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Title: The Little Colonel's Holidays
Author: Johnston, Annie F. (Annie Fellows), 1863-1931
Language: English
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[Illustration: Cover]
THE LITTLE COLONEL'S HOLIDAYS
(Trade Mark)
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: "AUNT CINDY DARTED AN ANGRY LOOK AT HER SWORN ENEMY."
(_See Page 25_)]
The Little Colonel's Holidays
By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
Author of "The Little Colonel," "Two Little Knights
of Kentucky," "The Story of Dago," "The Little
Colonel's House Party," etc.
Illustrated by L. J. BRIDGMAN
[Illustration]
BOSTON L. C. PAGE
& COMPANY PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1901_
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
_Twelfth Impression, March, 1908_
TO
"The Little Captain" and his sisters
WHOSE PROUDEST HERITAGE IS THAT
THEY BEAR THE NAME OF A
NATION'S HERO.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE MAGIC KETTLE 11
II. THE END OF THE SUMMER 17
III. BACK TO THE CUCKOO'S NEST 31
IV. TO BARLEY-BRIGHT 46
V. A TIME FOR PATIENCE 60
VI. MOLLY'S STORY 74
VII. A FEAST OF SAILS 91
VIII. EUGENIA JOINS THE SEARCH 105
IX. LEFT BEHIND 116
X. HOME-LESSONS AND JACK-O'-LANTERNS 129
XI. A HALLOWE'EN PARTY 146
XII. THE HOME OF A HERO 164
XIII. THE DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING 180
XIV. LLOYD MAKES A DISCOVERY 200
XV. A HAPPY CHRISTMAS 216
XVI. A PEEP INTO THE FUTURE 231
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
"AUNT CINDY DARTED AN ANGRY LOOK AT HER
SWORN ENEMY" (_see page 25_) _Frontispiece_
"TO THEIR EXCITED FANCY SHE SEEMED A REAL WITCH" 57
"THE PICTURE PASSED AROUND THE CIRCLE" 103
"THE PLAN WORKED LIKE A CHARM" 130
"SHE BEGAN THE OLD RHYME" 159
THE BUTTERFLY CARNIVAL 183
"'OH, _WHAT_ IS YOUR NAME?'" 208
"THE LITTLE HAND HELD HERS" 226
THE LITTLE COLONEL'S
(_Trade Mark_)
HOLIDAYS.
CHAPTER I.
THE MAGIC KETTLE.
ONCE upon a time, so the story goes (you may read it for yourself in the
dear old tales of Hans Christian Andersen), there was a prince who
disguised himself as a swineherd. It was to gain admittance to a
beautiful princess that he thus came in disguise to her father's palace,
and to attract her attention he made a magic caldron, hung around with
strings of silver bells. Whenever the water in the caldron boiled and
bubbled, the bells rang a little tune to remind her of him.
"Oh, thou dear Augustine,
All is lost and gone,"
they sang. Such was the power of the magic kettle, that when the water
bubbled hard enough to set the bells a-tinkling, any one holding his
hand in the steam could smell what was cooking in every kitchen in the
kingdom.
It has been many a year since the swineherd's kettle was set a-boiling
and its string of bells a-jingling to satisfy the curiosity of a
princess, but a time has come for it to be used again. Not that anybody
nowadays cares to know what his neighbour is going to have for dinner,
but all the little princes and princesses in the kingdom want to know
what happened next.
"What happened after the Little Colonel's house party?" they demand, and
they send letters to the Valley by the score, asking "Did Betty go
blind?" "Did the two little Knights of Kentucky ever meet Joyce again or
find the Gate of the Giant Scissors?" Did the Little Colonel ever have
any more good times at Locust, or did Eugenia ever forget that she too
had started out to build a Road of the Loving Heart?
It would be impossible to answer all these questions through the
post-office, so that is why the magic kettle has been dragged from its
hiding-place after all these years, and set a-boiling once more. Gather
in a ring around it, all you who want to know, and pass your curious
fingers through its wreaths of rising steam. Now you shall see the
Little Colonel and her guests of the house party in turn, and the bells
shall ring for each a different song.
But before they begin, for the sake of some who may happen to be in your
midst for the first time, and do not know what it is all about, let the
kettle give them a glimpse into the past, that they may be able to
understand all that is about to be shown to you. Those who already know
the story need not put their fingers into the steam, until the bells
have rung this explanation in parenthesis.
(In Lloydsboro Valley stands an old Southern mansion, known as "Locust."
The place is named for a long avenue of giant locust-trees stretching a
quarter of a mile from house to entrance gate, in a great arch of green.
Here for years an old Confederate colonel lived all alone save for the
negro servants. His only child, Elizabeth, had married a Northern man
against his wishes, and gone away. From that day he would not allow her
name to be spoken in his presence. But she came back to the Valley when
her little daughter Lloyd was five years old. People began calling the
child the Little Colonel because she seemed to have inherited so many of
her grandfather's lordly ways as well as a goodly share of his high
temper. The military title seemed to suit her better than her own name,
for in her fearless baby fashion she won her way into the old man's
heart, and he made a complete surrender.
Afterward when she and her mother and "Papa Jack" went to live with him
at Locust, one of her favourite games was playing soldier. The old man
never tired of watching her march through the wide halls with his spurs
strapped to her tiny slipper heels, and her dark eyes flashing out
fearlessly from under the little Napoleon cap she wore.
She was eleven when she gave her house party. One of the guests was
Joyce Ware, whom some of you have met, perhaps, in "The Gate of the
Giant Scissors," a bright thirteen-year-old girl from the West. Eugenia
Forbes was another. She was a distant cousin of Lloyd's, who had no
home-life like the other girls. Her winters were spent in a fashionable
New York boarding-school, and her summers at the Waldorf-Astoria, except
the few weeks when her busy father could find time to take her to some
seaside resort.
The third guest, Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis, or Betty, as every one lovingly
called her, was Mrs. Sherman's little god-daughter. She was an orphan,
boarding on a backwoods farm on Green River. She had never been on the
cars until Lloyd's invitation found its way to the Cuckoo's Nest. Only
these three came to stay in the house, but Malcolm and Keith MacIntyre
(the two little Knights of Kentucky) were there nearly every day. So was
Rob Moore, one of the Little Colonel's summer neighbours.
The four Bobs were four little fox terrier puppies named for Rob, who
had given one to each of the girls. They were so much alike they could
only be distinguished by the colour of the ribbons tied around their
necks. Tarbaby was the Little Colonel's pony, and Lad the one that Betty
rode during her visit.
After six weeks of picnics and parties, and all sorts of surprises and
good times, the house party came to a close with a grand feast of
lanterns. Joyce regretfully went home to the little brown house in
Plainsville, Kansas, taking her Bob with her. Eugenia and her father
went to New York, but not until they had promised to come back for Betty
in the fall, and take her abroad with them. It was on account of
something that had happened at the house party, but which is too long a
tale to repeat here.
Betty stayed on at Locust until the end of the summer in the House
Beautiful, as she called her godmother's home, and here on the long
vine-covered porch, with its stately white pillars, you shall see them
first through the steam of the magic caldron.)
* * * * *
Listen! Now the kettle boils and the bells begin the story!
CHAPTER II.
THE END OF THE SUMMER.
"Oh, the sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home,
'Tis summer, the darkies are gay,
The corn-top's ripe and the meadows are in bloom,
And the birds make music all the day."
IT was Malcolm who started the old tune, thrumming a soft accompaniment
on his banjo, as he sat leaning against one of the great white pillars
of the vine-covered porch. Then Betty, swinging in a hammock with a new
_St. Nicholas_ in her lap, began to hum with him. Rob Moore, sitting on
the step below, took it up next, whistling it softly, but the Little
Colonel and Keith went on talking.
It was a warm September afternoon, and all down the long avenue of giant
locust-trees there was scarcely a leaf astir. Keith fanned himself with
his hat as he talked.
"I wish schools had never been invented," he exclaimed, "or else there
was a law that they couldn't begin until cold weather. It makes me wild
when I think of having to go back to Louisville to-morrow and begin
lessons in that hot old town. Lloyd, I don't believe that you are half
thankful enough for being able to live in the country all the year
round."
"But it isn't half so nice out heah aftah you all leave," answered the
Little Colonel. "You don't know how lonesome the Valley is with you all
gone. I can't beah to pass Judge Moore's place for weeks aftah the house
is closed for the season. It makes me feel as if somebody's dead when I
see every window shut and all the blinds down. When Betty goes home next
week I don't know how I shall stand it to be all by myself. This has
been such a lovely summah."
"We've had some jolly good times, that's a fact," answered Keith with a
sigh, to think that they were so nearly over. Then beating time with his
foot to the music of Malcolm's banjo, he began to sing with the others:
"'Oh, weep no more, my lady, weep no more to-day.
We will sing one song for my old Kentucky home,
For my old Kentucky home far away.'"
Something in the mournful melody, coupled with the thought that this was
the end of the summer, and the last of such visits to beautiful old
Locust for many a long day, touched each face with a little shade of
sadness. For several minutes after the last note of the song died away
no one spoke. The only sounds were the bird-calls, and the voices of the
cook's grandchildren, who were playing on the other side of the house.
As in many old Southern mansions, the kitchen at Locust was a room some
distance back from the house. In the path that led from one to the
other, three little darkies were romping and tumbling over each other
like three black kittens.
Fat old Aunt Cindy, waddling into the pantry to flour-bin or
sugar-barrel, glanced at them occasionally through the open window to
see that they were in no mischief, and then went calmly on with her
baking. She knew that they were not like white children who need a nurse
to watch every step. They had taken care of themselves and each other
from the time that they had learned to crawl.
In Aunt Cindy's slow journeys around the kitchen, she stopped from time
to time to open the oven door and peep in. Finally she flung it wide
open, and, with a satisfied grunt, took out a big square pan. A warm
delicious odour filled the kitchen, and floated out around the house to
the group on the porch.
"I smell gingerbread!" exclaimed Rob, starting up and sniffing the air
excitedly with his short freckled nose.
"Me too!" exclaimed Keith. "It's the best thing I ever smelled in my
life. Doesn't it make you hungry?"
"Fairly starved!" answered Malcolm.
Lloyd tiptoed to the end of the porch and listened. "If Aunt Cindy's
singin' one of her old camp-meetin' tunes then I'd know she was feelin'
good, and I wouldn't mind tellin' her that we wanted the whole pan full.
But if she happened to be in one of her black tempahs I wouldn't da'h
ask for a crumb. She always grumbles if she has to cut a cake while it's
hot. She says it spoils them. No, she isn't singin' a note."
"Somebody might slip it out while she isn't looking," suggested Rob.
"I'd offer to try, but Aunt Cindy seems to have a grudge against me. She
cracked me over the head one day with a gourd dipper, because I spilled
molasses on the pantry floor. We wanted to make some candy, and Lloyd
sent me in through the window to get it. I dropped the jug, and Aunt
Cindy charged at me so furiously that I went out of that window a sight
faster than I came in. Whew! I can feel that whack yet!" he added,
screwing up his face, and rubbing his head. "You'd better believe I've
kept out of her reach ever since."
"I'll tell you what let's do," suggested Keith, growing hungrier every
minute as he snuffed that tantalising fragrance. "Let's play that Aunt
Cindy is an ogre, a dreadful old fat black ogre, and the gingerbread is
some kind of a magic cake that will break the spell she has cast over
us, if we can only manage to get it and eat some."
"Oh, yes," agreed Rob, eagerly. "Don't you remember the story that Joyce
used to tell us about the Giant Scissors that could do anything they
were bidden, if the command were only given in rhyme? Whoever rescues
the cake will be the magic Scissors. We can draw lots to see who will be
it. Make up a rhyme somebody."
"Giant Scissahs, so bewitchin',
Get the cake out of the kitchen!"
ventured the Little Colonel after a moment's thought.
"Giant Scissors, for our sake
Will you please to take the cake."
added Malcolm, while Betty followed with the suggestion:
"Giant Scissors, rush ahead
And bring us back the gingerbread."
"That's the best one," said Rob, "for that calls the article that we're
starving for by name. Now we'll draw lots and see who has to play the
part of the Scissors and storm old Gruffanuff's castle."
Carefully arranging five blades of grass between his thumbs, he passed
around the circle, saying, "The one who draws the shortest piece has to
be 'it.'" There was a shout from all the others and a groan from himself
when he discovered that the shortest piece had been left between his own
thumbs.
"I'll have to put on my thinking cap and plan some way to get it by
strategy," he exclaimed, dropping down on the steps again to consider.
"I wouldn't brave Aunt Cindy in single combat any more than I'd beard a
lion in his den. Help me think of something, all of you."
Just then the three little pickaninnies, who had been playing in the
path by the kitchen door, ran around the corner of the porch in hot
pursuit of a grasshopper.
"Here, Pearline," called Rob, beckoning to the largest and blackest of
them. The child stopped and came slowly toward him. Her head, with its
tight little braids of wool sticking out in all directions like tails,
was tipped shyly to one side. One finger was in her mouth. With the
other hand she was nervously plucking at the skirt of her red calico
dress.
"What's your gran'mammy doing now?" inquired Rob.
"Beatin' aigs in de kitchen." Pearline was wriggling and screwing her
little black toes around in the dust as she answered, almost overcome
with embarrassment.
"Pearline," said Rob, lowering his voice impressively, "do you think
that you could slip into the kitchen as e-easy as a creep-mouse and
tiptoe into the pantry behind your gran'mammy's back and pass that pan
of gingerbread out through the window to me while she isn't looking?
I'll give you a nickel if you'll try."
Pearline gave a swift inquiring look toward the Little Colonel, and
seeing her nod consent, she turned to Rob with a delighted flash of
white teeth and eye-balls.
"Yessa, Mist Rob. I kin do it if you'll come whilst she's makin' a
racket beatin' aigs. But she'll bus' my haid open suah, if she cotch
me."
"Mothah doesn't care if we have the gingahbread," said the Little
Colonel, and Rob added, reassuringly, "We won't let her touch you. Now
I'm going all the way around by the spring-house, so she can't see me,
for I'm her sworn enemy. When I get under the pantry window I'll call
like some bird--say a pewee. When you hear that, Pearline, you just come
a-jumping. She always sets the things out on that shelf under the pantry
window to cool, and you slip in and pass that gingerbread out to me
before she has time to guess what's happened."
Rob started off, and a moment later the clear call of "pewee" floated up
from under the pantry window, to the waiting group on the porch. "Come
on, let's see the ogre get him," called Keith. Just as they rushed
around the corner of the house they heard a scream, and then a mighty
clatter of falling tinware in the kitchen made them pause.
There was a scurry of flying feet through the orchard, and a snapping of
dry twigs. Rob had made his escape with the gingerbread, but hapless
Pearline had fallen into the clutches of the ogre. Only for a moment,
however. Through the window came a flash of red calico, and up the path
two bare black legs went flying like run-away windmills. The broad
slap-slap of Aunt Cindy's pursuing slipper soles followed, but it was an
uneven race. Pearline, wasting not a single breath in outcry, fled
around the house and down the avenue like a swift black shadow, and her
panting pursuer was left to hold her fat sides in helpless wrath.
"Just you wait till I get my hands on you, chile," she called with an
angry toss of her white-turbaned head. "I'll make you sma't! I'll learn
you to come carryin' off white folkses vittles an' scarin' me out of my
seven senses!"
"No, Aunt Cindy, you sha'n't touch her! You mustn't do a thing to
Pearline," called the Little Colonel, meeting her squarely in the path
and stamping her foot. "It's all ou' fault, because we sent her, and it
was Rob who carried off the gingahbread. There he comes now."
Aunt Cindy darted an angry look at her sworn enemy, as he came up with
hands and mouth both full. Then facing the children, with her hands on
her hips, she launched into such a scolding as only an old black mammy,
who has faithfully served three generations of a family, is permitted to
give.
"For mercy sakes, Aunt Cindy, what are you making such a fuss for?"
exclaimed Keith. "It's all your own fault. You know as well as we do
that nobody in the Valley can make cake as good as yours. You oughtn't
to have tempted us with such delicious gingerbread. It's the best I ever
tasted." Here he stuffed his mouth full again, with an ecstatic "_Yum_,
but that's good," and passed the plate back to Betty.
There was no resisting the flattery of Keith's expression as he
swallowed the stolen sweets. A grim smile twitched Aunt Cindy's black
face, but to hide the fact that her vanity had been touched by the
chorus of unstinted praise which followed Keith's compliments, she began
flapping her face with her gingham apron.
"Oh, you go 'long!" she exclaimed, in a gruff voice. But knowing Aunt
Cindy, they knew that they had appeased her, and even Pearline need no
longer fear her wrath, although she grumbled loudly all the way back to
her savoury kitchen.
They carried the plate around to the porch, followed by the three Bobs
in their big bows of yellow, pink, and green, who tumbled around their
feet, begging for crumbs until the last one was eaten, and then curled
up in the hammock beside Betty.
"I wonder what we'll be doing ten years from now," said Malcolm, as he
picked up his banjo again and began striking soft chords. He was looking
dreamily down the long locust avenue where the afternoon shadows were
lengthening across the lawn.
"I'll be through college by that time, and Rob and Keith will be
starting back for their junior year. You girls will be out in society
probably, and old Aunt Cindy will surely be dead and gone. I wonder if
we'll ever sit here together again and talk about old times and laugh
over this afternoon--the way Pearline flew through that window. Wasn't
it funny?"
"I am more interested in what I may be doing ten weeks from now," said
Betty. "I haven't an idea whether I'll be in London or Paris or the
Black Forest. I don't know where Cousin Carl expects to take us first.
But I'd rather not know. The whole trip is sure to be full of delightful
surprises as a fruit-cake is of goodies. I'd rather happen on them as
they come, than crumble it up to find what there'll be ten bites ahead."
"Well, I know what I'll be doing," said the Little Colonel, decidedly.
"School begins then, and it will be the same old things ovah and ovah
again. Music lessons, practice an' school; school an' practice an' music
lessons. Oh, I know what is ahead of me. All plain cake without a single
plum in it."
"Don't be so sure of that, little daughter," said a pleasant voice in
the doorway, and looking up, they saw Mrs. Sherman standing there with
an open letter in her hand. "We can never be sure of our to-morrows, or
even our to-days, and here is a surprise for you to begin with, Lloyd."
Malcolm sprang up to bring her a chair, and Lloyd tumbled the Bobs out
of the hammock that she might take their place beside Betty, while she
listened to the reading of the letter.
"It is from Mrs. Appleton--from your Cousin Hetty," began Mrs. Sherman,
turning to Betty. "I wrote her that you wanted to go back to the farm a
little while before starting abroad with Eugenia and her father, and
this is her answer. She has invited Lloyd and me to go with you for a
short visit."
"Oh, godmother! And you'll go?" cried Betty, nearly spilling Lloyd out
of the hammock as she sprang up in joyful surprise. "You don't know how
I've dreaded leaving you and dear old Locust. It will not be half so
hard if you can go with me, and I want you both to see Davy and all the
places I've talked about so often."
"But how can I miss school, mothah?" cried the Little Colonel. "I'll
fall behind in all my classes."
"Not so far but that you can make it up afterward by a little extra
study. Besides, you will be going to school every day that you are away.
I don't mean the kind you are thinking of," she hastened to say, seeing
the look of wonder in Lloyd's eyes. "But every day will be a school day
and you'll learn more of some things than all your books can teach you.
There are all sorts of lessons waiting for you in the Cuckoo's Nest."
Lloyd and Betty gave each other a delighted hug while Rob remarked,
mournfully, "I wish my father and mother wanted me to have some school
days that are all holidays. Think of it, boys, not a line of Latin."
The five o'clock train came rumbling down the track with a shrill
warning whistle, as it passed the entrance gate at Locust.
"It is time to go, Keith," exclaimed Malcolm. "You know we promised
grandmother and Aunt Allison to be back at half-past five. We must say
good-bye now, for ten whole months."
"It will be longer than that for me," said Betty, wistfully, as the boys
came up to shake hands. "There is no telling what will happen with the
ocean between us. But no matter where I go, I'll never forget how lovely
you have all been to me this summer, and I'll always think of this as
the dearest spot on earth,--my old Kentucky home."
They watched the three boys go strolling off down the avenue, shoulder
to shoulder, feeling that all the good times were disappearing with
them. Then they fell to talking of the Cuckoo's Nest, and making plans
for their visit. But what happened there must wait to be told at the
second bubbling of the caldron and another ringing of the bells.
CHAPTER III.
BACK TO THE CUCKOO'S NEST.
IT was very early on a bright September morning that Mrs. Sherman,
Betty, and Lloyd took the train for the Cuckoo's Nest; but there was
such a long time to wait at the little way station where they changed
cars, that it was nearly sundown when they came to the end of their
journey.
Mr. Appleton was waiting for them with the big farm wagon, into which he
lifted Betty's Bob, whining in his hamper, Mrs. Sherman's trunk, and
then Betty's shabby little leather one that had gone away half empty. It
was coming back now, nearly bursting with all that her godmother had
packed into it with the magic necklace, "for love's sweet sake."
"Shall we have to wait long for the carriage?" asked Lloyd, shading her
eyes with her hand to look down the dusty road. "There is nothing in
sight now."
Mr. Appleton gave a hearty laugh as he pointed with his whip to the
wagon. "That's the kind of a carriage folks ride in out here," he said.
"I reckon you never rode in one before. Well, it will be a new
experience for you, for it jolts considerable. I couldn't put in more
than one spring seat on account of the trunks, but there's room enough
for you and your ma beside me, and I brought along a little stool for
Betty to sit on."
Lloyd's face flushed at her mistake, and she was very quiet as they
drove along. The wagon did "jolt considerable," as Mr. Appleton said,
and she wondered if she should find everything as queer during her visit
as this ride from the railroad station to the house. The spring seat was
so high that her feet dangled helplessly. She could not touch the floor
of the wagon bed even with her toes. Every time they went down a hill
she had to clutch her mother's arm to keep from pitching forward on top
of Betty, seated on the low stool at her feet.
Betty was quiet, too, thinking how much had happened in the three months
since she had passed along that road. She had gone away in a sunbonnet,
with an old-fashioned brown wicker basket on her arm, and a feeling in
her frightened little heart that the world was a great jungle, full of
all sorts of unknown terrors. She was coming back now, in a hat as
stylish as Lloyd's own, with a handsome little travelling satchel in
her hands, and a heartful of beautiful memories; for she had met nothing
but kindness, so far as she had travelled in the world's wide jungle.
"There's the schoolhouse," she cried, presently, with a thrill of
pleasure as they passed the deserted playground, overgrown with weeds.
It was still vacation time in this country district. "There's our
playhouse under the thorn-tree," she added, half rising from the stool
to point it out to Lloyd. "And that bare spot by the well-shed is where
we play vineyard and prisoner's base. We always have so much fun at
recess."
The Little Colonel looked where Betty pointed, but the weather-beaten
schoolhouse, the weeds, and the trampled spot of ground did not suggest
any good times to her. It seemed the lonesomest, dreariest place she had
ever seen, and she turned away with a slight shrug of the shoulders. Not
so slight, however, but Betty saw it. Then, suddenly she began to look
at everything through the Little Colonel's eyes. Somehow everything
began to appear ragged and gone-to-seed and little and countrified and
common. So she did not exclaim again when they passed any of the other
old landmarks that had grown dear to her from long acquaintance.
There was the half-way tree, and the bridge where they always stopped to
lean over the railing and make rings in the water below, by dropping
pebbles into the clear pools. And there was the flat rock where they
could nearly always find a four-leaf clover, and, farther along, the
stile where a pet toad lived. She and Davy always pretended that the
toad was a toll-gate keeper who would not let them climb the stile
unless they paid him with flies.
All these places were dear to Betty, and she had intended to point them
out to Lloyd as they went along; but after that shrug, she felt that
they would have no interest for any one but herself. So she sat quietly
on the little stool, wishing that Lloyd could enjoy the ride home as
much as she was doing.
"Oh, how lonesome looking!" exclaimed Lloyd, as they turned the last
corner and came to the graveyard, with its gleaming tombstones. Betty
only smiled in reply. They were like old friends to her, but of course
Lloyd could not understand that. She had never strolled among them with
Davy on summer afternoons, or parted the tangled grass and myrtle vines
to read the names and verses on the mossy marbles, or smelled the pinks
and lilies growing over the neglected mounds.
The wild rose was gone, that had hung over the old gray picket-fence to
wave good-bye to Betty the morning she went away, but the same bush held
out a long straggling branch that almost touched her face as they drove
past, and the sunset glow shone pink across it. Beside it was the
headstone with the marble hand for ever pointing to the place in the
marble book where were deeply carven the letters of the text, "_Be ye
also ready_." With that familiar greeting Betty felt that at last she
had really reached home, and indeed that she had scarcely been away. For
everything was just as she had left it, from the spicy smell of the
cedar boughs, to the soft cooing of a dove in a distant woodland.
Cow-bells jingled in the lane, and the country quiet and contentment
seemed to fill the meadows, as the sunset glow filled all the evening
sky.
"There's Davy," said Mr. Appleton, as a chubby, barefoot boy came racing
down the lane to open the gate for them, and then hang on the back of
the wagon as it rattled along to the house.
"He has been talking about you all week, Betty. He couldn't eat any
dinner to-day, he was so excited about your coming."
Betty smiled back at the beaming little face, as shining as yellow soap
and perfect happiness could make it, and her conscience smote her that
she had not missed him more, and written to him oftener while she was
away from him. But however great his loneliness might have been, it was
all forgotten at the sight of her, and his delight was unbounded when
the hamper was unstrapped and Bob came tumbling out to frisk over his
bare toes.
"Now Betty will have two shadows," laughed Mr. Appleton. "That boy
follows her everywhere."
Betty led the way into the house. On the porch steps Lloyd stopped her
to whisper: "Mercy, Betty! How many children are there?" Several tow
heads like Davy's were peering around the corner of the house, and a
two-year-old baby toddled across the porch, squeezing a kitten in his
arms.
"There are six, altogether," answered Betty. "Scott is just Rob Moore's
age, but he is so bashful that you'll not see much of him. Then there's
Bradley. He is such a tease that we keep out of his way as much as
possible. Davy comes next. He's the nicest in the bunch. Then Morgan is
six, and Lee is four, and that's the baby over there. They haven't named
him yet, so the boys just call him Pudding."
"And is that your cousin Hetty?" whispered Lloyd, as a tall, thin woman
came out on the porch to greet her guests. In that greeting Betty
forgot that Mrs. Appleton was only a fourth cousin, her welcome was so
warm; she thought only how nice it was to have a family to come back to.
Looking into the woman's tired face with eyes that had grown wiser in
the summer's absence, the child saw that it was hard work and care that
had made it grow old before its time, and realised that the tenderness
she had longed for had been withheld only because her cousin Hetty had
been too overworked to take time to show it.
"Maybe she might have been as bright and sweet as godmother, if she
hadn't had to work so hard," thought Betty. "Still I can't imagine
godmother saying snappy cross things, no matter how tired she might
get."
"Supper's 'most ready," said Mrs. Appleton, ushering them into the
house. "I reckon you'll want to tidy up a bit after that long ride on
the dusty cars. Well, Molly didn't forget to fill the water-pitcher,
after all, though she usually forgets everything, unless I'm at her
heels every blessed minute to remind her."
"Molly!" repeated Betty, in surprise. "Who is she?"
"Oh, I forgot you didn't know. She is an orphan I took from the asylum
soon after you left. It's been such a hard summer that I had to have
somebody to help, so Mr. Appleton went to St. Joseph's orphan asylum and
picked me out this girl. She's fourteen, and big for her age, but as
wild as a Comanche Indian. So I can't say she's been as much help as I'd
hoped for. But she's good to the baby, and she can wash dishes. They
taught her that at the asylum. I tell you I've missed _you_, Betty. I
didn't realise how many steps you saved me until you were gone. Now, if
you'll excuse me, Mrs. Sherman, I'll go and see about supper. You'll
find your room just as you left it, Betty."
