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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation, by 
+Annie Fellows Johnston
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation
+
+Author: Annie Fellows Johnston
+
+Illustrator: Etheldred B. Barry
+
+Release Date: August 8, 2008 [EBook #26215]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_The_ LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION
+
+ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION
+
+
+
+
+Works of ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON The Little Colonel Series
+
+                        (_Trade Mark, Reg. U.S. Pat. Of._)
+                 Each one vol., large 12mo, cloth, illustrated
+
+  The Little Colonel Stories                               $1.50
+        (Containing in one volume the three stories, "The
+             Little Colonel," "The Giant Scissors," and
+                "Two Little Knights of Kentucky.")
+
+  The Little Colonel's House Party                          1.50
+  The Little Colonel's Holidays                             1.50
+  The Little Colonel's Hero                                 1.50
+  The Little Colonel at Boarding-School                     1.50
+  The Little Colonel in Arizona                             1.50
+  The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation                   1.50
+  The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor                         1.50
+  The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding                  1.50
+    The above 9 vols., _boxed_                             13.50
+  _In Preparation_--A New Little Colonel Book               1.50
+
+  The Little Colonel Good Times Book                        1.50
+
+
+Illustrated Holiday Editions
+
+  Each one vol., small quarto, cloth, illustrated, and printed
+                            in colour
+
+  The Little Colonel                                       $1.25
+  The Giant Scissors                                        1.25
+  Two Little Knights of Kentucky                            1.25
+  Big Brother                                               1.25
+
+
+Cosy Corner Series
+
+              Each one vol., thin 12mo, cloth, illustrated
+  The Little Colonel                                        $.50
+  The Giant Scissors                                         .50
+  Two Little Knights of Kentucky                             .50
+  Big Brother                                                .50
+  Ole Mammy's Torment                                        .50
+  The Story of Dago                                          .50
+  Cicely                                                     .50
+  Aunt 'Liza's Hero                                          .50
+  The Quilt that Jack Built                                  .50
+  Flip's "Islands of Providence"                             .50
+  Mildred's Inheritance                                      .50
+
+
+Other Books
+
+  Joel: A Boy of Galilee                                   $1.50
+  In the Desert of Waiting                                   .50
+  The Three Weavers                                          .50
+  Keeping Tryst                                              .50
+  The Legend of the Bleeding Heart                           .50
+  Asa Holmes                                                1.00
+  Songs Ysame (Poems, with Albion Fellows Bacon)            1.00
+
+          L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
+          200 Summer Street         Boston, Mass.
+
+[Illustration: "'GEE WHIZ!' EXCLAIMED ROB, IN A TEASING TONE, 'SAY THAT
+AGAIN, WON'T YOU PLEASE?'" (_See page 163_)]
+
+
+
+
+
+The Little Colonel's
+
+Christmas Vacation
+
+By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
+
+          Author of "The Little Colonel Series," "Big Brother,"
+          "Ole Mammy's Torment," "Joel: A Boy of Galilee,"
+          "Asa Holmes," etc.
+
+Illustrated by ETHELDRED B. BARRY
+
+          BOSTON * L. C. PAGE
+          & COMPANY * PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+          _Copyright, 1905_
+
+          By L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
+
+          (Incorporated)
+
+          _All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+          Published October, 1905
+
+
+
+          Ninth Impression, June, 1908
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                          PAGE
+     I. WARWICK HALL                                  1
+    II. "THE OLD GIRLS' WELCOME TO THE NEW"          22
+   III. AN EXCURSION                                 46
+    IV. "KEEP TRYST"                                 70
+     V. A MEMORY-BOOK AND A SOUVENIR SPOON           95
+    VI. CHRISTMAS CAROLS                            121
+   VII. HOMEWARD BOUND                              138
+  VIII. A PICNIC IN THE SNOW                        156
+    IX. A PROGRESSIVE CHRISTMAS PARTY               176
+     X. THE DUNGEON OF DISAPPOINTMENT               198
+    XI. IN THE ATTIC                                218
+   XII. HUMDRUM DAYS                                235
+  XIII. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF AMANTHIS                254
+   XIV. "CINDERELLA"                                273
+    XV. A HARD-EARNED PEARL                         292
+   XVI. "SWEET SIXTEEN"                             315
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                   PAGE
+
+  "'GEE WHIZ!' EXCLAIMED ROB, IN A TEASING TONE.
+    'SAY THAT AGAIN, WON'T YOU PLEASE?'"
+    (_See page 163_)                      _Frontispiece_
+
+  "MADAM'S CONVERSATION LED FAR AWAY FROM THE
+    CREST AND ITS LESSON"                            25
+
+  "STUDYING THE FACE OF THE HANDSOME YOUNG FELLOW
+    WITH INTEREST"                                  105
+
+  "'I TELL YOU SOMEBODY WAS TRYING TO SANDBAG ME'"  152
+
+  "ONE OF THE BOYS HAD DARED HIM TO CARRY IT"       221
+
+  "'I NEARLY FAINTED WHEN I HAPPENED TO LOOK UP'"   248
+
+  "SHE RODE OVER TO ROLLINGTON"                     299
+
+  "'NO MATTAH WHAT LIES AHEAD . . . I'LL NOT
+    DISAPPOINT THEM'"                               333
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+WARWICK HALL
+
+
+WARWICK HALL looked more like an old English castle than a modern
+boarding-school for girls. Gazing at its high towers and massive portal,
+one almost expected to see some velvet-clad page or lady-in-waiting come
+down the many flights of marble steps leading between stately terraces
+to the river. Even a knight with a gerfalcon on his wrist would not have
+seemed out of place, and if a slow-going barge had trailed by between
+the willow-fringed banks of the Potomac, it would have seemed more in
+keeping with the scene than the steamboats puffing past to Mount Vernon,
+with crowds of excursionists on deck.
+
+The gorgeous peacocks strutting along the terraces in the sun were
+partly responsible for this impression of mediæval grandeur. It was for
+that very purpose that Madam Chartley, the head of the school, kept the
+peacocks. That was one reason, also, that she proudly retained the coat
+of arms in the great stained glass window over the stairs, when
+circumstances obliged her to turn her ancestral home into a
+boarding-school. She thought a sense of mediæval grandeur was good for
+girls, especially young American girls, who are apt to be brought up
+without proper respect for age, either of individuals or institutions.
+
+In the dining-room, two long lines of portraits looked down from
+opposite walls. One was headed by a grim old earl, and the other by an
+equally grim old Pilgrim father of _Mayflower_ fame. The two lines
+joined over the fireplace in the portraits of Madam Chartley's
+great-grandparents. It was for this great-grandmother, a daughter of the
+Pilgrims and a beautiful Washington belle, that Warwick Hall had been
+built; for she refused to give up her native land entirely, even for the
+son of an earl.
+
+At his death, when the title and the English estates were inherited by a
+distant cousin, the only male heir, this place on the Potomac was all
+that was left to her and her daughter. It had been closed for two
+generations. Now it had come down at last to Madam Chartley. Although
+it found her too poor to keep up such an establishment, it also found
+her too proud to let her heritage go to strangers, and practical enough
+to find some way by which she might retain it comfortably. That way was
+to turn it into a first-class boarding-school. She was a graduate of one
+of the best American colleges. The patrician standards inherited from
+her old world ancestors, combined with the energy and common sense of
+the new, made her an ideal woman to undertake the education of young
+girls, and Warwick Hall was an ideal place in which to carry out her
+wise theories.
+
+The Potomac was red with the glow of the sunset one September evening,
+when four girls, on their way back to Washington after a day's
+sightseeing, hurried to the upper deck of the steamboat. Some one had
+called out that Warwick Hall was in sight. In their haste to reach the
+railing, they scarcely noticed a tall girl in blue, already standing
+there, who obligingly moved along to make room for them.
+
+She scrutinized them closely, however, for she had seen them in the
+cabin a little while before, and their conversation had been so amusing
+that she longed to make their acquaintance. Her face brightened
+expectantly at their approach, and, as they leaned over the railing, she
+studied them with growing interest. The oldest one was near her own age,
+she decided after a careful survey, about seventeen; and they were all
+particular about the little things that count so much with fastidious
+schoolgirls. She approved of each one of them from their broad silk
+shoe-laces to the pink tips of their carefully manicured finger-nails.
+
+As the boat swung around a bend in the river, bringing the castle-like
+building into full view, a chorus of delighted exclamations broke out
+all along the deck. The four girls hung over the railing with eager
+faces.
+
+"Look, Lloyd, look!" cried one of them, excitedly. "Peacocks on the
+terraces! It's the finishing touch to the picture. We'll feel like Lady
+Clare walking down those marble steps. There surely must be a milk-white
+doe somewhere in the background."
+
+"Oh, Betty, Betty!" was the laughing answer. "You'll do nothing now but
+quote Tennyson and write poetry from mawning till night."
+
+"They're from Kentucky," thought the girl in blue. "I'm sure of it from
+the way they talk."
+
+As the boat glided slowly along, Lloyd threw her arm around the girl
+beside her, with an impulsive squeeze.
+
+"Kitty Walton," she exclaimed, "aren't you _glad_ that the old
+Lloydsboro Seminary burned down? If it hadn't, we wouldn't be on ouah
+way now to that heavenly-looking boahding-school!"
+
+The sudden hug loosened Kitty's hat, held insecurely by one pin, and in
+another instant the strong breeze would have carried it over into the
+river had not the girl in blue caught it as it swept past her. She
+handed it back with a friendly smile, glad of an opportunity to speak.
+
+"You are new pupils for Warwick Hall, aren't you?" she asked, when Kitty
+had laughingly thanked her. "I hope so, for I'm one of the old girls.
+This will be my third year."
+
+"How perfectly lovely!" exclaimed Kitty. "We've been fairly crazy to
+meet some one from there. Do tell us if it is as fine as it looks, and
+as the catalogue says."
+
+"It is the very nicest place in the world," was the enthusiastic reply.
+"There are hardly any rules, and none of them are the kind that rub you
+up the wrong way. We don't have to wear uniforms, and we're not marched
+out to walk in wholesale lots like prisoners in a chain-gang."
+
+"That's what I used to despise at the Seminary," interrupted Lloyd. "I
+always felt like pah't of a circus parade, or an inmate of some asylum,
+out for an airing. Keeping in step and keeping in line with a lot of
+othahs made a punishment out of the walk, when it would have been such a
+pleasuah if we could have skipped along as we pleased. I felt resentful
+from the moment the gong rang for us to stah't. It had such a bossy,
+tyrannical sawt of sound."
+
+"You'll not find it that way at Warwick Hall," was the emphatic answer.
+"There are bells for rising and chapel and meals, but the signal for
+exercise is a hunter's horn, blown on the upper terrace. There's
+something so breezy and out-of-doors in the sound that it is almost as
+irresistible a call as the Pied Piper of Hamelin's. You ought to see the
+doors fly open along the corridors, and the girls pour out when that
+horn blows. We can go in twos or threes or squads, any way we please,
+and in any direction, so long as we keep inside the grounds. There's an
+orchard to stroll through, and a wooded hillside, and a big meadow. On
+bad days there is over half a mile of gravel road that runs through the
+grounds to the trolley station, or we can take our exercise going round
+and round the garden walks. The garden is over there at the left of the
+Hall," she explained, waving her hand toward it. "Do you see that
+pergola stretching along the highest terrace? That is where the garden
+begins, and the ivy running over it was started from a slip that Madam
+Chartley brought from Sir Walter Scott's home at Abbotsford.
+
+"It is the stateliest old garden you ever saw, and the pride of the
+school. There's a sun-dial in it, and hollyhocks from Ann Hathaway's
+cottage, and rhododendrons from Killarney. There's all the flowers
+mentioned in the old songs. Madam has brought slips and roots and seeds
+from all sorts of places, so that nearly every plant is connected with
+some noted place or person. I simply love it. In warm weather I get up
+early in the morning, and study my Latin out in the honeysuckle arbour.
+Latin is my hardest study, but it doesn't seem half so hard out there
+among the bees and hummingbirds, where it's all so sweet and still."
+
+"Oh, will they let you do things like that?" came the same amazed
+question from all four at once.
+
+"You wait and see," was the encouraging reply. "That isn't the
+beginning."
+
+The four exchanged ecstatic glances.
+
+"Oh, we haven't introduced ourselves," exclaimed Kitty, bethinking
+herself of formalities. "I am Katherine Walton, and this is my big
+sister, Allison. That is Lloyd Sherman and Elizabeth Lewis. They're
+almost as good as sisters, for they live together, and Lloyd's mother is
+Betty's godmother. And we're all from the same place, Lloydsboro Valley,
+Kentucky."
+
+"And I am Juliet Lynn from Wisconsin. That is, I lived there till papa
+had to come to Washington. He's a Congressman now. I was sure that you
+were from Kentucky, and I've been hoping that you were new girls for the
+Hall ever since I heard you talking about some house-party where you all
+did such funny things."
+
+"Oh, yes, that was one we had this summer at The Beeches," began Kitty,
+glibly, "when we all took turns--"
+
+But, with a big-sister frown of warning, Allison said, in a low aside:
+"For pity's sake, don't stop to tell all that long rigmarole over _now_.
+We want to hear some more about the school."
+
+"What is Madam Chartley herself like?" she asked, turning to Juliet.
+"She must be something of an old dragon if she can keep forty girls
+straight with so few rules. We've pictured her as a big British
+matron, dignified and imposing,--a sort of lioness rampant, you know,
+with a stern air, as if she was about to say in a deep voice,
+'England--expects--every--man--to--do--his--duty,--sir!'"
+
+"But she isn't that way at all!" cried Juliet, almost indignantly.
+"She's just as American as you are, for she was born and educated in
+this country. She has the gentlest voice and sweetest manner. Her hair
+is snow-white, and there's something awfully aristocratic about her, for
+she is--sort of--well, I hardly know how to express it, but just what
+you'd expect the 'daughter of a hundred earls' to be, you know. But you
+won't feel one bit in awe of her. The girls simply adore her."
+
+"But isn't she something to be afraid of when you break the rules?"
+queried Kitty, anxiously. "When you have midnight feasts and pillow-case
+prowls and all that?"
+
+Juliet shook her head. "We don't do those things. I tell you it isn't
+like any other boarding-school you ever heard of."
+
+"Then I know I sha'n't like it," declared Kitty. "All my life I've
+looked forward to going off to school just for the jolly good times I'd
+have. You see we were only day-pupils at Lloydsboro Seminary, and there
+wasn't a chance for that kind of fun, except the one term when Lloyd and
+Betty boarded in the school while their family was away from home. We
+managed to stir up a little excitement then, and I'd hoped for all sorts
+of thrilling adventures here. I'm horribly disappointed that it's so
+tame and goody-goody."
+
+Juliet's face coloured resentfully. "It isn't tame at all!" she
+declared. "It's only that we are always so busy doing pleasant things
+and going to interesting places that nobody cares for stolen spreads.
+Some girls don't like the place just at first, because it's so different
+from what they've been used to. But by the end of the term they're so in
+love with Warwick Hall and everything about it that nothing could induce
+them to change schools. There's only one girl I ever heard of who didn't
+like it."
+
+"And why didn't she?" asked Lloyd and Allison, in the same breath.
+
+"Well, she came from some ranch away out West, Wyoming or Nevada or some
+of those places, where she'd been as free and easy as a squaw, and she
+couldn't stand so much civilization. You see, from the minute you enter
+Warwick Hall you feel somehow that you're a guest of Madam Chartley's
+instead of a pupil. She uses the old family silver and the china has her
+great-grandfather's crest on it, and she brought over a London butler
+who grew up in the family service. She keeps him for the same reason
+that she keeps the peacocks, I suppose. They give such a grand air to
+the place.
+
+"Lida Wilsy--that's the girl from the ranch--couldn't live up to so much
+stateliness, especially of the stony-eyed butler. Hawkins was too much
+for her. She told her roommate that she thought it was foolish to have
+so many forks and spoons at each place. One was enough for anybody to
+get through a dinner with. Life was too short for so much fuss and
+feathers. She never could learn which to use first, and she would get
+her silverware so hopelessly mixed up that by the time dessert was
+brought on maybe she would have nothing to eat it with but an oyster
+fork. I've seen her ready to go under the table from embarrassment. Not
+that she cared so much what the girls thought. She joked about it to
+them. Her father owned the biggest part of a silver mine, and they could
+have had Tiffany's whole stock of forks if they'd wanted them. It was
+Hawkins she was afraid of. Of course he was too well trained to show
+what he thought of her mistakes, but you couldn't help feeling his high
+and mighty inward scorn of such ignorance. It fairly oozed from his
+finger-tips."
+
+Kitty's black eyes sparkled, anticipating times ahead when she would
+certainly make it lively for Hawkins.
+
+"There's grandfathah!" cried Lloyd, catching sight of a white-haired old
+gentleman who had just come up on deck. "I want to tell him about the
+garden before we lose sight of it."
+
+Juliet's glance followed her with interest as she darted away, for it
+was a distinguished-looking old gentleman who lifted his hat with
+elaborate courtesy at her approach. He was dressed in white duck, and
+the right coat-sleeve hung empty.
+
+"It's Colonel Lloyd," explained Allison, noting Juliet's glance of
+curiosity. "He's bringing us all to school, for it wasn't convenient for
+mother or Mrs. Sherman to come."
+
+"They don't look alike," remarked Juliet, surveying them with a puzzled
+expression. "But what is it about them--there is such a startling
+resemblance?"
+
+"Everybody notices it," said Kitty. "When Lloyd was smaller, they used
+to call her the Little Colonel all the time, but especially when she was
+in a temper. They call her Princess now."
+
+"Princess," echoed Juliet. "That name suits her exactly."
+
+She cast another admiring glance at the slender, fair-haired girl,
+standing with her hand in her grandfather's arm, pointing out the
+beauties of the place they were slowly passing.
+
+"And she will suit Warwick Hall," she added, with a sudden burst
+of schoolgirl enthusiasm, "just as the peacocks suit it, and the
+coat of arms, and Madam Chartley herself. She's got that same
+'daughter-of-a-hundred-earls' air about her that Madam has."
+
+"Oh, it all sounds so delightful and fascinating," sighed Betty, pushing
+back the brown hair that blew in little curls about her face, and
+smiling at the slowly disappearing Hall with a happy light in her brown
+eyes. "I can hardly wait for to-morrow."
+
+The boat had glided on until only the high, square tower was left in
+view, with the red sunset glow upon it.
+
+          "'The splendour falls on castle walls
+              And snowy summits old in story'"--
+
+Betty sang half under her breath, with a farewell flutter of her
+handkerchief, as the boat rounded a bend in the river which hid the
+tower from sight. Already she was in love with the place, and already,
+as Lloyd had predicted, she was fitting some line of Tennyson to it at
+every turn.
