decorative, illustrated, $1.25
The "Little White Indians" were two families of children who "played
Indian" all one long summer vacation. They built wigwams and made camps;
they went hunting and fought fierce battles on the war-trail.
A bright, interesting story which will appeal strongly to the
"make-believe" instinct in children, and will give them a healthy,
active interest in "the simple life."
PHYLLIS' FIELD FRIENDS SERIES
_By LENORE E. MULETS_
Six vols., cloth decorative, illustrated by Sophie Schneider. Sold
separately, or as a set.
Per volume, $1.00
Per set, 6.00
=Insect Stories.=
=Stories of Little Animals.=
=Flower Stories.=
=Bird Stories.=
=Tree Stories.=
=Stories of Little Fishes.=
In this series of six little Nature books, it is the author's intention
so to present to the child reader the facts about each particular
flower, insect, bird, or animal, in story form, as to make delightful
reading. Classical legends, myths, poems, and songs are so introduced as
to correlate fully with these lessons, to which the excellent
illustrations are no little help.
THE WOODRANGER TALES
_By G. WALDO BROWNE_
=The Woodranger.=
=The Young Gunbearer.=
=The Hero of the Hills.=
=With Rogers' Rangers.=
Each 1 vol., large 12mo, cloth, decorative cover, illustrated,
per volume, $1.25
Four vols., boxed, per set, 5.00
"The Woodranger Tales," like the "Pathfinder Tales" of J. Fenimore
Cooper, combine historical information relating to early pioneer days in
America with interesting adventures in the backwoods. Although the same
characters are continued throughout the series, each book is complete in
itself, and, while based strictly on historical facts, is an interesting
and exciting tale of adventure.
THE LITTLE COUSIN SERIES
The most delightful and interesting accounts possible of child life in
other lands, filled with quaint sayings, doings, and adventures.
Each one vol., 12mo, decorative cover, cloth, with six or more full-page
illustrations in color.
Price per volume, $0.60
_By MARY HAZELTON WADE (unless otherwise indicated)_
=Our Little African Cousin=
=Our Little Alaskan Cousin=
By Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
=Our Little Arabian Cousin=
By Blanche McManus
=Our Little Armenian Cousin=
=Our Little Brown Cousin=
=Our Little Canadian Cousin=
By Elizabeth R. Macdonald
=Our Little Chinese Cousin=
By Isaac Taylor Headland
=Our Little Cuban Cousin=
=Our Little Dutch Cousin=
By Blanche McManus
=Our Little English Cousin=
By Blanche McManus
=Our Little Eskimo Cousin=
=Our Little French Cousin=
By Blanche McManus
=Our Little German Cousin=
=Our Little Hawaiian Cousin=
=Our Little Hindu Cousin=
By Blanche McManus
=Our Little Indian Cousin=
=Our Little Irish Cousin=
=Our Little Italian Cousin=
=Our Little Japanese Cousin=
=Our Little Jewish Cousin=
=Our Little Korean Cousin=
By H. Lee M. Pike
=Our Little Mexican Cousin=
By Edward C. Butler
=Our Little Norwegian Cousin=
=Our Little Panama Cousin=
By H. Lee M. Pike
=Our Little Philippine Cousin=
=Our Little Porto Rican Cousin=
=Our Little Russian Cousin=
=Our Little Scotch Cousin=
By Blanche McManus
=Our Little Siamese Cousin=
=Our Little Spanish Cousin=
By Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
=Our Little Swedish Cousin=
By Claire M. Coburn
=Our Little Swiss Cousin=
=Our Little Turkish Cousin=
[Illustration: THE LITTLE COLONEL TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFFICE]
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Frontispiece, "BOB" changed to "ROB" to match text. (EXCLAIMED ROB, IN)
Page 50, "dreadfuly" changed to "dreadfully" (so dreadfully effusive)
Page 176, "wth" changed to "with" (with the ruddy glow)
Page 256, "amost" changed to "almost" (Lloyd almost gasped)
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation" ***
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