As the door closed behind her and Betty, the Little Colonel turned to
her mother with a puzzled face. "Did you evah see anything so queah in
all yo' life?" she asked. "A bed in the pahlah! What if somebody should
come to call aftah I've gone to sleep. Oh, I think this place is awful!
I don't see how people can be happy, living in such an odd way."
"That is your first holiday lesson," said Mrs. Sherman, beginning to
unpack her travelling bag. "You'll have to learn that our way of living
is not the only way, and that people can be just as good and useful and
happy in one place as another. Some people are so narrow-minded that
they never learn that. They are like car-wheels that can move only when
they have a certain kind of track to run on. You can be that kind of a
person, or you can be like a bicycle, able to run on any road, from the
narrowest path to the broadest avenue. I've found that people who can
fit themselves to any road they may happen to be on are the happiest,
and they are the easiest to live with. That is one of the greatest
accomplishments any one can have, Lloyd. I'd rather have my little
daughter able to adapt herself gracefully to all circumstances, than to
sing or paint or model or embroider.
"You are going to find things very different here from what you have
been accustomed to at home, but it wouldn't be polite or kind to appear
to notice any difference. For instance, some of the best people I ever
knew think it is silly to serve dinner in courses, as we do. They like
to see everything on the table at once,--soup, salad, meats, and
desserts."
"I hate everything all higgledy-piggledy!" muttered the Little Colonel,
with her face in a towel. "I'll try not to show it, mothah, but I'm
afraid I can't help it sometimes."
Meanwhile, Betty, with Davy tagging after her, and Bob frisking on
ahead, had started up the steps to her own little room in the west
gable. As she turned on the landing, the door at the foot of the stairs
moved slightly, and she caught the gleam of a pair of sharp gray eyes
peering at her through the crack.
"It's Molly!" whispered Davy, catching Betty's skirts, and scrambling
after her as fast as his short fat legs would allow.
"Say, Betty, did you know that she's a _witch_? She says that she can go
through keyholes, and that on dark nights she sails away over the
chimney on a broomstick with a black cat on her shoulder. Even Scott and
Bradley are afraid of her. They dasn't do anything she tells them not
to."
"Sh!" whispered Betty, warningly, with a backward glance over her
shoulder. The girl behind the door had stepped out on the landing for a
better view, but she darted back to her hiding-place as Betty turned,
and their eyes met.
"She looks like a gypsy," thought Betty, noticing her straight black
hair hanging around her eyes. "And she seems ready to dodge at a word."
"She tells us ghost stories every night after supper," exclaimed Davy.
They had reached the gable room, and, while Betty hung up her hat and
unlocked her trunk, he curled himself up comfortably on the foot of her
bed. "She can make you shiver no matter how hot a night it is."
Betty scarcely noticed what the boy was saying. At any other time she
would have been surprised at his talking so much. Just now she was
looking around her with a feeling of strangeness. Everything seemed so
much smaller than when she had left the place. Her room had not seemed
bare and cheerless before she went away, because she had seen no better.
But now, remembering the pretty room that had been hers in the House
Beautiful, the tears came into her eyes. For a moment the contrast made
her homesick. Instead of the crystal candlesticks, here was a battered
tin one. Here were no filmy curtains at the windows, no white fur rugs
on a dark polished floor. Only a breadth of faded rag carpet, spread
down on bare unpainted boards. Here was no white toilet-table with
furnishings of gold and ivory; no polished mirror in which she could see
herself from head to foot. She looked mournfully into the tiny
looking-glass that was so small that she could see only one-half of her
face at a time. Then from force of habit she stood on tiptoe to see the
other half. The mouth was not smiling as it used to in the old days.
She was recalled from her homesick reverie by Davy's voice again.
"Molly didn't want you and that other girl to come here," he confided.
"She said you'd be snobs; that all rich people were. Bradley asked Molly
what a snob was, and said if it was anything bad that she shouldn't call
you that, 'cause you wasn't one, and always tied his fingers up when he
cut hisself, and helped him with his mul'plication tables and
everything. And Molly said she'd call you what she pleased, and treat
you just as mean as you deserved, and if we dared say a word she'd shut
the first one that tried it up in the smoke-house in the dark; then
she'd say _abra-ca-dab-ra_ over us."
Davy's voice sank to a frightened whisper as he rolled the dread word
over his tongue in unconscious imitation of Molly. He was quivering with
excitement, and his cheeks were unusually red. He had talked more in the
few minutes than he often did in days.
"Why, Davy, what's the matter?" cried Betty. "What do you mean by
abracadabra?"
"Hush! Don't say it so loud," he begged earnestly. "It's Molly's hoodoo
word. Bradley says she can conjure you with it, same as coloured folks
when they put a rabbit's foot on you. I had to tell, 'cause I'm afraid
Molly's going to do something mean to you."
"Does your mother know that she tells you those silly things?" demanded
Betty, turning on him quickly. But Davy had lost his tongue, now that
his confession was made, and only shook his head in reply.
"Then don't listen to her any more, Davy boy," she said, taking him by
the ears and kissing him playfully, first on one dimpled cheek and then
on the other. "Poor Molly doesn't know any better, and she must have
lived with dreadful people before she went to the orphan asylum. You
stay with Lloyd and me, after this, and don't have anything more to do
with her when she tells you such stories."
"That's just what she said you'd do," said Davy, finding his voice
again. "She said that you and that other girl would be stuck up and
wouldn't play with her, or let us either, and that she'd always be left
out of everything. But she'd get even with you for coming in with your
high and mighty airs and fine clothes to turn us against her."
"That's the silliest thing I ever heard," answered Betty, indignantly.
Then a puzzled look crept into her brown eyes, as she stood pouring out
the water to wash her face. "I'll ask godmother about it," she said to
herself. "She'll tell us how we ought to treat her."
But there was no opportunity that evening. Molly sat down to the
supper-table with them, much to the surprise of the Little Colonel,
unused to the primitive customs of farm life, where no social difference
is made between those who are served and those who do the serving.
Remembering her mother's little sermon, she did not show her surprise by
the smallest change of expression.
After supper Betty offered to help with the dishes as usual, but her
cousin Hetty sent her away, saying it would not do to soil her pretty
travelling dress; that she was company now, and to run away and
entertain Lloyd. So Betty, with a sigh of relief, went back to the
porch, where Mr. Appleton, with Pudding in his lap, was talking with
Mrs. Sherman.
Betty hated dish-washing, and after her long holiday at the house party
it seemed doubly hard to go back to such unpleasant duties. She did not
see the swift jealous look that followed her from Molly's keen eyes, or
the sullen pout that settled on the older girl's lips, as, left to
herself, she rattled the cups and plates recklessly, in her envious
mood.
Out on the porch Betty sank into a comfortable rocking-chair, and sat
looking up at the stars. "Isn't it sweet and still out here, godmother?"
she asked, after awhile. "I love to hear that owl hooting away off in
the woods, and listen to the pine-trees whispering that way, and the
frogs croaking down in the meadow pond."
"Oh, I don't," cried the Little Colonel, with something like a sob in
her voice, as she nestled her head closer against her mother's shoulder.
"It makes me feel as lonesome as when Mom Beck sings 'Fa'well, my dyin'
friends.' I think they're the most doleful sounds I evah heard."
Presently, when Mr. Appleton went in to carry the sleepy baby to bed,
the Little Colonel put her arms around her mother's neck, whispering,
"Oh, mothah, I wish we were back at Locust. I'm so homesick and
disappointed in the place. Can't we go home in the mawnin'?"
"I think my little girl is so tired and sleepy that she doesn't know
what she wants," whispered Mrs. Sherman, in reply. "Come, let me take
you to bed. You'll think differently in the morning. Do you remember the
old song?
"'Colours seen by candle-light
Never look the same by day.'"
CHAPTER IV.
"TO BARLEY-BRIGHT."
THE next few days went by happily for the Little Colonel, for Betty took
her to all her favourite haunts, and kept her entertained from morning
till night. Once they stayed all day in the woods below the barn,
building a playhouse at the base of a great oak-tree, with carpets of
moss, and cups and saucers made of acorns.
Scott and Bradley joined them, and for once played peaceably, building a
furnace in the ravine with some flat stones and an old piece of stove
pipe. There they cooked their dinner. Davy was sent to raid the garden
and spring-house, and even Lee and Morgan were allowed a place at the
feast, when one came in with a hatful of guinea eggs that he had found
in the orchard, and the other loaned his new red wheelbarrow, to add to
the housekeeping outfit.
"Isn't this fun!" exclaimed the Little Colonel, as she watched Betty,
who stood over the furnace with a very red face, scrambling the eggs in
an old pie-pan. "I bid to be the cook next time we play out here, and
I'm going to make a furnace like this when I go back to Locust."
High above them, up the hill, on the back porch of the farmhouse, Molly
stood ironing sheets and towels. Whenever she glanced down into the
shady hollow, she could see Lloyd's pink dress fluttering along the
ravine, or Betty's white sunbonnet bobbing up from behind the rocks. The
laughing voices and the shouts of the boys came tantalisingly to her
ears, and the old sullen pout settled on her face as she listened.
"It isn't fair that I should have to work all day long while they are
off having a good time," she muttered, slapping an iron angrily down on
the stove. "I s'pose they think that because I'm so big I oughtn't to
care about playing; but I couldn't help growing so fast. If I _am_
nearly as big as Mrs. Appleton, that doesn't keep me from feeling like a
little girl inside. I'm only a year older than Scott. I _hate_ them! I
wish that little Sherman girl would fall into a brier patch and scratch
her face, and that a hornet would sting Betty Lewis smack in the mouth!"
By and by a tear sizzled down on the hot iron in her hand. "It isn't
fair!" she sobbed again, "for them to have everything and me nothing,
not even to know where my poor little sister is. Maybe somebody's
beating her this very minute, or she is shut up in a dark closet crying
for me." With that thought, all the distressing scenes that had made her
past life miserable began to crowd into her mind, and the tears sizzled
faster and faster on the hot iron, as she jerked it back and forth over
a long towel.
There had been beatings and dark closets for Molly many a time before
she was rescued by the orphan asylum, and the great fear of her life was
that there was still the same cruel treatment for the little sister who
had not been rescued, but who had been hidden away by their drunken
father when the Humane Society made its search for her.
Three years had passed since they were lost from each other. Molly was
only eleven then, and Dot, although nearly seven, was such a tiny,
half-starved little thing that she seemed only a baby in her sister's
eyes. Many a night, when the wind moaned in the chimney, or the rats
scampered in the walls, Molly had started up out of a sound sleep,
staring fearfully into the darkness, thinking that she had heard Dot
calling to her. Then suddenly remembering that Dot was too far away to
make her hear, no matter how wildly she might call, she had buried her
face in her pillow, and sobbed and sobbed until she fell asleep.
The matron of the asylum knew why she often came down in the morning
with red eyes and swollen face, and the knowledge made her more patient
with the wayward girl. Nobody taxed her patience more than Molly, with
her unhappy moods, her outbursts of temper, and her suspicious, jealous
disposition. She loved to play, and yelled and ran like some wild
creature, whenever she had a chance, climbing the highest trees, making
daring leaps from forbidden heights, and tearing her clothes into
ribbons. But she rebelled at having to work, and in all the time she was
at the asylum the matron had found only one lovable trait in her. It was
her affection for the little lost sister that made her gentle to the
smaller children on the place and kind to the animals.
She had been happier since coming to the Appleton farm, where there were
no rules, and the boys accepted her leadership admiringly. She found
great pleasure in inventing wild tales for their entertainment, in
frightening them with stories of ghosts and hobgoblins, and in teaching
them new games which she had played in alleys with boot-blacks and
street gamins.
All that had stopped with the arrival of the visitors. Their coming
brought her more work, and left her less time to play. The sight of
Lloyd and Betty in their dainty dresses aroused her worst jealousy, and
awoke the old bitterness that had grown up in her slum life, and that
always raged within her whenever she saw people with whom fortune had
dealt more kindly than with herself. All that day, while the seven happy
children played and sang in the shady woodland, she went around at her
work with a rebellious feeling against her lot. Everything she did was
to the tune of a bitter refrain that kept echoing through her sore
heart: "It isn't fair! It isn't fair!"
Late in the afternoon a boy came riding up from the railroad station
with a telegram for Mrs. Sherman. It was the first one that had ever
been sent to the farm, and Bradley, who had gone up to the house for a
hatchet, waited to watch Mrs. Sherman tear open the yellow envelope.
"Take it to Lloyd, please," she said, after a hurried reading. "Tell her
to hurry up to the house." Thrusting the message into his hand, she
hurried out of the room, to find Mrs. Appleton. Bradley felt very
important at being the bearer of a telegram, and ran down the hill as
fast as his bare feet could carry him over the briers and dry stubble.
He would have teased Lloyd awhile by making her guess what he had,
before giving it to her, if it had not been for Mrs. Sherman's request
to hurry.
Lloyd read the message aloud. "_Aunt Jane alarmingly ill; wants to see
you. Come immediately._" "Oh, how provoking!" she exclaimed. "I s'pose
we'll have to start right off. We always do. We nevah plan to go
anywhere or do anything without Aunt Jane gets sick and thinks she's
goin' to die. She's an old, old lady," she hastened to explain, seeing
Betty's shocked face. "She's my great-aunt, you know, 'cause she's my
grandmothah's sistah. I wouldn't have minded it so much when we first
came," she confessed, "but I don't want to leave now, one bit. We've had
a lovely time to-day, and I hate to go away befo' I've seen the cave you
promised to take me to and the Glenrock watahfall, and all those
places."
It never occurred to the Little Colonel that she might be left behind,
until she reached the house and found her mother with her hat on,
packing her satchel.
"I've barely time to catch the next train," she said, as Lloyd came
running into the room. "It is a two-mile drive to the station, you know,
and there's not time to get you and all your things ready to take with
me. It wouldn't be wise, anyhow, for everything is always in confusion
at Aunt Jane's when she is ill. Mrs. Appleton will take good care of
you, and you can follow me next week if Aunt Jane is better. Betty will
come with you, and we'll have a nice little visit in the city while she
does her shopping and gets ready for her journey. I'll write to you as
soon as I can decide when it will be best for you to come. Aunt Jane's
illness is probably half scare, like all her others, but still I feel
that I must never lose a moment when she sends for me, as she might be
worse than we think."
Mrs. Sherman packed rapidly while she talked, and almost before Lloyd
realised that she was really to be left behind, a light buckboard was at
the door, and Mr. Appleton was standing beside the horse's head waiting.
There was not even time for Lloyd to cling around her mother's neck and
be petted and comforted for the sudden separation. There was a hasty
hug, a loving kiss, and a whispered "Good-bye, little daughter. Mother's
sorry to go without her little girl, but it can't be helped. The time
will soon pass--only a week, and remember this is one of your school
days, and the lesson set for you to learn is _Patience_."
Lloyd smiled bravely while she promised to be good and not give Mrs.
Appleton any trouble. Her mother, looking back as they drove away, saw
the two little girls standing with their arms around each other, waving
their handkerchiefs, and thought thankfully, "I am glad that Lloyd is
here with Betty instead of at Locust. She'll not have time to be
lonesome with so many playmates."
It was hard for Lloyd to keep back the tears as the carriage passed out
of sight around the corner of the graveyard. But Bradley challenged her
to a race down-hill, and with a loud whoop they all started
helter-skelter back to the ravine to play. She had been busy making some
pine-cone chairs for the little parlour at the roots of the oak-tree,
when the telegram called her away, and now she went back to that
delightful occupation, working busily until the supper-horn blew to call
the men from the field. It was always a pleasure to Lloyd to hear that
horn, and several times she had puffed at it until she was red in the
face, in her vain attempts to blow it herself. All the sound she could
awaken was a short dismal toot. It was a cow's horn, carved and
polished, that had been used for nearly forty years to call the men
from the field. When Mrs. Appleton puckered her lips to blow it, her
thin cheeks puffed out until they were as round and pink as the baby's,
and the long mellow note went floating across the fields, clear and
sweet, till the men at work in the farthest field heard it and answered
with a far-away cheer.
"Let's get Molly to play Barley-bright with us to-night," said Bradley,
as they trudged up the hill. "It is a fine game, and if we help her with
the dishes, she'll get done in just a few minutes, and we'll have nearly
an hour to play before it gets dark."
The same thought was in Molly's mind, for after supper she called the
boys aside and whispered to them. She wanted to slip away from the girls
and not allow them to join in the game; but Bradley would not listen to
such an arrangement. He insisted that the game would not be any fun
without them.
Then Molly, growing jealous, turned away with a pout, saying that she
might have known it would be that way. They had had plenty of fun before
the girls came, but to go ahead and do as they pleased. It didn't make
any difference to _her_. _She_ could get on very well by herself.
Lloyd had gone down to the spring-house with Mrs. Appleton, but Betty
heard the dispute and put an end to it at once. "Here!" she cried,
catching up a towel. "Everybody come and help, and we'll be through
before you can say Jack Robinson. Pour out the hot water, Molly. Get
another towel, Bradley. We'll wipe, and Davy can carry the dishes to the
pantry. We'll be through before Scott has half filled the wood-box."
Molly could not keep her jealous mood and sulky frowns very long in the
midst of the laughing chatter that followed, and in a very few minutes
Betty had talked her into good humour with herself and all the world.
Such light work did the many hands make of the dish-washing, that the
sky was still pink with the sunset glow when they were ready to begin
the game.
"We always go down to the hay-barn to play Barley-bright," said Bradley.
"I never cared for it when we played it at school in the day-time, but
when we play it Molly's way it is the most exciting game I know. We
usually wait till it begins to get dark and the lightning-bugs are
flying about.
[Illustration: "TO THEIR EXCITED FANCY SHE SEEMED A REAL WITCH."]
"Molly and I will stand the crowd, this time. Our base will be here at
the persimmon-tree in front of the barn, and yours will be the pasture
bars down yonder. The barn will be Barley-bright, and after we call out
the questions and answers, you're to try to run around our base to the
barn, and back again to yours, without being caught by a witch. There
are six of you, so you can have six runs to Barley-bright and back, and
if by that time we have caught half of you the game is ours. The witch
has the right to hide and jump out at you from any place she chooses,
but I can't touch you except when you pass my base. Now shut your eyes
till I count one hundred, while the witch hides."
Six pairs of hands were clasped over six pairs of eyes, while Bradley
slowly counted, and Molly, darting away from his side, hid behind the
straw-stack.
"One--hun-dred--all eyes open!" he shouted. They looked around. The
fireflies were flashing across the pasture and the dusk was beginning to
deepen. Then six voices rang out in chorus, Bradley's shrill pipe
answering them.
"How many miles to Barley-bright?"
"_Three score and ten!_"
"Can I get there by candle-light?"
"_Yes, if your legs are long and light_--
_There and back again!_
_Look out! The witches will catch you!_"
Molly was nowhere in sight, so with a delicious thrill of excitement,
not knowing from what ambush they would be pounced upon, the six
pilgrims to Barley-bright started off at the top of their speed.
Across the pasture they rushed, around Bradley's base at the
persimmon-tree, and up to the big barn door, which they were obliged to
touch before they could turn and make a wild dash back to the pasture
bars.
Just as they reached the barn door, Molly sprang out from behind the
straw-stack; but they could not believe it was Molly, she was so
changed. To their excited fancy she seemed a real witch. Her black hair
was unbraided, and streamed out in elfish wisps from under a tall
pointed black hat. A hideous mask covered her face, and she brandished
the stump of an old broom with such effect that they ran from her,
shrieking wildly.
Some heavy wrapping paper, a strip of white cotton cloth, and coal-soot
from the bottom of a stove lid had changed an ordinary girl of fourteen
into a nameless terror, from which they fled, shrieking at the top of
their voices. The boys had been through the performance many times, but
they enjoyed the cold thrill it gave them as much as Betty and Lloyd,
who were feeling it for the first time.
Lee was caught in that first mad race, and Morgan in the second, and
they had to go over to the enemy's base, where Bradley stood guard under
the persimmon-tree. As they came in from the third run, Lloyd leaned
against the pasture bars, out of breath.
"Oh, I believe I should drop dead," she panted, "if that awful thing
should get me. I can't believe that it is only Molly. She seems like a
real suah 'nuff witch." She glanced over her shoulder again with a
little nervous shudder as the others began calling again:
"_How many miles to Barley-bright?_"
Betty was caught this time, and Lloyd, to whom the game was becoming a
terrible reality, stood with her heart beating like a trip-hammer and
her eyes peering in a startled way through the dusk. This time the witch
popped up from behind the pasture bars, and Lloyd, giving a startled
look over her shoulder as she flew, saw that the broomstick was
flourished in her direction, and the hideous black and white mask was
almost upon her. With an ear-splitting scream she redoubled her speed,
racing around and around the barn, instead of touching the door and
turning back, when she saw that she was followed.
Finally, with one sharp scream of terror after another, she darted into
the great dark barn, in a blind frenzy to escape. She heard the voices
of the children outside, the bang of the broomstick against the door,
and then plunging forward, felt herself falling--falling!
There was just an instant in which she seemed to see the faces of her
mother and Papa Jack. Then she remembered nothing more, for her head
struck something hard, and she lay in a little heap on the floor below.
She had fallen through a trap-door into an empty manger.
CHAPTER V.
A TIME FOR PATIENCE.
THEY thought at first that she was hiding in the barn, afraid to come
out, lest Molly might be lying in wait to grab her. So they began
calling: "Come on, Lloyd! King's X! King's excuse! Home free! You may
come home free!" But there was no answer, and Betty, suddenly
remembering the trap-door, grew white with fear.
The children played in the barn so much that Mr. Appleton's first order,
when he hired a new man, was that the trap-door must always be closed
and fastened the moment he finished pitching the hay down to the manger
below. The children themselves had been cautioned time and again to keep
away from it, but Lloyd, never having played in the barn before, was not
aware of its existence.
"Lloyd, Lloyd!" called Betty, hurrying into the twilight of the big
barn. There was no answer, and peering anxiously ahead, Betty saw that
the trap-door was open, and on the floor below was the gleam of the
Little Colonel's light pink dress, shining white through the dusk.
Betty's startled cry brought the other children, who clattered down the
barn stairs after her, into the straw-covered circle where the young
calves were kept. They met Mr. Appleton, coming in from the corn-crib
with a basket on his shoulder, and all began to talk at once. The words
"Lloyd" and "trap-door" were all he could distinguish in the jumble of
excited exclamations, but they told the whole story.
Hastily dropping his basket, he strode across to the manger that Betty
pointed out, with a look of grave concern on his face. They all crowded
breathlessly around him as he bent over the quiet little figure, lifting
it gently in his arms. It was a solemn-faced little company that
followed him up the hill with his unconscious burden. A cold fear seized
Betty as she walked along, glancing at the Little Colonel's closed eyes,
and the tiny stream of blood trickling across the still white face.
"Oh, if godmother were only here!" she groaned.
"There's no telling how badly Lloyd is hurt. Maybe she'll be a cripple
for life. Oh, I wish I'd never heard of such a game as Barley-bright."
If the accident had happened at Locust, a doctor would have been
summoned to the spot, as fast as telephones and swift horses could bring
him, and the whole household would have held its breath in anxiety. But
very little fuss was made over accidents at the Cuckoo's Nest. It was a
weekly occurrence for some of the children to be brought in limp and
bleeding from various falls. Bradley had once sprained his neck turning
somersaults down the hay-mow, so that he had not been able to look over
his shoulder for two weeks. Scott had been picked up senseless twice,
once from falling out of the top of a walnut-tree, and the other time
because a high ladder broke under him. Every one of the boys but Pudding
had at some time or another left a trail of blood behind him from barn
to house as he went weeping homeward with some part of his body to be
bandaged. So Lloyd's fall did not cause the commotion it might have done
in a less adventurous family.
"Oh, she's coming around all right," said Mr. Appleton, cheerfully, as
her head stirred a little on his shoulder, and she half opened her eyes.
"Here you are," he added a moment later, laying her on the bed in the
parlour. "Scott, run call your mother. Bring a light, Molly. We'll soon
see what is the matter."
There were no bones broken, and in a little while Lloyd sat up, white
and dizzy. Then she walked across the room, and looked at herself in the
little mirror hanging over a shelf, on which stood a bouquet of stiff
wax flowers. It was hung so high and tilted forward so much, and the wax
flowers were in the way, so that she could not get a very satisfactory
view of her wounds, but she saw enough to make her feel like an old
soldier home from the wars, with the marks of many battles upon her.
A bandage wet with arnica was tied around her head, over a large knot
that was rapidly swelling larger. Several strips of court-plaster
covered the cut on her temple. One cheek was scratched, and she was
stiff and sore from many bruises.
"But not half so stiff as you'll be in the morning," Mrs. Appleton
assured her, cheerfully. "All that side of your body that struck against
the manger is black and blue."
"I think I'll go to bed," said the Little Colonel, faintly. "This day
has been long enough, and I don't want anything else to happen to me.
Fallin' through a trap-doah and havin' my mothah leave me is enough fo'
one while. I think I need her moah than Aunt Jane does. You'll have to
sleep with me to-night, Betty. I wouldn't stay down heah alone fo'
anything."
It was very early to go to bed, scarcely more than half-past seven, when
Betty blew out the candle and climbed in beside the Little Colonel. She
lay for a long time, listening to the croaking of the frogs, thinking
that Lloyd had forgotten her troubles in dreamland, until a mournful
little voice whispered, "Say, Betty, are you asleep?"
"No; but I thought you were."
"I was, for a few minutes, but that dreadful false face of Molly's woke
me up. I dreamed it was chasing me, and I seemed to be falling and
falling, and somebody screamed at me '_Look out! The witches will catch
you!_' It frightened me so that I woke up all a tremble. I know I am
safe, here in bed with you, but I'm shaking so hard that I can't go to
sleep again. Oh, Betty, you don't know how much I want my mothah! I'll
nevah leave her again as long as I live. My head aches, and I'm so stiff
and soah I can't tu'n ovah!"
"Do you want me to tell you a story?" asked Betty, hearing the sob in
Lloyd's voice, and divining that her pillow had caught more than one
tear under cover of the darkness.
"Oh, yes!" begged the Little Colonel. "Talk to me, even if you don't say
anything but the multiplication table. It will keep me from hearin'
those dreadful frogs, and seein' that face in the dark. I'm ashamed to
be frightened at nothing. I don't know what makes me such a coward."
"Maybe the fall was a sort of shock to your nerves," said Betty,
comfortingly, reaching out to pat the trembling shoulders with a
motherly air. "There, go to sleep, and I'll stay awake and keep away the
hobgoblins. I'll recite the Lady Jane, because it jingles so
beautifully. It goes like a cradle."
A little groping hand reached through the darkness and touched Betty's
face, then buried itself in her soft curls, as if the touch brought a
soothing sense of safety. In a slow, sing-song tone, as monotonous as
the droning of a bee, Betty began, accenting every other syllable with a
sleepy drawl.
"The _la_-dy _Jane_ was _tall_ and _slim_,
The _la_-dy _Jane_ was _fair_.
Sir _Thomas_ her _lord_ was _stout_ of _limb_,
His _cough_ was _short_ and his _eyes_ were _dim_,
And he _wore_ green _specs_ with a _tortoise_ shell _rim_,
And his _hat_ was re-_mark_-ably _broad_ in the _brim_,
And _she_ was un-_common_-ly _fond_ of _him_,
And _they_ were a _lov_-ing _pair_.
And the _name_ and the _fame_ of this _knight_ and his _dame_
Were _every_-where _hailed_ with the _loud_-est ac-_claim_."