+
+Acquaintance progressed rapidly in the next half-hour. Long before they
+reached Washington, Juliet knew, not only that she had guessed Allison's
+age correctly at seventeen, that Betty was sixteen, and Lloyd and Kitty
+a year younger, but that each girl in her own way would make a desirable
+friend. Incidentally she learned that Allison and Kitty had lived in the
+Philippines, and were daughters of the brave General Walton who had lost
+his life there in his country's service. When they parted at the
+boat-landing, it was with delightful anticipations of the next day, and
+with each one eager to renew an acquaintance so pleasantly begun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If Warwick Hall suggested ancient stateliness on the outside, it was
+informal and frivolous enough within, when forty girls were taking
+possession of their rooms on the opening day of the school year. In and
+out like a flock of twittering sparrows, the old pupils darted from one
+room to another, exchanging calls and greetings, laughing over old jokes
+and reminiscences, and settling down into familiar corners with an ease
+that the new girls envied.
+
+Juliet Lynn, quickly establishing herself in her last year's quarters,
+started down the corridor to announce at every door that she was the
+first one unpacked and settled. All the other rooms were in hopeless
+confusion, beds, chairs, and floors being piled with the contents of
+open trunks.
+
+At the first door where she paused, a shower of shoes and slippers was
+the only answer to her triumphant announcement. At the next a laughing
+cry of "Help! help!" greeted her. At the third she was informed that
+there was standing-room only.
+
+"Don't you believe it, Juliet!" called a gay voice from the chiffonier,
+where an earlier visitor was perched. "There's always room at the top.
+I've discovered where Min keeps her butter-scotch. Come in and have
+some."
+
+"No, I'm going the rounds to see what everybody is about," she answered.
+"You're all in such a mess now, I'd rather look in later. I'm one of the
+early settlers, and have been in order for ages."
+
+"What's the odds so long as you're happy?" called the girl on the
+chiffonier. "Besides, it's no better next door. They'll invite you to
+make yourself at home under the bed, as they did me. Come on back and
+tell us your summer's experiences. Min has had one dizzy whirl of
+adventures after another."
+
+But Juliet kept on down the hall. She wanted to find what rooms had been
+assigned to the girls whom she had met the day before on the boat, and
+to hear their first impressions of Warwick Hall. Presently, through a
+half-open door, she caught sight of Betty, sitting at an open window
+overlooking the river. With chin in hand and elbows resting on the sill,
+she was gazing dreamily out at the willow-fringed banks, so absorbed in
+her thoughts that she did not hear Juliet's first knock. But at the
+second she started up and called cordially: "Oh, I'm so glad to see you!
+Come in!"
+
+"Why, you're all unpacked and put away, too!" exclaimed Juliet, in
+surprise, looking around the orderly room. "I thought that I was the
+only one, but I see you've even hung your pictures."
+
+"Yes, we don't know any of the other girls yet, so we didn't lose any
+time running back and forth to their rooms, as everybody else is doing.
+We've been through ever so long. Lloyd is out exploring the grounds
+with Allison, but I was too tired after all the sightseeing we have
+done. I'd be glad not to stir out of my room for a week."
+
+She pushed a rocking-chair hospitably toward her guest, and leaned back
+in the opposite one.
+
+"I don't want to sit down," said Juliet. "I'm just exploring. I think
+it's so much fun to poke around the first day and see how everybody is
+fixed. You don't mind, do you, if I walk around and look at your
+pictures?"
+
+"No, indeed!" answered Betty, cordially. "Help yourself."
+
+Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she sat up straight in her
+chair, and adjusted the side-combs which were slipping out of her curly
+hair. It was a pleasing reflection that the mirror showed her, of a slim
+girl in a linen shirt-waist and a dark brown skirt just reaching to her
+ankles. But it held her gaze only long enough for her to see that her
+belt was properly pulled down and her stock all that could be desired.
+The friendly brown eyes and the trusting little mouth never needed
+readjustment. They always met the world with a smile, and thus far the
+world had always smiled back at them.
+
+"Last year," said Juliet, as she wandered around, "the girl who had this
+room simply plastered the walls with posters. It was so sporty-looking.
+She had hunting scenes between these windows, and there was a frieze of
+hounds and a yard of puppies where you have that panel of photographs.
+Oh, what perfectly beautiful places!" she cried, moving nearer. "Do tell
+me about them. Is that where you live?"
+
+"Yes, this is our Lloydsboro Valley corner--the Happy Valley we call
+it," answered Betty, crossing the room to point out the various places:
+"Locust," her home and Lloyd's, a stately white-pillared mansion at the
+end of a long locust avenue; "The Beeches," where the Waltons lived; the
+vine-covered stone church; the old mill; the post-office, and a row of
+snap shots showing Lloyd and her mounted on their ponies, Tarbaby and
+Lad.
+
+"What good times you must have there!" sighed Juliet, presently.
+
+Betty opened a drawer in the writing-desk and took out six little books,
+bound in white kid, her initials stamped in gold on each cover.
+
+"Just see how many!" she exclaimed. "I started to keep a record of all
+my good times when I went to Lloyd's first house-party. When godmother
+gave me this volume, number one, I thought it would take a lifetime to
+fill it, but so many lovely things happened that summer that it was
+full in a little while. Then I went abroad in the fall, and that trip
+filled a volume. Now I am beginning the seventh."
+
+Juliet stared at the pile of white books in amazement. "What a lot of
+work!" she cried. "Doesn't it take every bit of pleasure out of your
+good times, thinking that you'll have to write all about it afterward? I
+tried to keep a diary once, but it looked more like the report of a
+weather bureau than anything else, and my small brother got hold of it
+and mortified me nearly to death one night when we had company, by
+quoting something from it. It sounded dreadfully sentimental, although
+it hadn't seemed so when I wrote it. That's the trouble in keeping a
+journal, don't you think so? You'll often put down something that seems
+important at the time, but that sounds silly afterward."
+
+"No," said Betty, hesitatingly. "I always enjoy going back to read the
+first volumes. It's interesting to see how one changes from year to year
+in opinions as well as handwriting. See how little and cramped the
+letters are in this first volume. It's good exercise, and, as I expect
+to write a book some day, every bit of practice helps."
+
+Betty made the announcement as simply as if she had said she intended
+to darn a stocking some day, and Juliet looked at her in open-mouthed
+wonder. She had never encountered a girl of that species before, and
+more than ever she felt that her friendship would be worth cultivating.
+When she finally took her departure, there was no time for any further
+tour of inspection, but she ran into several rooms on the way back to
+her own to say, hastily: "Girls, do all you can to get that Kentucky
+quartette into our sorority! I'll tell you about them later. We must
+give them a grand rush to-morrow night at the old girls' welcome to the
+new. I hope I'll get to take Elizabeth Lewis. My _dears_, she's a
+perfect genius! She's written poems and plays that have been published,
+and she's at work on a _book_!"
+
+As Juliet closed the door behind her, Betty took up the new volume in
+the series of little white records, and began turning the blank pages.
+Like the new school year, it lay spread out before her, white and fair,
+hers to write therein as she chose.
+
+"And I'll try my hardest to make it the best and happiest record of them
+all," she said to herself. As she dipped her pen into the ink, there was
+a knock at the door, and a white-capped maid looked in.
+
+"Madam Chartley would be pleased to see you at once in the pink room,
+miss," she announced, and Betty, much surprised, rose to answer the
+unexpected summons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+"THE OLD GIRLS' WELCOME TO THE NEW"
+
+
+AS Betty opened the door, she ran into Kitty Walton, who at sight of her
+struck an attitude on the threshold, crossing her hands on her breast,
+and rolling her eyes upward until only the whites were visible.
+
+"What new pose is this, you goose?" laughed Betty, shaking her gently by
+one shoulder.
+
+"Don't laugh," was the solemn answer. "This is pious resignation to
+fate." Then her hands dropped and she turned to Betty tragically.
+
+"I've just come from an interview with Madam Chartley," she explained.
+"And what do you think? That blessed old soul expects me to live up to
+the motto on her teacups! But how can I give Hawkins his just due _if_ I
+do? I had the loveliest things planned for his tormenting, but I'd be
+ashamed to look her in the face if she ever found me out after this
+interview.
+
+"Oh, Betty, I don't want to renounce the world and the flesh and all the
+other bad things this early in the term, but I'm afraid that I've
+already done it. She's laid a spell on all of us."
+
+"Has she sent for Lloyd and Allison, too?"
+
+"Yes, Allison was the first victim. She came back in a regular
+dare-to-be-a-Daniel mood, and announced that she intended to start in,
+heart and soul, for the studio honours this year. Then Lloyd had her
+turn, and she came back looking like Joan of Arc when she'd been
+listening to the voices. I vowed she shouldn't have that effect on me,
+but here I am, perfectly docile as you see, fangs drawn and claws cut. I
+tremble for the effect on you, sweet innocent. Your wings will sprout
+before you get back."
+
+Betty laughed and hurried past her down the stairs. Evidently it was
+Madam's custom to make the acquaintance of her new girls in this way,
+one at a time. Only fifteen freshmen were admitted each year, so it was
+possible for her to take a personal interest in every pupil.
+
+Betty's heart fluttered expectantly as she paused an instant in the door
+of the pink room. Madam Chartley had looked very imposing and dignified
+as she presided at the lunch-table that noon, with the stately Hawkins
+behind her chair and the stately portraits looking down from the walls.
+
+She looked now as if she might be the original of one of these old
+portraits herself, as she sat there in the high-backed chair, with the
+griffins carved on its teakwood frame. Her gray gown trailed around her
+in graceful folds. There was a soft fall of lace at wrists and throat,
+and her white hair had a sheen like silver against the pink brocade with
+which the chair was upholstered.
+
+With a smile which seemed to take Betty straight into her confidence,
+she held out her hand and drew her to a seat beside her. An
+old-fashioned silver tea-service stood on a table at her elbow, and when
+the maid had brought hot water, she busied herself in filling a cup for
+Betty.
+
+"There!" she said, as she passed it to her. "There's nothing like a cozy
+chat over a cup of tea for warming acquaintances into friends."
+
+Betty wondered, as she took a proffered slice of lemon, if Madam began
+all her interviews in this way, and if she was to hear the same little
+sermon about the crest on the ancestral teacups that Kitty had heard. It
+certainly was an interesting crest. She lifted the fragile bit of china
+for a closer survey. A mailed arm, rising out of a heart, clasped a
+spear in its hand, and under it ran the motto, "I keep tryst."
+
+[Illustration: "MADAM'S CONVERSATION LED FAR AWAY FROM THE CREST AND ITS
+LESSON"]
+
+But Madam's conversation led far away from the crest and its lesson. At
+first it was about a quaint old English inn, where is served delicious
+toasted scones with five o'clock tea. When she mentioned that, it was as
+if they had discovered a mutual friend, for Betty cried out joyfully
+that she had been there, and had spent a long rainy afternoon in one of
+its rooms, where Scott had written many chapters of "Kenilworth." Betty
+remembered afterward that not a word was said about school and its
+obligations. It was of the Old Curiosity Shop they spoke, and the House
+of Seven Gables. Madam promised to show her the autographs of Dickens
+and Hawthorne, which she had in her collection, and a pen which had once
+belonged to George Eliot.
+
+Then Betty found that Madam had known Miss Alcott, and, before she
+realized what she was doing, she had thrown herself down impulsively on
+the stool at her feet, and, with both hands clasping the griffin's head
+on the arm of the high-backed chair, was asking a dozen eager questions
+about "Little Women" and the author who had been her first inspiration
+to write.
+
+Nearly an hour later, when she went back to her room, it was with
+something singing in her heart that made her very solemn and very happy.
+It was the immortal music of the Choir Invisible. She had been in the
+unseen company of earth's best and noblest, and felt in her soul that
+some day she, too, would have a right to be counted in that chorus,
+having done something really great and worth while.
+
+That evening after dinner Kitty bounced into the room where Allison sat
+talking with Lloyd and Betty during recreation hour.
+
+"To-morrow night there's to be the Old Girls' Welcome to the New!" she
+cried. "Come on in, Juliet, and tell them about it."
+
+Juliet thrust her head through the half-open door.
+
+"Haven't time to stop," she answered, "but I'll tell this much. It's the
+first of the great social functions. Everybody wears her party clothes
+and a sweet smile. It's the first lesson of the year in How to attain
+Ease under New and Exacting Conditions. No matter how the seniors snub
+you later on, in order to teach you your proper place, you'll all be
+birds of a feather that one time, and flock together as peaceably as pet
+hens.
+
+"Each new girl has an escort appointed by the entertaining committee,
+who sends her flowers and calls for her and sees that her programme is
+filled. So there are never any wallflowers the first night. No, Allison,
+it isn't a dance. The programmes are for progressive conversation.
+Somewhere in the background there's a piano playing waltzes and
+two-steps, and so forth, but you talk out the numbers instead of dancing
+them. Changing partners so often keeps you from getting bored, and
+strangers can tell who is talking to them, for there are the names on
+their programmes. You can refer to that when anybody comes up to claim
+you. I'm to take Lloyd, and Sybil Green is to take Kitty. I haven't
+found out the other assignments yet. I'll let you know as soon as I do.
+Continued in our next."
+
+With an airy wave of the hand she withdrew, leaving them to an animated
+discussion of what to wear.
+
+"You must remember that this isn't the only time you're to appear in
+public, Katherine Walton," said Allison, severely, when Kitty proposed
+her best array. "There's to be a reception at the White House next week,
+and Friday night we're to go in to Washington to see Jefferson in 'Rip
+Van Winkle,' and there's to be a studio tea soon, and a recital, and
+all sorts of things. I saw the bulletin of the term's entertainments in
+the hall this evening."
+
+"_We_'ll never be seen at those things," insisted Kitty.
+
+"We'll scarcely be a drop in the bucket. But to-morrow night, isn't the
+whole affair for us? We'll be the whole show. We'll be _it_, Allison,
+and 'it's my night to howl.' I intend to wear my rose-pink mull and a
+rosebud in my raving tresses, and carry the gorgeous spangled fan that
+the dear old admiral gave me in Manila. So there!"
+
+"Then don't come near me," said Allison, with a warning shake of her
+head, "for I am going to wear my cerise crêpe de chine. It's lovely by
+itself, but by the side of anything the shade of your pink mull it's the
+most hideous, sickly colour you ever saw. I _wish_ you'd wear that pale
+green dress, Kitty. You look sweet in that, and it goes so well with
+mine."
+
+"But, my dear sister," laughed Kitty, "I don't expect to spend any time
+getting acquainted with _you_. I'll probably not be near you the whole
+evening. It's not expected that, just because we are from Kentucky, we
+have to pose as those two devoted creatures on the State seal,--stand
+around with our hands clasped, exclaiming 'United we stand, divided we
+fall!' to every one that comes up."
+
+"Nevah mind, Allison," said Lloyd, laughing at Kitty's dramatic gestures
+and her sister's worried expression. "I'll play 'State seal' with you. I
+have a pale green almost the shade of Kitty's, and I'll wear the coral
+clasps and chains that were Papa Jack's mothah's. He gave them to me
+just before I left home. I'll show them to you."
+
+She began to rummage through her trunk. Betty sat looking at the
+ceiling, trying to decide the momentous question of dress for herself.
+Finally she announced: "I'll just wear white, then I'll harmonize with
+everybody, and can run up to the first one of you I happen to see when I
+need a spark of courage. I know I'll be terribly embarrassed. It makes
+me cold right now to think of meeting so many strangers."
+
+But Betty's courage needed no reinforcing next evening, when Maria
+Overlin, one of the seniors, took her in charge. The reception took
+place in what had been the ballroom, in the days when Warwick Hall was
+noted for its brilliant entertainments. Even its first hostess could not
+have received her distinguished guests with courtlier grace than Madam
+Chartley received her pupils, when, to the music of a stately minuet,
+they filed past her down the long line of teachers.
+
+For once, each of the new girls, no matter how timid or inexperienced in
+social ways, tasted the sweets of popularity, and the four whom Juliet
+Lynn had dubbed the Kentucky quartette were overwhelmed with attentions.
+
+Juliet, who had hoped to escort Betty, was glad that Lloyd had fallen to
+her lot when she saw what an admiring little court flocked around her
+wherever she turned. In the pale green dress, with its clasps of pink
+coral carved in the shape of tiny butterflies, she looked more
+princess-like than ever. She wore a bracelet of the coral butterflies
+also, and a slender circlet of them about her throat. They gave a soft
+pink flush to her cheeks.
+
+No sooner had she passed the receiving line than she was surrounded by a
+group of white-gowned girls clamouring for an introduction and a place
+on her programme.
+
+"Whose initials are these?" she whispered to Juliet presently when the
+card was all filled and there were still several girls asking to be
+allowed to write their names on it.
+
+"Couldn't I give Miss Bartlett this line where there's nothing but G. M.
+scrawled on it?"
+
+"Mercy, no!" exclaimed Juliet. "That's for Gabrielle Melville. It would
+never do for you two to miss each other to-night. I put them down for
+her, as she's to play later in the evening on the violin, you know, and
+I knew she'd never get here in time to do it herself. She always has
+such frantic times dressing. Just struggles into her things, never can
+find half her clothes, and what she does manage to fall into catches and
+rips in the struggle. Her hat is always over one ear, and her belts
+never make connection in the back, but she's so adorable that nobody
+minds her wild toilets. They laugh and say, 'Oh, it's just Gay.' That's
+her nickname, you know. Here's Emily Chapman coming to claim you. Emily,
+you can tell Lloyd some things about Gay, can't you?"
+
+"I rather think so," laughed Emily. "We roomed together last year, and I
+got her again this term. It took a fight, though, for she's the most
+popular girl in school."
+
+"Is she pretty?" asked Lloyd.
+
+"We think so, don't we, Juliet? If she had any enemies, they might say
+that she has red hair and a pug nose. But that would be exaggerating.
+Her hair is that beautiful bronzy auburn that crinkles around her face
+and blows in her eyes till she always seems to be bringing a breeze with
+her."
+
+"And her nose isn't pug exactly," chimed in Juliet. "There's just a
+darling, saucy little tip to it, that seems to suit her. She wouldn't be
+half as pretty with the approved Gibson girl kind, no matter how perfect
+it was."
+
+"And her complexion is so lovely," Emily resumed, enthusiastically. "And
+her eyes are a jolly, laughing kind of brown, with an amber sparkle in
+them, except when she gets into one of her intense, serious moods. Then
+they are almost black, they're so deep and velvety. She's never twice in
+the same mood. Oh! There she comes now."
+
+A side door opened, and a slim little thing all in white, with a violin
+under her arm and a distracted pucker on her face, hurried up to the
+piano. Nervously feeling her belt to make sure that she was presentable
+before turning her back on the audience, she whispered to the girl who
+was to play her accompaniments, and began tuning the violin. Then,
+tucking it under her chin as if she loved it, she listened an instant to
+the piano prelude, and drew her bow softly across the strings.
+
+"Good!" whispered Emily. "It's that Mexican swallow song. She always
+has such a rapt expression on her face when she plays that. She makes me
+think of St. Cecilia. She's so earnest in all she does. If it's no more
+than making fudge, she throws her whole soul into it, just that way.
+She's as intense as if the fate of a nation depended on whatever she
+happens to be doing."