But it took more than the Lady Jane to put the restless little listener
to sleep that night. Maud Muller was recited in the same sing-song
measure, and Lord Ullin's daughter followed without a pause, till Betty
herself grew sleepy, and, like a tired little mosquito, droned lower and
lower, finally stopping in the middle of a sentence.
* * * * *
They woke in the morning, to hear thunder rumbling in the distance.
Betty, peeping through the curtains, announced that the sky was gray
with clouds, and she thought that it must surely begin to rain soon.
Lloyd, so stiff and sore from the effects of her fall that she could
scarcely move, sat up with a groan.
"Oh, deah!" she exclaimed. "What is there to do heah on rainy days? No
books, no games, no piano! Mothah said that the lesson set fo' me to
learn was patience, but I'd lose my mind, just sitting still in front of
a clock and watching the minutes go by. I don't see how Job stood it."
"Job didn't do that way," said Betty, soberly, as she looked up from
lacing her shoes. "They didn't have any clocks in those days, and
besides, patience isn't just sitting still all day without fidgeting.
It's putting up with whatever happens to you, without making a fuss
about it. The best way to do it is not to think about it any more than
you can help."
"I'd like to know how I'm goin' to keep from thinkin' about my bruises
and cuts," groaned the Little Colonel, limping stiffly across the room
to look again in the little mirror, at her bandaged forehead, her
scratched cheek, and her temple, criss-crossed with strips of
court-plaster. "What _would_ Papa Jack say if he could see me now?"
She repeated Betty's definition of patience to her reflection in the
mirror, making a wry face as she did so. "'Puttin' up with whatevah
happens to you, without makin' a fuss about it.' Well, I'll try, but
it's mighty hard to do when one of the happenings is fallin' through a
trap-doah, and gettin' as stiff and soah as I am."
She thought about the definition more than once during the long morning
that followed; when the hash was too salty at breakfast, and the oatmeal
was scorched; when Betty was busy in the spring-house, and she was left
all alone for awhile with nothing to entertain herself with but the
almanac and a week-old paper. The thunder, that had been only a low
muttering over the distant hills when they awoke, was coming nearer, and
the damp air was heavy with the approaching storm.
"I'll have one little run out-of-doahs befo' it begins to rain," thought
Lloyd, and started up to skip across the porch; but her skipping changed
to a painful walk as her aching muscles reminded her of her fall, and
she limped slowly down the lane toward the gate.
A strong wind suddenly began lashing the cherry-trees that lined the
lane, and sent a gust of dust and leaves into her face. She stopped a
moment to rub her eyes, and as she did so something fluttering on the
hedge-row broke loose from the thorns that held it, and came blowing
toward her. It was something soft and gray, and it fluttered along
uncertainly, like a bit of fleecy thistledown, as the wind bore it to
her feet.
"Oh, it's mothah's gray veil!" she exclaimed. "It was on the back of the
seat when she waved good-bye to me, and they were drivin' so fast it
must have blown away."
She picked up the dainty piece of silk tissue, soft and filmy as a
cloud, and held it against her cheek. Then she hurried into the house
with it, lest some of the boys should see her and notice the tears in
her eyes. But inside the dark closet, where she climbed to lay the veil
on a shelf, the lonely feeling was too strong for her to overcome.
Crouching down in a corner, with her face hidden in the soft
violet-scented veil, she cried quietly for a long time.
Then something came to her mind that had happened when she was only five
years old, before she had gone to Locust to live. It was that first
lonesome evening when she had been left to spend the night at her
grandfather's, and she grew so homesick as twilight fell that she
decided to run away. And while she stood with her hand on the latch of
the great gate, peering through the bars at the darkening world outside,
Fritz (the wisest little terrier that ever peeped through tangled bangs)
found something in the dead leaves at her feet. It was a little gray
glove that her mother had dropped, when she stooped to kiss her
good-bye. Lloyd remembered how she had squeezed it, and cried over it,
and fondled it as if it held the touch of her mother's hand, and then,
baby though she was, she had tucked it into her tiny apron pocket as a
talisman to help her be brave. Then she walked back to the house without
another tear.
"That visit had a beautiful ending," thought Lloyd, tenderly folding the
veil. "Then I had only Fritz for company, but now I have Betty. I'll
just stop wishin' I could run away from the Cuckoo's Nest, and I'll have
all the good times that I can get out of this visit."
She felt better now. The tears seemed to have washed away the ache in
her throat. Bradley was calling her, and only stopping at the wash-stand
a moment to bathe her red eyes, she went out to see what he wanted.
His freckled face was all alight with a beaming smile, as if he were the
bearer of good news. His hands were behind his back, and as he came
toward her he called out, in the pleasantest of voices, "Which will you
take, Lloyd, right or left?"
Forgetting that Betty had cautioned her about his love of teasing, and
remembering the apples he had brought her the day before, she answered,
with a friendly smile, "I choose what's in the right hand."
"Then shut your eyes, and hold fast all I give you."
Squinting her eyelids tightly together, Lloyd held out her unsuspecting
little hand, only to receive a squirming bunch of clammy, wriggling
fishing worms. She gave a loud shriek, and wrung the hand that the worms
had touched, as if it had been stung.
"Oo-ooh! Bradley Appleton! You horrid boy!" she cried. "How could you be
so mean? There's nothing I _hate_ like worms. I could touch a mouse or
even a snake soonah than those bare crawly things! Oh, I'll nevah, nevah
be able to get the feel of them off my hands, even if I should scrub
them a week. I don't mind things with feet, but the feel of the
squirmin' is awful!"
Bradley laughed so loudly over the success of his joke, that Betty came
out smiling to see what was the matter, and was surprised to see Lloyd
marching indignantly into the house, her head held high and her face
very red.
"Well, I didn't do anything but give her a handful of angleworms," said
Bradley, in reply to Betty's demand for an explanation. "Molly heard her
say that she despised worms, and that nothing could make her touch one
or put it on a hook. I was just showing her for her own good that there
is nothing to be afraid of in a harmless little fishing-worm, and she
had to go off and get mad. Girls are such touchy things. They make me
tired."
Long experience had taught Betty that the best thing to do, when Bradley
was in a teasing mood, was to keep out of his way, so she turned without
a word and went in search of Lloyd. As she did so, the rain that they
had been expecting all morning came dashing against the window-panes in
torrents. Suddenly it grew so dark one could scarcely see to read
without lighting a lamp.
"Come up to my room, Lloyd," called Betty, stopping at the parlour
door, with Davy tagging behind her. "It's lighter up there, and I love
to be close up under the roof when the rain patters on it."
"Wait till I finish washing my hands," answered Lloyd, looking up with a
disgusted face. "Ugh! I can't wash away that horrid squirmin' feelin',
even with a nail-brush."
As Davy climbed the stairs after them he caught Lloyd by the dress.
"Say!" he exclaimed in a half whisper, "it was Molly that told Bradley
to put those worms on you. She dared him to, and they're laughing about
it now, down in the kitchen."
It was on the tip of Lloyd's tongue to say, "They're both of them mean,
hateful things, and I'll get even with them if it takes all the rest of
my visit to do it." But before the words could slip out she remembered
the definition, "Putting up with anything that happens to you without
making a fuss about it."
"There couldn't anything nastier happen than fishin'-worms," she said to
herself, "so this must be one of the times I need patience the very
most."
Although the lesson was remembered in time to keep her from getting into
a rage, it did not put her into a good humour. It was a very unhappy
little face that looked out of the gable window, against which the
autumn rain was dashing. Her head ached from all its bumps and bruises,
and her eyes wore as forlorn an expression as if she were some unhappy
Crusoe, cast away on a desert island with no hope of rescue.
Davy perched himself on the trunk and awaited developments. Betty looked
around the room in search of something to brighten the dull day; but the
bare walls offered no suggestion of entertainment. Lloyd's fingers
drumming restlessly on the window-pane, and the patter of the rain on
the roof, were the only sounds in the room.
"I wondah if it's rainin' where Joyce and Eugenia are," said the Little
Colonel, after awhile, breaking the long silence.
"Oh, let's write to them," cried Betty, eagerly. "One can write East and
one can write West, and we'll tell them all that has happened in the
Cuckoo's Nest since we came back to it."
Davy slid off the trunk in silent disapproval when the writing material
was brought out, and the girls began their letters. The scratching of
the pens across the paper and the dismal dripping of the rain was too
monotonous for him, and he felt forced to go below in search of livelier
companionship.
CHAPTER VI.
MOLLY'S STORY.
THEY had been writing a long time, when the Little Colonel looked up
with a mischievous smile. "Joyce will think that this is a wondahful
place," she said. "I've told her all about my bein' chased by a
Barley-bright witch, and how ugly she was, and what Davy said about her
goin' through keyholes. It sounds so real when I read it ovah that I
could half-way make myself believe that she is one. I'm goin' to slip
across into her room now, and see if I can't find the broomstick that
she rides around on at night. If there'd just be a black cat sittin' on
her pillow, I could almost believe what Davy said about her hoodoo word.
Wouldn't she be mad if she knew what was in this letter? I told Joyce
how mean she'd acted about the fishin'-worms too, and how she's scowled
at us evah since we came."
Betty looked up with a preoccupied smile, for she had long ago finished
her letter to Eugenia and was busy with some verses that she was trying
to write about the rain. The rhymes were falling into place almost as
easily and musically as the rain-drops tinkling down the eaves, and her
face was flushed with the pleasure of it. She was so wrapped up in her
own thoughts that she did not understand what Lloyd was saying, and
smiled a reply without the faintest idea of what it was that she
proposed to do.
Lloyd laid down her pen, and, tiptoeing across the narrow passage that
divided Betty's room from Molly's, opened the door and looked in. She
had thought that the parlour bedroom down-stairs was queer, and that
Betty's room was pitifully bare and common, but such cheerlessness as
this she had certainly never seen before, and scarcely imagined.
It was an attic-like room over the kitchen, with such a low sloping
ceiling that she could touch it with her hand, except when she stood in
the middle of the room. There was a rough, unpainted floor, a cot, a
dry-goods box covered with newspaper, on which stood a tin basin and a
broken-nosed water-pitcher. Some nails, driven along the wall, held a
row of clothes, and a chair with both rockers broken off was propped
against the wall. Lloyd looked around her with a shiver. The only bright
spot in the room was a bunch of golden-rod in a bottle, and the only
picture, a page torn from an illustrated newspaper, and pinned to the
wall.
Wondering what kind of a picture such a creature as the Barley-bright
witch would choose to decorate her room, Lloyd walked across to examine
it. It was the front page from an old _Harper's Weekly_. The date caught
her eye first: December 25, 1897. And then she found herself looking
into a room still more pitiful than the one in which she stood, for the
pictured room was part of an old New York tenement, and sobbing in the
corner was a ragged, half-starved little waif, heartbroken because Santa
Claus had passed her by, and she had found an empty stocking on
Christmas morning.
Lloyd could not see the face hidden in the tattered apron, which the
disappointed little hands held up. She could not hear the sobs that she
knew were shaking the thin little shoulders, but she felt the misery of
the scene as forcibly as if the real child stood before her. As she
stood and looked, she knew that if all the troubles and disappointments
of her whole life could be put together, they would be as only a drop
compared to the grief of the poor little creature in the picture.
"Oh, Betty!" she called. "Come heah quick! I want to show you
something."
The distress in Lloyd's voice made Betty hurry across the passage with
her pen in her hand, wondering what could be the matter.
"Look!" exclaimed Lloyd, pointing to the picture. "How can Molly keep
such a thing in her room? Do you s'pose she was evah like that? It's
enough to make her cry every time she looks at it."
"Maybe she used to be like that," said Betty, examining the picture
carefully, "and maybe she keeps it here to remind her how much better
off she is now than she used to be."
"I can't see that her room is much nicer," said Lloyd, looking around
with an expression of disgust.
"It always has been used as a sort of storeroom," explained Betty. "This
is the first time I've been in here since I came back, and I didn't know
how it had been fixed for Molly. Cousin Hetty hasn't any time or money
to spend making it look nice. Besides, she is only in here for a little
while. She is to have my room when I go away. If I'm abroad all winter,
and with Joyce next summer, and at Locust going to school the year
after, as godmother has planned, I suppose I'll never be back here again
to really live. I'm going to make a new pincushion and a cover for my
bureau, and put a white curtain at the window before I leave. Maybe it
will look as fine to Molly as my white and gold room did to me at the
House Beautiful. It isn't any wonder she feels jealous of us, when she
hasn't a single nice thing in the whole world."
"Maybe I oughtn't to have written such spiteful things about her to
Joyce," said Lloyd, whose heart began to soften and whose conscience
pricked as she turned again to the picture.
But even while they were planning the changes they would make in the
gable room for Molly, there was a stealthy step on the stairs, and Molly
herself stood in the door, glaring at them like an angry tigress.
"How _dare_ you!" she cried, stamping her foot in a furious rage. "How
dare you come in here spying on me and making fun of my things and
looking at my picture! You sha'n't look at my little Dot when she is so
miserable. You sha'n't put eyes on her again!"
With a white angry face she dashed past them, tore the picture from the
wall, and with it held tightly against her threw herself face downward
on the cot.
"We were not spying on you," began Lloyd, indignantly. "We were not
making fun of your things!"
"I know better. Get out of this room, both of you! This minute!" cried
Molly, lifting her white face in which her angry eyes burned like
flames. Then she buried her head in her pillow, sobbing bitterly: "If
y-you were an or-orphan--and hadn't but one thing in the world, you
wouldn't want p-people to come sp-spying on _you_, that way."
Puzzled and almost frightened at such an outburst, the girls retreated
to the doorway, and then as she continued to storm at them they went
back to Betty's room. They could hear her sobbing even with the door
shut. Presently Betty said: "I'm going in there again, and see if I can
find out what's the matter. I am an orphan, too, and maybe I can coax
her to tell me, when she knows how sorry I am for her."
People wondered sometimes at Betty's way of walking into their hearts;
but sympathy is an open sesame to nearly all gates, and sympathy was
Betty's unfailing key. It was always ready in her loving little hand.
Presently, when Molly's wild burst of angry sobbing had subsided
somewhat, Betty ventured back to her. Lloyd heard a low murmuring of
voices, first Betty's and then Molly's, as one little orphan poured out
her story to the other. It was nearly an hour before Betty came back to
her room. Lloyd had written another letter while she waited, and now
sat leaning against the window-sill, listening to the monotonous
drip-drop-drip-drop from a leaky spout above the window.
"Well, what was it?" she asked, eagerly, as Betty opened the door.
"Oh, you never heard anything so pitiful," exclaimed Betty, sitting down
on her bed and drawing her feet up under her comfortably before she
began. "It is just like a story in a book.
"Molly says that when she was little her father was a railroad
conductor, and she and her mother and grandmother and baby sister lived
in a little house at the edge of town. It was near enough the railroad
track for them to wave to her father, from the front door, whenever his
train passed. He could come home only once a week. She and Dot thought
he was the best father anybody ever had, for he never came home without
something in his pockets for them, and he rode them around on his
shoulders and played with them all the time he was in the house. He was
always bringing things to their mother, too, a pretty cup and saucer or
a pot of flowers, or something to wear; and as for the old grandmother,
she spent her time telling the neighbours how good her son was to her.
"But Molly says one summer they moved away from the house by the
railroad track and took a smaller one in town, where there wasn't any
garden and trees, and where there wasn't even any grass, except a narrow
strip in the front yard. Her father had lost his place as a conductor,
and was out of work for a long time. By and by they sold their piano and
the carpets and the nicest chairs. Then they moved again. This time it
was to a cottage without even a strip of grass. The front door opened
out on the pavement and there was no place for them to play except on
the streets. Their father never brought anything home to them any more,
and never played with them. They couldn't understand what made him so
cross, or what made their mother cry so much, until one day she heard
some of their neighbours talking.
"She and Dot were waiting in the corner grocery for a loaf of bread, and
she heard one woman say to another, in a low tone, 'Those are Jim
Conner's children, poor little kids. My man says he used to be one of
the best conductors on the road, but he lost his job when he took to
getting drunk every Saturday night. He's going down-hill now, fast as a
man can go. Heaven only knows what'll become of his family if he doesn't
put on the brakes soon.'
"Then Molly knew what was the matter, and she didn't make her mother
cry by asking any more questions when they moved again the next week.
That time they had only two rooms up-stairs over a barber shop, and
Molly's mother died that summer. Then her father drank harder than ever,
and never brought any money home, and by fall they had sold nearly
everything that was left, and moved into one room in an old
tenement-house, up two flights of stairs.
"Their grandmother had to go away every morning to look for work. She
was too old to wash, or she might have had plenty to do. Sometimes she
got odd jobs of cleaning, and sometimes she made buttonholes for a pants
factory. It took nearly all the money she could make to pay the rent of
that room, and often and often, Molly said, there were days when they
had nothing but scraps of stale bread to eat. Sometimes there wasn't
even that, and she and Dot would be so cold and hungry that they would
huddle together in a corner and cry. She said it made her feel so awful
to hear poor little Dot sobbing for something to eat, that she would
have gone out on the streets and begged, but their grandmother always
locked them up when she went away."
"What for?" interrupted Lloyd, who was listening with breathless
attention.
"She was afraid that their father would come home drunk and find them
alone. He didn't live with them any more, but several times, before she
began locking them up, he staggered in, and frightened them dreadfully.
Their ragged clothes and their half-starved looks seemed to make him
furious. It hurt his conscience, I suppose, and that made him want to
hurt somebody. Molly says he beat them sometimes till the neighbours
interfered. More than once he shut them up in a dark closet, trying to
make them tell where their grandmother kept her money. They couldn't
tell him, for she didn't have any money, but he kept them shut up in the
dark, hours at a time.
"One night he came in crosser than they had ever seen him, and threw
things around dreadfully. He struck his old mother in the face, beat
Molly, and threw a stick of wood at little Dot. It just missed putting
out her right eye, and made such a deep cut over it that they had to
send for a doctor to sew it up. He said she would carry the scar all her
life, and he could not see how the blow had missed killing her.
"It nearly broke the old grandmother's heart. She sat up all night, and
Molly says she remembers that time like a dreadful dream. Half the time
the old woman was rocking Dot in her arms, crying over her, and half the
time she was walking the floor.
"Molly says that now, when she shuts her eyes at night, she can hear her
saying, over and over, 'Oh, my Jimmy! My Jimmy! To think that my only
child should come to this! Oh, my Jimmy! The baby boy that was my
sunshine, how can it be that _you've_ become the sorrow of my life!'
Then she'd walk up and down the room as if she were crazy, calling out,
'But it's the drink that did it! It's the drink, and a curse be on
everything that helps to bring it into the world.'
"Molly says that she looked so terrible, with her white hair streaming
over her shoulders, and her eyes staring, that she hid her face in the
bedclothes. But she couldn't shut out the words. She shouted them so
loud that the family in the next room couldn't sleep, and knocked on the
wall for her to stop. But she only went on walking and wringing her
hands and calling, 'A curse on all who buy and all who brew! A curse on
every distiller! On every saloon-keeper! On every man who has so much as
a finger in this business of death! May all the shame and the sin and
the sorrow they have sown in other homes be reaped a hundredfold in
their own!'
"I suppose it made such a strong impression on Molly, hearing her
grandmother take on so terribly, that she remembered every word, and
will as long as she lives. She said the rain poured that night till it
leaked down on the bed, and she and Dot had to snuggle up together at
the foot, to keep dry. Her grandmother walked the floor till daylight.
The neighbours complained of her, and said that her troubles had
unsettled her mind, and that she would have to be sent some place to be
taken care of. All she could talk about was the drink that had ruined
her Jimmy, and the awful things she prayed would happen to anybody who
had anything to do with making or selling whiskey.
"She couldn't work any longer, and they were almost starving. One day
she was taken to the almshouse, and the family in the next room took
care of Molly and Dot until arrangements could be made to send them to
an orphan asylum. It was hard to get them into one, you know, because
their father was living.
"They stayed several weeks with those people, and Molly helped take care
of the baby, for she was a big girl, eleven years old, then. Dot was
seven, but so little and starved that she looked scarcely half that old.
She couldn't do much to help, but they sent her on errands sometimes.
"One day she went to the meat-shop around the corner, and _she never
came back_. Molly hunted in all the alleys and courtyards for her, until
some one brought her a message from her father, that he had taken Dot
away to another town. He didn't care what became of Molly, he said. She
had been saucy to him, but no orphan asylum should have his baby. He'd
hide her where she wouldn't be found in a hurry.
"Molly says she would have liked it at the asylum if Dot could have been
with her, but because she couldn't it made her hate everything and
everybody in the world. There was a big distillery in sight of her
window. She could see the roof the first thing in the morning, when she
opened her eyes, and the last thing at night. Many a time before she got
out of bed she'd think of her grandmother's words and repeat them just
like it was her prayers. She'd think 'It's drink that put me here, and
it's what separated me from Dot,' and then she'd say, 'A curse on those
who sell, and those who make it, and on every hand that helps to bring
it into the world! Amen.'"
"How dreadful!" exclaimed the Little Colonel, with a shudder. "She is as
bad as a heathen."
"But you can't wonder at it," said Betty. "We would have felt the same
way in her place. Suppose it was your Papa Jack that had been made a
drunkard, and that he'd begin to be mean to you, and make so much
trouble that godmother would die, and you'd have to leave the House
Beautiful and be sent to an asylum, and all on account of the saloons.
Wouldn't _you_ hate them and everything that helped keep them going?"
Lloyd only shivered at the thought, without answering. It was not
possible for her to suppose such a horrible thing about her beloved
father, but she felt the justice of Betty's view.
"While she was at the asylum," continued Betty, "some one sent a pile of
old magazines, and among them she found the picture that we saw. She
says that it looks exactly like Dot, and that is the way she used to
stand and cry sometimes when she was cold and hungry, and there wasn't
anything in the house to eat. It makes her perfectly miserable whenever
she looks at it, but it is so much like Dot that she can't bear to give
it up. Now you see why she didn't like us. It didn't seem fair to her
that we should have so much to make us happy, when she has so little.
She has had a hard enough time to spoil anybody's disposition, I think."
Lloyd was in tears by this time, and reaching across the table for the
letter she had written about the Barley-bright witch, she began tearing
it into pieces.
"Oh, if I'd only known," she said, "I never would have written those
things about her. I'll write another one this afternoon, and tell Joyce
all about her. Is she still crying in there, Betty?"
"No, she stopped before I left. I told her we would all try to find her
little sister, and that I was sure godmother could do it, even if
everybody else failed. But she didn't seem to think that there was much
hope."
"Did you tell her about Fairchance?" asked Lloyd, "or Joyce's finding
Jules's great-aunt Desiré, that time she went to the Little Sisters of
the Poor?"
"No," said Betty.
"Then let me tell her," cried the Little Colonel, starting up eagerly.
She ran on into Molly's room, while thoughtful Betty slipped down-stairs
to offer her services in Molly's place, that she might listen
undisturbed to Lloyd's tale of comfort,--all about Jonesy and his
brother, and the bear, who had found a fair chance to begin life again,
in the home that the two little knights built for them, in their efforts
to "right the wrong and follow the king." All about old great-aunt
Desiré, who had been found in a pauper's home and brought back to her
own again, through the Gate of the Giant Scissors, on Christmas Day in
the morning.
"It is too good to be true," sighed Molly, when Lloyd had finished. "It
might happen to some people, but it's too good to happen to me. It
sounds like something out of a story-book."
"Most of the things in story-books had to happen first before they were
written about," answered the Little Colonel. "You've got so many friends
now that surely some of them will be able to do something to find her."
Presently Molly looked up, saying, in a hesitating way, "Several people
have been good to me before, but I never thought about them doing it
because they were my _friends_. I thought they treated me kindly just
because they pitied me, and that made me cross."
Lloyd was turning the little ring that Eugenia had given her around on
her finger, and something in the touch of the little lover's knot of
gold recalled all that she had resolved about the "Road of the Loving
Heart." It was the ring that made her say, gently, "You mustn't think
that about Betty and me. We'll be your really truly friends just as we
are Joyce's and Eugenia's."
Then to Molly's great surprise the Little Colonel's pretty face leaned
over hers an instant, and she felt a quick kiss on her forehead. She lay
there a moment longer without speaking, and then sat up, a bright smile
flashing across her tear-swollen face. "Somehow the whole world seems
different," she cried. "It seems so queer to think I've really got
_friends_ like other people."
There was a warm glow in the Little Colonel's heart when she went back
to Betty's room. The consciousness that she had carried comfort and
sunshine into another's life brightened the rainy day until it no longer
seemed dark and dreary. That comfortable consciousness was still with
her in the afternoon, when she sat down to write another letter to
Joyce,--a letter, not filled this time with her own mishaps and
misfortunes, but so full of sympathy for Molly's troubles that no one
who read it could fail to be touched and interested.
CHAPTER VII.
A FEAST OF SAILS.
NOW ring your merriest tune, ye silver bells of the magic caldron. 'Tis
a birthday feast that awakes your chiming, so make your key-note joy.
And now if the little princes and princesses will thrust their curious
fingers into the steam as the water bubbles again, it will take them far
away from the Cuckoo's Nest. They will see the village of Plainsville,
Kansas, and the little brown house where the Ware family lived.
* * * * *
The day that the Little Colonel's letter reached Joyce was Holland's
tenth birthday. One would not have dreamed that there was a party of ten
boys in the parlour that bright September afternoon, for the shutters
were closed, and every blind tightly drawn. Jack had darkened the room
to give them a magic lantern exhibition, while Joyce was spreading the
table under an apple-tree in the side yard. Mary, her funny little
braids with their big bows of blue ribbon continually bobbing over her
shoulders, was helping to carry out the curious dishes from the house
that had taken all morning to prepare.
There was never much money to spend in entertainments in the little
brown house, but birthdays never passed unheeded. Love can always find
some way to keep the red-letter days of its calendar. Joyce and her
mother had planned a novel supper for Holland and his friends, thinking
it would make a merry feast for them to laugh over now, and a pleasant
memory by and by, when three score years had been added to his ten.
Looking back on the day when somebody cared that it was his birthday,
and celebrated it with loving forethought, would kindle a glow in his
heart, no matter how old and white-haired he might live to be.
The little mother could not take much time from her sewing, but she
suggested and helped with the verses, and came out when the table was
nearly ready, to add a few finishing touches.
A Feast of Sails, Joyce called it, saying that, if Cinderella's
godmother could change a pumpkin into a gilded coach, there was no
reason why they should not transform an ordinary luncheon into a fleet
of boats, for a boy whose greatest ambition was to be a naval officer,
and who was always talking about the sea.
These were the invitations, printed in Jack's best style, and decorated
by Joyce with a little water-colour sketch of a ship in full sail:
Please come, hale and hearty,
To Holland Ware's party,
September, the twenty-first day,
And partake in a bunch
Of a queer birthday lunch,
And afterward join in a play.
The things which we'll eat
Will be boats, sour and sweet,
With maybe an entrée of whales.
Will you please to arrive
Awhile before five,
The hour that this boat-luncheon sails.
The invitations aroused great interest among all Holland's friends, and
every boy was at the gate long before the appointed hour, curious to see
the "boats sour and sweet" that could be eaten. But even Holland did not
know what was in store for them. Joyce had driven him out of the kitchen
while she was preparing the surprise, and would not begin to set the
table until Jack had marshalled every boy into the dark parlour and
begun his magic lantern show. The baby was with them, a baby no longer,
he stoutly declared, as he had that day been promoted from kilts to his
first pair of trousers, and he insisted on being called henceforth by
his own name, Norman.
As he and Jack were to be added to the party of ten, the table was set
for twelve. It was a gay sight when everything was ready. From the
mirror lake in the middle, on which a dozen toy swans were afloat, arose
a lighthouse made of doughnuts. It was surmounted by a little lantern
from which floated a tiny flag. At one end of the table a huge
watermelon cut lengthwise, and furnished with masts and sails of red
crêpe paper, looked like a brig just launched. At the other end rose the
great white island of the birthday cake, with its ten red candles. All
down the sides of the table was a flutter of yellow and green and white
and blue sails, for at each plate was a little fleet sporting the
colours of the rainbow.