+
+As Lloyd joined loudly in the applause which followed the performance,
+another girl came up to claim her attention. It was Myra Carr, the
+senior who had taken Allison under her wing.
+
+"Doesn't Gay play splendidly?" she exclaimed, not knowing that she had
+been the previous topic of conversation. "We think she's a genius. She
+improvises little things sometimes in the twilight that are so sweet and
+sad they make you cry. Then she's unconventional enough to be a genius.
+She's always shocking people without meaning to, and so careless, she'd
+lose her head if nature hadn't attended to the fastenings.
+
+"We all love her dearly, but we vowed the last time we went sightseeing
+that she should never go with us again unless she let us tie her up in a
+bag, so that nothing could drop out by the way. First she lost her hat.
+It blew off the trolley-car, one of those 'seeing Washington' affairs,
+you know. She had to go bareheaded all the rest of the way. Then she
+lost her pocketbook, and such a time as we had hunting that. The time
+before, she lost a locket that had been a family heirloom, and we missed
+our train and got caught in a shower looking for it."
+
+"Where does she live?" asked Lloyd, watching the bright face that was
+making its way toward them across the crowded room.
+
+"At Fort Sam Houston, down in San Antonio. Her father is an army officer
+at that post."
+
+There was no time for further discussion, for Gabrielle was coming
+toward her with outstretched hand.
+
+"This is Juliet's Princess, isn't it?" she asked, with a smile that
+captivated Lloyd at once, flashing over the whitest of little teeth.
+"You're getting all sorts of titles to-night. I heard a girl speak of
+you as a mermaid in that pale sea-green gown and corals, but I've come
+over here on purpose to call you the 'Little Colonel.' You don't know
+how much good it does me to hear a military title once more. Out at the
+fort it's all majors and captains and such things."
+
+Then, dropping her grown-up society manner, she suddenly giggled,
+turning to include Emily in the conversation.
+
+"Oh, girls, I had the worst time getting dressed this evening that I
+ever had in my life. When I unpacked my trunk yesterday, everything was
+so wrinkled that there was only one dress I could wear without having it
+pressed; this white one. So I laid it out, but, when I went to put it on
+to-night, I found that mamma had made a mistake in packing, and put in
+Lucy's skirt instead. Lucy is my older sister," she explained to Lloyd.
+"We each had a dotted Swiss this summer, made exactly alike, but Lucy is
+so much taller than I that her skirts trail on me. Just look how
+imposing!"
+
+She swept across the floor and back to show the effect of her trail.
+
+"Of course there was nothing to do at that late hour but pin it up in
+front and go ahead. I'm afraid every minute that I'll trip and fall all
+over myself, but I do feel so dignified when I feel my train sweeping
+along behind me. The pins keep falling out all around the belt, and I
+can't help stepping on the hem in front. I love trains," she added,
+switching hers forward with a grand air that was so childlike in its
+enjoyment that Lloyd felt impelled to hug her. "It gives you such a
+dressed-up, peacocky feeling."
+
+Then she looked up in her most soulful, intense way, as if she were
+asking for important information. "Do you know whether it's true or not?
+_Does_ a peacock stop strutting if it happens to see its feet? My old
+nurse told me that, and said that it shows that pride always goes before
+a fall. I never was where they kept peacocks before I came to Warwick
+Hall, and I've spent hours watching Madam's to see if it is true. But
+they are always so busy strutting, I've never been able to catch them
+looking at their feet."
+
+She glanced at her own feet as she spoke, then gasped and, covering her
+face with her hands, sank limply into a chair in the corner behind her.
+
+"What's the matter?" cried Juliet, alarmed by the sudden change.
+
+"Look! Oh, just _look_!" was the hysterical answer, as she thrust out
+both feet, and sat pointing at them tragically, with fingers and thumbs
+of both hands outspread.
+
+"No wonder they felt queer. I was so intent on getting my dress pinned
+up, and in rushing out in time to play, that I couldn't take time to
+analyze my feelings and discover the cause of the queerness. Madeline
+blew in at a critical point to borrow a pin, and that threw me off, I
+suppose."
+
+From under the white skirt protruded two feet as unlike as could well be
+imagined. One was cased in dainty white kid, the other in an old red
+felt bedroom slipper, edged with black fur.
+
+"And it would have been all the same," sighed Gay, "if I had been going
+to an inaugural ball to hobnob with crowned heads. And I had hoped to
+make _such_ a fine impression on the Little Colonel," she added, in a
+plaintive tone, with a childlike lifting of the face that Lloyd thought
+most charming.
+
+If the mistake had been made by any other girl in the school, it would
+not have seemed half so ridiculous, but whatever Gay did was
+irresistibly funny. A laughing crowd gathered around her, as she sat
+with the red slipper and the white one stretched stiffly out in front of
+her, bewailing her fate.
+
+"Anyhow," she remarked, "I'll always have the satisfaction of knowing
+that I put my best foot foremost, and if they had been alike I couldn't
+have done that. Now could I?" And the girls laughed again, because it
+was Gay who said it in her own inimitable way, and because the old felt
+slipper looked so ridiculous thrust out from under the dainty white
+gown. As others came crowding up to see what was causing so much
+merriment in that particular corner, Gay attempted to slip out and go to
+her room to correct her mistake. But Sybil Green, pushing through the
+outer ring, came up with Allison and Kitty.
+
+"Gay," she began, "here are the girls that you especially wanted to
+meet: General Walton's daughters."
+
+Gay's face flushed with pleasure, and, forgetting her errand, she
+impulsively stretched out a hand to each, and held them while she
+talked.
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad to meet you!" she cried. "I wish that I had known that
+you girls were here yesterday before papa left. He is Major Melville,
+and he was such a friend of your father's. He was on that long Indian
+campaign with him in Arizona, and I've heard him talk of him by the
+hour. And last week"--here she lowered her voice so that only Allison
+and Kitty heard, and were thrilled by the sweet seriousness of it. "Last
+week he took me out to Arlington to carry a great wreath of laurel. When
+he'd laid it on the grave, he stood there with bared head, looking all
+around, and I heard him say, in a whisper, 'No one in all Arlington has
+won his laurels more bravely than you, my captain.' You see it was as a
+captain that papa knew him best. He would have been so pleased to have
+seen you girls."
+
+Kitty squeezed the hand that still held hers and answered, warmly: "Oh,
+you dear, I hope we'll be as good friends as our fathers were!" And
+Allison answered, winking back the tears that had sprung to her eyes:
+"Thank you for telling us about the laurel. Mother will appreciate it so
+much."
+
+While this conversation was going on at Lloyd's elbow, Betty came up to
+her on the other side. "Please see if my dress is all right in the
+back," she whispered. "It feels as if it were unfastened." Then, as
+Lloyd assured her it was properly buttoned, she added, in an undertone:
+"Have you met Maud Minor? She's one of the new girls."
+
+Lloyd shook her head.
+
+"Then I'm going to introduce you as soon as I can. She knows Malcolm
+MacIntyre."
+
+"Knows Malcolm!" exclaimed Lloyd, in amazement. "Where on earth did she
+ever meet him?"
+
+"At the seashore last summer. She can't talk about anything else. She
+thinks he is so handsome and has such beautiful manners and is so
+adorably romantic. Those are her very words. She has his picture.
+Evidently he has talked to her about you, for she's so curious to know
+you. She asked a string of questions that I thought were almost
+impertinent."
+
+"Where is she?" asked Lloyd.
+
+"There, that girl in white crossing the room with the fat one in
+lavender."
+
+Lloyd gave a long, critical look, and then said, slowly: "She's the
+prettiest girl in the room, and she makes me think of something I've
+read, but I can't recall it."
+
+"I know," said Betty, "but you'll laugh at me if I say Tennyson again.
+It's from 'Maud'--
+
+          "'I kissed her slender hand.
+            She took the kiss sedately.
+            Maud is not seventeen,
+            But she is tall and stately.'
+
+"But she is not as sedate as she looks," added Betty, truthfully. "I'd
+like her better if she didn't gush. That's the only word that will
+express it. And it seemed queer for her to take me into her confidence
+the minute she was introduced. Right away she gave me to understand that
+she'd had a sort of an affair with Malcolm. She didn't say so in so many
+words, but she gave me the impression that he had been deeply
+interested in her, in a romantic way, you know."
+
+Lloyd looked at Maud again, more critically this time, and with keener
+interest. Then her thoughts flew back to the churchyard stile where they
+had paused in their gathering of Christmas greens one winter day. For an
+instant she seemed to see the handsome boy looking down at her, begging
+a token of the Princess Winsome, and saying, in a low tone, "I'll be
+whatever you want me to be, Lloyd."
+
+Juliet's voice broke in on her reverie. "Miss Sherman, allow me to
+present Miss Minor."
+
+Maud was slightly taller than Lloyd, but it was not her extra inches
+alone which seemed to give her the air of looking down on every one. It
+was her patronizing manner. Lloyd resented it. Instinctively she drew
+herself up and responded somewhat haughtily.
+
+"My dear, I've been simply _dying_ to meet you," began Maud, effusively.
+"Ever since I found out that you were the girl Malcolm MacIntyre used to
+be so fond of."
+
+Lloyd responded coldly, certain that Malcolm had not discussed their
+friendship in a way to warrant this outburst from a stranger.
+
+"Do you know his brothah Keith, too?" she asked. "We're devoted to both
+the boys. You might say we grew up togethah, for they visited in the
+Valley so much. We've been playmates since we were babies. You must meet
+the Walton girls. They are Malcolm's cousins, you know."
+
+Before Maud realized how it came about, Lloyd had graciously turned her
+over to Allison and Kitty, and made her escape with burning cheeks and a
+resentful feeling. Maud's words kept repeating themselves: "So adorably
+romantic. The girl Malcolm _used to be_ so fond of!" They made her
+vaguely uncomfortable. She wondered why.
+
+For another hour she went on making acquaintances and adding to her
+store of information about Warwick Hall. They couldn't have
+chafing-dishes in their rooms, one frivolous sophomore told her. The
+insurance companies objected after one girl spilled a bottle of alcohol
+and set fire to the curtains. But once a week those who pined for candy
+could make it over the gas-stove in the Domestic Science kitchen. Those
+who were too lazy to make it could buy it Monday afternoons from Mammy
+Easter, an old coloured woman who lived in a cabin on the place. She was
+famous for her pralines, the sophomore declared. "We have jolly charades
+and impromptu tableaux up in the gymnasium sometimes. Oh, school at the
+Hall is one grand lark!"
+
+"Don't you believe it," said the spectacled junior who monopolized Lloyd
+next. "It's a hard dig to keep up to the mark they set here. But I must
+say it is an agreeable kind of a dig," she added.
+
+"It's good just to wake up in the morning and know there's going to be
+another whole day of it. The classes are so interesting, and the
+teachers so interested in us, that they bring out the very best in
+everybody. Even a grasshopper would have its ambition aroused if it
+stayed in this atmosphere long."
+
+She peered at Lloyd through her glasses as if to satisfy herself that
+she would be understood, and then added, confidentially: "I can fairly
+feel myself grow here. I feel the way I imagine the morning-glories do
+when they find themselves climbing up the trellis. They just stretch out
+their hands and everything helps them up,--the sun and the soil, the
+wind and the dew. And here at Warwick Hall there's so much to help. Even
+the little glimpses we get over the garden wall into the outside world
+of Washington, with its politics and great men. But those two people
+over there help me most of all." She nodded toward Madam Chartley and
+Miss Chilton, the teacher of English, who were now seated together on a
+sofa near the door.
+
+"When I look at them I feel that the morning-glory vine must climb just
+as high as it possibly can, and shake out a wealth of bells in return
+for all that has been given toward its growth. Don't you?"
+
+"Yes," answered Lloyd, slightly embarrassed by the soulful gaze turned
+on her through the spectacles. "Betty would enjoy knowing you," she
+exclaimed. "She is always saying and writing such things."
+
+"Oh, I thought that you were the one that writes," answered the junior.
+"Aren't you the one the freshmen are going to elect class editor for
+their page of the college paper?"
+
+"No, indeed!" protested Lloyd, laughing at the idea. "Come across the
+room with me and I'll find Betty for you."
+
+"There won't be time to-night," responded the junior, "for there goes
+the music that means good night. They always play 'America' as a signal
+that it's time to go."
+
+"What makes you so quiet?" asked Betty, a little later, as they slowly
+undressed. She had chattered along, commenting on the events of the
+evening, ever since they came to their room, but Lloyd had seemed
+remarkably unresponsive.
+
+"Oh, nothing," yawned Lloyd. "I was just thinking of that fairy-tale of
+the three weavers. I'll turn out the light."
+
+As she reached up to press the electric button, she thought again, for
+the twentieth time, "I wonder what it was that Malcolm told Maud Minor."
+Then she nestled down among the pillows, saying, sleepily, to herself:
+"Anyway, I'm mighty glad that I nevah gave him that curl he begged
+for."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+AN EXCURSION
+
+
+IT was a Sabbath afternoon in October, sunny and still, with a purple
+haze resting on the distant woodlands across the river. A warm odour of
+ripe apples floated across the old peach orchard, for a few rare
+pippin-trees stood in its midst, flaunting the last of their fruitage
+from gnarled limbs, or hiding it in the sear grass underneath.
+
+Here and there groups of bareheaded girls wandered in the sun-flecked
+shade, exchanging confidences and stooping now and then to pounce
+joyfully upon some apple that had hitherto evaded discovery. Betty, who
+had been reading aloud for nearly an hour to a little group under one of
+the largest trees, closed her book with a yawn. Lloyd and Kitty leaned
+lazily back against the mossy trunk, and Allison, with her arms around
+her knees, gazed dreamily across the river. The only one who did not
+seem to have fallen under the drowsy spell of the Indian summer
+afternoon was Gay. Up in the tree above them, she lay stretched out
+along a limb, peering down through the leaves like a saucy squirrel.
+
+"What a Sleepy Hollow tale that was!" she exclaimed. "It just suits the
+day, but it has hypnotized all of you. Do wake up and be sociable."
+
+She began breaking off bits of twigs and dropping them down on the heads
+below. One struck Lloyd's ear, and she brushed it off impatiently,
+thinking it was a bug. Gay laughed and began teasingly:
+
+          "There was a young maiden named Lloyd,
+           Whom reptiles always annoyed.
+           An innocent worm would cause her to squirm,
+           And cloyed--toyed--employed--
+
+I'm stuck, Betty. Come to the rescue with a rhyme."
+
+"So with germicide she's overjoyed," supplied Betty, promptly.
+
+"That's all right," said Kitty, waking up. "Let's each make a Limerick.
+Five minutes is the limit, and the one that hasn't his little verse
+ready when the time is up will have to answer truthfully any question
+the others agree to ask."
+
+"No," objected Lloyd. "I'd be suah to be it. I can make the rhymes, but
+the lines limp too dreadfully for any use."
+
+"We won't count that," promised Kitty, looking at her chatelaine watch.
+"Now, one, two, three! Fire away!"
+
+There was silence for a little space, broken only by the soft cooing of
+a far-away dove. Then Betty looked up with a satisfied smile. The
+anxious pucker smoothed out of Lloyd's forehead, and Allison nodded her
+readiness.
+
+"Lloyd first," called Kitty, looking at her watch again.
+
+A mischievous smile brought the dimples to the Little Colonel's face as
+she began:
+
+          "There's a girl in our school called Kitty,
+           Evidently not from the city.
+           With screeches and squawkin's
+           She upset the nerves of poah old Hawkins.
+           Oh, her behaviour was not at all pretty."
+
+A burst of laughter greeted Lloyd's attempt at verse-making, for the
+subject which she had chosen recalled one of Kitty's outbreaks the first
+week of school, when the temptation to upset Hawkins's dignity was more
+than she could resist. No one of them who had seen Hawkins's wild exit
+from the linen closet the night she hid on the top shelf, and raised
+his hair with her blood-curdling moans and spectral warnings (having
+blown out his candle from above), could think of the occurrence without
+laughing till the tears came to their eyes.
+
+"Now, Allison," said Kitty, when the final giggle had died away. "It's
+your turn." Allison referred to the lines she had scribbled on the back
+of a magazine:
+
+          "There is a young maiden, they say,
+           Who grows more beloved every day.
+           When we talk or we ramble, there's always a scramble
+           To be next to the maid who is _Gay_."
+
+"Whew! Thanks awfully!" came the embarrassed exclamation from the boughs
+above, and Betty cried, in surprise: "Why, I wrote about her, too. I
+said:
+
+          "Like the bow on the strings when she plays,
+           So she crosses with music our days.
+           Our hearts doth she tune to the gladness of June,
+           And the smile that brings sunshine is Gay's."
+
+"My dear, that's no Limerick, that's poetry!" exclaimed Kitty, and Gay
+called down: "It's awfully nice of you, girls, but please change the
+subject. I'm so covered with confusion that I'm about to fall off this
+limb."
+
+"Well, here's something mean enough to brace you up," answered Kitty.
+"It's about Maud Minor. It's hateful of me to write it, but I happened
+to see her going down the terrace steps and it just popped into my head:
+
+          "There is a young lady named Maud,
+           Whose manners are overmuch thawed.
+           She'll beat an oil-well. When they'd gushed for a spell
+           _It_ would take a back seat and applaud."
+
+"What's the matter, Kitty?" asked Betty, "I thought you admired her
+immensely."
+
+"I did that first week, but it's just as I say. She gushes over me so,
+simply because I am Malcolm's cousin. I know very well that I am not the
+dearest, cutest, brightest, most beautiful and angelic being in the
+universe, and she isn't sincere when she insists that I am. She overdoes
+it, and is so dreadfully effusive that I want to run whenever she comes
+near me. I wish she wasn't going on the excursion to-morrow."
+
+"She doesn't worry me," said Gay. "I meet her on her own ground and fire
+back her own adjectives at her, doubled and twisted. She has let me
+alone for some time."
+
+The discussion of Maud led their thoughts away from Gay's Limerick, and
+Kitty forgot to ask for it. They sat in silence again, and the
+plaintive calling of the dove sounded several times before any one
+spoke.
+
+"It's so sweet and peaceful here," said Betty, softly. "It makes me
+think of Lloydsboro Valley. I could shut my eyes and almost believe I
+was back in the old Seminary orchard."
+
+"I'm glad we're not," said Allison. "For then we'd miss to-morrow's
+excursion. And I like having our holiday on Monday instead of Saturday,
+as we did there."
+
+"What excursion are you talking about?" asked Gay, lazily swinging her
+foot over the limb.
+
+Betty explained. "We're going to see some rare old books and illuminated
+manuscripts. Miss Chilton has a friend in Washington who has one of the
+finest private collections in the country, and she offered to take any
+of the freshman class who cared to go. Ten of us have accepted the
+invitation. We're going to the Congressional Library in the morning,
+take lunch at some restaurant, and then call on this lady early in the
+afternoon. It will be the only chance to see them, as she is going
+abroad very soon, and the house will be closed for the winter."
+
+"There are other things in the collection besides books," said Allison
+"Some queer old musical instruments,--a harpsichord and a lute, and an
+old violin worth its weight in gold. Some of the most noted violinists
+in the world have played on it."
+
+"Oh, I know!" cried Gay, raising herself to a sitting position and
+throwing away the core of the apple she had been eating. "That's the
+excursion I missed last year when I sprained my ankle. I never was so
+disappointed in my life. I'm going right now to ask Miss Chilton to take
+me, too. I'm wild to get my fingers on that violin."
+
+Swinging lightly down from the limb to the ground, she twisted around
+like a contortionist in a vain attempt to see her back.
+
+"There!" she exclaimed, feeling her belt with a sigh of relief. "For a
+wonder there's nothing torn or busted this trip. I must be reforming
+Girls, what do you think! I haven't lost a single thing for a whole
+week."
+
+"Don't brag," warned Lloyd. "Mom Beck would say you'd bettah scratch on
+wood if you don't want yoah luck to change."
+
+Gay shrugged her shoulders at the superstition, but she reached over and
+lightly scratched the pencil thrust through Betty's curly hair.
+
+"There goes the first bell for vespers," said Kitty, as they strolled
+slowly back toward the Hall, five abreast and arm in arm. With one
+accord they began to hum the hymn with which the service always
+opened,--"Day is dying in the west."
+
+"It's going to be a fair day to-morrow," prophesied Gay, pausing an
+instant on the chapel steps. "There's Miss Chilton. I'll run over and
+ask her now."
+
+"It's all right," she whispered several minutes later, when she slipped
+into the seat next Lloyd. "I can go. It'll be the greatest kind of a
+lark."
+
+As Sybil Green passed through the hall next morning, where the
+excursionists were assembling, Gay stopped her and began slowly
+revolving on her heels. "Now view me with a critic's eye," she
+commanded. "Gaze on me from chapeau to shoe sole, and bear witness that
+I am properly girded up for the occasion. See how severely neat and
+plain I am. See how beautifully my belts make connection in the back.
+Three big, stout safety-pins will surely keep my skirt and shirt-waist
+together till nightfall, and there's not a thing about me that I can
+possibly lose."
+
+She was still turning around and around. "Not a watch, ring, pin, or
+bangle! Not even a pocketbook. Miss Chilton is carrying my car-fare,
+and my handkerchief is up my sleeve."
+
+"You might lose your balance or your presence of mind," laughed Sybil.
+"You'll have to watch her, girls. How spick and span you all look," she
+added, as they trooped past, behind Miss Chilton, most of them in
+freshly laundered shirt-waist suits, for the Indian summer day was as
+warm and sunny as June.
+
+"It would be just about Gay's luck to run into a watering-cart or lean
+up against a freshly painted door, in that pretty pongee suit," she
+thought, watching them out of sight.
+
+But for once Gay's lucky star was in the ascendant. The trip to the
+library left her without spot or wrinkle, and as she followed Miss
+Chilton into the restaurant she could not help smiling at her reflection
+in the mirror. It looked so trim and neat.
+
+The restaurant was crowded. The waiters rushed back and forth, balancing
+their great trays on their finger-tips in a reckless way that made Gay
+dodge every time they passed.
+
+"Oh, you needn't laugh," she exclaimed, when some one jokingly called
+attention to her. "I'm born to trouble; and I have a feeling that
+something is going to happen before the day is over."
+
+Something did happen almost immediately, but not to Gay. Two of the
+pompous coloured men collided just as they were passing Miss Chilton's
+table. One tray dropped to the floor with a tremendous crash of breaking
+dishes. The other was caught dexterously in mid-air, but not before its
+contents had turned a somersault and wrought ruin all around it. A bowl
+of tomato soup splashed over Lloyd's immaculate shirt-waist and ran in
+two long red streaks across the shoulders of her duck jacket, which she
+had hung on her chair-post. Her little gasp of dismay was followed by
+one from Maud Minor, whose dainty gray silk waist was spattered
+plentifully with coffee.
+
+There was a profusion of apologies from the waiters and a momentary
+confusion as the wreck was cleared away. In the midst of it, Miss
+Chilton was pleased and gratified to hear a low-pitched voice at the
+table behind her say: "Those are Warwick Hall girls. I recognize their
+chaperon, but I would have known them anywhere from the ladylike way
+they treated the affair. So quiet and self-controlled, not a bit of fuss
+or excitement, and it probably means that the day's outing will be
+spoiled for two of them."
+
+The girls proceeded with their dessert, but Miss Chilton sat
+considering.
+
+"If you girls were only familiar with the city," she said at last,
+looking at her watch, "I could let you go to some shop and get new
+shirt-waists, and you could meet me at my friend's afterward. But even
+if you could find your way to the shop, I would be afraid to risk your
+finding her house. You would have to change cars and walk a block after
+leaving the last one. I must keep my engagement with her promptly, for
+she is an extremely busy woman, and has granted this view of her library
+as a personal favour to me."
+
+"Do let me take them, Miss Chilton," urged Gay, eagerly. "I'm the only
+old girl in the crowd. I learned my way all about town during last
+Christmas vacation. We could meet you in time to see part of the things.
+All I care for is that violin. _Please_ say yes. I'll be the strictest,
+most dignified chaperon you ever heard of."
+
+Miss Chilton laughed at the expression of ferocity which Gay's face
+suddenly assumed to convince her that she could play the part she begged
+for.
+
+"Really that seems to be the only way out of the difficulty," she
+answered. "I'll give you a note to the department store which Madam
+Chartley always patronizes, so that you can have your purchases
+charged."
+
+"What if we can't find anything to fit," suggested Maud, "and it should
+take such a long time to alter them that we'd be too late to meet you?"
+
+Miss Chilton considered again. "It's almost preposterous to imagine
+that, but it is always well to provide for every emergency. If anything
+unforeseen should happen to delay you, or you can't find the proper
+things to make yourselves presentable, just go to the station and take
+the first car back to the school. I'll inquire of the ticket agent, and
+if you've left a card saying 'gone on,' I'll know that you are safe. If
+you've left no word, I'll put these girls on the car for home, and come
+back and institute a search for you."
+
+While the others busied themselves with finger-bowls, she wrote a hasty
+note on a leaf torn from her memorandum book, which she gave to Maud.
+Then she handed a card to Gay.
+
+"You are the pilot, so here is my friend's address on this card. I've
+marked the line of cars you're to take, and the avenue where you
+change."
+
+"Better let Lloyd take it," suggested Kitty. But, with a saucy grimace,
+Gay folded it and slipped it under her belt.
+
+"There!" she said, fastening it with a big black pin she borrowed from
+Allison. "I've woven that pin in and out, first in the ribbon and then
+through the card, till it's as tight as if it had grown there."
+
+"Can't you take us down an alley?" asked Lloyd. "It mawtifies me
+dreadfully to have to go down the street looking like this."
+
+"The car-line that passes this door goes directly to the department
+store," answered Gay. "It's only a few blocks away, but we'll take it.
+That tomato soup on you certainly does look gory."
+
+Maud had taken the veil from her hat and thrown it over her shoulders in
+a way to hide the coffee stains. "Never mind," she said, carelessly, as
+they left the restaurant. "Just hold your head up and sail along with
+your most princess-like air, and people will be so busy admiring you
+that they won't have time to look at your soupy waist."
+
+"Ugh! It smells so greasy and horrid," sniffed the Little Colonel,
+ignoring Maud's remark. "It's just like dishwatah and bacon rinds. I
+want to get away from it as soon as possible."
+
+"Misses' white shirt-waists?" repeated the saleswoman in the big
+department store, when they reached it a few minutes later. "Certainly.
+Here is something pretty. The newest fall goods."
+
+She led them to a counter piled high with boxes, and they made a hasty
+selection. Some alteration was needed in the collar of the one Lloyd
+chose, and in the sleeves of Maud's. While they waited in the
+fitting-room, turning over some back numbers of fashion-plates and
+magazines, Gay amused herself by wandering around the millinery
+department, trying on hats. Presently she found one so becoming that she
+ran back to them, delighted.
+
+"It isn't once in a thousand years that I find a picture hat that looks
+well with my pug nose!" she cried. "But gaze on this!"
+
+She revolved slowly before them, so radiantly pleased over her discovery
+that she looked unusually pretty. Both girls exclaimed over its
+becomingness. Then Lloyd's gaze wandered from the airy structure of
+chiffon and flowers down Gay's back to her waist-line.
+
+"Mercy, child!" she exclaimed. "You've lost your belt. Every one of
+those three safety-pins is showing, and they each look a foot long!"
+
+Gay's hand flew wildly to the back of her dress, but she felt in vain
+for a belt under which to hide the pins. She turned toward them with a
+hopeless drooping of the shoulders.
+
+"_How_ did I lose it?" she demanded, helplessly. "It had the safest,
+strongest kind of a clasp. When do you suppose I did it, and where? I
+must have been a sight parading the street this way like an animated
+pincushion."
+
+She passed her hand over the obtrusive pins again. "I certainly had it
+on when we left the restaurant. Yes, and after we got on the car to come
+here, for I remember just after you paid the fare I ran my fingers down
+inside of it to make sure that Miss Chilton's card was still safely
+pinned to it."
+
+Then she rolled up her eyes and fell limply back against the wall.
+
+"Girls!" she exclaimed, in a despairing voice, "the card is lost with
+it, too. I've no more idea than the man in the moon where Miss Chilton's
+friend lives, or what her name is, or what car-line to take to get
+there. Do either of you remember hearing her say anything that would
+throw any light on the subject?"
+
+Neither Lloyd nor Maud could remember, and the three stood staring at
+each other with startled faces.
+
+"Maybe you dropped your belt coming up in the elevator," suggested Maud.
+"You might inquire. As soon as we get our clothes on, we'll help you
+hunt."
+
+Gay flew to lay aside the picture hat for her own, and, with her hands
+clutching her dress to hide the unsightly safety-pins, started on her
+search through the store.
+
+"We came straight past the ribbon counter and the embroideries to the
+silks, and then we turned here and took the elevator," she said to
+herself, retracing her steps. But inquiries of the elevator boy and
+every clerk along the line failed to elicit any information about the
+lost belt.
+
+"No, it was only an ordinary belt that no one would look at the second
+time," she explained to those who asked for a description. "Just dark
+blue ribbon with a plain oxidized silver clasp. But there was an address
+pinned to it that is very important for me to find."
+
+The floor-walker obligingly joined in the search, going to the door and
+scanning the pavement and the street-crossing at which they had left the
+car, but to no purpose.
+
+"I can buy a new belt and have it charged," she said to Lloyd, when she
+came back to report, "but there is no way to get the lost address. If I
+could only remember the name, I could look for it in the directory, but
+I never heard it. Miss Chilton always spoke of the lady as 'my friend.'"
+
+"I heard her speak it once," said Lloyd, "but I can't remembah it now."
+
+"Go over the alphabet," suggested Maud. "Say all the names you can think
+of beginning with A and then B, and so on. Maybe you will stumble across
+one that you recognize as the right one."
+
+Lloyd shook her head. "No, it was an unusual name, a long
+foreign-sounding one. I wondahed at the time how she could trip it off
+her tongue so easily."
+
+"Then we're lost! Hopelessly, helplessly undone!" moaned Gay. "All our
+lovely outing spoiled! You won't get to see the books, nor I the violin.
+I know you are hating me horribly. There's nothing to do but go back to
+Warwick Hall, and leave a note with the ticket agent for Miss Chilton."
+
+The tears stood in her eyes, and she looked so broken-hearted that Lloyd
+put her arms around her, insisting that it didn't make a mite of
+difference to her. That she didn't care much for the old books, anyhow,
+and for her not to grieve about it another minute.
+
+Maud's face darkened as she listened. Presently she said: "I don't care
+particularly about the books, either, but I don't see any use of our
+losing the entire holiday. You know your way about the city, Gay; I have
+some car-fare in my purse, and so has Lloyd. We can go larking by
+ourselves."
+
+The dressmaker came back with Maud's waist. She put it on, and Gay went
+for her belt. While Lloyd was still waiting for her waist, Maud
+sauntered out of the fitting-room, and asked permission to use the
+telephone. She was still using it when Gay joined them.
+
+"Wait a minute," Maud called to her invisible auditor, and, still
+holding the receiver, turned toward the girls.
+
+"Such grand luck!" she exclaimed, in a low tone. "I just happened to
+think of a young fellow I know here in town--Charlie Downs. He is always
+ready for anything going, and, when I telephoned him the predicament we
+are in, he said right away he would meet us down here and take us all to
+the matinée."
+
+"Charlie Downs," echoed Gay. "I never heard of him."
+
+"That doesn't make any difference," Maud answered, hurriedly. Then, in a
+still lower tone, with her back to the telephone: "He's all right. He's
+a sort of a distant relative of mine,--that is, his cousin married into
+our family. I can vouch for Charlie. He's a young medical student, and
+he's in old Doctor Spencer's office. Everybody knows Doctor Spencer, one
+of the finest specialists in the country."
+
+She turned toward the telephone again, but Gay stopped her. "It's out of
+the question, Maud, for us to accept such an invitation. It's kind of
+him to ask us, but you're in my charge, and I'll have to take the
+responsibility of refusing."
+
+"Well, I never heard the like of that!" said Maud, angrily, looking down
+on Gay in such a scornful, disgusted way that Lloyd would have laughed
+had the situation not been so tragic. Gay, trying to be commanding,
+reminded her of an anxious little hen, ruffling its feathers because the
+obstinate duckling in its brood refused to come out of the water.
+
+"Madam Chartley wouldn't like it," urged Gay.
+
+"Then she should have made rules to that effect. You know there's not a
+single one that would stand in the way of our doing this."
+
+"Yes, there is. It's an unwritten one, but it's the one law of the Hall
+that Madam expects every one to live up to."
+
+"May I ask what?" Maud's tone was freezingly polite.
+
+"The motto under the crest. It's on everything you know, the old earl's
+teacups, the stationery, and everything--'Keep tryst.'"
+
+"Fiddlesticks for the old earl's teacups!" said Maud, shrugging her
+shoulders. "It's unreasonable to expect us to keep tryst with Miss
+Chilton now."
+
+"Not that," said Gay, ready to cry. "We're to keep tryst with what she
+expects of us. She expects us to do the right thing under all
+circumstances, and you know the right thing now is to go home. We were
+recognized at the restaurant as Warwick Hall girls, and we might be
+again at the matinée. What would people think of the school if they saw
+three of the girls there with a strange young man without a chaperon?"
+
+"You're the chaperon. If you'd do to take us shopping, you'd do for
+that."
+
+"Oh, Maud, don't be unreasonable," urged Gay. "It's entirely different.
+Don't be offended, please, but we can't go. It's simply out of the
+question."
+
+"Indeed it isn't," answered Maud, turning again to the telephone. "Go
+home if you want to, but Lloyd and I will do as we please. I'll accept
+for us."
+
+This time Lloyd stopped her. "Wait! Let's telephone out to the Hall and
+ask Madam."
+
+Maud shrugged her shoulders. "You know very well she'd say no if you
+asked her beforehand." Then the two heard one side of her conversation
+over the telephone.
+
+"Hello, Charlie! Sorry to keep you waiting so long."
+
+"The girls are afraid to go."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I don't suppose so."
+
+"I'm perfectly willing. I'll ask them."
+
+Then turning again, with the receiver in her hand: "He says that the
+matinée will probably be over before the second train out to the Hall,
+and, if it isn't, we can leave a little earlier and be at the station
+before Miss Chilton gets there, and she need never know but what we've
+just been streetcar riding, as we first planned."
+
+"Then that settles it!" exclaimed Lloyd. "If he said that, I wouldn't go
+with him for anything in the world."
+
+"Why?" demanded Maud. Her eyes flashed angrily.
+
+"Because--because," stammered Lloyd. "Well, it'll make you mad, but I
+can't help it. Papa Jack said one time that an honourable man would
+never ask me to do anything clandestine. And it would be sneaking to do
+as he proposes."
+
+Maud was white with rage, and the hand that held the receiver trembled.
+"Have the goodness to keep your insulting remarks to yourself in the
+future, Miss Sherman."
+
+"Please don't go," begged Gay. "I feel so responsible for getting you
+home safely, and it _would_ be sneaking, you know, to pretend we'd been
+simply trolley-riding when we'd been off with him."
+
+"You're nasty little cats to say such things!" stormed Maud. "I don't
+want to have anything more to do with either of you. Go on home and
+leave me alone. Hello! Hello, Charlie!"
+
+They heard her make an engagement to meet him at the drug-store on the
+next corner. Then she sailed out of the store past them, without a
+glance in their direction. Gay began fumbling up her sleeve for her
+handkerchief. The tears were gathering too fast to be winked back.
+
+"It's all my fault," she sobbed. "Oh, if I hadn't lost that unlucky
+belt. To think that I begged to be a chaperon, and then wasn't fit to be
+trusted."
+
+Lloyd tried vainly to comfort her. A little later two
+disconsolate-looking girls took the first afternoon train out to Warwick
+Hall, and stole up to Lloyd's room. As Betty was with Miss Chilton, no
+one knew of their arrival, and they spent several uncomfortable hours
+agonizing over the question of what they should say when they were
+called to account. They decided at last that they would give no more
+information about Maud than that a distant relative had called for her.
+
+At five o'clock, Miss Chilton reached the ticket-office with her little
+brood, and found Lloyd's card with the words "gone on" scribbled in one
+corner. Lloyd and Gay, watching at the window for their arrival, saw
+with sinking hearts that Maud was not with them. They hoped that she
+would come on the same train, and would be forced to make her own
+explanations. But they were not called upon to explain her
+disappearance. Miss Chilton, almost distracted with an attack of
+neuralgic headache, went to her room immediately, and sent down word
+that she would not appear at dinner.
+
+"She'll surely come on the next train," Gay whispered to Lloyd, but the
+whistle sounded at the station, and they watched the clock in vain.
+Ample time passed for one to have walked the distance twice from the
+station to the Hall, but no one came.
+
+It was half-past six when they filed down to dinner. The halls were
+lighted, and all the chandeliers in the great dining-room glowed.
+
+As they passed the window on the stair-landing, Lloyd pressed her face
+against the pane and peered out into the darkness. Gay, just behind her,
+paused and peered also.
+
+"What do you suppose has happened?" she whispered. "It's as dark as a
+pocket, and Maud hasn't come yet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+"KEEP TRYST"
+
+
+LLOYD and Betty were starting to undress when there was a light tap at
+the door, and Gay's head appeared. In response to their eager call, she
+came in, and, shutting the door behind her, stood with her back against
+it.
+
+"No, I can't sit down," she answered. "It's too late to stop. I only ran
+in to tell you that Maud got home about five minutes ago. 'Charlie' came
+with her as far as the door and Madam has just sent for her to demand an
+explanation. She told her roommate that she knew she was in for a
+scolding, and that, as one might as well be killed for a sheep as a
+lamb, she made her good time last as long as she could. After the
+matinée they had a little supper at some roof-garden or café or
+something of the kind, where there was a band concert. Then he brought
+her out on the car, and they strolled along the river road home. The
+moon was just beginning to come up. She's had a beautiful time, and
+thinks she has done something awfully cute, but she'll think differently
+by the time Madam is through with her."