It had been an interesting task to make the dressed eggs into canoes, to
cut the cheese into square rafts, and hollow out the long cucumber
pickles into skiffs, fitting sails or pennons to each broomstraw mast.
It had been still more interesting to change a bag of big fat raisins
into turtles, by poking five cloves and a bit of stem into each one for
the head, legs, and tail.
Joyce took an artistic pleasure in arranging the orange boats around the
table. She had made them by cutting an orange in two, and putting a
stick of peppermint candy in each half for a mast, and they had a
foreign, Chinese look with their queer sails, flaming with little
red-ink dragons. Jack had drawn them. Here and there, over the sea of
white tablecloth, she had scattered candy fish and the raisin turtles.
At the last moment there were potato chips to be heated, and islands of
sandwiches and jelly to distribute, and the can of sardines to open.
Mary had insisted on having the sardines to personate whales, and she
herself served one to each guest on a little shell-shaped plate
belonging to her set of doll dishes. It had taken so long to prepare all
these boats, that Joyce had had no time to decorate the menu cards as
she had planned, but Jack had cut them in the shape of an anchor, and
stuck a fish-hook through each one for a souvenir. This was what was
printed on them:
MENU.
An egg Canoe A Skiff of pickle
A Cheese Raft too. Your taste to tickle.
Turtles galore, Entrée of Whales
Found alongshore. (A la sardine tails).
Chips in a pile, and
A Sandwich Island.
The Brig _Watermelon_ An orange boat last
With sails all a-swellin'. With a candy mast.
The Island of Cake
With fish from Sweet Lake.
Mary gave the signal when everything was ready, a long toot on an old
tin whistle that sounded like a fog-horn. She blew it through the
keyhole of the parlour door, expecting a speedy answer, but was not
prepared for the sensation her summons created. The door flew open so
suddenly that she was nearly taken off her feet, and the boys fell all
over each other in their race for the table. When they were all seated,
Norman, standing up at the foot of the table, repeated the rhyme which
Joyce had carefully taught him:
"Heave ho, my hearties, let these boats
Sail down the Red Sea of your throats."
"They're surely obeying orders," said Mary, mournfully, a few minutes
later, when she hurried into the kitchen for another Sandwich Island.
"They're swallowing up those boats quicker'n the real Red Sea swallowed
up old Pharaoh and all his chariots. There'll be nothing left for us but
the rinds and the broom-straws."
"Oh, yes, there will," said Joyce, cheerfully, opening the pantry door
and showing her three plates on the lower shelf. "There is our supper. I
put it aside, for boys are like grasshoppers. They'll eat everything in
sight. I didn't take time to put sails in my boats or in mother's, but
you've got one of every kind just like the boys, even to a menu-card
with a fish-hook in it."
There was a broad smile on Mary's beaming little face as she surveyed
her part of the feast, and popping one of the fat raisin-turtles into
her mouth, she hurried back to her duties as waitress. Joyce followed to
pass around the birthday cake, telling each boy to blow out a candle as
he took a slice, and to make a birthday wish.
Just as she finished there was a click of the gate-latch, and one of her
schoolmates came up the path. It was Grace Link, one of her best
friends, yet Joyce wished she had not happened in at that particular
time.
Grace had a way of looking around her with a very superior air. It may
have been due to her effort to keep her eye-glasses in position, but
Joyce found it irritating at times. The glances made her feel how shabby
the little brown house must look in comparison to the Links' elegant
home, and she resented Grace's apparent notice of the fact.
"In just a minute, Grace," she called, thinking she would pass the cake
around once more, and leave the boys to finish quietly by themselves.
But she did not have a chance to do that. With a whoop as of one voice,
each boy started up, grabbing another slice of cake in one hand as he
passed the plate, and all the candy fish he could scoop up with the
other, and was off for a noisy game of hum-bum in the back yard.
"My gracious! what a noisy lot," exclaimed Grace, recognising her own
small brother among them, and making mental note of a lecture she meant
to give him after awhile.
"Oh, you ought to have seen how beautiful everything looked when they
sat down," cried Mary, noticing Grace's critical glances, as she
surveyed the wreck they had made of the table. "They've eaten up the
lighthouse all but the lantern and the flag, and the watermelon ship was
_so_ pretty. Here's what the little boats looked like." She dashed into
the pantry for her own gay little fleet of egg and orange and pickle
boats with their many-coloured sails.
"How cunning!" said Grace, looking admiringly from the boats to the row
of raisin-turtles. "But what a lot of time and trouble you all must have
taken for those kids. Do you think boys appreciate it? I don't."
"My brothers do," said Joyce, stoutly. "We can't afford to have ices and
fine things from the confectioner's, so we have to think up all sorts
of odd surprises to take their place. Mother began it long ago when Jack
and I were little, and she gave us our first Valentine tea. She said it
was no more trouble to cut the cookies and sandwiches heart-shaped than
to make them round, and it took very little time to decorate the table
to look like a lace-paper valentine, but it made a world of difference
in our enjoyment. Jack and I have dozens of bright spots to remember
because she made gala days of all our birthdays and holidays, and it's
no more than right that we should do it for Mary and Holland and the
baby, now that she is so busy."
"We have something for every month in the year," chimed in Mary,
"counting our five birthdays and Washington's, and New Year and
Decoration Day and Christmas and Hallowe'en and Valentine and
Thanksgiving."
"There are more than that," added Joyce, "for there's always the Fourth
of July picnic, you know, and the eggs and rabbits and flowers at
Easter."
"Yes, and April fool's day," Mary called out triumphantly after them, as
the two girls walked slowly toward the house. "That makes fifteen."
"Can't you go over to Elsie Somers's with me, Joyce?" asked Grace.
"That's what I stopped by for. It is only half-past five. I want to
look at the centrepiece she is embroidering before I begin mine, and ask
her about the stitch. Then I can begin it this evening after supper."
"Oh, I don't believe I can," answered Joyce, sitting wearily down on the
doorstep, and making room for Grace beside her. "There's all that mess
to clean up, and the boys will be coming in soon when it begins to get
dark, for their bonfire stories. Do you see that enormous pile of leaves
over there? We're going to have a jolly big bonfire after awhile, and
sit around it telling stories. That is Holland's idea, and part of our
way of keeping birthdays is to let the one who celebrates choose what he
would like to do."
"_Hum, bum! Here I come!_" shouted several voices from the stable roof
and alley fence, and Jack repeated it at the top of his voice, as he
dashed around the corner of the house.
"Here, Joyce," he cried, pitching a letter toward her. "It came in the
last mail, and I forgot to give it to you when I came back from the
post-office. Just thought of it," and off he went again.
"It is from the Little Colonel," said Joyce, in a pleased tone. "Don't
you want to hear it?"
Grace, who had heard so much about the happenings at the house party
that she almost felt as if she had been one of the guests, promptly
settled herself to listen, and at Joyce's call, Mrs. Ware, who was still
stitching beside the dining-room window, laid down her sewing, and came
out to be part of the interested audience.
"Oh, goody! Betty has written, too," said Joyce, as she unfolded the
closely written pages. "I've wondered so often what Lloyd would think of
life at the Cuckoo's Nest, and if it would seem the same to Betty after
her visit at Locust."
But there was nothing of the Little Colonel's experience, in either
letter. Not a word about Aunt Jane's illness, or the game of
barley-bright, or the trap-door accident. They had just come from
listening to Molly's pitiful story, and both letters were full of it.
The story-telling gift, that was to make Betty famous in after years,
showed in the pathetic little tale she wrote Joyce, and so real did she
make the scene that Joyce could scarcely keep a tremble out of her voice
as she read it aloud.
"Wouldn't you love to see the picture that looks so much like Molly's
little lost sister?" asked Mary, drawing a deep breath when the letter
was done.
"Maybe we've got it at home," said Grace, eagerly. "We've taken the
_Harper's Weekly_ for years, and there is a pile of them in the attic.
Some of them have been lost or torn up, but if I can find the picture
I'll bring it over. What did Betty say is the date of that number?"
[Illustration: "THE PICTURE PASSED AROUND THE CIRCLE."]
"December twenty-fifth, ninety-seven," said Joyce, referring to the
letter.
"Well, as you can't go over to Elsie's with me now, I'll wait till some
other time. I'll go home now and look for that picture before dark."
"Come back in time for the bonfire," said Joyce cordially. "We have some
fine stories ready."
"All right," responded Grace. "I'd love to."
"In the meantime we'll clear away the wreck, and eat our supper," said
Joyce, as Grace went down the path and Mary followed the little mother
into the pantry. They had just hung up the last tea towel and called
Jack to light the bonfire, when Grace came back. She had the picture
with her, and they looked long and earnestly at the little bunch of
misery, sobbing in the corner.
"What if Dot's father has brought her out West!" exclaimed Mary,
impulsively, as she continued to gaze at the forlorn little figure.
"What if she should come to our house begging some day, and we should
find her! Wouldn't it be grand? and wouldn't Molly and the girls be
glad?"
[Illustration: "THE PICTURE PASSED AROUND THE CIRCLE."]
"It makes me want to cry," said Joyce. "If I were rich I'd go out and
hunt for all the poor little children like this that I could find, and
do something to make them happy. Surely somebody of all the thousands
who have seen that picture must have been moved to pity by it. No
telling how much good that artist has done, by making people see some of
the misery in the world that they can help. That is the kind of an
artist I hope to be some day."
There were many stories told that evening around the birthday bonfire,
which Jack kept ablaze, not only with leaves, but with pine cones and
hickory knots. Giants and ghosts and hobgoblins, Indians and burglars
and wild beasts, took their turns in the thrilling tales. But none made
such a profound impression as the story of Molly's little lost sister,
who perhaps at that very moment was locked in a dark closet by a drunken
father, or sobbing herself to sleep, bruised and hungry. For one reason,
it was real, and for another, the picture passed around the circle in
the light of the glowing bonfire appealed to every child heart there.
"I wish the Giant Scissors were real," said Holland, referring to his
favourite tale. "They'd find her. Joyce, what would you have to say to
them to make them go in search?"
"Giant Scissors, rise in power!
Find little Dot this very hour!
And then they would go rushing away over mountains and dales," continued
Joyce, who knew how greatly Holland enjoyed these variations of his
favourite story. "Through streets and through alleys they'd go, through
mansions and tenements until they found her and brought her back to
Molly. Then, hand in hand, the big sister and the little one would
follow the Scissors back to the home of Ethelred, because, like him, the
only kingdom that they crave is the kingdom of a loving heart and a
happy fireside. There would be feasting and merrymaking for seventy days
and seventy nights, with the Scissors keeping guard at the portal of
Ethelred, so that only those who belong to the kingdom of loving hearts
and gentle hands might enter in."
Strangely moved by the story, little Norman got up from his seat and ran
to Joyce, burying his head in her lap. "I hope I'll never be losted from
_my_ big sister," he cried, his voice quivering, despite the fact that
he no longer wore kilts.
"Me, too," said Holland, sliding along the bench a little closer to her.
"Fellows that haven't got any sisters to get up birthday parties for 'em
and everything don't know what they miss."
Joyce looked over at Grace with a smile that seemed to say, "What did I
tell you? These kids, as you call them, do appreciate what their sisters
do for them."
Long after the bonfire was out and the birthday guests had departed,
Holland turned restlessly on his pillow. The many boats he had eaten may
have had something to do with his restlessness, but the thought of the
lonely little child for whom Molly was grieving was still in his mind,
when his mother looked in an hour later, to see if all was well for the
night.
"I'm thankful for the party," he announced unexpectedly, as she bent
over him, "and I'm thankful for most everything I can think of, but I'm
most thankfullest because we aren't any of us in this house lost from
each other."
"Please God you may say that on all your birthdays," whispered his
mother, kissing him. Then she went away with the light, and silence
reigned in the little brown house.
CHAPTER VIII.
EUGENIA JOINS THE SEARCH.
CITY towers rise now in the steam of the bubbling caldron, smoky chimney
tops and high roof gardens. The clang and roar and traffic of crowded
streets jangle through the silver chiming of the magic bells.
* * * * *
Eugenia Forbes, sitting near an open window in one of the handsomest
apartments of the Waldorf-Astoria, heard none of the city's noise, saw
nothing of the panorama in the restless streets below. The bell-boy had
just brought her a letter, and she was reading it aloud to her maid.
Patient old Eliot had taken such a deep interest in all that belonged to
Lloydsboro Valley since their journey to Locust, that it was a pleasure
to confide in her. Even if Eugenia had had any one else to confide in,
she could have found no one who had her interest at heart more than this
sensible, elderly woman, who had taken care of her for so many years.
Eugenia had not gone back to boarding-school as a regular pupil. It had
scarcely seemed worth while, since she was to leave so soon for her trip
abroad. But Riverdale Seminary, being in the suburbs, was not such a
great distance from the hotel but that she could go out every morning
for her French lesson. Knowing that she would soon have practical use
for the language, she was doing extra work in French, and taking a
greater interest in it than she had ever shown before in any study.
If the three girls who had been her devoted friends the year before had
come back to Riverdale at the beginning of the term, she would have
insisted on taking her place in the boarding-hall as a regular pupil, in
order to be with them as long as possible. But the summer vacation had
brought many changes. The day that Eugenia reached New York on her
return from the house party, a letter had come saying that Molly Blythe
would never be back at the school. There had been an accident on the
mountain where she had gone to spend the summer with her family. A
runaway team, a wild dash down the mountainside, and the merry picnic
had ended in a sad accident. She was lying now in a long, serious
illness that would either leave her a cripple for life, or take her away
in a little while from the devoted family that was nearly distracted by
the thought of losing her.
Kell, still in the Bermudas, was not coming back to school until after
Christmas, and Fay, while she still called Eugenia her dearest, divided
her affections with a blonde girl from Ohio. They had passed the summer
on the same island in the St. Lawrence, and Eugenia felt that her place
was taken by this stranger.
With Molly and Kell away, and Fay so changed, Eugenia would have lost
all interest in the school, had it not been that she wanted to acquire
as much French as possible before going abroad. In most things she was
not so overbearing and thoughtless in her treatment of poor old Eliot,
since her visit to Locust. The ring she wore was a daily reminder of the
Road of the Loving Heart that she was trying to leave behind her in
everybody's memory. But Eliot still found her patience sorely tried at
times. Missing the girls at school, Eugenia was lonely, and wished a
hundred times a day that she were back at the house party. Sometimes she
grumbled and moped until the atmosphere around her was as gloomy and
depressing as a London fog.
"Nothing to do is a dreadful complaint," Eliot had said a few moments
before the boy brought up the letter. "You break one of the
commandments every day you live, Miss Eugenia."
"How can you say such a thing?" demanded Eugenia, indignantly. "I don't
lie or steal or murder, or do any of those things it says not to."
"It isn't any of the 'thou shalt nots,'" said Eliot, determined to speak
her mind, now that she had started. "It is a _shalt_. 'Six days shalt
thou labour and do all thy work.' It is plain talk, Miss Eugenia, but
there's nobody else to say it, and I feel that it ought to be said. More
than three-fourths of your life you are miserable because you are doing
nothing but grumbling and trying to kill time. You needn't be unhappy at
all if you'd look around you and see some of the world's work lying
around waiting for just such hands as yours to take hold of it."
"Oh, don't be so preachy!" pouted Eugenia, impatiently.
It was just at this point that the Little Colonel's letter was brought
in, and the sight of the familiar handwriting made Eugenia's face
brighten as if by magic.
"One from Betty, too," she cried, as a second closely written sheet
dropped into her lap. Then forgetting her impatience with Eliot's
preaching, she began reading aloud the news from the Cuckoo's Nest. It
was the same pathetic little tale that had touched the hearts of the
birthday banqueters, circled around the glowing bonfire, and it moved
Eugenia to pity, just as it had moved all who listened at the little
brown house.
Eugenia folded up the letters, and slipped them back into the envelope.
"If I were down there at the Cuckoo's Nest with Lloyd and Betty, there
would be something for me to do. I'd find Molly's sister even if I had
to spend all my year's allowance to employ a detective. Poor, lonesome
little thing! I've taken a fancy to that girl. Maybe it is on account of
her name being the same as Molly Blythe's. Even for no other reason than
that I would be glad to help her."
"You don't have to go travelling to find lonely people, Miss Eugenia,"
said Eliot, who seemed to have much on her mind that afternoon, and a
determination to share it with Eugenia. "All the aching hearts don't
belong to little orphans, and some of the loneliest people in the world
touch elbows with you every day."
"Who, for instance?" demanded Eugenia, unbelievingly. "I never saw
them." Then, without waiting for an answer, she sprang up and glanced
into the mirror, and gave a few hasty touches to her hair and belt.
"Bring me my hat, Eliot, and get into your bonnet. I'm going out to
Riverdale. I'm sure I can find the picture they wrote about somewhere in
the seminary library. They always save the old files of illustrated
papers. I'm wild to see what that picture looks like that Molly made
such a fuss about, and it will give me some amusement for the
afternoon."
Little Miss Gray, the librarian at the Riverdale Seminary, looked up in
surprise when Eugenia came rustling into the reading-room an hour later.
It was the first time she had been in that term. It was a half-holiday,
and up to that time no one had come in all the afternoon. Sitting by the
window, cataloguing new books, Miss Gray had looked out from time to
time, wishing that she, too, could have a half-holiday, and that she
could change places with some of the care-free schoolgirls outside on
the campus. She could see them strolling along the shady avenues by twos
and threes and fours, never one alone. The sight made her feel even more
lonely than usual. She looked up eagerly at the sound of the approaching
footsteps, glad of any companionship, but shrank back timidly when she
saw who was rustling toward her. Eugenia had always had such a
supercilious air in asking for a book, that she disliked to wait on her.
But to-day Eugenia came forward so intent on her errand that she forgot
to be haughty, and asked for the old volume of _Harper's Weeklies_ as
eagerly as a little girl asking for a picture-book.
"That's the date," she said, handing Miss Gray a slip of paper. "Oh, I
do hope you have it. You see the girls wrote such an interesting account
of the little waif that I'm anxious to have the picture. It will be so
nice to know that I'm looking at the same thing they saw in Molly's
room.
"What a little morsel of misery!" she exclaimed, as Miss Gray opened the
volume. "Isn't it pitiful? I never would have imagined that a real child
could be so forlorn and miserable as this if the girls hadn't written
about it. I thought such tales were made up by newspapers and magazines,
just for something to write about."
Before she realised that she was taking the little librarian into her
confidence, she was pouring out the story of Molly and Dot as if she
were talking to one of the girls. When she finished Miss Gray turned her
head away, but Eugenia saw two tears splash down on the table.
"Excuse my taking it so much to heart," said Miss Gray, with a smile,
as she wiped away the tell-tale drops, "but it seems so real to me that
I couldn't help it. I'm like the little lost sister, you know. Not
ragged and torn and poverty-stricken like the waif in the picture, for
this position gives me all the comforts of life, but I'm just as much
alone in the world as she. When I am busy I never think of it; but
sometimes the thought sweeps over me like a great overwhelming
wave,--I'm all alone in this big, strange city, only a drop in the
bucket, with nobody to care whether I fare ill or well."
Eugenia did not know how to answer. She thought this must be one of the
people whom Eliot meant, who touched elbows with her every day. Stirred
by a great pity and a desire to comfort this gentle-faced little woman
whose big blue eyes were as appealing as a baby's, and whose voice was
as mournful as a dove's, Eugenia stood a moment in awkward silence. She
wished that Betty could be there to say the right thing at the right
time, as she always did, or that, better still, she had Betty's way of
comforting people. Then a thought came to her like an inspiration.
"Oh, Miss Gray! Maybe if you have so much sympathy for the little lost
child, you'd take an interest in helping me find her. Nobody knows
where her father took her. He sent word that he had left Louisville, and
there is no telling where he has drifted. They are as likely to be here
in New York as anywhere. Maybe if we went around to all the orphanages
and hospitals and free kindergartens we could find some trace of her.
Papa won't let me go out in the city alone, and Eliot is such a stick
about going to strange places. She always loses her head and gets
flustered and makes a mess of everything. Oh, _would_ you mind going?"
"Any day after four o'clock," exclaimed Miss Gray eagerly, "and on
Wednesdays the library closes at one."
"We'll begin next Wednesday," said Eugenia. "Come and take lunch with me
at the Waldorf, and we can get an early start. Oh, I'll be so much
obliged to you."
Before Miss Gray could say anything more, she had rustled out into the
hall where Eliot sat waiting. The little librarian was left to clasp her
hands in silent delight over the thought of such a lark as a lunch at
the Waldorf and an afternoon's outing with the wealthiest and most
exclusive girl in the Seminary.
"We are on the track, too," wrote Eugenia to Betty, some time after.
"Miss Gray and I are playing private detective on the trail of little
Dot. We haven't found any trace of her yet, but we're haunting all sorts
of places where we think there is any prospect of coming across her. We
have found plenty of other children who need help, and papa gave me a
big check last night to use for a little cripple that we became
interested in. Miss Gray is lovely. We've been to several things
together, a matinee and a concert and an art exhibition. I showed her my
ring the day she was here to lunch, and told her all about the time when
you were blind and what you said to me about the Road of the Loving
Heart. And she said, 'Tell that blessed little Betty that she has given
me an inspiration for life. Instead of thinking of my own loneliness I
shall begin to think more of other people's and to leave a memory behind
me, too, as enduring as Tusitala's.'"
* * * * *
One other person took the trouble to hunt up an old file of papers, and
find the picture like the one pinned on Molly's wall. That was Mrs.
Sherman. The morning that Lloyd's letter came, she happened to be
passing the city library, and went in to ask for it. The sight of the
poor little creature haunted her all morning, and remembering Molly's
sullen face, she longed to do something to give it a happier
expression. That afternoon she went down to an art store to choose a
picture for Lloyd to hang in Molly's room beside the pitiful little
newspaper clipping. It was a picture of the Good Shepherd, carrying in
his arms a little stray lamb that had wandered away from the shelter of
the sheepfold.
CHAPTER IX.
LEFT BEHIND.
EVERY evening for a week, at the Cuckoo's Nest, a fire had been kindled
on the sitting-room hearth, for the autumn rains made the nights chilly.
Here until half-past eight the boys could play any game they chose.
Hop-scotch left chalk marks on the new rag carpet, and tag upset the
furniture as if a cyclone had swept through the room, but never a word
of reproof interrupted their sport, no matter how boisterous. Lloyd
wondered sometimes that the roof did not tumble in around their ears
when she and Betty and Molly joined the five boys in a game of blind
man's buff.
"It is nice to have old furniture and stout rag carpets," she confided
to Betty, in a breathless pause of the game. "We couldn't romp in the
house this way at Locust. I like the place now, it doesn't seem a bit
queah. I wouldn't care if mothah would write for us to stay heah anothah
week."
But the summons to leave came next day. A howl went up from all the
little Appletons as the letter was read aloud. It had been the most
exciting week of their lives, for Betty and the Little Colonel were on
the friendliest terms with Molly, and the three together introduced new
games into the Cuckoo's Nest with an enthusiasm that made the evening
playtime a delight. The charades and tableaux and private theatricals
were something to enjoy with keen zest at the moment, and dream of for
weeks afterward.
"We will have one more jolly old evening together, anyhow," said
Bradley. "I'll go out and get the firewood now." But when supper was
over, and the two trunks stood in a corner, packed and strapped for
their morrow's journey, nobody seemed in a mood for romping. The boys
squatted on the hearth-rug as solemnly as Indians around a council-fire.
As the shadows danced on the ceiling, Betty reached down from the low
stool where she sat, to stroke the puppy stretched across her feet.
"What do you all want me to bring you from Europe?" she asked,
playfully. "Pretend that I could bring you anything you wanted. Only
remember the story of Beauty and the Beast, and don't anybody ask for a
white rose. Molly, you are the oldest, you begin, and choose first."
Molly's gray eyes gazed wistfully into the embers. "Oh, you know that
there is only one thing in the whole world that I ever wish for, and
that is Dot. But of course she isn't in Europe."
"You don't know," interrupted Lloyd. "I've read of stranger things than
that. I have a story at home about a boy that was kidnapped, and yeahs
aftah he was found strollin' around in a foreign country with a band of
gypsies. They'd taken him across the ocean with them."
"And there's a piece in my Fourth Reader," added Scott, eagerly, "about
a child that was stolen by Indians when she was so young that she soon
forgot how to talk English. She grew up to look just like a squaw. When
the tribe was captured, her own mother did not recognise her. Her mother
was an old white-haired woman then. But there was a queer kind of scar
that had always been on the girl's arm, and when her mother saw that she
knew it was her daughter, and she began to sing a song that she used to
sing when she rocked her children to sleep. And the girl remembered it,
and it seemed to bring back all the other things she had forgotten, and
she ran up to her mother and put her arms around her."
"Dot has a scar," said Molly. "I could tell her anywhere by that mark
over her eye where the stick of wood hit her."
"S'pose Betty should find her somewhere abroad," said Lloyd, her eyes
shining like stars at the thought. "S'pose they'd be driving along in
Paris, and a little flower girl would come up with a basket of violets,
and Eugenia would say, 'Oh, papa, please stop the carriage. I want some
of those violets.' And while they were buying them Betty would talk to
the little flower girl, and find out that she was Dot. Of co'se Cousin
Carl would take her right into the carriage, and they'd whirl away to
the hotel, and aftah they'd bought her a lot of pretty clothes they'd
take her travellin' with them, and finally bring her back to America
just as if it were in a fairy tale."
"Or Eugenia might find her in New York before we leave," suggested
Betty. "You know she wrote that she is hunting, and that her father
promised to ask the police force to look, too."
"Joyce is lookin', too," said Lloyd. "Dot is as apt to wandah west as
east. There's so many people interested now in tryin' to find her. I do
wondah who'll be the one."
"Godmother, most likely," said Betty. "Wouldn't it be lovely if she
should? Suppose she'd find her about Christmas time, and she'd send word
to Molly to hang up two stockings, because she was going to send her a
present so big that it wouldn't go into one. And Christmas morning Molly
would run down here to the chimney where she'd hung them, and there
would be Dot standing in her stockings."
"Oh, _don't_!" said Molly, imploringly, with a little choke in her
voice. "You make it seem so real that I can't bear to talk about it any
more."
There was silence in the room for a little space, and only the shadows
moved as the flames leaped and flickered on the old hearthstone. Then
Lloyd, leaning forward, took hold of one of Betty's long brown curls.
"Tell us a story, Tusitala," she said, coaxingly. "It will be the last
one before we go away."
"Why did you call her that?" asked the inquisitive Bradley.
"Tusitala? Oh, that means tale-teller, you know. That is the name the
Samoan chiefs gave to Robert Louis Stevenson when he went to live on
their island, and that is the name we gave Betty when we thought she was
going blind, the time we all had the measles."
"Why?" asked Bradley again.
"Because mothah said Betty writes stories so well now, that she will be
known as the children's Tusitala some day. Besides, she told us the
tale about the Road of the Loving Heart, and Eugenia gave us each a ring
to help us remembah it. See? They are just alike."
She laid her hand against Betty's a moment, to compare the little twists
of gold, each tied in a lover's knot, and then slipped hers off, passing
it around the circle, that each might see the name "Tusitala" engraved
inside. "Tell them about it, Betty," she insisted.