+
+"Will she be very terrible?" asked Lloyd, pausing with brush in hand.
+
+"I don't know," answered Gay. "Nothing like this has happened since I
+have been at the Hall, but I've heard her say that this is not a reform
+school, and girls who have to be punished and scolded are not wanted
+here. If they can't measure up to the standard of good behaviour, they
+can't stay. As long as this is the first offence, she'll probably be
+given another trial, but I'd not care to be in her shoes when Madam
+calls her to judgment."
+
+No one ever knew what passed between the two in the up-stairs office,
+but Maud sailed down to breakfast next morning as if nothing had
+happened. The only difference in her manner was when Lloyd and Gay took
+their places opposite her at the table. They glanced across with the
+usual good morning, but she looked past them as if she neither saw nor
+heard.
+
+"Cut dead!" whispered Lloyd. Gay giggled, as she unfolded her napkin.
+"I'm very sure she has no cause to be angry with us. We are the ones
+who ought to act offended."
+
+Soon after breakfast they were called into Miss Chilton's room, but to
+their great relief found that she already knew what had happened, and
+that they were to be questioned only about their own part in the affair.
+So presently Gay passed out to her Latin recitation, and Lloyd wandered
+around the room, waiting for the literature class to assemble.
+
+Miss Chilton's room was the most attractive one in the Hall. It looked
+more like a cheerful library than a schoolroom. Low book-shelves lined
+the walls, with here and there a fine bust in bronze or Carrara marble.
+Pictures from many lands added interest, and the wicker chairs, instead
+of being arranged in stiff rows, stood invitingly about, as if in a
+private parlour. There were always violets on Miss Chilton's desk, and
+ferns and palms in the sunny south windows. The recitations were carried
+on in such a delightfully informal way that the girls looked forward to
+this hour as one of the pleasantest of the day.
+
+This morning, to their surprise, instead of questioning them about the
+topic they had studied, Romance of the Middle Ages, she announced that
+she had a story which Madam Chartley had requested her to read to them,
+and she wished such close attention paid to it that afterward each one
+could write it from memory for the next day's lesson.
+
+"I have a reason for wishing to impress this little tale indelibly on
+your minds," she said, "so I shall offer this inducement for
+concentrating your attention upon it: five credits to each one who can
+hand in a full synopsis of the story, and ten to the one who can
+reproduce it most literally and fully."
+
+There was a slight flutter of expectancy as the class settled itself to
+listen, and, opening the little green and gold volume where a white
+ribbon kept the place, she began to read:
+
+
+"Now there was a troubadour in the kingdom of Arthur, who, strolling
+through the land with only his minstrelsy to win him a way, found in
+every baron's hall and cotter's hut a ready welcome. And while the
+boar's head sputtered on the spit, or the ale sparkled in the shining
+tankards, he told such tales of joust and journey, and feats of brave
+knight errantry, that even the scullions left their kitchen tasks, and,
+creeping near, stood round the door with mouths agape to listen.
+
+"Then with his harp-strings tuned to echoes of the wind on winter moors,
+he sang of death and valour on the field, of love and fealty in the
+hall, till those who listened forgot all save his singing and the noble
+knights whereof he sang.
+
+"One winter night, as thus he carolled in a great earl's hall, a little
+page crept nearer to his bench beside the fire, and, with his blue eyes
+fixed in wonderment upon the graybeard's face, stood spellbound. Now
+Ederyn was the page's name, an orphan lad whose lineage no man knew, but
+that he came of gentle blood all eyes could see, although as vassal
+'twas his lot to wait upon the great earl's squire.
+
+"It was the Yule-tide, and the wassail-bowl passed round till boisterous
+mirth drowned oftentimes the minstrel's song, but Ederyn missed no word.
+Scarce knowing what he did, he crept so close he found himself with
+upturned face against the old man's knee.
+
+"'How now, thou flaxen-haired,' the minstrel said, with kindly smile.
+'Dost like my song?'
+
+"'Oh, sire,' the youth made answer, 'methinks on such a wing the soul
+could well take flight to Paradise. But tell me, prithee, is it possible
+for such as _I_ to gain the title of a knight? How doth one win such
+honours and acclaim and reach the high estate that thou dost laud?'
+
+"The minstrel gazed a little space into the Yule log's flame, and
+stroked his long hoar beard. Then made he answer:
+
+"'Some win their spurs and earn the royal accolade because the blood of
+dragons stains their hands. From mighty combat with these terrors they
+come victorious to their king's reward. And some there be sore scarred
+with conquest of the giants that ever prey upon the borders of our fair
+domain. Some, who have gone on far crusades to alien lands, and there
+with heart of gold and iron hand have proved their fealty to the Crown.'
+
+"Then Ederyn sighed, for well he knew his stripling form could never
+wage fierce combat with a dragon. His hands could never meet the brawny
+grip of giants. 'Is there no other way?' he faltered.
+
+'I wot not,' was the answer. 'But take an old man's counsel. Forget thy
+dreams of glory, and be content to serve thy squire. For what hast such
+as thou to do with great ambitions? They'd prove but flames to burn away
+thy daily peace.'
+
+"With that he turned to quaff the proffered bowl and add his voice to
+those whose mirth already shook the rafters. Nor had he any further
+speech with Ederyn. But afterward the pretty lad was often in his
+thoughts, and in his wanderings about the land he mused upon the
+question he had asked.
+
+"Another twelvemonth sped its way, and once again the Yule log burned
+within the hall, and once again the troubadour knocked at the gate, all
+in the night and falling snow. And as before, with merry jests they led
+him in and made him welcome. And as before, was every mouth agape from
+squire's to scullion's, as he sang.
+
+"Once more he sang of knights and ladyes fair, of love and death and
+valour; and Ederyn, the page, crept nearer to him till the harp-strings
+ceased to thrill. With head upon his hands, he sat and sighed. Not even
+when the wassail-bowl was passed with mirth and laughter did he look up.
+And when the graybeard minstrel saw his grief, he thought upon his
+question of the Yule-tide gone.
+
+"'Ah, now, thou flaxen-haired,' he whispered in his ear. 'I bear thee
+tidings which should make thee sing for joy. There is a way for even
+such as thou to win the honours thou dost covet. I heard it in the royal
+court when last I sang there at the king's behest.'
+
+"Then all aquiver with his eagerness did Ederyn kneel, with face
+alight, beside the minstrel's knee to hear.
+
+"'Know this,' began the graybeard. ''Tis the king's desire to 'stablish
+round him at his court a chosen circle whose fidelity hath stood the
+utmost test. Not deeds of prowess are required of these true followers,
+with no great conquests doth he tax them, but they must prove themselves
+trustworthy, until on hand and heart it may be graven large, "_In all
+things faithful._"
+
+"'To Merlin, the enchanter, he hath left the choice, who by some strange
+spell I wot not of will send an eerie call through all the kingdom. And
+only those will hear who wake at dawn to listen in high places. And only
+those will heed who keep the compass needles of their souls true to the
+north star of a great ambition. The time of testing will be long, the
+summons many. To duty and to sorrow, to disappointment and defeat, thou
+may'st be called. No matter what the tryst, there is but one reply if
+thou wouldst win thy knighthood. Give heed and I will teach thee now
+that answer.'
+
+"Then smiting on his harp, the minstrel sang, so softly under cover of
+the noise, that only Ederyn heard. Through all the song ran ever this
+refrain. It seemed a brooklet winding in and out through some fair
+meadow:
+
+          "''Tis the king's call. O list!
+            Thou heart and hand of mine, keep tryst--
+               Keep tryst or die!'
+
+"Then Ederyn, with his hand upon his heart, made solemn oath. 'Awake at
+dawn and listening in high places will I await that call. With the
+compass needle of my soul true to the north star of a great ambition
+will I follow where it leads, and though through fire and flood it take
+me, I'll make but this reply:
+
+          "''Tis the king's call. O list!
+            Thou heart and hand of mine, keep tryst--
+               Keep tryst or die!'
+
+"Pressing the old man's hand in gratitude (he could say no word for the
+strange fulness in his throat that well-nigh choked him), he rose from
+his knees and left the hall to muse on what had passed.
+
+"That night he climbed into the tower, and, with his face turned to the
+east, kept vigil all alone. Below, the rioters waxed louder in their
+mirth. The knife was in the meat, the drink was in the horn. But he
+would not join their revels, lest morning find him sunk in sodden
+sleep, heavy with feasting and witless from wine.
+
+"As gray dawn trailed across the hills, he started to his feet, for far
+away sounded the call for which he had been waiting. It was like the
+faint blowing of an elfin horn, but the words came clearly.
+
+"'Ederyn! Ederyn! One awaits thee at nightfall in the shade of the
+yew-tree by the abbey tower! Keep tryst!'
+
+"Now the abbey tower was the space of forty furlongs from the domain of
+the earl, and full well Ederyn knew that only by especial favour of his
+squire could he gain leave of absence for this jaunt. So, from sunrise
+until dusk, he worked with will, to gain the wished-for leave. Never
+before did buckles shine as did the buckles of the squire entrusted to
+his polishing. Never did menial tasks cease sooner to be drudgery,
+because of the good-will with which he worked. And when the day was
+done, so well had every duty been performed, right willingly the squire
+did grant him grace, and forthwith Ederyn sped upon his mission.
+
+"The way was long, and, when he reached the abbey tree, he fell
+a-trembling, for there a tall wraith stood within the shadows of the
+yew. No face had it that he could see, its hands no substance, but he
+met it bravely, saying: 'I am Ederyn, come to keep the king's tryst.'
+
+"And then the spectre's voice replied: 'Well hast thou kept it, for 'tis
+known to me the many menial tasks thou didst perform ere thou couldst
+come upon thy quest. In token that we two have met, here is my pledge
+that thou may'st keep to show the king.'
+
+"He felt a light touch on the bosom of his inner vestment, and suddenly
+he stood alone beside the gruesome abbey. Clammy with fear, he knew not
+why, he drew his mantle round him and sped home as one speeds in a
+fearsome dream. And that it was a dream he half-believed, when later, in
+the hall, he served at meat those gathered round the old earl's board.
+But when he sought his bed, and threw aside his outer garment, there on
+his coarse, rough shirt of hodden gray a pearl gleamed white above his
+heart, where the wraith's cold hand had touched him. It was the token to
+the king that he had answered faithfully his call.
+
+"Again before the dawn he climbed into the tower, and, listening when
+the voices of the world were still, heard clear and sweet, like
+far-blown elfin horn, another summons.
+
+"'Ederyn! Ederyn! One awaits thee at the midnight hour beside black
+Kilgore's water. Keep tryst!'
+
+"Again to gain his squire's permission he toiled with double care. This
+time his task was counting all the spears and halberds, the battle-axes
+and the coats of mail that filled the earl's great armament. And o'er
+and o'er he counted, keeping careful tally with a bit of keel upon the
+iron-banded door, till the red lines that he marked there made his eyes
+ache and his head swim. At last the task was finished, and so well the
+squire praised him, and for his faithfulness again was fain to speed him
+on his way.
+
+"It was a woful journey to the waters of Kilgore. Sleep weighed on
+Ederyn's eyelids, and haltingly he went the weary miles, footsore and
+worn. But midnight found him on the spot where one awaited him, another
+wraith-like envoy of the king, and it, too, left a touch upon his heart
+in token he had kept the tryst. And when he looked, another pearl
+gleamed there beside the first.
+
+"So many a day went by, and Ederyn failed not in his homely tasks, but
+carried to his common round of duties all his might, as if they were
+great feats of prowess. Thus gained he liberty to keep the tryst with
+every messenger the king did send.
+
+"Once he fared forth along a dangerous road that led he knew not where,
+and, when he found it crossed a loathly swamp all filled with slime and
+creeping things, fain would he have fled. But, pushing on for sake of
+his brave oath, although with fainting heart, he reached the goal at
+last. This time his token made him wonder much. For when he wakened from
+his swoon, a shining star lay on his heart above the pearls.
+
+"Now it fell out the squire to whom this Ederyn was page was killed in
+conflict with a robber band, and Ederyn, for his faithfulness, was taken
+by the earl to fill that squire's place. Soon after that, they left the
+hall, and journeyed on a visit to a distant lord. 'Twas to the Castle of
+Content they came, where was a joyous garden. And now no menial tasks
+employed the new squire's time. Here was he free to wander all the day
+through vistas of the joyous garden, or loiter by the fountain in the
+courtyard and watch the maidens at their tasks, having fair speech with
+them among the flowers. And one there was among them, so lily-like in
+face, so gentle-voiced and fair, that Ederyn well-nigh forgot his oath,
+and felt full glad when for a space the king's call ceased to sound. And
+gladder was he still, when, later on, the earl's long visit done, he
+left young Ederyn behind to serve the great lord of the castle, for so
+the two friends had agreed, since Ederyn had pleased the old lord's
+fancy.
+
+"Yet was he faithful to his vow, and failed not every dawn to mount to
+some high place, when all the voices of the world were still, and listen
+for the sound of Merlin's horn. One morn it came:
+
+"'Ederyn! Ederyn! One waits thee far away. By the black cave of Atropos,
+when the moon fulls, keep thy tryst!'
+
+"Now 'twas a seven days' journey to that cave, and Ederyn, thinking of
+the lily maid, was loath to leave the garden. He lingered by the
+fountain until nightfall, saying to himself: 'Why should I go on longer
+in these foolish quests, keeping tryst with shadows that vanish at the
+touch? No nearer am I to a knight's estate than, when a stripling page,
+I listened to the minstrel's tales.'
+
+"The fountain softly splashed within the garden. From out the
+banquet-hall there stole the sound of tinkling lutes, and then the lily
+maiden sang. Her siren voice filled all his heart, and he forgot his
+oath to duty. But presently a star reflected in the fountain made him
+look up into the jewelled sky, where shone the polar constellation. And
+there he read the oath he had forgotten: 'With the compass needle of my
+soul true to the north star of my great ambition, I will follow where it
+leads.'
+
+"Thrusting his fingers in his ears to silence the beloved voice of her
+who sang, he madly rushed from out the garden into the blackness of the
+night. The Castle of Content clanged its great gate behind him. He
+shivered as he felt the jar through all his frame, but, never taking out
+his fingers, on he ran, till scores of furlongs lay between him and the
+tempting of that siren voice.
+
+"It was a strange and fearsome wood that lay between him and the cave.
+All things seemed moaning and afraid. He saw no forms, but everywhere
+the shadows shuddered, and moans and groans pursued him till nameless
+fears clutched at his heart with icy chill. Then suddenly the earth
+slipped way beneath his feet, and cold waves closed above his head. He
+knew now he had fallen in the pool that lies upon the far edge of the
+fearsome wood,--a pool so deep and of such whirling motion that only by
+the fiercest struggle may one escape. Gladly he would have allowed the
+waters to close over him, such cold pains smote his heart, had he not
+seemed to hear the old minstrel's song. It aroused him to a final
+effort, and he gasped between his teeth:
+
+          "''Tis the king's call! O list!
+            Thou heart and hand of mine, keep tryst--
+                Keep tryst or die!'
+
+"With that, in one mighty struggle he dragged himself to land. A
+bow-shot farther on he saw the cave, and by sheer force of will crept
+toward it. What happened then he knew not till the moon rose full and
+high above him. A form swathed all in black bowed over him.
+
+"'Ederyn,' she sighed. 'Here is thy token that the king may know that
+thou hast met me face to face.'
+
+"He thought it was a diamond at first, that sparkled there beside the
+star, but when he looked again, lo, nothing but a tear.
+
+"Then went he back unto the joyous garden by slow degrees, for he was
+now sore spent. And after that the summons came full often. Whenever all
+the world seemed loveliest and life most sweet, then was the call most
+sure to come. But never once he faltered. Never was he faithless to the
+king's behest. Up weary mountain steps he toiled to find the sombre face
+of Disappointment there in waiting, and Suffering and Pain were often at
+his journey's end, and once a sore Defeat. But bravely as the months
+went by he learned to smile into their eyes, no matter which one handed
+out to him the pledge of Duty well performed.
+
+"One day, when he no longer was a beardless youth, but grown to pleasing
+stature and of great brawn, he heard the hoped-for call of which he long
+had dreamed: 'Ederyn! Ederyn! The king himself awaits thee. Midsummer
+morn at lark-song, keep tryst beside the palace gate.'
+
+"As travellers on the desert, spent and worn, see far across the sand
+the palm-tree's green that marks life-giving wells, so Ederyn hailed
+this summons to the king. The soul-consuming thirst that long had urged
+him on grew fiercer as the well of consummation came in sight. Hope shod
+his feet with wings, as thus with every nerve a-strain he pushed toward
+the final tryst. So fearful was he some mishap might snatch the cup away
+ere it had touched his thirsty lips, that three full days before the
+time he reached the Vale of Avalon, and sat him down outside the
+entrance to the palace.
+
+"Now there came prowling through the wood that edged the fair domain the
+gnarled dwarfs that do the will of Shudderwain. And Shudderwain, of all
+the giants thereabouts, most cruel was and to be feared. Knowing full
+well what pleasure it would give the bloody monster, these dwarfs laid
+evil hands on Ederyn. Sleeping they found him, and bound him with hard
+leathern thongs, and then with gibes and impish laughter dragged him
+into a dungeon past the help of man.
+
+"Two days and nights he lay there, raging at fate and at his
+helplessness, till he was well-nigh mad, bethinking him of all his
+baffled hopes. And like a madman gnawed he on the leathern thongs till
+he was free, and beat his hands against the stubborn rock that would not
+yield, and threw himself against the walls that held him in.
+
+"The dwarfs from time to time peered through the slatted window overhead
+and mocked him, pointing with their crooked thumbs.
+
+"'Ha! ha! Thou'lt keep no tryst,' they chattered. 'But if thou'lt swear
+upon thy oath to go back to the joyous garden, and hark no more for
+Merlin's call, we'll let thee loose from out this Dungeon of thy
+Disappointment.'
+
+"Then was Ederyn tempted, for the dungeon was foul indeed, and his heart
+cried out to go back to the lily maiden. But once more in his ears he
+thrust his fingers and cried:
+
+          "'To the king's call alone I'll list!
+            Oh, heart and hand of mine, keep tryst--
+               Keep tryst or die!'
+
+"On the third night, with the quiet of despair he threw him prone upon
+the dungeon floor and held his peace, no longer gnawing on his thongs or
+beating on the rock. A single moonbeam straggled through the slatted
+window, and by its light he saw a spider spinning out a web. Then,
+looking dully around, he saw the dungeon was hung thick with other webs,
+foul with the dust of years. Great festoons of the cobweb film shrouded
+his prison walls. As up and down the hairy creature swung itself upon
+its thread, the hopeless eyes of Ederyn followed it.