"There isn't much to tell," began Betty, clasping her hands around her
knees. "Only Stevenson was so good to those poor old Samoan chiefs,
visiting them when they were put in prison, and treating them so kindly
in every way he could think of, that they called him their white
brother. They wanted to do something to show their appreciation, for
they said, 'The day is not longer than his kindness.' They had heard him
wish for a road across part of the island, so they banded together and
began to dig. It was hard work, for the heat was terrible there in the
tropics, and they were weak from being in prison so long; but they
worked for days and days, almost fainting. When it was done, they set up
an inscription over it, calling it the Road of the Loving Heart that
they had built to last for ever."
Betty paused a moment, twisting the little ring on her finger, and then
repeated what she had confessed to Joyce, the afternoon that she thought
she must be blind all the rest of her life.
"I wanted to build a road like that for godmother. Of course I couldn't
dig one like those chiefs did, and she wouldn't have wanted it even if I
could; but I thought maybe I could leave a memory behind me of my visit,
that would be like a smooth white road. You know, remembering things is
like looking back over a road. The unpleasant things that have happened
are like the rocks we stumble over. But if we have done nothing
unpleasant to remember, then we can look back and see it stretched out
behind us, all smooth and white and shining.
"So, from the very first day of my visit, I tried to leave nothing
behind me for her memory to stumble over. Not a frown or a cross word or
a single disobedience. Nothing in all my life ever made me so happy as
what she said to me the day I left Locust. I knew then that I had
succeeded."
There was nothing preachy about Betty. She did not apply the story to
her hearers, even in the tone in which she told it; but the silence that
followed was uncomfortable to one squirming boy at least.
Bradley remembered the fishing-worms, and was in haste to change the
subject. "Say, Betty, what are you going to do with Bob when you go
away?"
"I have been trying for some time to make up my mind," said Betty.
"First I thought I would take him back to Locust, and let him stay with
his brothers; but I'll be away so long that he won't know me when I come
back, and this afternoon I decided to give him to Davy."
"Oh, really, truly, Betty?" cried the child, tumbling forward at her
feet in a quiver of delight, for he had loved the frolicsome puppy at
first sight, and had kept it with him every waking moment since it came.
"Really, truly," she repeated, picking up the puppy and dropping him
into Davy's arms. "There, sir! Go to your new master, you rascal, and
remember that your name isn't Bob Lewis any longer. It is Bob Appleton
now."
Davy squeezed the fat puppy so close in his arms that his beaming face
was nearly hidden by the big bow of yellow ribbon. He had never been so
happy in all his life. The road that Betty had left in her godmother's
memory was not the only one that stretched out white and shining behind
her. No matter how long she might be gone from the Cuckoo's Nest, or how
the years might pile up between them, in Davy's heart she would be the
dearest memory of his childhood. With Bob she had given him its crowning
joy, a reminder of herself, to live and move and frisk beside him; to
keep pace with every step, and to bring her to his loving remembrance
with every wag of its stumpy tail, and every glance of its faithful
brown eyes.
Again it was early morning, with dew on the meadows, as it had been when
Betty first ventured out into the world. Now she fared forth on another
and a longer pilgrimage, but this time there was no lonely sinking of
the heart when she waved good-bye to the group on the porch. She was
sorry to leave them, but the Little Colonel was with her, her godmother
was to meet them at the junction, and just beyond was the wonderland of
the old world, through which Cousin Carl was to be her guide.
It was one o'clock when they reached Louisville. The afternoon was taken
up in shopping, for there were many things that Betty needed for her
voyage. But by six o'clock the new steamer trunk, with all the bundles,
was aboard the suburban train, and Betty, with the check in her purse,
followed her godmother and Lloyd into the car for Lloydsboro Valley.
Then there were three more nights to go to sleep in the white and gold
room of the House Beautiful; three more days to wander up and down the
long avenue under the locusts, arm in arm with the Little Colonel, or to
go riding through the valley with her on Lad and Tarbaby; three more
evenings to sit in the long drawing-room where the light fell softly
from all the wax tapers in the silver candelabra,--and Lloyd, standing
below the portrait of the white-gowned girl with the June rose in her
hair, played the harp that had belonged to her beautiful grandmother
Amanthis. Then it was time to start to New York, for Mr. Sherman's
business called him there, and Betty was to go in his care.
It seemed to the Little Colonel that the week which followed, that last
week of September, was the longest one she had ever known. Since the
beginning of the house party she had not been without a companion. Now
as she wandered aimlessly around from one old haunt to another, not
knowing how to pass the time, it seemed she had forgotten how to amuse
herself. She was waiting until the first of October to start to school.
At last Betty's steamer letter came, and she dashed home from the
post-office as fast as Tarbaby could run, to share it with her mother.
The letter was dated "On board the _Majestic_," and ran:
"DEAREST GODMOTHER AND LLOYD:--Everybody is in the
cabin writing letters to send back by the pilot-boat,
so here is a little note to tell you that we are
starting off in fine style. The band is playing, the
sun is shining, and the harbour is smooth as glass. I
have been looking over the deck-railing, and the deep
green water, rocking the little boats out in the
harbour, makes me think of the White Seal's lullaby
that godmother sang to us when we had the measles.
"'The storm shall not wake thee,
Nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.'
"I know that I shall think of that many times during
the passage, and am sure we are going to enjoy every
minute of it. Eugenia sends lots of love to you both.
She is writing to Joyce. The next time we write it
will be from Southampton. If you could only be with us
I should be perfectly happy. Good-bye, till you hear
from me from the other side.
"Lovingly, BETTY."
There was a hasty postscript scribbled across the end. "Be sure you let
me know the minute you hear anything from Dot. If anybody finds her,
Cousin Carl says cable the word '_found_,' and we will know what you
mean."
For a few minutes after the reading of the letter, the Little Colonel
stood by the window, looking out without a word. Then she began:
"I wish I'd nevah had a house party. I wish I'd nevah known Joyce or
Eugenia or Betty. I wish I'd nevah laid eyes on any of them, or been to
the Cuckoo's Nest, or--or _nothin'_!"
"What is the trouble now, Lloyd?" asked her mother, wonderingly.
"Then I wouldn't be so lonesome now that everything is ovah. I despise
that 'left behind' feelin' moah than anything I know. It makes me so
_misah'ble_! They've all gone away and left me now, and I'll nevah be as
happy again as I've been this summah. I'm suah of it!"
"'Tis the last rose of summer left blooming alone.
All her lovely companions are faded and gone,'"
sang Mrs. Sherman, gaily, as she came and put an arm around Lloyd's
drooping shoulders. "Every summer brings its own roses, little daughter.
When the old friends go, look around for new ones, and you'll always
find them."
"I don't want any new ones," exclaimed the Little Colonel, gloomily.
"There'll nevah be anybody that I'll take the same interest in that I do
in Betty and Joyce and Eugenia."
Yet even as she spoke, there were coming toward her life, nearer and
nearer as the days went by, other friends, who were to have a large part
in making its happiness, and who were to fill it with new interests and
new pleasures.
CHAPTER X.
HOME-LESSONS AND JACK-O'-LANTERNS.
IT was hard for the Little Colonel to start back to school after her
long holiday. Hard, in the first place, because she was a month behind
her classes, and had extra home-lessons to learn. Hard, in the second
place, because a more gorgeous October had never been known in the
Valley, and all out-doors called to her to come and play. In the lanes
the sumach flamed crimson, and in the avenues the maples turned gold. In
the woods, where the nuts were dropping all day long, the dogwood-trees
hung out their coral berries, and every beech and sweet gum put on a
glory of its own.
"Oh, mothah, I can't study," Lloyd declared one afternoon. "I don't care
whethah the Amazon Rivah rises in South America or the South Pole; an' I
think those old Mexicans were horrid to give their volcanoes an' things
such terrible long names. They ought to have thought about the trouble
they were makin' for all the poah children in the world who would have
to learn to spell them. I nevah can learn Popocatepetl. Why didn't they
call it something easy, like--like Crosspatch!" she added, closing her
book with a bang. "That's the way it makes me feel, anyhow. It is going
to take all afternoon to get this one lesson."
[Illustration: "THE PLAN WORKED LIKE A CHARM."]
"Not if you put your mind on it. Your lips have been saying it over and
over, but your thoughts seem to be miles away."
"But everything interrupts me," complained Lloyd. "The bumble-bees an'
the woodpeckahs an' the jay-birds are all a-callin'. I'm goin' in the
house an' sit on the stair steps an' put my fingahs in my yeahs. Maybe I
can study bettah that way."
The plan worked like a charm. In less than ten minutes she was back
again, glibly reciting her geography lesson. After that all her
home-lessons were learned on the stairs, where no out-door sights and
sounds could arrest her attention.
She was in the midst of her lessons one afternoon, her book open on her
knees, and her hands over her ears, when she felt, rather than heard,
the jar of a heavy chair drawn across the porch. Dropping her hands from
her ears, she heard her mother say: "Take this rocker, Allison. I'm so
glad you have come. I have been wishing that you would all
afternoon."
"Oh, it is Miss Allison MacIntyre!" thought Lloyd. "I wish I didn't have
to study while she is heah. I love to listen to her talk."
Thinking to get through as soon as possible, she turned her attention
resolutely to her book, but, after a few moments, she could not resist
stopping to lift her head and listen, just to find out what subject they
were discussing. Although Miss Allison was her mother's friend, Lloyd
claimed her as her own especial property. But all children did that.
Such was the charming interest with which she entered into comradeship
with every boy and girl in the Valley, that they counted her one of
themselves. A party without Miss Allison was not to be thought of, and a
picnic was sure to be a failure unless she was one of the number.
The two little knights, Keith and Malcolm, were privileged, by reason of
family ties, to call her auntie, but there were many like Lloyd who put
her on a pedestal in their affections, and claimed a kinship almost as
dear. Presently Lloyd caught a word that made her prick up her ears, and
she leaned forward, listening eagerly.
"Sister Mary's children are coming out next Saturday. I was lying awake
last night, wondering what I could do to entertain them, when it popped
into my head that Saturday will be the last day of October, and of
course they'll want to celebrate Hallowe'en."
"Sister Mary's children," repeated Lloyd to herself, with a puzzled
expression, that suddenly turned to one of joyful recollection. "Oh, she
means the little Waltons! I wondah how long they've been back in
America?"
Her geography slipped unnoticed to the floor, as she sat thinking of her
old playmates, whom she had not seen since their departure for the
Philippines, and wondering if they had changed much in their long
absence. There were four of them, Ranald (she remembered that he must be
fourteen now, counting by his cousin Malcolm's age) and his three
younger sisters, Allison, Kitty, and Elise. Some of the happiest days
that Lloyd could remember had been the ones spent with them in the big
tent pitched on the MacIntyre lawn; for no matter how far west was the
army post at which their father happened to be stationed, they had been
brought back every summer to visit their grandmother in the old Kentucky
home.
Lloyd had not seen them since their father had been made a general, and
they had gone away on the transport to the strange new life in the
Philippines. Although many interesting letters were sent back to the
Valley, in which the whole neighbourhood was interested, it happened
that Lloyd had never heard any of them read. Her old playmates seemed to
have dropped completely out of her life, until one sad day when the
country hung its flags at half-mast, and the black head-lines in every
newspaper in the land announced the loss of a nation's hero.
Lloyd remembered how strange it seemed to read the account, and know it
was Ranald's father who was meant. She thought of them often in the
weeks that followed, for Papa Jack could not pick up a newspaper without
reading some touching tribute to the brave general's memory, some
beautiful eulogy on his heroic life, but somehow the strange experiences
her little playmates were passing through seemed to set them apart from
other children in Lloyd's imagination, and she thought of them as people
in a book, instead of children she had romped with through many a long
summer day.
As she listened to the voice on the porch she found that Miss Allison
was talking about her sister, and telling some of the interesting things
that had happened to the children in Manila. It was more than the
Little Colonel could endure, to sit in the house and hear only snatches
of conversation.
"Oh, mothah, _please_ let me come out and listen," she begged. "I'll
study to-night instead, if you will. I'll learn two sets of lessons if
you'll let me put it off just this once." There was a laughing consent
given, and the next moment Lloyd was seated on a low stool at Miss
Allison's feet, looking up into her face with an expectant smile, ready
for every word that might fall from her lips.
"I was telling your mother about Ranald," began Miss Allison. "She asked
me how it came about that such a little fellow was made captain in the
army."
"Oh, was he a _really_ captain?" cried Lloyd, in surprise. "I thought it
was just a nickname like mine that they gave him, because his father was
a general."
"No, he was really a captain, the youngest in the army of the United
States Volunteers, for he received his appointment and his
shoulder-straps a few weeks before his twelfth birthday. He'll never
forget that Fourth of July if he lives to be a hundred; for those
shoulder-straps meant more to him than all the noise and sky-rockets and
powder-burns of all the boys in America put together. You see he had
been under fire at the battle of San Pedro Macati. He had gone out with
his father, a short time after they landed in Manila, and the general in
command invited them out on the firing line. Before they realised their
peril, they suddenly found themselves under a sharp fire from the enemy.
One of the staff said afterward that he had never seen greater coolness
in the face of as great danger, and all the officers praised his
self-possession. For a little while the bullets whizzed around him thick
and fast. One hit the ground between his feet. Another grazed his hat,
but all he said as one hummed by was, 'Oh, papa, did you see that? It
looked like a hop-toad.'
"It was a terrible sight for a child's eyes, for he saw war in all its
horrors, and his mother did not want him to take the risks of any more
battle-fields, but he was a true soldier's son, and insisted on
following his father wherever it was possible for him to go. At the
battle of Zapote River he was in no danger, for he had been put in a
church tower overlooking the field. But that was a terrible ordeal, for
all day long he stood by the window, expecting any minute to see his
father fall. All day long he looked for him, towering above his men, and
whenever he lost sight of him for awhile, he leaned out to watch the
litters the men were carrying into the church below where they brought
the dead and dying. It was always with the sickening dread that the
still figure on some one of them might be that of his beloved father.
Sister Mary sent me a copy of the official announcement, that gave him
the rank of captain. It mentions his coolness under fire. You may
imagine I am quite proud of that little document, for I always think of
Ranald as he was when I had him with me most, a sensitive little fellow
with golden curls and big brown eyes, as silent and reserved as his
father. You see I know that his courage has no element of daring
recklessness. So many things he did showed that, even when he was a
baby. It is just quiet grit that takes him through the things that
hardier boys might court. That, and his strong will.
"At first he was appointed aide-de-camp on his father's staff, and went
with him on all his expeditions, and rode on a dear little Filipino
pony. The natives called him the Pickaninny Captain. He was under fire
again at the capture of Calamba, and soon after he was made an aide on
Gen. Fred. Grant's staff. Once while under him he was ordered back in
charge of some insurgents' guns that had fallen into the hands of the
Americans, to be turned in at headquarters. So you see he was a
'really' captain as you called him."
"Oh, tell some more, Miss Allison," begged Lloyd, thinking that the
subject might be dropped, when Miss Allison paused for a moment.
"Well, I hardly know what else to tell. His room is full of relics and
trophies he brought home with him,--shells and bullets and bolos--great
savage knives with zigzag two-edged blades--flags, curios,--all sorts of
things that he picked up or that the officers gave him. His mother can
tell you volumes of interesting experiences he has had, but he is as shy
and modest as ever about his own affairs, and maybe he'll never speak of
them. He'll tell you possibly of the deer which the English consul gave
him, and the pet monkey that followed him everywhere, even when it had
to swim out through a rice swamp after him; maybe he'll mention the
Filipino pony that the officers gave him when he came back to America,
but he rarely speaks of those graver experiences, those scenes of battle
and bloodshed."
"It doesn't seem possible that it is Ranald who has seen and done all
those things," said the Little Colonel, thoughtfully. "When you play
with people and fuss with them, and slap their faces when they pull your
hair, or throw away their marbles when they break your dolls, as we
did, when we were little, it seems so queah to think of them bein'
_heroes_."
Miss Allison laughed heartily. "That's a universal trouble," she said.
"We never can be heroes to our family and neighbours. Even brass buttons
and shoulder-straps cannot outshine the memory of early hair-pullings."
"Tell about the girls," said Lloyd, fearing that if a pause were allowed
in the conversation Miss Allison would begin talking about something
less entertaining than her nephew and nieces. "Do they still love to
play papah dolls and have tableaux in the barn?"
"Yes, I am sure they do. They didn't have as exciting a time as Ranald,
for of course they stayed at home with their mother in the palace at
Manila. But it was interesting. It had queer windows of little sliding
squares of mother-of-pearl, that were shut only when it rained. They
could peep through and see the coolies in their capes and skirts of
cocoa-nut fibre, and the big hats, like inverted baskets, that made them
look as if they had stepped out of Robinson Crusoe's story.
"On one side of the palace was the Pasig River, where the natives go by
in their long skiffs. On the other side were the sights of the streets.
Sometimes it was only an old peanut vendor whom they watched, or a man
with fruit or boiled eggs or shrimps or dulce. Sometimes it was the
seller of parched corn, squatting beside the earthen pot of embers which
he constantly fanned, as he turned the ears laid across it to roast. And
sometimes the ambulances went by on their way to the hospital, reminding
them that life on the island was not a happy play-day for every one. I
am sure that the Lady of Shalott never saw more entertaining pictures in
her magic mirror than the panorama that daily passed those windows of
mother-of-pearl.
"Time never dragged there, you may be sure. Sometimes they were invited
to spend an afternoon on the English war-ship, and the young officers
gave them a spread and a romp over the ship. Allison still keeps an old
hat with the ship's ribbon on it for a hat-band, which a gallant little
midshipman gave her to remind her of the good times they had had
together on the vessel. The English consul and vice-consul frequently
invited them to tiffin or to parties, and their garden of monkeys was
open to their little American neighbours at all times.
"Coming home the transport stopped in a Japanese harbour for a week. The
faithful old Japanese servants, Fuzzi and her husband, who had lived
with them in California and followed them to the Philippines, were with
them on the transport. This place where they stopped happened to be
their native town, so they took the children on land every day and gave
them a glimpse behind the scenes of Japanese life, which few foreigners
see.
"Then Allison had a birthday, while they were homeward bound, away out
in the middle of the Pacific, and the ship's cook surprised her by
making her a magnificent birthday cake with her name on it in icing. Oh,
they've had all sorts of unusual experiences, and many, no doubt, that I
have never heard of, although they have been back in America a year. But
now that they have taken a house in town I expect to have them with me a
great deal. And that brings me to the matter I came up to see you both
about. They are coming out Saturday, and I want you to help me give them
a Hallowe'en party."
"Another holiday!" exclaimed Lloyd, clapping her hands. "I had forgotten
that there was anything to celebrate between Fourth of July and
Thanksgiving. I never went to a Hallowe'en party in my life, but it
sounds as if it would be lots of fun."
"Do you remember the old house at Hartwell Hollow that has been vacant
so long?" asked Miss Allison. "The coloured people say it is haunted.
Of course we do not believe such foolish things, or any of the
foolishness of Hallowe'en in fact, but as long as we're going to
resurrect the old superstitions, it is appropriate to have a haunted
house for the purpose. The landlord says that it is that report which
keeps it vacant. I saw him this morning, and got his permission to use
it for the party. I think we can make an ideal spot of it. I'll have it
swept and cleaned, and on Saturday afternoon I want you both to come and
help me decorate it."
"Of course the only lights must be Jack-o'-lanterns," said Mrs. Sherman,
entering into the plan as heartily as if she had been Lloyd's age. "The
corn-field is full of pumpkins. Walker can make lanterns all day if
necessary. It will take nearly a hundred, will it not, Allison?"
"I think so, although we will light only the down-stairs rooms, but
there ought to be some large ones on the porches. We'll try all the old
charms that we tried when we were children; bake a fate cake, melt lead,
bob for apples, and observe every silly old custom that we can think of.
The house is unfurnished except for an old stove in the kitchen, but I
can easily send over enough tables and chairs."
Miss Allison went away soon, after they had finished all their plans,
and Lloyd stood looking after her as long as she was in sight.
"How can I wait until Saturday?" she asked, with a wriggle of
impatience. "I'm so glad she asked us to help. Getting ready for things
is nearly as much fun as the things themselves. But Hallowe'en pahties
and home-lessons don't mix very well. I'll be thinking about that now,
instead of my lessons. Oh, mothah, it seems to me I nevah can learn to
spell that old volcano. I knew how last week, but I missed it again
yestahday when we had review in spelling."
"I have thought of a way to mix Hallowe'en and home-lessons in such a
way that you will never forget one word, at least," said her mother.
"Tell Walker to bring the largest, roundest pumpkin that he can find in
the field, and put it on the bench by the spring-house. Call me when he
is ready."
Wondering what pumpkins and volcanoes had to do with each other, but
charmed with the novelty of her mother's way of teaching spelling, Lloyd
went skipping down the path to give the order to Walker. It was only a
little while until she was back again.
"It is the biggest pumpkin I evah saw," she reported. "It was too big
fo' Walkah to carry. He had to bring it up on a wheelbarrow."
Taking a carving-knife as she passed through the kitchen, Mrs. Sherman
caught up her dainty skirts and followed Lloyd down the path to the
spring-house. It was late in the afternoon and a touch of frost was in
the air. The yellow maple leaves were floating softly down from the
branches above the path, and wherever the sun touched them on the ground
lay a carpet of shining gold.
"See, mothah, isn't it a whoppah?" cried Lloyd, trying to put her arms
around the mammoth pumpkin on the bench. "It is a beauty," answered Mrs.
Sherman, as she began deftly outlining a face on one side of it, with
the sharp carving-knife. First she drew two large circles in the yellow
skin where the eyes were to be cut, a triangle for the nose, and a
grinning crescent just below for the mouth.
"Now," she said, passing the knife to Lloyd, "carve the letters P-O in
each circle. It does not matter if they are crooked. They are to be cut
out with the circle afterwhile. Now in the triangle put the word CAT and
the letter E after it, and in the crescent the word PET and the letter
L. Now what does the face say to you?"
"The eyes say popo, the nose cat-e and the mouth pet-l," answered
Lloyd, laughing at the comical face outlined on the pumpkin.
"Shut your eyes and spell Popocatepetl," said Mrs. Sherman.
"Why, it is just as easy," cried Lloyd, as she rattled it off. "I can
see each syllable grinning at me, one aftah the othah. I am suah I'll
nevah fo'get it now. I like your way of teaching, bettah than
anybody's."
Presently, as she scooped out the seeds while her mother made a mandarin
hat of the slice she had cut off below the stem, she said, "Old
Popocatepetl will make the biggest Jack-o'-lantern of them all. It's a
good name for him, too, because he'll be all smoke and fiah inside aftah
the candles are lighted. We can put him ovah the front doah. I wondah
what Allison and Kitty and Elise will think of him. Oh, mothah, do you
remembah the time that Kitty set all the clocks and watches in the house
back a whole hour and made everybody late fo' church? And the time she
folded a grasshoppah up in everybody's napkin, the night the ministah
was invited to Mrs. MacIntyre's to dinnah, and what a mighty hoppin'
there was as soon as the napkins were unfolded?"
Once started on Kitty's pranks, Lloyd went on with a chapter of don't
you remember this and don't you remember that, until the sun went down
behind the western hills and old Popocatepetl grinned in ugly
completeness even to the last tooth in his wide-spread jaw.
CHAPTER XI.
A HALLOWE'EN PARTY.
NOTHING worse than rats and spiders haunted the old house of Hartwell
Hollow, but set far back from the road in a tangle of vines and cedars,
it looked lonely and neglected enough to give rise to almost any report.
The long unused road, winding among the rockeries from gate to house,
was hidden by a rank growth of grass and mullein. From one of the trees
beside it an aged grape-vine swung down its long snaky limbs, as if a
bunch of giant serpents had been caught up in a writhing mass and left
to dangle from tree-top to earth. Cobwebs veiled the windows, and dead
leaves had drifted across the porches until they lay knee-deep in some
of the corners.
As Miss Allison paused in front of the doorstep with the keys, a snake
glided across her path and disappeared in one of the tangled rockeries.
Both the coloured women who were with her jumped back, and one screamed.
"It won't hurt you, Sylvia," said Miss Allison, laughingly. "An old
poet who owned this place when I was a child made pets of all the
snakes, and even brought some up from the woods as he did the wild
flowers. That is a perfectly harmless kind."
"Maybe so, honey," said old Sylvia, with a wag of her turbaned head,
"but I 'spise 'em all, I sho'ly do. It's a bad sign to meet up wid one
right on de do'step. If it wasn't fo' you, Miss Allison, I wouldn't put
foot in such a house. An' I tell you p'intedly, what I says is gospel
truth, if I ketch sound of a han't, so much as even a rustlin' on de
flo', ole Sylvia gwine out'n a windah fo' you kin say _scat_! Don't
ketch dis ole niggah foolin' roun' long whar ghos'es is. Pete's got to
go in first an' open de house."
But not even the rats interrupted Sylvia in her sweeping and garnishing,
and by four o'clock all the rooms which were to be used were as clean as
three of Mrs. MacIntyre's best trained servants could make them.
"Even ole Miss would call that clean," said Sylvia, looking around on
the white floors and shining window-panes with a satisfied air.
Mrs. Sherman had driven down some time before, with a carriage-load of
Jack-o'-lanterns, and was now arranging them in rows on all the
old-fashioned black mantels. She looked around as Sylvia spoke.
"It would have been spookier to have left the dust and cobwebs," she
said, "but this is certainly nicer and more cheerful."
Fires were blazing on every hearth, in parlour, dining-room, and hall,
to dissipate the dampness of the long unused rooms. A kettle was singing
on the kitchen stove, and tables and chairs had been brought over and
arranged in the empty rooms. All that the woods could contribute in the
way of crimson berries, trailing vines, and late autumn leaves, had been
brought in to brighten the bare walls and festoon the uncurtained
windows. The chestnuts, the apples, the tubs of water, the lead, and
everything else necessary for the working of the charms was in
readiness; the refreshments were in the pantry, and on the kitchen table
Lloyd was arranging the ingredients for the fate cake.
"There couldn't be a bettah place for a Hallowe'en pahty," she said,
looking around the rooms when all was done. "No mattah how much we romp
and play, there's nothing that can be hurt. Won't it look shivery when
all the Jack-o'-lanterns are lighted? Just as if some old ogah of a
Bluebeard lived heah, who kept the heads of all his wives and neighbours
sittin' around on all the mantels an' shelves."
It was in the ruddy glow of the last bright October sunset that they
drove away from the house to go home to dinner. Even then the grounds
looked desolate and forlorn; but it was doubly gruesome when they came
back at night. The Little Colonel and her mother were first to arrive.
They had offered to come early and light the lanterns, as Miss Allison
was expecting all her nieces and nephews on the seven o'clock train, and
wanted to go down to meet them.
The wind was blowing in fitful gusts, rustling the dead leaves and
swaying the snaky branches of the grape-vine until they seemed
startlingly alive. Now and then the moon looked out like a pale bleared
eye.
"It is a real Tam O'Shanter night," said Miss Allison, as she led the
way up the winding walk to the front door. "I can easily imagine witches
flying over my head. Can't you?" she asked, turning to the little group
surrounding her. There were eight children. For not only Ranald and his
sisters had come with Malcolm and Keith, but Rob Moore and his cousin
Anna had been invited to come out from town to try their fortunes at
Hartwell Hollow, and spend the night in the Valley where they always
passed their happy summers.
"Oh, auntie! What's that?" cried little Elise, holding tightly to Miss
Allison's hand, as she caught sight of Lloyd's old Popocatepetl,
grinning a welcome by the front door. He looked like a mammoth dragon,
spouting fire from nose, eyes and mouth.
Elise clung a little closer to Miss Allison's side as they drew nearer.
"What awful teeth it's got, hasn't it?"
"Nothing but grains of corn, dear. Lloyd stuck them in. You haven't
forgotten the Little Colonel, have you? She is inside the house now,
waiting to see you." Then Miss Allison turned to the others. "Step high,
children, every one of you, when you come to this broomstick lying
across the door-sill. Be sure to step over it, or some witch might slip
in with you. It is the only way to keep them out on Hallowe'en. Step
high, Elise! Here we go!"
"That's one of the nice things about auntie," Kitty confided to Anna
Moore as they followed. "She acts as if she really believes those old
charms, and that makes them seem so real that we enjoy them so much
more."
The Little Colonel, waiting in the hall for the guests to arrive, had
been feeling a little shy about renewing her acquaintance with Ranald
and his sisters. It seemed to her that they must have seen so much and
learned so much in their trip around the world, that they would not
care to talk about ordinary matters. But when they all came tumbling in
over the broomstick, they seemed to tumble at the same time from the
pedestals where her imagination had placed them, back into the old
familiar footing just where they had been before they went away.
Lloyd had thought about Ranald many times since Miss Allison's account
of him had made him a hero in her eyes. She could not think of him in
any way but as dressed in a uniform, riding along under fluttering flags
to the sound of martial music. So when Miss Allison called, "Here is the
captain, Little Colonel," her face flushed as if she were about to meet
some distinguished stranger. But it was the same quiet Ranald who
greeted her, much taller than when he went away, but dressed just like
the other boys, and not even bronzed by his long marches under the
tropical sun. The year that had passed since his return had blotted out
all trace of his soldier life in his appearance, except, perhaps, the
military erectness with which he held himself.
Kitty, after catching Lloyd by the shoulders for an impulsive hug and
kiss, started at once to examine the haunted house.
"There'll be mischief brewing in a little bit, I'll promise you," said
Miss Allison, as Kitty's head with its short black hair dodged past her,
and there was a flash of a red dress up the stairway. "She is looking
for the 'ghos'es' that Sylvia told her were up there."
Elise clung to Allison's hand, for the little sister wanted the
protection of the big one, in those ghostly-looking rooms, lighted only
by the fires and the yellow gleam of those rows of weird, uncanny
Jack-o'-lantern faces. Like Kitty, both Allison and Elise had big dark
eyes that might have been the pride of a Spanish señorita, they were so
large and lustrous. Kitty's curls had been cut, but theirs hung thick
and long on their shoulders. The sight of them moved Rob to a
compliment.
"You and Anna Moore make me think of night and morning," he said,
looking from Anna's golden hair to Allison's dusky curls. "One is so
light and one is so black. You ought to go around together all the time.
You look fine together."
"Rob is growing up," laughed Anne. "Two years ago he wouldn't have
thought about making pretty speeches about our hair; he'd just have
pulled it."
"Here comes a whole crowd of people," exclaimed Allison, as the door
opened again. "I wonder how many of the girls I'll know. Oh, there's
Corinne and Katie and Margery and Julia Forrest. Why, nobody seems to
have changed a bit. Come on, Lloyd, let's go and speak to them."
"I'm glad that everybody is coming early," said Lloyd, "so that we can
begin the fate cake."
That was the first performance. When the guests had all arrived, they
were taken into the kitchen. Under the ban of silence (for the speaking
of a word would have broken the charm) they stood around the table,
giggling as the cake was concocted, out of a cup of salt, a cup of
flour, and enough water to make a thick batter. A ring, a thimble, a
dime, and a button were dropped into it, and each guest gave the mixture
a solemn stir before the pan was put into the oven, and left in charge
of old Mom Beck.
By that time the two tubs of water had been carried into the hall.
Several dozen apples were set afloat in them, with a folded strip of
paper pinned to each bearing a hidden name. By the time these had been
lifted out by their stems in the teeth of the laughing contestants, the
lead was melted ready to use.
They tried their fate with that next, pouring a little out into a plate
of water, to see into what shapes the drops would instantly harden.
Strangely enough, Ranald's took the shape of a sword. Malcolm's was a
lion and Keith's a ship, the Little Colonel's a star and Rob's a spur.
Some could have been called almost anything, like the one little Elise
found in her plate. She could not decide whether to call it a sugar-bowl
or a chicken. But Miss Allison explained them all, giving some funny
meaning to each, and setting them all to laughing with the queer
fortunes she declared these lead drops predicted.
They tried all the old customs they had ever heard of. They popped
chestnuts on a shovel, they counted apple-seeds, they threw the parings
over their heads to see what initials they would form in falling. They
blindfolded each other and groped across the room to the table, on which
stood three saucers, one filled with ashes, one with water, and one
standing empty, to see whether life, death, or single blessedness
awaited them in the coming year.
In the midst of these games Kitty beckoned the boys aside and led them
out on the porch. "What do you think?" she whispered. "After all the
trouble auntie has taken to plan different entertainments, Cora Ferris
isn't satisfied. I heard her talking to some of the older girls. She
told Eliza Hughes that she expected some excitement when she came, and
that she was dying to go down cellar backward with a looking-glass in
one hand and a candle in the other. You know if you do that, the person
whom you're to marry will come and look over your shoulder, and you can
see him in the glass.
"The girls begged her not to, and told her that she'd be frightened to
death if she saw anybody, but she whispered to Eliza that she knew she
wouldn't be scared, for she was sure Walter Cummins was her fate, and
would have to be down in the cellar if she tried the charm, and that she
wouldn't be afraid of going into a lion's den if she thought Walter
would be there. And Eliza giggled and threatened to tell, and Cora got
red and put her hand over Eliza's mouth, and carried on awfully silly.
It made me tired. But she's bound to go down cellar after awhile, and
somebody has told Walter what she said, and he's going, just for fun.
Now I think it would be lots of fun to watch Walter, and keep him from
going, on some excuse or another, and then one of you boys look over her
shoulder."
"Rob, you're the biggest, and almost as tall as Walter. You ought to be
the one to go," suggested Keith.
"Down in that spook cellar?" demanded Rob. "Not much, Keithie, my son. I
might see something myself, without the help of a looking-glass or
candle. I am not afraid of flesh and blood, but I vow I'm not ready to
have my hair turn white in a single night. I have been brought up on
stories of the haunts that live in that cellar. My old black mammy used
to live here, and she has made me feel as if my blood had turned to
ice-water, lots of times, with her tales."
"You go, captain," said Malcolm, turning to Ranald. "You've been under
fire, and oughtn't to be afraid of anything. You've got a reputation to
keep up, and here is a chance for you to show the stuff you are made
of."
"I am not afraid of the cellar," said the little captain, stoutly, "but
I'm not going to be the one to look over her shoulder into the
looking-glass. I don't want to run any risk of marrying that fat Cora
Ferris."
A shout of laughter went up at his answer.
"You won't have to, goosey," said Rob. "There's nothing in those old
signs."
"Well, I am not going to take any chances with her," he persisted,
backing up against the wall. That settled it. They could have moved the
rock foundation of the house itself easier than the captain, when he
took that kind of a stand. Looking at it from Ranald's point of view,
none of the boys were willing to go down cellar, for they could easily
imagine how the others would tease them afterward. Kitty's prank would
have fallen through, if she had not been quicker than a weasel at
planning mischief.
"What's to hinder fixing up a dummy man, and putting him down there?"
she suggested. "You boys can run home and get Uncle Harry's rubber
boots, and his old slouch hat, and some pillows, and that military cape
that Ginger's father left there, and she'll think it is an army officer
that's she's going to marry. Won't she be fooled?"
The boys were as quick to act as Kitty was to plan. A noisy game of
blind man's buff was going on inside the house, so no one missed the
conspirators, although they were gone for some time.
"We just ran home a minute for something," was Keith's excuse, when he
and Malcolm and Ranald came in, red-faced and breathless. Rob and Kitty
were still in the cellar, putting the finishing touches to the army
officer. Kitty was recklessly fastening the dummy together with big
safety-pins, regardless of the holes she was making in her Uncle Harry's
high rubber hunting-boots.
"Isn't he a dandy!" exclaimed Rob, putting the slouched hat on the
pillow head at a fierce angle, and fastening the military cape up
around the chin as far as possible. "Come on now, Kitty, let us make our
escape before anybody comes."
[Illustration: "SHE BEGAN THE OLD RHYME."]
Meanwhile, the boys had corralled Walter Cummins, and Cora, seeing him
leave the room, thought that the proper time had come. Slipping the
hand-mirror from the dressing-table in the room where they had left
their wraps, she took a candle from one of the Jack-o'-lanterns on the
side porch, and signalled the girls who had agreed to follow her. She
was nearly sixteen, but the three girls who groped their way across the
courtyard in the flickering light of her candle were much younger.
The cellar was entered from the courtyard, by an old-fashioned door, the
kind best adapted to sliding, and it took the united strength of all the
girls to lift it. A rush of cold, damp air greeted them, and an earthy
smell that would have checked the enthusiasm of any girl less
sentimental than Cora.
"I am frightened to death, girls," she confessed at the last moment, her
teeth chattering. Yet she was not so frightened as she would have been
had she not been sure that Walter had gone down the steps ahead of her.
"Hold the door open," she said, preparing to back slowly down. Her
fluffy light hair stood out like an aureole in the yellow
candle-light, and the face reflected in the hand-mirror was pretty
enough to answer every requirement of the old spell, despite the silly
simper on her lips. When she was nearly at the bottom of the cellar
steps she began the old rhyme:
"If in this glass his face I see,
Then my true love will marry me."
But the couplet ended in a scream, so terrifying, so ear-splitting, so
blood-curdling, that Katie dropped in a cold, trembling little heap on
the ground, and Eliza Hughes sank down on top of Katie, weak and
shivering. Cora had seen the pillow-man in the cellar. Dropping the
looking-glass with a crash, but clinging desperately to the candle, she
dashed up the steps shrieking at every breath. Just at the top she
stepped on the front of her skirt, and fell sprawling forward. She
dropped the candle then, but not before it had touched her hair and set
it afire.
The soft fluffy bangs blazed up like tow, and too terrified to move,
Eliza Hughes still sat on top of Katie, screaming louder than Cora had
done. The sight brought Katie to her senses, however, and scrambling up
from under Eliza, she flew at Cora and began beating out the fire with
her bare hands. Cora, who had not discovered that her hair was ablaze,
did not know what to make of such strange treatment. Her first thought
was that Katie had gone crazy with fright, and that was why she had
flown at her and begun to beat her on the head. It was all over in an
instant, and the fire put out so quickly that only Cora's bangs were
scorched, and Katie's fingers but slightly burned.
But the screams had reached through the uproar of blind man's buff, and
the whole party poured out into the courtyard to see what had happened.
There was great excitement for a little while, and Kitty, enjoying the
confusion she had stirred up, giggled as she listened to Cora's
startling description of the man that had peeped over her shoulder. "He
didn't look like any one I'd ever seen before," she declared. "He was
tall and handsome and dressed like a soldier."
"Oh, surely not, Cora," answered Miss Allison, who saw that some of the
little girls gathered around her were badly frightened. "That couldn't
be, you know. The cellar is quite empty. Give me the candle, and I'll go
down and show you."
"Oh, no, please, auntie, don't go down," cried Kitty, seeing that the
time had come to confess. "It is just a Hallowe'en joke. We didn't
suppose that Cora would be scared. We just wanted to tease her because
she seemed so sure that she would find Walter down there. Go and bring
him up, boys."
Ranald and Rob started down the stairs, with Keith carrying a candle,
and Malcolm calling for Walter to come on and help carry out his rival.
The four boys, picking up the dummy as if it had been a real man,
carried it up the steps and laid it carefully on the ground. So comical
did it look with its pudgy pillow face, that everybody laughed except
Cora. She was furiously angry, and not all Kitty's penitent speeches or
the boys' polite apologies could appease her. If it had not been for
Miss Allison she would have flounced home in high displeasure. But she
as usual poured oil on the troubled waters, and talked in such a tactful
way of her harum-scarum niece's many pranks, that there was no resisting
such an appeal. She allowed herself to be led back to the house, but she
would not join in any of the games.
"Mom Beck says I'll have bad luck for seven years because I broke that
looking-glass," she said, mournfully.
"Oh, nonsense!" exclaimed Miss Allison. "Don't give it another thought,
dear, it is only an old negro superstition."
She might have added that it was to herself and brother the ill luck had
come, since it was her silver mirror that was broken, and Harry's rubber
boots that would be henceforth useless for wading because of the holes
thoughtless Kitty had made in them with safety-pins, when she fastened
them to the pillows.
Refreshments were served soon after they went back to the house. Not the
cakes and ices that usually attended parties in the Valley, but things
suggestive of Hallowe'en. Pop-corn, nuts, and apples, doughnuts and
molasses candy. Then the fate cake was cut, and everybody took a slice
to carry home to dream on.
"Eat it the last thing before you retire," said Miss Allison. "Then walk
to bed backwards without taking a drink of water or speaking another
word to-night. It is so salty that it is likely you will dream of being
thirsty, and of somebody bringing you water. They say if you dream of
its being brought in a golden goblet you will marry into wealth. If in a
tin cup poverty will be your lot. The kind of vessel you see in your
dream will decide your fate. Ah, Walter got the button in his slice.
That means he will be an old bachelor and sew his own buttons on all his
life."
Anna Moore got the dime, and Eliza Hughes the ring, which foretold that
she would be the first one in the company to have a wedding. The thimble
fell to no one, as it slipped out between two slices in the cutting.
"That means none of us will be old maids," said little Elise. Miss
Allison slipped it on Kitty's finger. "To mend your mischievous ways
with," she said, and everybody who had enjoyed the pillow-man laughed.
The moon was hiding behind a cloud when at last the merry party said
good-night, so Miss Allison provided each little group with a
Jack-o'-lantern to light them on their homeward way. As the grotesque
yellow heads with their grinning fire-faces went bobbing down the lonely
road, it was well for Tam O'Shanter that he need not pass that way. All
the witches of Allway Kirk could not have made such a weird procession.
Well, too, for old Ichabod Crane that he need not ride that night
through the shadowy Valley. One pumpkin, in the hands of the headless
rider, had been enough to banish him from Sleepy Hollow for ever. What
would have happened no one can tell, could he have met the long
procession of bodiless heads that straggled through the gate that
Hallowe'en, from the haunted house of Hartwell Hollow.
CHAPTER XII.
THE HOME OF A HERO.
WITH November came heavier frosts and the first light snowfall of the
season, a skim of ice on the meadow-ponds, shorter days, and long
cheerful evenings around the library fire. More than that, it brought
the end of the extra home-lessons, for by this time the Little Colonel
had not only caught up with her classes, but stood at the head of most
of them.
"I think she deserves a reward of merit," said Papa Jack when she came
home one day, proudly bearing a record of perfect recitations for a
week. And so it came about that the next Friday afternoon she had a
reward of her own choosing. Allison, Kitty, and Elise were invited out
to stay until Monday. So for two happy days four little girls raced back
and forth under the bare branches of the locusts, where usually one
lonely child walked to and fro by herself. And because the daylight did
not last half long enough, and because bedtime seemed to come hours too
soon, they were invited to come out next week also.
"It is almost like having Betty back again to have Allison," Lloyd
confided to her mother. "She is so sensible, and has the same sweet
little ways that Betty had of thinking of other people's pleasure first.
Sometimes I forget and call her Betty. I wish they could all come out
again next week."
"Have you looked at the calendar to see what comes next week, Lloyd?"
"No, mothah. What is it? Anybody's birthday?"
"What do we always have the last Thursday in November?"
"Oh, Thanksgiving!" exclaimed Lloyd, joyfully. "Anothah holiday! How
fast they come!"
Usually Thanksgiving was made a great occasion at Locust, and the house
was full of guests; but this year Mr. Sherman was obliged to be in New
York all week, and the old Colonel was in Virginia. Lloyd and her mother
were planning to celebrate alone when Aunt Jane sent for them to spend
the Thanksgiving vacation with her in town.
Lloyd never enjoyed her visits to her great-aunt Jane. The house was too
big and solemn with its dark furniture and heavily curtained windows.
The chairs were all so tall that they lifted her feet high above the
floor. The books in the library were all heavy volumes with dull, hard
names that she could not pronounce. The tedious hours when she sat in
the invalid's dimly lighted room and listened to the details of her many
ailments, or to tales of people whom she had never seen, seemed endless.
This Thanksgiving Day it was unusually cheerless. "All so grown-up and
grumbly!" thought Lloyd. "Seems to me the lesson set for me to learn on
every holiday is patience. I'm tiahed of being patient."
Aunt Jane had her Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of the day. Much
turkey and plum-pudding made Lloyd drowsy, and the hour that followed
was a stupid one. She sat motionless in a big velvet armchair listening
to more of Aunt Jane's long stories of unknown people. Now and then she
stifled a yawn, wishing with all her heart that she could change places
with the little newsboy, calling papers in the street below the window,
or with the stumpy-tailed dog frisking by in the snow. She fairly ached
with sitting still so long, and wondered how her mother could be so
interested in all that Aunt Jane was telling. She could have clapped her
hands for joy when the maid broke the tediousness of the hour by asking
Mrs. Sherman to step out into the hall. Mrs. Walton wanted to speak to
her at the telephone.
Lloyd slipped from her chair and followed her mother out of the room,
thankful for any excuse to make her escape. She wished she could hear
what Mrs. Walton was saying, instead of only one side of the
conversation. This is what she heard her mother say:
"Is that you, Mary?"
"Yes; we came in for the Thanksgiving holidays, and expect to stay until
Saturday afternoon."
"A Butterfly Carnival? How lovely!"
"No, I couldn't possibly leave for any length of time, thank you. Aunt
Jane is counting on my staying with her; but I'll gladly accept for
Lloyd if she is willing to stay away all night without me. Wait a
moment, please, I'll ask her."
"Lloyd," she said, turning from the instrument, "Mrs. Walton has just
telephoned me that you are included in the invitation that Anna Moore
has given the girls to the Butterfly Carnival at the Opera House
to-morrow afternoon. It is for the benefit of the free kindergarten in
which Mrs. Moore is interested, and she has taken a box at the matinée
for Anna and her friends. Anna is going to give a butterfly luncheon
just before the performance. She heard that you were in town and
thought that you were visiting Allison, so she called at Mrs. Walton's
to invite you. Mrs. Walton has asked you to stay all night with the
girls. Would you like to go?"
Mrs. Sherman could not help laughing at the expression of delight on
Lloyd's face as she began noiselessly clapping her hands.
"Oh, if it wouldn't be rude to Aunt Jane," she exclaimed, in a whisper,
"I'd just _squeal_, I'm so glad to get out of this dismal place. It is
all so grown-up and grumbly heah, and a Buttahfly Cahnival has such a
delicious sound."
Mrs. Sherman turned to the receiver again, and Lloyd listened eagerly to
one side of a short conversation about what to wear and when to go. Then
Mrs. Sherman hung up the receiver, saying, "Allison and Kitty are coming
for you. They will start on the next car. I'll ask Aunt Jane to send the
man over with your clothes in a little while, and I'll call in the
morning."
Twenty minutes later two bright faces smiled up at the window, two
little muffs waved an excited greeting, and Kitty and Allison ran up the
front steps to meet the Little Colonel.
"We're going to have the best time that ever was," cried Kitty. "Malcolm
and Keith and Rob are invited, too. So is Ranald, but he went out to
grandmother's directly after dinner to-day. He said he wouldn't miss the
good times he'd have in the country for forty old Butterfly Carnivals.
But the lunch is going to be beautiful, and it will be so nice to go to
the Carnival afterward, and all sit in the same box."
Mrs. Sherman, watching from an upper window, breathed a sigh of relief
as she saw the three girls going gaily down the street together. She
knew that Lloyd's vacation time could not fail to be a happy one if
spent in the home of her old friend, Mary Walton.
"I feel so queah," said the Little Colonel, as she followed Kitty and
Allison into the house and up the stairs to their rooms. "It is just as
if some one had waved a wand, and said, 'Presto! change!' Only half an
hour ago I was in a big dark house that was as quiet as a deaf and dumb
person. But heah, it seems as if the very walls were talkin', and I
can't take a step without seeing something curious. I am sure that there
is a story about that Indian tomahawk and peace-pipe on the wall, and
all those pretty things hanging ovah the doah."
"There is," answered Allison, pausing to point over the bannister to the
curios arranged in the hall below. "Papa brought them back from that
Indian campaign, when he was out so long, and captured that dreadful old
Apache chief, Geronimo. The things in that other corner are relics of
the Cuban War, and the other things are from the Philippines."
Lloyd lingered a moment on the stairs, leaning over the bannister to
peep into the library, where a flag, a portrait, and a sword shrined the
memory of one of the nation's best belovèd. It was only a glimpse she
caught, but with it came the impressive thought that she was in the home
of a hero; and a queer feeling, that she could not understand, surged
over her, warm and tender. It was as if she were in a church and ought
to tread softly, and move reverently in such a presence.
"Come on," called Allison, throwing open the door into her room.
"How different this is from the Cuckoo's Nest," was Lloyd's next
thought, as she looked about the interesting room, filled with toys and
souvenirs from all parts of the world.
"I'd lots rathah look at these things than play," she said, when a
choice of entertainment was offered her. "Oh, what a darling book!"
It was a quaint little volume of Japanese fairy tales she pounced upon,
printed on queer, crinkly paper, with pictures of amazing dragons and
brilliant birds, such as only the Japanese artists can paint. But before
she could examine that, Kitty had brought her a tortoise-shell
jinrikisha, and Allison a toy Filipino bed. Elise marshalled out a whole
colony of dolls, from Spanish soldiers to fur-clad Esquimaux babies.
Each brought out her special treasures, and all talked at once. They
piled the floor around her with interesting things, they filled her lap,
they covered the chairs and tables. And for every article there was an
interesting tale of the time or place where it had come into their
possession.
Outside the snow began to fall again. The electric cars passed and
repassed with whirr and rush and clang. The short winter day ended in
sudden dusk, and the maid came in to light the gas.
"Why, how could it get dark so soon!" exclaimed Lloyd, looking up in
surprise as she suddenly realised that it was night. "It doesn't seem to
me that I have been heah any time at all. I have enjoyed it so much."
After the big Thanksgiving dinner nobody was very hungry, but they all
followed Mrs. Walton down to the dining-room for a light lunch. Here
Lloyd found herself in another treasure-house of interesting things. She
could not turn her head without a glimpse of something to arouse her
curiosity, the quaint Chinese ladle on the sideboard, the gay procession
of elephants and peacocks around the border of the table-cover, the old
army chest, the silver candlesticks that had lighted the devotions of
many a Spanish friar in the gray monasteries of Cuba, and the exquisite
needlework of the nuns of far-away Luzon.
Mrs. Walton was the tale-teller now, and Lloyd listened with an intense
eagerness that made her dark eyes grow more starlike than ever, and
brought the delicate wild-rose pink flushing up into her cheeks.
Seeing what pleasure it was giving her little guest, Mrs. Walton took
her into the library afterward and opened the cabinets, pointing out one
object of interest after another. But the things that pleased Lloyd most
were the bells in the hall. Near the foot of the stairs, in an oaken
frame placed there for the purpose, swung three Spanish bells, that had
been presented to Mrs. Walton as trophies of war. They had been taken
from different church towers on the island of Luzon, by the Filipino
insurgents, when they were sacking the villages and taking everything
before them. These bells had been captured from the insurgents by the
soldiers of the general's division. A thrill went through the Little
Colonel as Mrs. Walton told her their history, and swung one of the
great iron tongues back and forth till the hall echoed with the clear
ringing.
Several times during the evening Lloyd slipped out into the hall again
to stand before these mute witnesses of the ravages of war, and tap the
rims with light finger tips. She tapped so lightly that only the
faintest echo sounded in the hall, but from her rapt face Mrs. Walton
knew that the note awakened other voices in the Little Colonel's
imagination. She had known Lloyd ever since she had gone to live at
Locust, and she remembered the child's quaint habit of singing to
herself.
All the words that pleased her fancy she strung together on the thread
of a soft minor tune, in a crooning little melody of her own. "Oh, the
buttercups an' daisies," she had heard her sing one time, standing
waist-high in a field of nodding bloom. "Oh, the buttercups an' daisies,
all white an' gold an' yellow. They're all a-smilin' at me! All a-sayin'
howdy! howdy!"
And another time when the August lilies, standing white and waxen in the
moonlight, had moved the old Colonel to speak tenderly of the wife of
his youth, Mrs. Walton had seen a smile cross his face, when the baby
voice, unconscious of an audience, crooned softly from the doorstep,
"Oh, the locus'-trees a-blowin', an' the stars a-shinin' through them,
an' the moonlight an' the lilies, an' Amanthis! An' Amanthis!"
Now, curious to know what thoughts the bells were awakening, Mrs. Walton
bent her head to listen as the Little Colonel chanted to herself in a
half-whisper, "Oh, the bells, the bells a-tolling, and the tales they
ring for evah, of the battle-flags an' victory, an' their hero! An'
their hero!"
The tears sprang to Mrs. Walton's eyes as she listened to the child's
interpretation of the voices of the bells, and presently, when she
looked up and saw Lloyd standing in front of the general's portrait,
gazing reverently into the brave, calm face, she crossed the room and
put an arm around her.
"Do you know," said the Little Colonel, in a confiding undertone, "when
I look up at that, I know just how Betty feels when she writes poetry.
She heahs voices inside, and thinks things too beautiful to find words
for. There's something in his face, and about that sword that he used
for his country, and the flag that he followed, and the bells that ring
for his memory, that make me want to cry; and yet there's a glad, proud
feelin' in my heart because he was so brave, as if he sort of belonged
to me, too. It makes me wish I could be a man, and go out and do
something brave and grand. What do you suppose makes me feel both ways
at the same time?"
"It is a part of patriotism," said Mrs. Walton, with a caressing hand on
her hair.
"I didn't know I had any," said Lloyd, seriously, looking up with
wondering eyes. "I always took grandfathah's side, you know, because the
Yankees shot his arm off. I hated 'em for it, and I nevah would hurrah
for the Union. I've despised Republicans and the Nawth from the time I
could talk."
"Don't say that, Lloyd," said Mrs. Walton, still caressing her soft
hair. "What have we to do with that old quarrel? Its time has long gone
by. I, too, am a daughter of the South, Lloyd, but surely such lives as
his have not been sacrificed in vain." She pointed impressively to the
portrait. "That, if nothing else, would make me want to forget that
North and South had ever been arrayed against each other. Surely such
lives as his by their high loyalty should inspire a love of country deep
enough to make America the guiding star of the nations."
Bedtime came long before Lloyd was ready for it. "Do you want to tell
your mother good night?" asked Mrs. Walton, stopping at the telephone as
they passed through the upper hall.
"Oh, yes," cried Lloyd. "How different it is from the Cuckoo's Nest. You
can't get homesick when you know you're at one end of a wiah, and yo'
mothah is at the othah."
Mrs. Walton called up Aunt Jane's number, and, putting the receiver into
Lloyd's hand, passed on into her room.
"Oh, mothah," Allison heard her say, "it's like livin' in that fairy
tale, where everything in the picture was made alive. Don't you
remembah? The birds sang, and the fishes swam, and the rivah ran.
Everything in the picture acted as if it were alive and out of its
frame. Everything in the house talks, for it has a story of its own. All
the family have been tellin' me stories, and I've had a lovely
Thanksgiving Day."
There was a long pause while Mrs. Sherman answered, then Allison heard
Lloyd's voice again.
"The lesson is a beautiful one this time. It isn't patience any moah. It
is _Patriotism_. Good night. Can you catch a kiss? Heah it is." Allison
heard the noise of her lips, and then a laughing good night as she hung
up the receiver.
They often had what they called night-gown parties at the Waltons, and
they had one that night, when they were all ready for bed. The little
group of white-robed figures gathered on the hearth rug at Mrs. Walton's
feet, counting their causes for thankfulness, and chattering sociably of
many things. Presently, across the merry conversation, fell a
recollection that rested on Lloyd's mind like a shadow. She remembered
Molly in her bare little bedroom over the kitchen, at the Cuckoo's Nest.