+
+"All in a twinkling he saw how he might profit by the spider's teaching,
+and clapped his hand across his mouth to keep from shouting out his joy,
+so that the dwarfs could hear. Now once more like a madman rushing at
+the walls, he tore down all the dusty webs, and twisted them together in
+long strands. These strands he braided in thick ropes and tied them,
+knotting them and twisting and doubling once again. All the while he
+kept bewailing the stupid way in which he wasted time. 'Three days ago I
+might have quit this den,' he sighed, 'had I but used the means that lay
+at hand. Full well I knew that heaven always finds a way to help the man
+who helps himself. No creature lives too mean to be of service, and
+even dungeon walls must harbour help for him who boldly grasps the first
+thing that he sees and makes it serve him.'
+
+"So fast and furiously he worked that, long before the moonbeam faded,
+his cobweb rope was strong enough to bear his weight, and long enough to
+reach twice over to the slatted window overhead. By many trials he at
+last succeeded in throwing it around a spike that barred the window,
+and, climbing up, he forced the slats apart and clambered through. Then
+tying the rope's end to the window, he slid down all the dizzy cliffside
+in which the dwarfs had dug the dungeon, and dropped into the stream
+that ran below.
+
+"Lo, when he looked around him it was dawn. Midsummer morn it was, and,
+plunging through the wood, he heard the lark's song rise, and reached
+the palace gate just as it opened to the blare of trumpets for the
+king's train to ride forth. When Ederyn saw the royal cavalcade, he
+shrunk back into the wayside bushes, so ill-befitting did it seem that
+he should come before the king in tattered garments, with blood upon his
+hands where the sharp rocks had cut, and with foul dungeon stains.
+
+"But that the king might know he'd ever proven faithful, he sank upon
+his knees and bared his breast at his approach. There all the pledges
+glistened in the sunlight, in rainbow hues. There Pain had dropped her
+heart's blood in a glittering ruby, and Honour set her seal upon him in
+a golden star. A diamond gleamed where Sorrow's tear had fallen, and
+amethysts glowed now with purple splendour to mark his patient meeting
+with Defeat. But mostly were the pledges little pearls for little duties
+faithfully performed; and there they shone, and, as the people gazed,
+they saw the jewels take the shape of letters, so that the king read out
+before them all, '_Semper fidelis_.'
+
+"Then drew the king his royal sword and lightly smote on Ederyn's
+shoulder, and cried: 'Arise, Sir Knight, Sir Ederyn the Trusty. Since I
+may trust thee to the utmost in little things as well as great, since
+thou of all men art most worthy, henceforth by thy king's heart thou
+shalt ride, ever to be his faithful guard and comrade.'
+
+"So there before them all he did him honour, and ordered that a prancing
+steed be brought and a good sword buckled on his side.
+
+"Thus Ederyn won his sovereign's favour. Soon, by his sovereign's grace
+permitted, he went back to the joyous garden to woo the lily maiden.
+When he had won his bride and borne her to the palace, then was his
+great reward complete for all his years of fealty to his vow. Then out
+into the world he went to guard his king. Henceforth blazoned on his
+shield and helmet he bore the crest--a heart with hand that grasped a
+spear, and, underneath these words:
+
+"_'I keep the tryst!'_"
+
+Slipping the white ribbon back between the pages to mark the place, Miss
+Chilton laid the little green and gold volume on the table, and smiled
+at the circle of attentive faces.
+
+"I am sure you understand why I have read this story," she said. "It is
+the motto of the school. Tradition has it that Sir Ederyn was an ancient
+member of Madam Chartley's family. At any rate, it has borne his crest
+for many, many generations, and there could be no better motto for a
+school. The world expects us to do certain things. We must keep tryst
+with these expectations. You all know what happened yesterday. Madam
+looks for a certain course of conduct from her girls. She does not make
+rules. She only expects what the inborn instinct of a true lady would
+prompt you to do or to be. I am sure that after this explanation none
+of you will fail to keep tryst with her expectations."
+
+That was the only public reference to Maud's escapade. She left the room
+with a very red face when the class was dismissed. The little story put
+her so plainly in the wrong before the other girls that it made her
+cross and uncomfortable.
+
+Every member of the class had five marks to her credit, and Betty was
+the lucky one whose almost literal reproduction of the story gave her
+ten. She copied it all down in her white record afterward, adding a
+verse that she had once seen in an autograph album:
+
+              "Life is a rosary
+          Strung with the beads of little deeds,
+          Done humbly, Lord, as unto thee."
+
+She repeated the verse aloud to Lloyd. "I'd like to make that kind of a
+rosary. I'd like to act out that story. It just strikes my fancy. It
+would be such a satisfaction to lay aside a token each night, as Ederyn
+did, that I had kept tryst with duty,--had perfect lessons, or lived
+through a day just as nearly right as I possibly could."
+
+She went on writing after she had made the remark, but Lloyd, pleased by
+the thought, sat staring at the lamp. It was nearly bedtime, and
+presently, putting aside her book, she rose and crossed over to the
+bureau. In a sandalwood box in the top drawer was a broken fan-chain of
+white beads--tiny Roman pearls that she had bought in a shop in the Via
+Crucia. She had intended to string them sometime, mixing with them here
+and there some curious blue beads she had seen made at a glass-blower's
+in Venice--large blue ones with tiny roses on the sides.
+
+Betty, busy with her diary, did not notice how long Lloyd stood with her
+back toward her, pouring the little Roman pearls from one hand to the
+other.
+
+"It seems almost babyish," Lloyd was saying to herself. "But othah girls
+keep memory-books and such things, and this is such a pretty idea. No
+one need know. Yes, I'll begin the rosary this very night, for every
+lesson was perfect to-day, and I truly tried my best in everything."
+
+Hesitating an instant longer, she rummaged through the drawer for a
+piece of fine white silk cord which she remembered having placed there.
+When she found it, she knotted one end securely, and then slowly slipped
+one little pearl bead down against the knot.
+
+"There!" she thought, with a hasty glance over her shoulder at Betty, as
+she dropped the string back into its box. "There's one token that I've
+kept tryst, even if I nevah earn any moah. I'm going to have that string
+half-full by vacation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A MEMORY-BOOK AND A SOUVENIR SPOON
+
+
+THE string of white beads grew steadily, but work went hand in hand with
+play at Warwick Hall, as Kitty's memory-book testified. She brought it
+out to liven the recreation hour one rainy afternoon, late in the term,
+when they were house-bound by the weather. Its covers, labelled "Gala
+Days and Bonfire Nights," were bulging with souvenirs of many memorable
+occasions. She sat on the floor with it spread open on her lap. Betty
+was on one side and Lloyd on the other, while Gay leaned against her
+back and looked over her shoulder.
+
+Kitty opened her treasure-house of mementos with a giggle, for on the
+first page was a water-colour sketch of Gay as she had appeared on the
+welcoming night. She had painted her with two enormous feet protruding
+from her flowing skirts, one cased in a party slipper with an
+exaggerated French heel, the other in a down-trodden bedroom slipper
+painted a brilliant crimson.
+
+"You mean thing!" cried Gay, laughing over the ridiculous caricature of
+herself.
+
+"That isn't a circumstance to some of them," remarked Allison, who was
+virtuously spending her recreation hour in sewing buttons on her gloves
+and mending a rip in the lining of her coat-sleeve. "Wait till you come
+to the programme of the recital given by the students of voice, violin,
+and piano. The pictures she made all around the margin of it are some of
+the best she has done. The sketch of Susie Tyndall, tearing her hair and
+shrieking out the 'Polish Boy,' is simply killing."
+
+"Kitty Walton," exclaimed Gay, as she bent over the grotesquely
+decorated programme, "where do you keep this book o' nights? I'll surely
+have to steal it. Think what it will be worth to us when we are old
+ladies. There's one thing certain, you could never pose as a saintly old
+grandmother with such a record for mischief as this to bear witness
+against you."
+
+Kitty looked up with a startled expression. "You know, it never occurred
+to me before that I'd ever look at this book through spectacles. I
+wonder if I'll find it as amusing then, when I'm dignified and
+rheumatic, as I do now."
+
+"I'm sure _that_ will be pleasant to recall," said Betty, pointing to a
+withered rose pinned to the next page. "That will properly impress your
+grandchildren."
+
+Underneath the rose was written the date of a private reception granted
+the Warwick Hall girls at the White House.
+
+"I had such a lovely time that afternoon," sighed Betty. "It was so much
+nicer to go as we did, for a friendly little visit under Madam's wing,
+than to have pushed by in a big public mob. Wasn't Cora Basket funny?
+She was so overawed by the honour that she fairly turned purple. Her
+roommate vows that, when she wrote home, she began, 'Preserve this
+letter! The hand that is now writing it has been shaken by the President
+of the United States of America!'"
+
+"Cordie Brown was funnier than Cora," said Allison. "She wanted to
+impress people with the idea that the affair was nothing to her. That it
+rather bored her, in fact. She went around with her nose in the air,
+trying to appear so superior and indifferent, as if crowned heads and
+their ilk made her tired."
+
+"What's this?" demanded Lloyd, as they turned the next leaf, through
+which a single long black hair had been drawn. Underneath was the
+gruesome legend, "Dead men tell no tales."
+
+"Oh, that's only a 'hair from the tail of the dog of the child of the
+wife of the wild man of Borneo,'" laughed Kitty, attempting to turn the
+page; but Lloyd, laying both palms across it, held it fast.
+
+"You know it's not, you naughty thing. You've been up to some prank."
+
+"It a p. j. A private joke," explained Kitty, bending over the book and
+laughing till her forehead touched her knees. "I'm dying to tell you,
+for it's the funniest thing in the collection. It happened at the
+Hallowe'en party, and I promised not to tell."
+
+"Promised whom?" demanded Betty.
+
+"Can't tell that, either," was all that Kitty would say. She flipped
+over the next leaf. A gilded wishbone was fastened to the page by the
+bit of red ribbon run through it.
+
+"That's 'In Memoriam' of the grand spread at the Thanksgiving Day feast.
+And this button pasted on just below it, popped off the glove of
+Mademoiselle La Tosto the afternoon she came to the Studio Tea and Art
+reception. You know how the girls buzzed around her like a swarm of
+bees, begging for her autograph. I'd rather have this button than a
+dozen autographs, for it dropped off her glove as she clapped her hands
+in that vivacious Frenchy way of hers, when she saw my caricature of
+Paderewski that the girls stuck up on the wall. Understand, young
+ladies, she was _applauding_ it. I walked on air all afternoon."
+
+"Why undah the sun have you saved this tea leaf?" asked Lloyd, pointing
+to one pasted carefully in the corner of the next page.
+
+"Don't you remember the day that we went down to Mammy Easter's cabin,
+and her old black grandmother was there, and told our fortunes? She was
+a regular old hag, Gay. I wish you could have seen her,--teeth all gone;
+skin puckered as a dried apple; she looked more monkey than human. But
+she's a fine fortune-teller. I made a few hieroglyphics to recall what
+she said. This mark is supposed to be a coach and four. She said that
+Allison was to wed wid de quality and ride in a car'age, but sorrow
+would be her po'shun if she walked proud. She said that I'm bawn to
+trouble as de spah'ks fly upwa'd, case I won't hah'k to counsel, and
+that I mustn't marry the first man that axes me, and I mustn't marry the
+second man that axes me, but the third man that axes me, him I can
+safely marry. This tea leaf stands for the third man. I'm to have three
+sons and one daughter, and my luck will come to me through running water
+when the weather-vane points west."
+
+Kitty pointed to several pencil scratches beside the tea leaf, intended
+to signify a brook and a weather-vane on a steeple.
+
+"What did she say about Betty?" asked Gay.
+
+Kitty studied the next line of hieroglyphics a moment. "Oh, I see now. I
+intended this for a ship. She said there was a veil done hanging ovah
+her future, so she couldn't rightly tell, but she could see ships coming
+and going and crowds of people, and she could see that her fortune was
+mixed up with a great many other persons. She said that the teacup held
+gold for her, and the signs all 'pinted friendly.'"
+
+"And Lloyd?" queried Gay, trying to decipher the next line of pencil
+marks. "Surely that's not a cat I see."
+
+"A cat, a teapot, and a ball of knitting," laughed Kitty. "I supposed
+that Lloyd's fortune would be something thrilling, but according to the
+old darky, it's to be the tamest of all. She said, 'I see a rising sun,
+and a row of lovahs, but I don't see you a-taking any of 'em, honey. Yo'
+ways am ways of pleasantness and all yo' paths am peace, but I'se
+powahful skeered dat you'se gwine to be an ole maid. I sholy is.'"
+
+"Is that so, Lloyd?" asked Gay, leaning over Kitty's shoulder to laugh
+at the Little Colonel's teased expression. Kitty answered for her.
+
+"Not if we can help it. We want her for a cousin, and we think that she
+ought to marry Malcolm just for the sake of being able to claim us as
+her dear relations. Look how she's blushing, girls."
+
+"I'm not!" was the indignant answer. "You're just trying to make me get
+red, because you know I do it so easily."
+
+She turned the page hastily and began to talk about its contents to
+change the subject. There were scraps of ribbon, as they went farther
+on, a burnt match, a peacock feather, a tiny block of wood with a hole
+shot through it, a strand of embroidery silk, a faded pansy,--a hundred
+bits of worthless rubbish which an unknowing hand would have swept into
+the waste-basket; but to Kitty each one was a key to unlock some happy
+memory of her swiftly passing school-days. As the four heads, brown and
+golden, black and auburn, bent over the book, the rain beat against the
+windows in torrents.
+
+With needle in air, Allison sat a moment watching the water stream down
+the pane. "This makes me think of that afternoon in old Lloydsboro
+Seminary," she said, musingly, "when Ida Shane read the 'Fortunes of
+Daisy Dale' aloud to us. I wonder what has become of Ida. She was living
+in a little country town up in the mountains the last time I heard of
+her, taking in sewing and doing her own work."
+
+"She's the girl who caused so much excitement at the Seminary," Betty
+explained to Gay. "The one who got our Shadow Club into disgrace. She
+tried to elope one night, but the teachers found it out and sent her
+home. It didn't do any good, for she ran away with Ned Bannon the next
+summer, and they were married by a justice of the peace. I don't see how
+Ida could do it when she'd always been so romantic, and planned to have
+her wedding just like Daisy Dale's, in cherry blossom time, and in the
+little stone church at Lloydsboro, with the vines over the belfry. It's
+so quaint and English looking, just like the one that Daisy was married
+in. Instead of being all in white, she was married in the dress she
+happened to have on when she ran away,--just an old black walking skirt
+and plaid shirt-waist. No veil, no trail, and no orange-blossoms, and
+she had counted on having all three. It was so prosy and commonplace
+after the grand things she had planned."
+
+"She's had it prosy enough ever since, too," remarked Allison. "Ned
+drinks so hard that he can't keep a position. She didn't reform him one
+single bit, and I reckon she understands now why her aunt objected so
+strongly to her marrying him. Poor Ida, to think of her having to take
+in sewing to keep her from actual starvation! It's awful!"
+
+"Poah Ida!" echoed Lloyd. "I don't see how she does it. When she was in
+the Seminary, she couldn't do anything with her needle but embroidah. I
+used to have Mom Beck do her mending and darning when she did mine."
+
+"Thank fortune _my_ mending is done!" exclaimed Allison, dropping her
+thimble into her work-bag, and throwing her coat across a chair. "It's
+almost time for the bell. I must take Juliet Lynn the papers I promised
+her."
+
+Lloyd and Betty, looking at the clock, scrambled to their feet, and a
+moment after only Gay and Kitty were left on the rug with the
+memory-book open between them.
+
+"Do you think that Lloyd really cares for your cousin?" asked Gay.
+
+"No," was the emphatic answer. "You can make her blush that way about
+anybody, and I love to tease her. When she first came back from Arizona,
+I used to think she liked Phil Tremont, a boy she met out there, and
+then I thought maybe it was Joyce's brother Jack. She talked so much
+about the duck hunts they had together, and what a splendid fellow he
+was, and how much her father admired him. But the Princess is so
+particular that I believe the old darky told her fortune truly. If she's
+so particular at fifteen, 'I'se powahful skeered she's gwine to be an
+old maid. I sholy is.' For what will she be at twice fifteen?"
+
+Gay laughed at the imitation of the old coloured woman, then asked: "But
+doesn't your cousin come up to her standard? According to Maud Minor he
+is as handsome as a Greek god, as accomplished as all the Muses put
+together, and as entertaining as a four-ring circus."
+
+"Oh, Malcolm's all right," answered Kitty. "We're awfully fond of him,
+but we're not so crazy about him as to think all that. I have a picture
+of him somewhere in my box of photographs, if you'd like to see it."
+
+Climbing on a chair to reach the box on the top of the wardrobe, she
+took it down and began rummaging through it. In a moment she tossed a
+photograph to Gay, who still sat on the floor, Turk fashion.
+
+[Illustration: "STUDYING THE FACE OF THE HANDSOME YOUNG FELLOW WITH
+INTEREST"]
+
+"Here is one he had taken years ago when he and Keith used to play they
+were two little Knights of Kentucky, and went around trying to set the
+wrongs of the world to rights."
+
+While Gay was still exclaiming over it, she threw down another. "Here's
+the one I was looking for. It was taken this summer at Narragansett Pier
+on his polo pony."
+
+Gay seized it, studying the face of the handsome young fellow with
+interest. "Why, he's almost grown!" she cried.
+
+"Yes, he's nearly eighteen, and he is even better looking than that
+picture. And here's Keith, the one I'm so fond of. We always have so
+much fun when they come out to grandmother's for the holidays."
+
+The box slipped and the entire contents showered over the floor. Gay
+helped her to put them back into the box, glancing at each one as she
+did so. One in a cadet uniform attracted her attention.
+
+"Who's this? Now _he's_ the one I'd like to know. I suppose it's because
+I've lived at an army post always that I adore anything military. _He_
+looks interesting."
+
+Kitty leaned over to look. "Oh, that's my brother Ranald. He's away at
+military school. Won't he be teased when I tell him what you said? He's
+dreadfully bashful with girls, though you'd think he oughtn't to be. He
+was under fire ever so many times with papa in the Philippines when he
+was a little chap. You know he was the youngest captain in the army, at
+one time, and was on General Grant's staff when he was still in short
+trousers."
+
+"Why, of course, I know," cried Gay, enthusiastically. "I heard some
+officers talking about it one night at dinner just after it happened.
+Papa toasted 'The Little Captain' in such a pretty speech that the
+officers who had fought with your father cheered. But I never dreamed
+then that I'd ever know his sister, or be sitting here holding his
+picture, talking about him. I'm going to take possession of this," she
+added, when all the other photographs were back in the box.
+
+"You don't care, do you? I'd like it to add to my collection of heroes.
+I'll put it in a frame made of brass buttons and crossed guns and all
+sorts of ornaments that the officers have given me off of their
+uniforms."
+
+"No, I don't care," answered Kitty. "Allison has one like it, and I can
+get another any time by writing home for it. I wish you would take it,
+for that would give me such a fine thing to tease him about. I could
+worry him nearly distracted."
+
+"I don't care how much you tease him so long as I may keep the picture,"
+laughed Gay. "I'm a thousand times obliged to you."
+
+As she sat looking at it, she exclaimed, suddenly: "Kitty Walton, you're
+an awfully lucky girl to have such nice boys in your family. I wish I
+knew them. I haven't a brother or even a forty-second cousin."