Poor little Molly, who could never know a happy Thanksgiving so long as
Dot was away from her!
Here was shelter and home-light and mother-love, but Molly had none of
the latter to be thankful for. Lloyd could not drive away the thought,
and when there came a pause in the conversation she began telling
Molly's story to her interested listeners. It had the same effect on
them that it had on Joyce and Eugenia, and presently Allison slipped
down to the library to bring up a volume of bound magazines that the
girls might see the picture that reminded Molly of Dot.
The grief of the poor little waif seemed very real to Elise, who hung
over the picture, calling attention to every detail of the shabby room.
"Look at the old broken stool," she said, "and her thin little arms.
And her shoes are all worn out, too. I wish she had a pair of mine."
Long after she was tucked away in her little white bed she called out
through the darkness, "Mamma, do you s'pose Dot knows how to say her
prayers?"
"I don't know, darling," came the answer. "It has been a long time since
she had any one to teach her." There was a pause, then another whispered
call.
"Mamma, do you s'pose it would do any good if I'd say them for her?"
"Yes, love, I am sure it would."
There was a rustling of bedclothes. Two bare feet struck the floor, and
Elise knelt down in the dark, saying, softly:
"Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray thee, Lord, her soul to keep.
If she should die before I wake,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.
Please, God, help poor little lost Dot to get back to her sister. Amen.
There, I guess he'll know, even if it did sound sort of mixed up," she
said, climbing back to bed with a sigh of mingled relief and
satisfaction.
"That's the kind he loves best, little one," said her mother, coming
into the room to tuck her in once more. "It doesn't make any difference
about the pronouns. The more we mix our neighbours with ourselves in our
prayers, the better he is pleased."
CHAPTER XIII.
THE DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING.
"THERE! You are ready at last!" said Mrs. Sherman, as she finished
buttoning Lloyd's gloves, and fastened the jewelled clasp of her long
party cloak. She had come over to help the Little Colonel dress for the
Butterfly Luncheon at Anna Moore's.
Feeling very elegant in her unusual party array, Lloyd surveyed herself
in the mirror with a satisfied air, and sat down beside Allison to wait
for the carriage that Mrs. Moore had promised to send for them. Mrs.
Walton was tying Kitty's sash, and in the next room Elise was buzzing
around like an excited little bee.
"Hold still! Do now!" they heard Milly say, impatiently. "I'll never get
the tangles brushed out of your curls, and the others will go off and
leave you, and you'll have to miss the party."
Presently there was a long protesting wail from Elise. "Oh, Milly, what
did you put that ribbon on my hair for? It isn't pink enough to match
my stockings."
"There's scarcely any difference at all in the shades," answered Milly.
"Sure it would take a microscope to tell, even if they were side by
side, and your head is too far away from your heels for anybody to
notice."
"Oh, but it won't do at all!" cried Elise, breaking away from her to run
into the next room. "See, mamma, they don't match." In her eagerness
Elise leaned over, bending herself like a little acrobat, till the pink
bow on her hair was on a level with the pink silk stockings.
"There's barely a shade difference," laughed Mrs. Walton. "The
difference is so slight that nobody will notice it unless you expect to
double up occasionally like a jack-knife and call attention to it."
"Of course I don't expect to do that," said Elise, with such a funny
little air of injured dignity that her mother caught her up with a hasty
kiss. "You're a dear little peacock, even if you do think too much of
your fine feathers. But you can't stop to make a fuss about your ribbons
now. It would be making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Run back to Milly
for your hat. I hear the carriage stopping out in front."
"What a lot of things I'll have to write about in my next letter to the
girls," thought Lloyd, as they rolled along in the carriage a few
minutes later. "Joyce and Betty will like to hear about the general's
home and all the interesting things in it, and Eugenia will enjoy this
part of my visit most."
[Illustration: THE BUTTERFLY CARNIVAL.]
It was with a view to impressing Eugenia with the elegance of her
friends, that Lloyd noticed every detail of the beautiful luncheon. She
intended that Eugenia should hear about it all. Gay butterflies, so
lifelike that one could not believe that human hands had made them, were
poised everywhere, on the flowers, the candle-shades, the curtains. The
menu cards were decorated with them, the fine hand-painted china bore
swarms of them around their dainty rims, and even the ices were moulded
to represent them. The little hostess herself, fluttering around among
her guests as gracefully as if she too were a winged creature, wore a
gauzy dress of palest blue, embroidered in butterflies, and there were
butterflies caught here and there in her golden curls.
The Little Colonel could scarcely eat for admiring her. She felt very
elegant and grown up to be the guest at such an entertainment, and as
she took her place at the table between Malcolm and Rob, she wished
with all her heart that Eugenia could peep in and see her.
It was time to start to the Butterfly Carnival almost immediately when
luncheon was over, and again Lloyd felt very elegant and grown up
rolling along in the carriage to the matinee. Mrs. Moore ushered the
party into the box she had taken for Anna and her little friends, and
more than one person in the audience turned to ask his neighbour, "Who
are those lovely children? Did you ever see such handsome boys? They
have such charming manners. It is like a scene from some old
court-play." The Little Colonel, sitting beside Anna, with the two
little knights leaning forward to talk to her, to pick up her fan, or
adjust her lorgnette, was all unconscious that any one in the audience
was watching her admiringly, but she wished again that Eugenia could see
her.
When the curtain went up the scene on the stage was so absorbing that
she forgot Eugenia. She forgot where she was, for the play carried her
bodily into fairy-land. The queen of the fairies was there with her
star-tipped wand and all her spangled court, and Lloyd looked and
listened with breathless attention, while the naughty Puck played pranks
on all the butterflies, and, finally catching them at play in a
moonlighted forest, took all the gauzy-winged creatures captive. It was
as entrancing as looking into a living fairy tale, and when at last the
queen released the prisoners with a wave of her star-tipped wand, and to
the soft notes of the violins, the butterflies danced off the stage,
Lloyd drew a long breath and came down to earth with a sigh. She could
have listened gladly for hours more.
But the curtain was down, the people were rising all over the house, and
Keith was holding her party cloak for her to slip into. Mrs. Moore
turned to Allison.
"Elise is wild to see behind the scenes," she said. "I am going to keep
her with me a little while. Your cousin Malcolm says that he and Keith
can take you home in their carriage with Lloyd and Kitty. So I'll send
Anna and Rob home in mine and wait here until it comes back. Tell your
mother I'll take good care of Elise and bring her home as soon as I
attend to my little protegés behind the scene."
Many of the children who had taken part in the performance were from the
free kindergarten, and Elise, holding fast to Mrs. Moore's hand, watched
the transformation behind the scenes, from gauzy wings to gingham gowns,
with wondering eyes.
"It is like when Cinderella lost her glass slipper," she said. "The
clock struck twelve, and her silks turned to rags."
All the glitter and glory of fairy-land had disappeared with the
footlights. In the wintry light of the late afternoon, some of the faces
were pitifully thin and wan.
"Here are three little butterflies that must go back home and be grubs
again," said Mrs. Moore, as she beckoned to the children whom she had
promised to take home in her carriage. Elise looked at them, wondering
if it could be possible that they were the same children, who, fifteen
minutes before, had looked so radiantly beautiful in their spangled
costumes on the stage. They were shy little things who could scarcely
find words to answer Mrs. Moore's questions, but they seemed to enjoy
the drive in the warm closed carriage, behind the team of prancing bays.
Elise chatted on gaily, telling Mrs. Moore how much she had enjoyed the
carnival, how she had admired the fairy queen, and how she longed for a
real live fairy. She had looked for them often in the morning-glories
and the lily-bells. If she could find one maybe it would tell her where
to look for Dot.
Presently they turned into a side street among unfamiliar
tenement-houses, and paused at an alley entrance.
"I am going to the top of the stairs with the children," said Mrs.
Moore, preparing to step out of the carriage. "I want to inquire about
the baby, who is sick. I'll be back in a moment, Elise."
As the carriage door closed behind her she spoke to the coachman. "Wait
here a moment, Dickson." The man on the box touched his hat and then
turned his fur collar higher around his ears. There was a cold wind
whistling through the alley. Elise pressed her face against the glass
and looked out into the wintry street. Mrs. Moore's moment stretched out
into five. The baby up-stairs was worse, and she was making a list of
the many things it needed for its comfort.
There was little of interest to watch from the carriage window. Few
people were passing along the narrow pavement, and Elise wondered
impatiently why Mrs. Moore did not come. Presently, down the street came
a ragged child with its arm held up over its eyes, sobbing and sniffling
as it shuffled along in a pair of wornout shoes many sizes too large for
its little feet.
Elise's heart gave a great thump, and she started forward eagerly.
"Molly's little lost sister!" she exclaimed aloud. "It must be, for she
looks just like the girl in the picture. Oh, I must call her!"
She was fumbling at the knob of the carriage door, but before she could
get it open, the child turned and started up the dirty alley, still
sobbing aloud, with her arm over her face.
"Oh, I must call her back," thought Elise. "Everybody will be so glad if
she is found. I mustn't let her get away."
It took all her strength to turn the knob, but with another desperate
wrench she got the door open, and climbed out to the pavement. The
coachman, half asleep in his great fur collar and heavy lap-robes, did
not hear the tap of the little pink boots, as she ran up the dark alley
between the high, rickety buildings, with their bad smells and dirty
sewers.
"Oh, she is going so fast!" panted Elise. "I'll never catch up with
her!" The pretty pink boots were wet and snowy now, the silk stockings
splashed with muddy water. Her big velvet hat was tipped over one eye
and her curls were blowing in tangles over the wide collar of her
fur-trimmed cloak. But forgetting all about her fine feathers, she ran
on, around corners, into strange passages, across unfamiliar streets,
following the flutter of a tattered gown. All of a sudden she paused,
looking around in bewilderment. The child she was following had
disappeared.
With a bitter sense of disappointment swelling in her little heart, she
turned to go back to the carriage, and then stood still in bewilderment.
She could not tell which way she had come. She was lost herself! For a
few minutes the little pink boots trudged bravely on, then the tears
began to gather in her big black eyes.
"They'll feel so bad at home," she thought, "when they hunt and hunt and
can't find me anywhere. Oh, what if I'd stay lost, and get to look all
ragged and dirty like Dot, and just have to stand in a corner and cry.
If there was any nice stores along here, I'd go in and ask the man to
send me home, but these places look so dreadful I'm afraid."
She was in a disreputable part of the town, where second-hand clothing
stores and pawn-shops were crowded in between saloons and cheap
restaurants, and she dared not venture into any of them to ask for help.
Little as she was, she felt that she was safer on the streets than
inside those crowded, dirty quarters, where half-drunken negroes and
coarse, brawling white men quarrelled and swore in loud tones.
"It's the saloons that brought all the trouble to Molly and Dot,"
thought Elise, shrinking away from a group of noisy loafers, as they
straggled out of one. "They made their father mean and their mother die
and their grandmother go crazy and them lose each other. They're worse
than wild beasts, and I'm afraid of 'em. Maybe if I walk far enough I'll
come to a nice policeman, but I'm so tired now." Her lip quivered as she
whispered the words. "Oh, it seems as if I'd drop! And I'm so cold I am
nearly frozen."
As she walked on, across her way an electric arch suddenly shot its cold
white light into the street. Then another and another appeared, and as
far as she could see in any direction the streets were brilliantly
illuminated.
"Oh, it's night!" she sobbed. "I'll freeze to death before morning if
somebody doesn't come and find me."
Still she dragged on, growing more tired and frightened at every step,
until she could walk no longer. At the end of a long block she sat down
on a doorstep, and huddled up in one corner out of the wind. A dismal
picture came to her mind of the little match-seller in Hans Andersen's
fairy tales. The little match-seller who had frozen to death on
Christmas eve, on the threshold of somebody's happy home.
"She had a box of matches to warm herself with," sobbed Elise. "I
haven't even that. Oh, it's awful to be lost!"
With the tears trickling down her face she pictured to herself the grief
of the family in case they should never find her.
"Mamma will stand in the door and look out into the dark and call and
call, but her little Elise will never answer. And Allison and Kitty will
feel so bad that they won't want to play. They'll divide my things
between them to remember me by, and for a long time it'll make them cry
whenever they see my dolls and books, or my place at the table, or my
little wicker chair in the library, that I'll never sit in any more.
Ranald won't cry, 'cause he's a captain and he's brave. But he'll be
just as sorry. Oh, I wish Ranald wasn't out in the country! He could
find me if he was at home."
It was growing colder and colder on the doorstep. The child's teeth
chattered and her lips were blue. Still she sat there, until an
evil-looking man in the next house slouched out on to the street with a
lean spotted dog at his heels. Suddenly, for no reason that Elise could
discover, for she did not know that he was half drunk, he turned and
kicked the poor beast, cursing it violently. It shrank away, yelping
with pain. Seeing that the man was coming toward her, Elise sprang up in
terror, and with one frightened glance over her shoulder, darted around
the corner. Once out of his sight, she stopped running, but fear kept
her moving, and she walked wearily on and on. Every step carried her
farther away from home.
Through unwashed windows she could see the yellow lamplight streaming
over dingy rooms. Most of the sights were unattractive, but in one
house, cleaner than the rest, she saw a crowd of clamouring children
seated around a supper-table, all reaching their spoons and plates
toward a big steaming platter in the middle. It reminded her that she
was hungry herself, and she lingered a moment, looking wistfully in at
the cheerful scene. Then on she started again. Once she stumbled and
fell in the slush of a snowy crossing, but scrambled bravely up again,
walking on and on.
Meanwhile Allison, Kitty, and the Little Colonel, who had gone ahead in
the carriage with the boys, had stopped at Klein's for a box of candy,
and at a book store for a dissected game they had been discussing at the
luncheon. When they reached Mrs. Walton's, Malcolm sent the carriage
home, and both the boys went into the house with the girls.
"Tell mamma we'll come up-stairs in a few minutes and tell her all about
the carnival," said Allison to the maid who opened the door.
The five children went into the library with their candy and game, and
Mrs. Walton, busy with many letters, did not notice how Allison's few
minutes lengthened out, until it grew so dark that she had to lay down
her pen. As she did so, a carriage drove rapidly up to the house, Mrs.
Moore hurried up the steps, and there was a hasty dialogue at the door
between her and Allison.
Mrs. Walton did not hear the frightened cry, "Oh, mamma! Elise is lost!"
that went up from Allison. And impetuous Kitty, hearing no answer, and
feeling that she must summon help in some way, began beating madly on
the bells of Luzon, as if she were trying to call out the whole fire
department.
As the clangour startled her, Mrs. Walton's first thought was that the
house must be on fire, and she hurried out to the head of the stairs and
looked over the bannister. Kitty was still beating on the bells with an
umbrella that she had snatched from the rack.
"Stop, Kitty!" she called. "Tell me what is the matter?"
"Elise is lost!" repeated Allison, and Mrs. Walton, with a white face,
hurried down to hear Mrs. Moore's explanation.
She had been detained some time in the tenement-house, listening to the
tale of woe that the sick baby's mother poured out to her; but she had
felt no uneasiness about Elise, knowing that the foot-stove in the
carriage would keep her warm and comfortable. When she came down, to her
utter amazement the carriage door stood open, and the child was gone.
The sleepy coachman, who roused himself from his cold doze when he heard
her coming, was as surprised as she, and declared he had not heard the
carriage door open or the child slip out. He had no idea what could have
become of her. They made inquiries of people all along the block, but
nobody had seen a child answering to the description of Elise. Then Mrs.
Moore thought that the child must have grown tired of waiting, and for
some reason had started to walk home. She had driven out to the house
with the hope that she might find her there, or might overtake her on
the way.
Mrs. Walton acted quickly. "Telephone to your father, Malcolm," she
cried, "and to the police station. Oh, my poor baby, out in the cold
streets with night coming on. I must look for her without losing a
minute."
She started up the stairs to call Milly to help her dress for the
search. "Get my furs," she called, "and my heaviest coat. It will be a
cold night." But Malcolm stopped her.
"Don't go, Aunt Mary," he cried. "Papa is on his way here now, and we
boys will go in your place. The policemen are being notified all over
the city, and it will do more good for you to stay here ready to answer
any questions that may come."
"I'll wait until Mr. MacIntyre comes," said Mrs. Moore, "so that I can
take him straight back to that tenement district if he thinks best to
go."
While they were still standing, an anxious little group in the hall, Mr.
MacIntyre came in, and after a hurried consultation he and Mrs. Moore
drove in one direction, and the boys started in another.
None of them like to remember the three hours that followed. The news
spread like wild-fire, and the telephone bell rang constantly with
friendly messages. Each time they hoped that some one of the searching
party was calling them up, but each time they were disappointed. At
intervals one of the girls stole to the front door to look out into the
night and listen. Every voice made them start, every footstep. Every
roll of carriage wheels along the avenue made them hold their breath in
suspense until it had passed.
Presently, Kitty, leaving her mother at the telephone, and Allison and
Lloyd on the stairs, strolled down to the kitchen, where Milly and the
cook were talking about Charlie Ross and all the children they had ever
heard of who had mysteriously disappeared from home.
"An' it's just the loikes av her they'd be afther taking," said the
cook, wiping her eyes. "She was that pretty wid her long currls, an'
eyes shparklin' loike black dimonts, an' her swate little mouth wid its
smile fit for a cherub. I moind the very last toime I saw her. Only this
afthernoon she coom down here to show me her foine clothes she was
wearin' to the parrty. There's no doubt in me moind but that somebody's
stolen her on account av them same illigent clothes. Mebbe they think
there'll be a big reward offered. Bless the two little pink shoes av
her! It'll be a sorry day for this house if they niver coom walking into
it again."
Kitty stole out of the kitchen cold with this new horror, and went back
to whisper it to Allison and Lloyd, as they sat on the stairs ready to
spring forward at the first sound of coming footsteps.
"Now if it had been Allison who was lost," thought Mrs. Walton, "she
could have found her way home without any difficulty. She is such a
sensible, womanly child, always to be trusted for doing the right thing
in the right place. Kitty might not act so wisely, but she would bang
ahead and come out all right in the end. She is the kind one might
expect to see come home in almost any style, from a coal cart to a
triumphal car. But my baby Elise is so little and so timid, my heart
aches for her. She will be so sorely frightened."
Dinner was put on the table and carried out again. Nobody could eat, and
as the moments dragged by the girls still sat on the stairs, and the
anxious mother sprang to the telephone at every tinkle of the bell,
praying for a hopeful message from the police-station.
Elise, stumbling on down strange streets, exhausted, hungry, and cold,
stopped on a street corner and looked around her. She had strayed down
among the warehouses now, and the little feet, numb with cold, were too
tired to go much farther. Down here few people were passing. A big
tobacco warehouse, looming up tall and dark above her, made her feel so
tiny and lost, that the last bit of her courage ebbed away, and she
began to sob aloud.
Out of the shadow just ahead a man was coming toward her. So tall and
broad-shouldered he looked, that he seemed a giant to her terrified
eyes. She put her little gloved hands over her eyes to shut out the
sight, and crouched close against the wall, her baby heart fluttering
like a frightened bird's.
On he came, with slow, heavy tread, his footsteps ringing through the
silent street with a strange metallic echo. As he passed out from the
black shadow of the warehouse, into the light of the street-crossing,
Elise peeped between her fingers again, and then smiled through her
tears. It was a big, burly policeman.
The next instant she was running toward him, calling, "Oh, Mister
Policeman, I'm lost! _Please_ take me home!"
It was a safe haven she had run into. The policeman had just come from
home to go on his beat, and in a little cottage not many blocks away
were three children who were still in his thoughts. They had followed
him to the door to swarm over him and kiss him, and had called after him
down the snowy street, "Good night, daddy!" The childish voices were
still ringing in his ears.
As tenderly as if she had been one of his own, he lifted Elise in his
strong, fatherly arms, wiped her tear-stained face, and began to
question her. She told him her name, but in her confusion could not
remember the name of the street where she lived.
It was the work of only a moment to carry her into a drug-store around
the corner, ring up headquarters, and report his discovery, and it was
only a few moments after that until they were on an electric car,
homeward bound.
Elise was not the first lost child the big, tender-hearted policeman had
taken home, but he had never had such a royal welcome as the one that
awaited him in the hall when the joyful family met him.
He glanced around him curiously, seeing on every side the relics of
victorious battle-fields, the grim weapons of warfare that stood as mute
witnesses of a brave soldier's life. Beyond in the library he caught a
glimpse of the portrait, the flag, and the sword, and then suddenly
realised in whose presence he stood.
"Don't mention it, madam," he said, awkwardly, as the grateful mother
tried to express her thanks. "Don't you know that this is about the
proudest moment of my life? To know that it was _his_ little one I
found, and brought back with her arms around my neck! I read everything
there was about him in the papers (he nodded toward the portrait), and I
always did say he was exactly my idea of a hero. But I never thought
the day would come when I'd stand in his house and see all the things he
touched and looked at."
"That's the way everybody seems to feel about the general," thought the
Little Colonel, glancing from the blue-coated policeman to the portrait.
"It's grand to be a hero."
Elise was too tired and sleepy to talk about her adventures that night,
and asked to be put to bed as soon as she had had the bowl of oyster
soup that was being kept hot for her. When the cook brought it in,
loudly blessing all the saints in the calendar that the child had been
found, all the family remembered that they were hungry and the long
delayed dinner was brought on again.
Elise fell asleep at the table before she finished the soup, but she
opened her drowsy eyes as they were carrying her away to bed to say,
"You all won't feel very bad, will you, if I give you just a teenty
weenty Christmas present this year? 'Cause I want to save most of my
money to buy something nice for that big policeman that brought me home.
Being found is the very best thing in all the world, and I would have
been lost yet, if it hadn't been for him."
CHAPTER XIV.
LLOYD MAKES A DISCOVERY.
"IT _was_ Molly's little lost sister, I'm sure of it!" insisted Elise
next morning, stopping in the middle of her dressing to argue the matter
with Lloyd and Allison. "Of course I couldn't see her face, for she had
her apron up over it, crying. But neither can you see the little girl's
face in the picture, Allison Walton, and the rest of her was exactly
like the picture. See?"
She ran across the room for the magazine that had been brought up from
the library on the night of Thanksgiving, and which still lay open on
the table.
"They have the same thin little arms and ragged clothes and everything.
Oh, I am sure it was Dot that I ran after, and now that I know how awful
it is to be lost, I'd do anything to find her. I dreamed about her last
night, and I can't think about anybody else."
So positive was she, that Lloyd could hardly wait for ten o'clock to
come, the hour that her mother had promised to call for her. They were
to begin their Christmas shopping that morning, for the calendar showed
them that whatever gifts they intended sending Betty and Eugenia must
soon be started on their way, in order to reach them in time. Lloyd was
so excited over the prospect of finding Dot that she wanted to postpone
the shopping, and start at once for the tenement district where Elise
had wandered away from her carriage.
"I know that Betty and Eugenia would rather do without any Christmas
gifts," she declared almost tearfully, "than miss this chance of finding
her. Betty used to talk about it all the time, and if we don't go this
morning, something may happen that we may never find her."
"But be reasonable, dear," answered Mrs. Sherman. "It would be like
hunting for a needle in a hay-stack. You have such a slight clue, Lloyd.
That picture is _not_ a picture of Molly's sister. It is only one that
reminded Molly of her, and there are thousands of poor little waifs in
the world that look like that. I will see the Humane Society about her,
and the teachers of the free kindergarten who work in that district, and
we will report the case to the police. It would be useless for us to go
wandering aimlessly around, up one flight of dirty stairs and down
another."
Lloyd had to be content with that, but all the time she was going around
among the shops, trying to choose gifts appropriate to send across the
sea, she kept thinking of Molly as she had seen her that rainy day,
lying face downward on her cot and sobbing out her misery in the little
attic room of the Cuckoo's Nest.
They went back to Mrs. Walton's for lunch, where Elise was still talking
of her adventure of the night before.
"I wish Dot had some of this good plum-pudding," she remarked. "She
looked so cold and hungry. Maybe she was crying because she didn't have
anything to eat."
Mrs. Walton shook her head in perplexity. "Everything leads straight
back to that subject," she exclaimed. "The child has talked of nothing
else all morning. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you, Lloyd. Mrs. Moore
called while you were out this morning, and promised Elise she would
take her through all those tenements next week. She is very charitable,
and has helped so many poor people in that part of the city that they
will do anything for her. She thinks that there really may be some
possibility of finding the child."
Lloyd's face shone as if she had come into the possession of a fortune.
She was sure now that Dot would be found in time to keep Christmas with
them, and she could scarcely wait until she reached home to write to
Betty about the search that was to be made.
She went back to her Aunt Jane's that afternoon to wait until train
time, much to the disappointment of Allison and Kitty, who were
arranging some tableaux.
"You'll write to me if they find out anything about Dot, won't you?" she
asked Allison at parting.
"Yes, the very next breath," answered Allison. So the Little Colonel
went away quite hopeful, and for days she haunted the post-office.
Before school, after school, at recess, sometimes the last thing before
dark, she made a pilgrimage to the post-office, to stand on tiptoe and
see if anything was in their box. But the days went by, and the
long-looked-for letter never came. There were papers and magazines,
thick letters from Joyce, and thin foreign-stamped ones from Betty and
Eugenia, but none that told of a successful search for Dot.
Two weeks before Christmas there came a letter from Allison, inviting
her to spend the following Saturday in town. On the opposite page her
mother had pencilled a postscript almost as long as the letter itself,
saying: "Do come in with Lloyd. Sister Elise usually makes a merry
Christmas for the little ones at the Children's Hospital, but this year
she will be so busy with other things that she has asked us to take her
place. Malcolm and Keith have asked for an unusually big celebration at
Fairchance this Christmas, and she will have her hands full trying to
carry out all their plans.
"I have promised to take her place here, and we have planned a tiny
individual Christmas tree for each child in the hospital. I am going to
take the girls down there Saturday and let them talk to the children,
and find out, as far as possible, what gift would make each one happy.
Be sure to come in with Lloyd. Even if we have failed in our efforts to
find little Dot, we may have a hand in making twenty other little souls
supremely happy on Christmas Day. Come on the early train, and we will
go to the hospital first, and spend the rest of the day in shopping."
Luckily it was late in the week when the letter arrived, or Lloyd would
have had a hard time waiting for Saturday. So impatient was she for the
holiday to come that she began to count the hours and then even the
minutes.
"Two whole days and nights!" she exclaimed. "That makes forty-eight
hours, and there's sixty minutes in an hour, and sixty seconds in a
minute. That makes--let me see." It was too big a sum to do in her head,
so she ran for pencil and paper and began multiplying carefully, putting
down the amount in neat little figures.
"One hundred and seventy-two thousand eight hundred seconds," she
announced, finally. "What a terrible lot. The clock has to tick that
many times before I can go."
"But remember, part of that time you will be asleep," suggested Papa
Jack. "Over fifty thousand of these seconds will be ticked off when you
know nothing about it."
That was some comfort, and the Little Colonel, putting on her warmest
winter wrappings, went out to make some of the other seconds go by
unnoticed, by rolling up snowballs for a huge snow-man on the lawn.
It had been a dull week in the hospital. Gray skies and falling snow is
a dreary outlook for children who can do nothing but lie in their narrow
beds and look wearily out of the windows. This Saturday morning the
nurses had given the little invalids their baths and breakfasts, the
doctors had made their rounds, and in each ward were restless little
bodies who longed to be amused.
Those who were well enough to be propped up in bed fingered the games
and pictures that had entertained them before; but a dozen pairs of eyes
in search of some new interest turned expectantly toward the door every
time it opened. Suddenly a stir went through the ward where the
convalescents lay, and the wintry morning seemed to blossom into
June-time.
Four little girls, each with her arms full of great red roses, with
leafy stems so long that it seemed the whole bush must have been cut
down with them, passed down the room, leaving one at each pillow.
"My Aunt Elise sent them," said the smallest child, pausing at the first
white bed. "She asked us to bring them 'cause she couldn't come herself.
They're American Beauties and they always make me think of my Aunt
Elise."
"She must be a dandy, then," was the response of Micky O'Brady, on whom
she bestowed one, taking it up awkwardly in his left hand. His right one
was still in a sling, and one leg had just been taken out of a plaster
cast, for he had been run over by a heavy truck, and narrowly escaped
being made a cripple for life. Elise stopped to question him about his
accident, and found that despite his crippled leg a pair of skates was
what he wished for above all things. While she was chattering away to
him like a little magpie, Kitty and Allison went on down the room with
their roses. It was not the first time they had been there, and they
knew some of the children by name. But it was all new to Lloyd. In the
next room the sight of the white little faces, some of them drawn with
pain, almost brought the tears to her eyes.
There were only six beds in this ward, and at the last one Lloyd laid a
rose down very softly, because in that bed the little invalid lay on one
side as if she were asleep. But as the perfume of the great American
Beauty reached her, she opened her eyes and smiled weakly. Lloyd was so
startled that she dropped the rest of the roses to the floor and clasped
both hands around the bedpost. For the eyes that smiled up at her, keen
and gray with their curly black lashes, might have been Molly's own,
they were so like hers. The black hair brushed back from the white face
waved over the left temple exactly as Molly's did. There were the same
straight black eyebrows and the familiar droop of the pretty little
mouth, and it seemed to Lloyd, as she stared at her with a fascinated
gaze, that it was Molly herself who lay there white and wan. Only a much
smaller Molly, with a sad, hopeless little face, as if the battle with
life had proved too hard, and she was slowly giving it up.
[Illustration: "'OH, _WHAT_ IS YOUR NAME?'"]
The child, still smiling, weakly raised her bony little hand to lift the
rose from the pillow, and even the gesture with which she laid it
against her cheek was familiar.
"Oh, _what_ is your name?" cried Lloyd, forgetting that she had been
told not to talk in that room.
"The people I lived with last called me Muggins," said the child,
faintly, "but a long time ago it used to be Dot."
As she spoke she turned her head so that both sides of her face were
visible, and Lloyd saw that across the right eyebrow was a thin white
scar.
"Oh, I knew it!" cried Lloyd, under her breath. "I knew it the minute I
looked at you!" Then to the child's astonishment, without waiting to
pick up the fallen roses, she ran breathlessly into the hall.
"Mothah! Mrs. Walton!" she cried, breaking into their conversation with
one of the nurses. "Come quick, I've found her! It's really, truly
Dot! She says that is her name, and she looks exactly like Molly. Oh,
do come and see her!"
She wanted to rush back to the child with the news that she knew her
sister Molly and that they should soon be together, but the nurse said
it would excite her too much if it were really so. Then she wanted to
send a telegram to Molly and a cable to Betty saying that Dot had been
found, but nobody except herself was sure that this little Dot was
Molly's sister.
"We must be absolutely sure of that first," said Mrs. Sherman, who saw
the same strong resemblance to Molly that had startled the Little
Colonel, but who knew how often such resemblances exist between entire
strangers. "Think how cruel it would be to raise any false hopes in
either one. Think how sure Elise was that the child she followed was
Molly's sister. You both couldn't be right, for this one was brought to
the hospital before Elise was lost."
The nurse could tell very little. The child had been picked up on the
street so ill that she was delirious, and all their investigating had
proved little beyond the fact that she had been deserted by her drunken
father. Her illness was evidently caused by lack of proper food and
clothing. Nobody knew her by any other name than Muggins.
While they were still discussing the matter in the hall, Allison had a
bright idea. "Why couldn't you telephone for Ranald to bring his camera
and take a picture of her and send that to Molly. If she says it is Dot
that will settle it."
The nurse thought that would be a sensible thing to do, but they had to
wait until one of the doctors was consulted. As soon as he gave his
permission, they began to make arrangements. Ranald answered his
mother's summons promptly, and it was not long before he was setting up
his tripod in the room where the child lay.
A pleased smile came over the child's face when she discovered what was
to be done. "Put in all the things that have made me so happy while I
have been in the hospital," she said to the nurse, "so that when I leave
here I can have the picture of them to look at."
So they laid a big wax doll in her arms, that had been her constant
companion, and around her on the counterpane they spread the games and
pictures she had played with before she grew so weak. On her pillow was
the queen-rose, and close beside the bed they wheeled the little table
that held a plate of white grapes and oranges. Just as Ranald was ready
to take the picture, the matron came in with a plate of ice-cream. "Oh,
put that in, too," cried Muggins "Miss Hale sends it every day, and it's
one of the happiest things to remember about the hospital. It is like
heaven, isn't it?" she exclaimed, glancing around at the luxuries she
had never known until she came to the hospital, and that smile was on
her face when Ranald took the picture.
"I'll develop it as soon as I get home, and print one for you this
afternoon," he promised. "You shall have one to-morrow."
"Will you print me one, too?" inquired the Little Colonel, anxiously,
when they had bidden Muggins good-bye, and were going through the hall.
"I want one to send to Betty and Eugenia, and one to send to Joyce, and
one to keep."
"I'll print a dozen next week if you want them," promised Ranald, "but
the first one must be for that little Dot or Muggins, or whatever you
call her, and the next one for Molly."
It was Mrs. Sherman who wrote the letter that carried the picture to
Molly. By the same mail there went a note to Mrs. Appleton, saying that
in case Molly recognised it as her sister, they would send for her to
come and spend Christmas with her in the hospital, for the nurse had
said it would probably be the child's last Christmas, and they wanted
to do all they could to make it a happy one.
In a few days the answer came. Molly was almost wild with joy, and would
start as soon as the promised railroad ticket reached her. The
photograph of little Dot was scarcely out of her hands, Mrs. Appleton
said. She propped it up in front of her while she washed the dishes. It
lay in her lap when she was at the table, and at night she slept with it
under her pillow to bring her happy dreams.
The day that Mrs. Appleton's letter came, Allison went up to her
mother's room and stood beside her desk waiting for her pen to come to
the end of a page. "Mamma," she said, as Mrs. Walton finally looked up,
"I've thought of such a nice plan. Have you time to listen?"
Mrs. Walton smiled up at the thoughtful face of her eldest daughter.
"You should have been named Pansy, my dear. _Pensee_ is for thought, you
know, and I'm glad to say you are always having thoughts of some
sensible way to help other people. I'm very busy, but I am sure your
plan is a good one, so I'll let the letters wait for awhile."
She leaned back in her chair, and Allison, dropping down on the rug at
her feet, began eagerly. "Out at the hospital, mamma, there is a little
empty room at the end of a side hall. It is a dear little room with a
fireplace and a sunny south window. It has never been furnished because
they haven't enough money. I asked one of the nurses about it, and she
said they often need it for cases like Dot. It would be so much
pleasanter to have her away from all the noise. And I've been thinking
if it could be fixed up for Dot to spend Christmas in, how much nicer it
would be for her and Molly both. It wouldn't cost very much to furnish
it, just enough to get the little white bedroom set and the sheets and
towels and things. Anyhow, it wouldn't be much more than you've often
spent on my Christmas presents. And I wanted to know if you wouldn't let
me do that this year instead of your giving me a Christmas present.
Please, mamma, I've set my heart on it. If I got books they'd soon be
read, and jewelry or games I'd get tired of after awhile, and things to
wear, no matter how pretty, would be worn out soon. But this is
something that would last for years. I could think every day that some
poor little soul who has never known anything but to be sick or sad was
enjoying my pretty room."
"That is as beautiful a _pensee_ as ever blossomed in any heart-garden,
I am sure," said Mrs. Walton, softly, smoothing the curly head resting
against her knee, "and mother is glad that her little girl's plans are
such sweet unselfish ones. We'll go this very afternoon and talk to the
matron about it."
Aladdin's lamp is not the only thing that can suddenly bring wonderful
things to pass. There is a modern magic of telephones and electric cars,
and the great Genii of sympathy and good-will are all-powerful when once
unbottled. So a few hours wrought wonderful changes in the empty little
room, and next morning Allison stood in the centre of it looking around
her with delighted eyes.
Everything was as white and fresh as a snowdrop, from the little bed to
the dainty dressing-table beside the window. A soft firelight shone on
the white-tiled hearth of the open fireplace. The morning sun streamed
in through the wide south window, where a pot of pink hyacinths swung
its rosy bells, and Allison's Japanese canary, Nagasaki, twittered in
its gilded cage. She had brought it all the way from Japan.
"Of course they won't want it in the room all the time," she said, "but
there will be days when the children will love to have it brought in a
little while to sing to them."
"If you give up Nagasaki then I'll give my globe of goldfish," said
Kitty, anxious to do her part toward making a happy time for little Dot.
"Afterward, if the child who stays in that room is too sick to enjoy
it, it can go into the convalescent ward."
It was into this room that Molly came, bringing her picture of the Good
Shepherd. She had carried it in her arms all the way, frequently taking
it out of its brown paper wrapping, for down in one corner of the frame
she had fastened the photograph of Dot.
All that morning on the train, the refrain that had gone through her
happy heart as she looked at the picture was, "Oh, she's been happy for
a month! She's got grapes and oranges, and a doll, and roses in the
picture, and _ice-cream_! And there's lace on her nightgown, and she is
_smiling_."
"Shall we name the room for you, Miss Allison?" asked the nurse, when
the picture of the Good Shepherd was hung over the mantel, and Dot lay
looking up at it with tired eyes, her little hand clasped in Molly's,
and a satisfied smile on her face.
"No," whispered Allison, her glance following the gaze of the child's
eyes. "Call it _The Fold of the Good Shepherd_. She looks like a poor
little lost lamb that had just found its way home."
"I wish all the poor little stray lambs might find as warm a shelter,"
answered the nurse, in an undertone, "and I hope, my dear, that all your
Christmases will be as happy as the one you are making for her."
CHAPTER XV.
A HAPPY CHRISTMAS.
THERE was a fortnight's vacation at Christmas time. Lloyd spent nearly
all the week before in town, and not once in all that time did it occur
to her to wonder what she might find in her own stocking. She was too
busy helping get the little trees ready for the children in the
hospital.
There were twenty of them, each one complete, with starry tapers and
glittering ornaments, with red-cheeked candy apples, and sugar animals
hung by the neck; with tiny tarlatan stockings of bonbons, with festoons
of snowy popcorn, and all that goes to make up the Christmas trees that
are the dearest memories of childhood. And somewhere, hidden among the
branches of each one, or lying at its base, was the especial book or toy
or game that its owner had been known to long for.
"I believe that Molly and Dot would rather have theirs together," said
Allison. "As they are in a room by themselves we can give them as large
a one as we please, and the others will never know it."
So it was a good-sized tree that was set aside for "The Fold." The very
prettiest of the ornaments were put with it; the brightest coloured
candles, and at the top was fastened a glittering Christmas angel and a
shining Christmas star.
It was not till the day before Christmas that they began to think of
their own affairs. Then Kitty brought out four stockings, which the
Little Colonel examined with interest. They were long and wide, with
tiny sleigh-bells on the top, the heels, and the toes, that jingled
musically at the slightest movement. Two were pink and two were blue.
What charmed Lloyd the most were the fascinating pictures printed on
them. They told the whole story of Christmas.
Holly and mistletoe and Christmas trees were on one side, down which ran
a road where pranced the reindeer with the magic sleigh, driven by jolly
old Santa Claus himself. On the other side of the stocking was the
picture of the fireplace and a row of stockings hanging from the mantel.
In a cradle near by lay a baby asleep. Down on the toe was printed in
fancy letters:
"Hang up the baby's stocking,
Be sure and don't forget.
The dear little dimpled darling
Has never seen Christmas yet."
"We hang them up every year," explained Kitty. "Ranald and all of us. It
wouldn't seem like Christmas if we used any other kind. We had them in
Washington and at every army post we've lived at, and they've been
around the world with us. If they could talk they could tell of more
good times than any other stockings in the world."
"Um! I just _love_ mine!" cried Elise, catching hers up with a caressing
squeeze, and then swinging it around her head until every little bell
was set a-jingling musically. A little while later she said, with a
serious face, "I don't s'pose Molly and Dot ever saw a beautiful picture
stocking like this. Do you? Gifts seem so much nicer when they come out
of it than out of the common kind that I believe I'll lend them mine
this year. I know what it is to be lost, you know. I'm so glad that I
was found that I'd like to do something to show how thankful I am about
it."
"But how will Santa Claus know it's to be filled for them?" asked Kitty.
"He has always filled it for you, and he might put your things in it,
and they'd get them."
"I could pin a note on it saying it was mine, but to please put their
things in it this one time," said Elise, with a troubled look, as she
went over to the window to consider the matter by herself.
A little while later she carried her stocking to her mother with this
note pinned to it:
"DEAR SANTA CLAUS:--This is my stocking. I s'pose
you'll recognise it, as I've carried it around the
world with me, and you have put lots of pretty things
in it for me every year since I was born. But this
year please put Molly's and Dot's presents in it, and
I shall be a million times obliged to you.
"Your loving little friend,
"ELISE WALTON."
"But what will you do, little one?" asked Mrs. Walton.
"Hang up one of my blue silk stockings," said Elise, promptly, as she
danced around the room, jingling the bells on heel and toe in time to a
gay little tune of her own.
Lloyd would not have missed taking part in the Christmas celebration at
the hospital for anything, yet she could not give up her usual custom of
hanging her stocking beside the old fireplace at Locust. So, in order to
give her both pleasures, it was finally decided that the trees should
be taken to the hospital at dusk on Christmas eve, and she could go home
afterward on the nine o'clock train.
Malcolm and Keith were having a great celebration out at Fairchance for
Jonesy and all who had been gathered into the home since its founding.
Miss Allison was helping them, and could not go into town, much to the
disappointment of the girls.
"I wish that auntie was twins," said Kitty, mournfully. "Then she could
be in both places at once. The boys are always wanting her whenever we
do."
"Your auntie helped with the celebration last year at the hospital,
Kitty-cat," said her mother, "so it is only fair that they should have
her in the country this year."
"But Malcolm and Keith were with her both times," persisted Kitty,
jealously. "I think that it is just too bad that she isn't twins."
Rob and Ranald went with the girls to help distribute the trees. It
seemed as if a tiny forest had been carried out of fairyland and set in
long, glittering rows down the sides of the wards. One twinkled and
bloomed beside each little white bed. The children did not stay long in
the wards. They were more interested in the little room at the end of
the hall,--Allison's room, that was known all over the building now as
"The Fold of the Good Shepherd." The room where two little sisters lost
from each other so long, but brought together at last, lived through the
happy hours, hand in hand.
Molly's face had lost every trace of its old sullen pout, and fairly
shone with contentment as she sat by Dot's bed, smoothing her pillow,
feeding her from time to time as the nurse directed, and singing softly
when the tired eyes drooped wearily to sleep.
"She would make a fine nurse," said the matron to Mrs. Walton. "She is
strong and patient, and seems to have so much sense about what to do for
a sick person. Usually we wouldn't think of letting anybody come in as
she is doing, but she minds the nurse's slightest nod, and seems to be
doing Dot more good than medicine."
It had cost Elise a pang to give up her cherished stocking even as a
loan, but she was more than repaid by the pleasure it gave the child,
who had known no Christmas story and none of its joy since she had been
large enough to remember.
They went back to their homes as soon afterward as possible, Lloyd to
hang up her stocking at Locust, and the children to put theirs by the
library fire One plain little blue one hung among the gay pictured
ones, no mistletoe upon it, no holly, no jingling bells, no printed
rhymes; but as Mrs. Walton gathered Elise's little white gowned form in
her arms, she repeated something that made the child look up
wonderingly.
"Oh, mamma!" she cried. "Does it mean that the little Christ-child
counts it just the same--my lending the stocking to Dot and Molly--as if
I had loaned it to him?"
"Just the same, little one."
"And he is glad?" She asked the question in an awed whisper.
"I am sure he is; far gladder than they."
Somehow the thought that she had really brought joy to the Christ-child
made more music in her heart that Christmas eve than all the tinkling of
the tiny Christmas bells.
It would take too long to tell of all the good times that filled the
happy holiday. At Fairchance it was a sight worth travelling miles to
see,--those merry little lads, and the two little knights who had gone
so far in their trying to "right the wrong and follow the king." At
Locust Lloyd spent a happy day in a bewilderment of gifts, for besides
all that she found in her overflowing stocking were the packages from
Joyce and Eugenia and Betty. There was a new saddle for Tarbaby from
her grandfather, and a silver collar from Rob for his frisky namesake,
with "Bob" engraved on the clasp. All day there were woolly little heads
popping into the hall to say "Chris'mus gif, Miss Lloyd." And then white
eye-balls would shine and snowy teeth gleam as she handed out the candy
and nuts and oranges reserved for such calls. Every old black mammy or
uncle who had ever worked on the place, every little pickaninny who
could find the slightest claim, visited the great house at some time
during the day for a share of its holiday cheer.
In the Walton household there was a chattering in the library long
before sunrise, for Kitty, impatient to see what was in her stocking,
had stolen down when the clock struck five, and the other girls had
followed in her wake. "I got fourteen presents," said Kitty, chattering
back to bed in the gray dawn, after a blissful examination of her
stocking.
"So did I," said Elise. "Everything in the world that I wanted, and lots
of things I'd never dreamed of getting, besides. Auntie and Aunt Elise
always think of such lovely things."
Allison's gifts did not make such a brave showing when spread out with
the others, but she thought of the little white room at the hospital
with a warm glow in her heart that was worth more than all the gifts
that money could buy. Down in the toe of her stocking she found a box
from her Aunt Allison, and took it back to bed with her to open. Inside
the jeweller's cotton was a little enamelled pansy of royal purple and
gold, and in the centre sparkled a tiny diamond like a drop of dew.
"Mamma must have told her," thought Allison, as she read the greeting
written on the card with it. "For my dear little namesake. May your
whole lifetime blossom with such beautiful thoughts for others as has
made this Christmas day a joy."
* * * * *
Out at the hospital, as the day went by, Dot sat with her hand in
Molly's, looking from time to time with eyes that never lost their
expression of content, at the angel and the star that crowned the tree.
She grew weaker and weaker as the hours passed, but, opening her eyes
now and then, she smiled at Molly, and squeezed her hand, and looked
again from the gay stocking hanging on the foot of her bed to the
shining angel atop of the tree.
The Japanese canary twittered in his cage; the goldfish flashed around
and around in their sunny globe; the deep red roses on the table bloomed
as if it were June-time. Outside there was snow and ice and winter
winds. Inside it was all cheer and comfort and peace that happy
Christmas Day.
Mrs. Walton and the girls came down again in the twilight. Dot was too
weak to say much, but she asked Mrs. Walton to sing, and wanted the
tapers lighted again on the tree. Thoughtful Allison had brought fresh
ones with her, which she soon fastened in place. And so, presently, with
only the soft firelight in the room, and the starlight of the little
Christmas candles, Mrs. Walton began an old tune that she loved. Her
beautiful voice had sung it in many a hospital, in the cheerless tents
of many a camp. Many a brave soldier, dying thousands of miles away from
home, had been soothed and comforted by it. It was "My Ain Countrie" she
sang. Not the sweet old Scotch words, with the breath of the moors and
the scent of the heather in them, that she loved. She changed them so
that the child could understand. Dot opened her eyes and looked up at
the picture of the Good Shepherd, hanging over the mantel, as she sang:
"'For he gathers in his bosom all the helpless lambs like me,
And he takes them where he's going, to my own country.'"
There was silence for a moment, and Dot asked suddenly, "Will everything
there be as lovely as it is here in the hospital?" When Mrs. Walton
nodded yes, she added, with a long, fluttering sigh, "Oh, I've been so
happy here. I don't see how heaven could be any nicer. Sing some more,
please."
[Illustration: "THE LITTLE HAND HELD HERS."]
She fell asleep a little later to the soothing refrain of an old
lullaby, and never knew when her guests slipped out, with a whispered
good night to Molly.
An hour went by. The Christmas tapers burned lower and lower, and
finally went out, one by one, till there was left only the one above the
angel and the star. The fire flickered on the hearth, but Molly did not
rise to replenish it, for the little hand held hers, and she did not
want to waken such sweet sleep. The nurse looked in at the door once or
twice, and slipped out again. Nagasaki, curled up like a feather ball,
with his head under his wing, stirred once, with a sleepy twitter, but
no other sound broke the stillness of the little room.
Again the door opened softly, and the doctor stepped in on his round of
evening visits. He laid his finger on the little one's pulse a moment,
and then turned away. The last taper on the tree, that lit the star,
glowing above the Christmas angel, gave a final flicker and went out.
The doctor, stepping into the hall, met one of the nurses. "You'll
have to tell her sister," he said. "She is still holding the little
one's hand, thinking that she is asleep. But her life went out with the
last of the Christmas candles."
* * * * *
It was not until next day that the children heard what had happened the
evening before. The matron had telephoned immediately to Mrs. Walton,
but she did not tell the children, or send word to Locust, until next
morning. She did not want a single shadow to rest on their glad
Christmas Day.
"I do not believe in taking children to funerals," she said to her
sister Elise, "but death seems so beautiful in this instance that I want
them to see it."
The reception-room at the hospital had been fitted up like a chapel. An
altar, draped in white, was covered with flowers, and before it stood
the white casket where Dot's frail little body was tenderly tucked away
for its last sleep.
All of the children were there; the two little knights, with a sweet
seriousness in their handsome faces, wearing in their buttonholes Aunt
Allison's badge, the pin that was to remind them that they were trying
to wear, also, "the white flower of a blameless life."
The little captain stood beside them, thinking, as he looked at the
little body the saloons had killed (for nothing but the cruelty and
neglect of a drunken father had caused Dot's illness and death), that
there were battles to fight for his country at home, as well as those on
foreign fields. The manly little shoulders squared themselves with a
grave resolution to wear whatever duty the future might lay upon them,
in warfare against evil, as worthily as he had worn the epaulets in
far-away Luzon.
Allison and Kitty and Elise were there, and the Little Colonel, all
strongly moved by the unusual scene. It was a very short and simple
service. The late afternoon sun shone in aslant through the western
window, like a wide bar of gold. The minister read the parable of the
ninety and nine, and repeated the burial service. Then there was a
prayer, and Miss Allison, seating herself at the organ, touched the keys
in soft chords for Mrs. Walton to sing. She sung the lullaby that Dot
had asked for the night before; the cradle-song of hundreds of happy
home-sheltered children:
"'Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me,
Bless thy little lamb to-night,
Through the darkness be thou near me,
Keep me safe till morning light.
"'Let my sins be all forgiven,
Bless the friends I love so well,
Take me when I die to heaven,
Happy there with thee to dwell.'"
When it was all over they filed softly out into the corridor, feeling
that they had only said good night to little Dot, and that it was good
that one so tired and worn should find such deep and restful sleep. It
was not at all like what they had imagined dying to be.
"Even Molly didn't cry," said Kitty, wonderingly, as they went home
together in the twilight.
"No," said Mrs. Walton, "she said to me that she had done all her crying
in those dreadful years when they were separated. She said, 'Oh, Mrs.
Walton, now that I know that she's comfortable and happy, I can't feel
so bad about her as I used to. She's so safe, now. No matter what
happens, the saloons can't hurt her, now. There'll be no more hungry
days, no more beatings, and it will always be such a comfort to me to
think she had such a good time in the hospital. For six weeks she had
plenty to eat, and everybody was good to her. Every time I look at her
picture, I think of that. She had white grapes and roses even in the
winter-time, and she had _ice-cream_! All she wanted. And I made up my
mind this morning that when I'm old enough I am going to be a trained
nurse and help take care of poor little children the way she was taken
care of here. Miss Agnes says she can find room for me right away, for
there's all sorts of things that I can do, and I'd love to do it for my
poor little Dot's sake.'"
"I must write that to Betty," thought the Little Colonel. "That is the
most beautiful way of all to build a Road of the Loving Heart."
She thought of it all the way home, as the train sped on through the
wintry fields, between snow-covered fences. It was dark when the
brakeman called "Lloydsboro Valley," but Walker was waiting with the
carriage, and they were soon driving in at the great entrance gate.
"Oh, mothah," said the Little Colonel, nestling closer under the warm
carriage robes. "See how the stars shine through the locust-trees, and
how the light streams out from the house, down the avenue to meet us!
Somehow, no mattah how happy the holidays are, it always seems so good
to get home."
CHAPTER XVI.
A PEEP INTO THE FUTURE.
"AND what happened next?"
Ah, that I cannot tell you, for the rest of the story is yet to be
lived. Only the swineherd's magic caldron can give you a glimpse into
the future.
Gather around it, all you curious little princes and princesses, and
thrust your fingers into the steam as the water bubbles and the bells
begin again. I cannot tell what it will show you. Glimpses of college
life, perhaps, and gay vacation times, as Rob and the captain and the
two little knights leave their boyhood days behind them and grow up into
manly young fellows, ready to take the places waiting for them in the
world.
Perhaps there will be college days and gay vacation times for the girls,
too, with white commencement gowns and diplomas and June roses. And away
off in the distance there may be the sound of wedding bells ringing for
them all, but if it is too far for the kettle to catch the echo of
their chiming, surely _I_ have no right to tell.
But no matter what the kettle may show, or what it fails to disclose,
you may be sure of this, that none who ever played under the Locusts
with the Little Colonel forgot the pleasure of those merry playtimes.
And all who shared her joy in finding little Dot were better and more
helpful ever after, because of what happened that Christmas-tide, the
happiest of all the Little Colonel's holidays.
THE END.
BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
THE LITTLE COLONEL BOOKS (Trade Mark)
_By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON_
Each 1 vol., large 12mo, cloth decorative, per vol. $1.50
=The Little Colonel Stories.= (Trade Mark)
Illustrated.
Being three "Little Colonel" stories in the Cosy Corner Series, "The
Little Colonel," "Two Little Knights of Kentucky," and "The Giant
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=The Little Colonel's House Party.= (Trade Mark)
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=The Little Colonel's Holidays.= (Trade Mark)
Illustrated by L. J. Bridgman.
=The Little Colonel's Hero.= (Trade Mark)
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=The Little Colonel at Boarding School.= (Trade Mark)
Illustrated by E. B. Barry.
=The Little Colonel in Arizona.= (Trade Mark)
Illustrated by E. B. Barry.
=The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation.= (Trade Mark)
Illustrated by E. B. Barry.
=The Little Colonel, Maid of Honour.= (Trade Mark)
Illustrated by E B. Barry.
=The Little Colonel.= (Trade Mark)
=Two Little Knights of Kentucky.=
=The Giant Scissors.=
=Big Brother.=
Special Holiday Editions
Each one volume, cloth decorative, small quarto, $1.25.
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These four volumes, boxed as a four volume set $5.00
=In the Desert of Waiting: THE LEGEND OF CAMELBACK MOUNTAIN.=
=The Three Weavers: A FAIRY TALE FOR FATHERS AND MOTHERS AS WELL AS FOR
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=Keeping Tryst.=
=The Legend of the Bleeding Heart.=
Each one volume, tall 16mo, cloth decorative $0.50
Paper boards .35
There has been a constant demand for publication in separate form of
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=Joel: A Boy of Galilee.= By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON. Illustrated by L.
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New illustrated edition, uniform with the Little Colonel
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A story of the time of Christ, which is one of the author's best-known
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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."
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page 146, "knee-keep" changed to "knee-deep" (lay knee-deep in some)
Page 194, word "to" added to the text (call Milly to help her)
Final ad pages, sometimes the printer forgot to make an author or
sub-heading in a listing set in small-capitals, such as on The Wreck of
the Ocean Queen. In such instances as these, small-capitals were added
to make the title or author match the rest of the listings.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Little Colonel's Holidays" ***
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