+
+"Well, you can know them if you'll come home with me to spend the
+Christmas vacation. Ranald always brings a boy home with him for the
+holidays, and mother said Allison and I might bring a friend. I'm sure
+she'd rather have you than anybody else, she knows your father and
+mother so well."
+
+The amber lights in Gay's brown eyes deepened. "Oh, I'd _love_ to!" she
+cried. "I'd dearly love to! It's too far to go away back to San Antonio
+for such a short time, and I hated to think of the holidays, knowing
+I'd have to stay here at the Hall, with all you girls gone. Are you sure
+your mother won't object?"
+
+"You wait and see," advised Kitty. "You don't know mammy! You'll not
+have any doubt of your welcome when her letter comes."
+
+"Oh, it would be too lovely for anything!" exclaimed Gay, listening with
+a far-away look in her eyes, as Kitty began outlining plans for the
+coming holidays. Presently, in sheer joy at the prospect, they pulled
+each other up from the floor, and, springing on to the bed, danced a
+Highland fling in the middle of it, till a slat fell out with a
+terrifying crash.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the coming of December the holiday gaieties began. A spirit of
+festivity lurked in the very air. A mock Christmas tree was one of the
+yearly features of the school, when each pupil's pet fad or peculiarity
+was suggested by appropriate gifts. Preparations for the tree began
+early in the month, and whispered consultations were carried on in every
+corner, with much giggling and profound assurances of secrecy.
+
+The practising of Christmas carols went on in the music-rooms, and
+snatches of them floated down the halls and through the building, till
+the blithe young hearts were filled to overflowing with the cheer and
+good-will of the sweet old melodies. Now the usual Monday sightseeing
+gave way to shopping, and every moment that could be snatched from
+school work was given to crochet-needles and embroidery-hoops, to the
+finishing of an endless variety of gifts, and the wrapping of same in
+mysterious packages.
+
+One Monday Betty did not join the others in their weekly shopping
+expedition. Her few purchases had been made, and she wanted the day to
+work on unfinished gifts. She was making most of them with her needle.
+She was glad afterward that she had decided to stay when a slow winter
+rain began to fall. It melted the light snow-fall which whitened the
+ground into a disagreeable compound of slush and mud.
+
+It was almost dark when Kitty and Allison burst into the room, their
+arms full of bundles, and began displaying their purchases. Lloyd
+followed more slowly, and, dropping her packages on the floor by the
+radiator, stood trying to warm her fingers through her wet gloves.
+Presently, in the midst of the exhibition, with her hat still on, she
+flung herself across her bed, piled up as it was with strings and
+crumpled wrapping-paper. "Excuse me if I mash your bargains, Kitty," she
+said, weakly, closing her eyes. "But I'm as limp as a rag! So ti'ahed--I
+feel as if I were falling to pieces. We tramped around in the wet so
+long, and then inside the stores there were such crowds that we were
+pushed and jammed and stepped on everywhere we turned. It seemed to me
+we waited hours for our change. Then the car we came out on was so
+ovah-heated that we almost stifled. I'm suah I caught cold when the icy
+wind struck us aftah we left the station."
+
+She shivered as she spoke. Betty sprang up and began tugging at her wet
+wraps.
+
+"Don't lie there that way," she begged. "Let me help you get into some
+dry clothes, and ask the housekeeper for a glass of hot milk."
+
+At first Lloyd protested that she was too tired to move. Betty could be
+as persistent as a mosquito at times. She insisted until Lloyd finally
+allowed her to have her way, and got up wearily to put on the dry skirts
+and stockings which she brought to her. A hot dinner made her feel
+somewhat better, but her face was flushed when they went up-stairs for
+the study hour. Betty saw her wipe her eyes as she took out her Latin
+grammar, and instantly forgave the petulant way in which Lloyd had
+answered her several times during the evening.
+
+"Don't try to study, Lloyd," she urged. "I know you don't feel well."
+
+"No," acknowledged the Little Colonel, "every bone in my body aches, and
+my head is simply splitting."
+
+"Let me run down to the sanitarium and ask Miss Gilmer to come up and
+see if she can't do something for you," began Betty, but Lloyd
+interrupted her, stamping her foot with a touch of her old childish
+imperiousness.
+
+"You sha'n't go! I'm not sick! I've just caught a plain cold."
+
+"But people don't catch just plain colds nowadays," persisted Betty.
+"They always catch microbes at the same time, that are apt to turn into
+la grippe and pneumonia and all sorts of dreadful things. 'A stitch in
+time saves nine,' you know," she added, wisely, quoting from the motto
+embroidered on her darning-bag, which happened to be hanging on a
+chair-post in the corner. "'An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of
+cure' every time."
+
+"Oh, for mercy's sake, Betty," cried Lloyd, impatiently, "let me alone
+and don't be so preachy. I'm not going to repoa't a little thing like a
+headache and a soah throat to the nurse. She'd put me to bed and keep me
+there for a week. I'd get behind with my lessons, and lose all the
+holiday fun. Like as not mothah and Papa Jack would come straight aftah
+me, and take me home befoah we'd had the mock Christmas tree or any of
+the things I've been looking forward to so long."
+
+Betty picked up her algebra again without an audible reply, but inwardly
+she was saying: "I know she is sick, or she wouldn't be so cross."
+
+The next day found Lloyd with such high fever that she was installed at
+once in the sanitarium. "It is la grippe that she has," the nurse told
+Betty. "It is the real thing, and not what people always claim to have
+with an ordinary cold. The worst will probably be over in a few days,
+but it will leave her so exhausted and so susceptible to other things
+that I shall keep her with me for a week at least."
+
+Lloyd rebelled at first, but she had to submit as her fever mounted
+higher, and the world grew, to her blurred fancy, one great, throbbing
+ache. She was glad to give herself up to Miss Gilmer's soothing touches.
+Mrs. Sherman did not come, for a letter from the school physician
+assured her that Lloyd was receiving every care and attention that she
+could have had at home, and the case was quite a simple one.
+
+Miss Gilmer, the nurse, was a big motherly woman, who seemed to radiate
+comfort and cheer, as a stove does heat. After the first few days, Lloyd
+would have enjoyed the time spent with her in the cheerful room assigned
+her had she not been haunted by the thought that she was falling behind
+her classes.
+
+"It's a pretty good sawt of a world, aftah all," she said one day, as
+she sat propped up among the pillows, enjoying a dainty mid-afternoon
+lunch Madam Chartley had personally prepared and sent in hot from the
+chafing-dish. Bouillon in the thinnest of fragile china, and a toasted
+scone which recalled delightfully the little English inn she had visited
+near Kenilworth ruins. By some oversight, no spoon had been sent in on
+the tray, and Miss Gilmer supplied the deficiency by bringing one of her
+own from a little cabinet in the next room.
+
+"It has a history," Miss Gilmer said, and Lloyd looked at it with
+interest before dipping it into the cup.
+
+"Why, the handle is a May-pole!" she exclaimed, with pleasure. "And the
+date down among the garlands is the queen's birthday, isn't it? I
+remembah we were up in the Burns country that day, when we saw the
+school-children celebrating it."
+
+"To think of an American girl remembering that date!" cried Miss Gilmer,
+in a pleased tone. "It is a great day on my calendar, for it was then
+that I met Madam Chartley, for the first time, on the queen's birthday.
+She has been my good angel ever since. It was she who sent me that
+May-pole spoon, as a souvenir of that meeting."
+
+"Oh, would you tell me about it?" asked Lloyd. "It sounds so
+interesting."
+
+Taking up some needlework from a basket on the table, Miss Gilmer leaned
+back as if to begin a long story.
+
+"There isn't so much to tell, after all," she said, pausing to thread
+her needle. "It was long ago, when Madam Chartley was Alicia Raeburn,
+and I was a bashful little English schoolgirl at St. Agnes Hall. Alicia
+had come from America to visit her uncle, who was proctor of the
+cathedral. His grounds joined the school premises on the south, and I
+often used to peep through the hedge and watch her strolling around the
+garden. She was older than I, and the difference in our ages seemed
+greater then than now, for I was still wearing short frocks, and she
+had just put on long ones. I had heard that she was to be presented at
+court next season. That, and the fact that she was an American, and very
+beautiful, and that she looked lonely strolling around the old proctor's
+garden by herself, threw a glamour of romance about her.
+
+"I would have given a fortune to have made her acquaintance, and I spent
+hours down by the brook dreaming innocent little day-dreams in which I
+pictured such meetings. Suddenly heliotrope became my favourite flower
+instead of roses, because she so often wore a bunch of it tucked in the
+belt of her gray dress. Indeed, because she so often wore it, I grew to
+regard it as sacred to her alone, and felt that no one else had a right
+to wear it. Fortunately, at that season of the year it grew only in the
+proctor's conservatory, so that the schoolgirls could not obtain it. I
+would have inwardly resented it, if any one of them had taken such a
+liberty as to wear her flower. She seemed to me the most beautiful and
+perfect creature I had ever seen, and I worshipped her from afar, and
+imitated her in every way possible. I don't suppose you can understand
+such an infatuation."
+
+"Indeed I do undahstand," interrupted Lloyd, eagerly. She was thinking
+of Ida Shane, and the way she had fallen under the spell of her
+charming personality. Even yet the odour of violets brought back the
+same little thrill it had awakened when violets seemed made for Ida's
+exclusive wearing. Miss Gilmer's feeling for the beautiful Alicia
+Raeburn was no deeper than hers had been for Ida. She could readily
+understand about the heliotrope.
+
+"Well, then," Miss Gilmer went on, "you can imagine my state of mind
+when at last I actually met her. It was on the queen's birthday. At our
+school, instead of having the May-pole dance on May-day, we waited until
+the queen's birthday, and on that occasion Alicia was one of the invited
+guests. It was quite by accident she spoke to me. She dropped her
+handkerchief, and I sprang to pick it up. But she must have seen the
+adoration in my poor little embarrassed face, for I went quite red I am
+sure. I could fairly feel the hot blood surge over me. She said
+something pleasant to cover my confusion, and then swept her skirts
+aside for me to share her seat. She wanted to ask some questions about
+the customs of the school, she said.
+
+"That was the beginning of our acquaintance. Next day she waved her
+handkerchief over the hedge to me, and the next called me over for a
+little chat. She was lonely in the great garden. After awhile I plucked
+up courage to tell her how I had watched her through the hedge, and
+dreamed about meeting her. I could not put it into words, but she could
+readily see that the good Victoria and the queen of the May were not the
+sovereigns who claimed my dearest allegiance. It was the 'Queen Rose of
+the rosebud garden of girls,' the beautiful Alicia Raeburn.
+
+"She went away that summer, but we had grown to be such friends that she
+promised to write to me once a year, in order that I might not lose her
+entirely out of my life. She knew what a lonely little orphan I was, and
+she never denied me the joy of that yearly letter. They were full of her
+travels and the interesting experiences of her life, for she married a
+young English officer and went to India.
+
+"They came back to England once. I saw her then. It was at a great ball
+given for the Prince of Wales when he honoured the little cathedral town
+with a visit. She could hardly believe that I was the little schoolgirl
+who had eyed her so adoringly through the hedge. I had grown so large.
+But she found from others what a lonely life I had, and, knowing how
+much her friendship meant, she still gave me the pleasure of that yearly
+letter, written on the queen's birthday. That she should remember
+through all her busy years shows one of the finest traits of her
+character.
+
+"Once she was too ill to write, but the message came just the same. She
+sent this spoon with the May-pole handle, and on her card was scrawled
+the one line, 'I keep the tryst.' She had told me the story of their
+family crest. You don't know how many times in the next few years the
+sight of that card and the souvenir spoon helped me. Her fidelity to a
+promise made me rely on her and her friendship when all others failed
+me. My guardian died and left my property in such shape that I found I
+would have to support myself, and I began to take training for a
+professional nurse. When she heard of it, she wrote and told me that
+she, too, had been obliged by her husband's death to earn her own
+living, and that she had established this school in her
+great-grandmother's old mansion. She offered me the position of
+professional nurse here. I came on the next steamer, and have been here
+ever since.
+
+"You don't know how many times I've thought how different my life would
+have been if she had failed in that one little matter of sending a
+yearly letter. No doubt it was a bore to her oftentimes, but it was the
+line that kept us in touch and finally drew me to this happy anchorage.
+Alicia Chartley is a great woman, my dear. She has left her imprint on
+every girl who has passed through this school, and there'll be a long
+line of them to rise up and call her blessed. Not so much for the fine
+ladies she has made of them with her high-bred ways and ideals, but for
+the example she has set them always in that one thing. No matter in how
+small a duty, she has never once failed to keep the tryst."
+
+Lloyd would have liked to ask some questions about Madam's girlhood, but
+some one called Miss Gilmer into the office just then, so, taking the
+tray with its empty cup and plate, she passed out. Lloyd thumped her
+pillows and lay looking out of the window at the sparrows on the balcony
+railing. All the ache was gone, and, with a delightful sense of
+drowsiness and of well-being, she began slipping into a little doze.
+Even illness had its bright side, she thought, languidly. She liked Miss
+Gilmer's reminiscences. They opened into a world so delightfully
+English. When she came back she would ask for more stories. Down from
+the distant music-room stole the faint echo of one of the carols. She
+opened her eyes to listen.
+
+          "God rest you, merry Christians,
+             Let nothing you dismay,
+           For Christ our Lord and Saviour
+             Was born on Christmas Day."
+
+Lloyd liked that carol. "'Let nothing you dismay,'" she repeated,
+softly. "No, it doesn't really make any difference what happens," she
+thought, closing her eyes again and curling up like a sleepy kitten. "It
+will all come right in the end, as it did with Miss Gilmer. I'll not
+worry about missing so many lessons and so many pearls on my rosary.
+I'll just be thankful for Christmas and all it brings."
+
+Again through her drowsy senses echoed the refrain, and she dropped to
+sleep, repeating, slowly, "'Let--nothing--you--dismay!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+CHRISTMAS CAROLS
+
+
+"THIS is the worst time of all the yeah to be sick," fretted the Little
+Colonel, pausing in her restless journey around the room. She had been
+pacing from window to fireplace in the nurse's office, and from
+fireplace to window again, watching the clock and the slowly westering
+sun, as if watching would hasten the day to its close.
+
+Miss Gilmer, who was placidly knitting, changed needles without looking
+up. "That is what people always say. I've never yet found one whose
+calendar had a time when illness would be convenient."
+
+"But now, just befoah the holidays, a thousand things are waiting to be
+done. I'm behind a whole week with my studies, and my Christmas presents
+that I'm going to make are scarcely begun. You haven't even let me look
+at the material. I feel like a caged lion, and I'd like to roah and claw
+and ramp around till I'd smashed my bah's."
+
+"You'll have your liberty soon," laughed Miss Gilmer. "I think it will
+be safe to let you go down to the dining-room this evening, and I'll
+give you your honourable discharge in the morning. But, if I were in
+your place, I would make no attempt to catch up with the classes this
+term. I would lock the unfinished presents away in a drawer, and not
+give any this Christmas. You ought to spend the holidays as quietly as
+possible, doing nothing but rest."
+
+Lloyd turned toward her with an exclamation of dismay.
+
+"Oh, Miss Gilmer! That's impossible! We've planned for a gayer Christmas
+vacation than we've evah had befoah. Every day will be full to the brim.
+And I _must_ make up the recitations I have missed. I've had such good
+repoah'ts all term that I can't beah to spoil everything right at the
+end. When I was in bed, feeling so bad, I made up my mind I wouldn't
+worry about them, but now I feel as good as new, only a little weak, and
+one always feels weak aftah fevah. It's to be expected. You know I
+wasn't dangerously ill."
+
+"No," admitted Miss Gilmer, "but your little illness has left you with
+less strength than you think you have. You are like an ice-pond that is
+just beginning to freeze over. A very light weight will break it
+through at that stage, but if there is no strain until it has frozen
+properly, it can bear the weight of the most heavily loaded wagons."
+
+Lloyd slipped into a chair and stared dismally at the fire.
+
+"But I am strongah than you think, Miss Gilmer. Except one time when I
+had the measles, I'd never been sick in my life till last week. I don't
+believe it's good for people to coddle themselves and worry all the time
+for feah they are going to be ill."
+
+"Oh," answered the nurse, "I fully agree with you in that, still I
+should not be doing my duty if I did not put up a warning signal when I
+see danger ahead. I do see it now. You are getting on very nicely, but
+the ice is very thin,--far too thin for any such extra weights as double
+study hours and holiday dissipations. If you don't walk lightly,
+there'll be a nervous breakdown."
+
+Some one called Miss Gilmer away before she could finish her warning,
+and Lloyd sat facing the fire and this unpleasant bit of counsel for
+nearly half an hour. A verse from her favourite carol came echoing
+through the halls from the distant music-room, for it was practice hour
+again, but this time it did not fit her mood, and it brought no cheer.
+It was all well enough for those girls up-stairs, happy and well and
+able to do as they pleased, to be singing "Let _nothing_ you dismay,"
+but she couldn't help being dismayed at Miss Gilmer's opinion of her
+condition. She was ready to cry, thinking how all her holidays would be
+spoiled should she follow the nurse's advice.
+
+With her chin in her hand and her elbow on the arm of the chair, she sat
+picturing her doleful Christmas if she could have no part in the giving,
+and must be left out of all the merrymaking they had planned. Tears
+welled up into her eyes, and her miserable reverie might have ended in a
+downpour had it not been interrupted by the entrance of Gay and Betty.
+Having taken a hasty run across the terraces, they had obtained
+permission to spend the rest of the recreation hour with Lloyd.
+
+"We can't waste a minute now," exclaimed Gay, as she pulled out her
+knitting-work and began clicking her ivory needles through a rainbow
+shawl she was making. "I believe Betty sleeps with her embroidery hoops
+under her pillow, and I know that Allison paints in her sleep."
+
+"What would you do if you were in my place?" mourned Lloyd. She repeated
+the nurse's dismal warning.
+
+"Boo! She magnifies her office," said Gay, glancing over her shoulder to
+make sure that they were alone. "I suppose it is perfectly natural that
+she should. When you're with Miss White, she makes you feel that there's
+nothing in life to live for but Latin. When you're with Miss Hooker,
+mathematics is the chief end of man. With Professor Stroebel the violin
+is the one and only. So of course a professional nurse is in duty bound
+to make hygiene the first consideration. Don't listen to them, listen to
+me. I change my mind a dozen times a day, and have a new fad every
+fortnight, so it stands to reason that my advice is more broad-minded
+than the advice of a person who rides only one hobby, and rides that in
+a rut."
+
+Lloyd laughed at Gay's foolishness, but groaned when Betty told her how
+far the classes had advanced during her absence from recitations.
+
+"I'll have to work like a beavah this next week to catch up. I stah'ted
+out to have perfect repoah'ts, and I feel that I must stick to it, as
+Ederyn did when he heard the king's call. It is an obligation that I
+_must_ meet. I must keep tryst or die."
+
+Gay looked at her admiringly. "I knew you were like that," she
+exclaimed. "If there is anything I envy it is strength of character."
+
+The admiring glance and Gay's remark carried greater weight than all the
+nurse's warning. There was another reason now for persevering in her
+determination. Gay expected it of her, and she could not fall below
+Gay's expectation of what a strong character should accomplish.
+
+Gay, having finished a white stripe across the shawl, opened the
+sweet-grass Indian basket hanging on her chair-post, and took out
+several skeins of zephyr of a delicate sea-shell pink.
+
+"Let me hold it while you wind," begged Lloyd. "It's such an exquisite
+shade, like the heart of a la France rose. It makes me think of the
+stories mothah used to tell me. Everything in them had to be pink, from
+the little girl's dress to the bow on her kitten's neck. Her slippahs,
+parasol, flowahs in the garden, papah on the wall, icing on the cake,
+everything had to be pink."
+
+"What a funny little creature you must have been," laughed Gay, secretly
+making note of Lloyd's favourite colour, and resolving to change the
+names on two packages laid away in her trunk. The blue sachet-bag with
+the forget-me-nots should go to Betty instead of Lloyd, as she had
+originally intended. Lloyd should have the one with the garlands of pink
+rosebuds.
+
+"My room at home is furnished in pink," Lloyd went on. "Oh, Gay, I'm
+wild for you to see Locust. I'm going to have you and the Walton girls
+and Katie Mallard, one of our neighbahs, spend two days and nights with
+us. While I've been cooped up heah getting well, I've planned some of
+the loveliest things to do that you evah dreamed of. It's going to be
+the gayest vacation that evah was."
+
+When Miss Gilmer returned at the end of the hour, Lloyd looked so much
+brighter and better that she gave her an unexpected furlough.
+
+"There, run along to your room with the other girls. I'll expect you
+back at bedtime, for I want to keep you under my wing one more night,
+but you're at liberty till then on one condition,--you're not to look
+into a book."
+
+"I'll promise! Oh, I'll promise!" cried Lloyd, impetuously throwing her
+arms around the nurse. "You're _such_ a deah! Not that I'm anxious to
+get away from you," she added, fearing that her delight might be
+misunderstood. "But I just want to get _out_!"
+
+True to her promise, Lloyd opened no books, but, flying to her room, she
+took out one of the uncompleted Christmas gifts, a pair of bedroom
+slippers, and worked with feverish haste until dinner was ready. It was
+good to be at the table again with the other girls after her week of
+solitary meals in the nursery. Afterward it was a temptation to linger
+in the library talking with them, but the thought of the many tasks
+undone sent her hurrying back to her room.
+
+Betty followed presently with the Walton girls, and they all worked
+steadily on their various gifts until the bell rang for the evening
+study hour. Then Allison and Kitty reluctantly departed, and Betty took
+out her algebra. Lloyd crocheted in silence for half an hour longer, her
+fingers flying faster and faster in her eagerness to complete the task.
+Finally she laid it down with a sigh of relief.
+
+"There!" she exclaimed aloud. "That's done. They're all ready for the
+bows. Now, thank fortune, I can check them off my list."
+
+Betty looked up with an absent-minded smile, nodded approvingly at the
+finished slippers standing on the table, and then went on with her
+problems. Lloyd opened her bureau-drawer to search for the ribbon which
+she had bought for the bows. As she rummaged through it, her hand
+touched the little sandalwood box that held the unfinished rosary. She
+glanced over her shoulder. Betty was deep in her algebra. So, taking out
+the string of beads, she passed it slowly through her fingers. Then she
+held it up, and, looping it around her throat, looked in the mirror.
+
+"I suppose it's mighty childish of me," she said to herself, "but I
+can't enjoy my vacation if I go home with a single one of this term's
+pearls missing. I've _got_ to make up those lessons, no mattah what the
+nurse says. I can rest aftahward."
+
+A few minutes later she presented herself at Miss Gilmer's door with the
+announcement that she would go to bed an hour earlier than usual, in
+order to get a good start for the next day.
+
+All that week she worked with a restless energy that kept her keyed to
+the highest pitch of effort. She scarcely ate, and her sleep was broken,
+but her eyes were so bright and her manner so animated, that Betty wrote
+home that Lloyd's little spell of illness seemed to have done her good.
+
+By studying before breakfast, and snatching every minute she could spare
+from other duties, she managed to have perfect recitations in each
+study, and at the same time to make up the lessons she had missed. Five
+o'clock Saturday afternoon found her with the last task done. She
+slipped ten more little Roman pearls over the silken cord; five for the
+week's advance work, and five for the days she had missed. Then with a
+sigh of relief she put the sandalwood box into her trunk, already partly
+packed for home-going, and flung herself wearily across the bed.
+
+The mock Christmas tree had been lighted the evening before, and the
+gifts distributed. She had not enjoyed it as she had expected to,
+although some of the jokes were excruciatingly funny, and the girls had
+laughed until they were limp. She was too tired to laugh much. She was
+glad that Sunday was coming before the day of leave-taking. She made up
+her mind that she would skip dinner, and ask Betty just to slip her
+something from the table.
+
+Then she remembered that this was the night the carols were to be sung
+in the chapel. She could not miss that. It was the prettiest service of
+all the year, the old girls said. Some one had told her it was a custom
+for everybody to wear white to the carol-singing, but it was hard to
+remember things, maybe she had only dreamed it. She wished that she did
+not have to remember things, but could lie there without moving, until
+morning. What was it her mother used to sing to her? "Asleep in the arms
+of the slow-swinging seas." Oh! The white seal's lullaby. That was what
+she wanted. How good it would feel to be rocked by the restful motion
+of the waves, to be caught in that long sleepy sweep of the
+slow-swinging seas.
+
+When she opened her eyes again it was to find the room lighted, and
+Betty dressing for the carol service. She had slept an hour.
+
+"It'll never do to miss the carols," Betty assured her, when she
+suggested skipping dinner. "Come on, I'll help you dress. Just tell me
+what you want to wear, and I'll lay out your things while you're shaking
+your wits together. You'll feel better after you've had a hot dinner."
+So struggling with the weariness which nearly overpowered her, Lloyd
+forced herself to follow Betty's example, and go down to the dining-room
+when the bell rang. An hour later she fell into line with the other
+girls, as, all in white, they filed into the chapel.
+
+"How Christmasey it looks and smells," she whispered to Allison, as the
+doors swung open and a breath from the pine woods greeted them. The
+chancel was wreathed and festooned with masses of evergreen. To-night
+tall white candles furnished the only light. Far down the dim aisles
+they twinkled like stars against the dark background of cedar and
+hemlock.
+
+Betty was glad that they had entered early. The deep silence of those
+moments of waiting, the dim light of the Christmas tapers, and the
+fragrance of the pine seemed as much a part of the service as anything
+which followed. In the expectant hush that filled the little chapel, she
+pictured the three kings riding through the night, until she could
+almost see the shadowy desert and hear the tread of the camels who bore
+the wise men on their starlit quest. She saw the hillside of Judea,
+where the shepherds kept their night-watch by their flocks, and all the
+mystery and wonder of the first great Christmastide seemed to vibrate
+through her heart, as the deep organ prelude suddenly filled the air
+with the jubilant chords of "Joy to the world, the Lord has come."
+
+Presently the music changed, and the girls looked around expectantly.
+From far down distant halls and corridors came a chorus of girlish
+voices: "Oh, little town of Bethlehem." So sweet and far away it was,
+the audience in the chapel involuntarily leaned forward to listen.
+Across the campus it sounded, gradually drawing nearer and clearer,
+until, with a triumphant burst of melody, the doors swung open and the
+white-robed choir swept in.
+
+Only the best voices in the school had been chosen for this choir, and
+weeks of training preceded the service. One after another they sang the
+sweet old tunes of the Christmas waits until they reached Lloyd's
+favourite, "Let nothing you dismay." She listened to it with pleasure
+now, since her greatest cause for dismay had been removed. She had kept
+tryst with the term's obligations, as the last pearl on the rosary could
+testify.
+
+In the hush that followed that carol, an old man, with silvery hair and
+benign face, rose under the tall candles of the chancel.
+
+"It's the bishop," whispered Gay to Lloyd. "Old Bishop Chartley. He is
+Madam's uncle, and he always comes down for this service."
+
+Then even her irrepressible tongue grew still, for, in a deep voice that
+filled the chapel, he began to read the story of the three wise men who
+followed the star with their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh,
+until it led them to Bethlehem's manger. An old, old story, but it
+bloomed anew once more, as it has bloomed every year since first the
+wondering wise men started on their quest.
+
+The bishop closed the Book. "How shall we keep the King's birthday?" he
+asked. "What gifts shall we bring? To-day in a quaint old tale, beloved
+in boyhood, I found the answer. It is the story of a strange country
+called Cathay, and this is the way it runs:
+
+"'The ruler thereof is one Kublan Khan, a mighty warrior. His government
+is both wise and just, and is administered to rich and poor alike,
+without fear or favour. On the king's birthday the people observe what
+is called the White Feast. Then are the king and his court assembled in
+a great room of the palace, which is all white, the floor of marble and
+the walls hung with curtains of white silk. All are in white apparel,
+and they offer unto the king white gifts, to show that their love and
+loyalty are without a stain. The rich bring to their lord pearls,
+carvings of ivory, white chargers, and costly broidered garments. The
+poor present white pigeons and handfuls of rice. Nor doth the great king
+regard one gift above another, so long as all be white. And so do they
+keep the king's birthday.'"
+
+Lloyd, leaning forward, listened with such breathless interest that it
+attracted Gay's attention. "That's just like your pink story," she
+whispered. Lloyd gave her fingers a responsive squeeze, but never took
+her eyes from the benign old face. The bishop was applying the story to
+the audience before him.
+
+"As these pagans of Cathay kept the feast of Kublan Kahn, so we may make
+of Christmas a White Feast, whose offerings are without stain. We need
+make no weary pilgrimages across the trackless sands, as did those
+Eastern sages. 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my
+brethren' (these are the King's own words), 'ye have done it unto me.'
+At our very doors we may give to Him, through His poor and needy.
+
+"But there is another way. You are all familiar with the motto of this
+house, and the legend which gave rise to it. Clad in the white garments
+of Righteousness, we may keep the tryst as Ederyn kept it, and bring to
+the King the white pearls of a well-spent life. Days unstained by
+selfishness, days filled up with duties faithfully performed. It matters
+not how small and commonplace our efforts seem, the rice and the pigeons
+of the poor showed Kublan Kahn his subjects' loyalty as fully as the
+ivory carvings and the costly broidered garment. Nor doth the great King
+regard one gift of ours above another, so long as all be white. If only
+on our breasts the tokens Duty gives us spell out the words, '_semper
+fidelis_,' then ours will be the royal accolade: 'Well done, thou good
+and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.' To give
+_ourselves_, unstained and gladly, thus may we keep the White Feast on
+the birthday of the King."
+
+Then the choir stood again, but Lloyd scarcely noticed what it sang. She
+was thinking of the bishop's story, and her secret hidden away in the
+sandalwood box. She was so glad now that she had strung the pearls. She
+had begun it because it pleased her fancy to act out the story of
+Ederyn, but now the sacred meaning the old bishop gave the story
+thrilled her through and through. The King's call suddenly seemed very
+sweet and personal. Henceforth she would string the pearls in answer to
+that call.
+
+When they all knelt in the closing prayer, she fervently echoed the
+bishop's petition: "Grant that we make of this Christmastide a White
+Feast, and that all our days may be worthy of thy acceptance, unstained
+by selfishness and full of deeds to show our love and loyalty."
+
+The white-robed choir filed slowly out, their music sounding fainter and
+fainter until it died away across the campus, and the white-robed
+audience was left kneeling in silence. There were tears in Gay's eyes
+when she arose. Such music always stirred her to the depths. Kitty went
+back to her room humming one of the carols, and Betty stole away to
+write the bishop's sermon in her little white record, while the memory
+of it was still warm in her heart.
+
+At Miss Gilmer's request, Lloyd waited a moment in the vestibule. At
+first she wished that Miss Gilmer had not detained her. She wanted to go
+on with Allison, who had her by the arm. Afterward, however, she was
+glad of the waiting. It gave her an opportunity to meet the venerable
+bishop.
+
+"So you are going home to-morrow for the holidays," he said, genially,
+as he held out his hand. "Godspeed, daughter. May you keep the White
+Feast with joy."
+
+It seemed to Lloyd that that "Godspeed" followed her like a
+benediction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+HOMEWARD BOUND
+
+
+          "O Warwick Hall, dear Warwick Hall,
+           Thy happy hours we'll oft recall!
+           No time or change can break thy tie,
+           Though for awhile we say good-bye--
+               Good-bye! Good-bye!"
+
+AMID a flutter of handkerchiefs and a babel of parting cries, each
+'bus-load of girls departed from the Hall to the station singing the
+farewell song of the school.
+
+A dozen times on the way home Allison, humming it unconsciously, found
+the rest of the party joining in. It was an uneventful journey, but a
+merry one to the five girls, travelling for the first time without a
+chaperon. For the first few hours they had the observation car to
+themselves. Even the porter mysteriously disappeared.
+
+"He's curled up asleep somewhere, rest his soul," said Gay, when she had
+rung for him several times.
+
+"All the better," answered Kitty. "We don't really need the table, and
+it's nice to have him out of the way. This is as good as travelling in
+a private car. We can 'stand on our head in our little trundle-bed, and
+nobody nigh to hinder.' Oh, girls, I'm so crazy glad that we're on our
+way home that I'm positively obliged to do something to let off steam.
+I've exhausted my vocabulary trying to express my delight, so there's
+nothing left but to howl."
+
+"Or to wriggle," suggested Gay. "Why not try facial expression? How is
+this for transcendent joy?"
+
+The grotesque smile which she turned upon them was so ridiculous that
+they screamed with laughter.
+
+"Oh, Gay, do stop!" begged Betty. "You're as bad as a comic valentine."
+
+"I'd like to see you do any better," retorted Gay.
+
+"Let's all try," suggested Kitty. "Line up in front of this mirror,
+girls. Now all look pleasant, please. Now let your smiles express
+rapture. Now, frenzied delight!"
+
+Fascinated by their own ugliness, the five girls stood in a row
+distorting their pretty faces with hideous grins and grimaces until they
+were weak from laughing. The banging of the car door sent them scuttling
+into their seats. A portly old gentleman passed through the car to the
+rear platform, and, slamming the door behind him, stood looking down
+the rapidly vanishing track. Evidently it was too breezy a view-point
+for the old gentleman, even with his coat-collar turned up and hat
+pulled down to meet his ears, for in a moment he came in and passed back
+to his seat in a forward car. The girls sat demurely looking out of the
+windows until he was gone, then they faced each other, giggling.
+
+"Suppose he had caught us making those idiotic faces," exclaimed
+Allison. "He would have taken us for a lot of escaped lunatics."
+
+"No, he wouldn't," insisted Gay. "He was a real benevolent-looking old
+fellow, the kind that understands young people, and he'd know that it
+was just that Christmas has gone to our heads, and made us a little
+flighty. I'm sure that his name is James, and that he has six old maid
+daughters. He lives out West, and he's taking home a trunk full of
+presents for them."
+
+"Let's guess what he has for them," said Kitty. "I'll say that the
+oldest one is named Emmaline, and he is taking her a squirrel fur muff."
+
+"And the next one is Agnes Dorothea," said Betty, taking her turn, as if
+it were a game. "She's the delicate one of the family, and a sort of
+invalid. So he bought her a lavender shoulder shawl that caught his
+fatherly eye in a show window, because it was so soft and fluffy. But it
+will shrink and fade the first time it is washed till Agnes Dorothea
+will look like a homeless cat if she wears it. Still she will persist in
+putting it on because dear father brought it to her from Washington."
+
+"He'd certainly think you all were crazy if he could heah yoah
+remah'ks," laughed Lloyd.
+
+"Speaking of shawls," cried Gay, "that reminds me of that rainbow shawl
+in my bag. I haven't taken a stitch in it since we started, and I
+intended to knit all the way home. I simply have to, if I'm to get it
+done in time."
+
+Taking out the square of linen in which the fleecy zephyr was wrapped,
+she settled herself by the rear window in a big arm-chair, with her feet
+drawn up under her, and fell to work with all her might.
+
+"It's so nice and cosy to have the car all to ourselves," sighed
+Allison, stretching out luxuriously on the sofa. Betty, bending over her
+embroidery, smiled tenderly at a picture that her memory showed her just
+then. She was comparing this journey with the first one she had ever
+taken. And she saw in her thoughts a little brown-eyed girl of eleven,
+setting forth on her first venture into the wide world, with a
+sunbonnet tied over her curls, and an old-fashioned covered basket on
+her arm. What a dread undertaking that journey had been from the
+Cuckoo's Nest to the House Beautiful. She remembered how frightened she
+was, and how she had studied the picture of Red Ridinghood, printed in
+colours on the border of her handkerchief, until she was afraid to speak
+even to the conductor. She saw a possible wolf in every stranger.
+
+Somehow her thoughts kept going back to that time, even in the midst of
+Gay's most amusing nonsense, and Kitty's brightest repartee. Even when
+Allison began to sing "O Warwick Hall," and she chimed in with the
+others, "Dear Warwick Hall," she was not thinking of school, but of the
+Cuckoo's Nest, and Davy, and the old weather-beaten meeting-house, in
+whose window she had passed so many summer afternoons, reading the musty
+dog-eared books she found in the little red bookcase.
+
+"What are you smiling about, Betty, all to yoahself?" asked Lloyd. "You
+look as if you are a thousand miles away."
+
+Betty glanced up with a little start. "Oh, I was just thinking about the
+Cuckoo's Nest, and wishing that I could see Davy's face when they open
+the Christmas box I sent. There are only trifles in it, but the box will
+mean a lot to them, for Cousin Hetty never has time to make anything of
+Christmas."
+
+Lloyd sat up with a sudden exclamation. "Oh, Betty, I _beg_ yoah
+pah'don. There's a lettah for you in my bag from some of them that I
+forgot to give you. Hawkins came up with it just as we drove off, and
+there was so much excitement and confusion I nevah thought of it again
+till this minute. I'm mighty sorry I forgot."
+
+"It doesn't make any difference," Betty assured her. "Good news can
+afford to wait, and, if it's bad news, it would have spoiled all the
+first part of this trip."
+
+She tore open the envelope and glanced down the page. Lloyd, looking up,
+saw a distressed expression cross her face and the brown eyes fill with
+tears.
+
+"Oh, it's poor little Davy that's in trouble," said Betty, answering
+Lloyd's anxious question. "He had his leg badly hurt last week, broken
+in two places. He was riding one of those heavy old farm horses,
+hurrying home to get out of a storm. Going down a steep, slippery hill,
+it stumbled and fell on him. He'll have to lie in bed for weeks, with
+his knee in plaster, and he's so tired of it already, and _so_ lonesome.
+Nobody has any time to sit with him. I know how it is. I was sick myself
+once at the Cuckoo's Nest. Oh, I'd give anything if I could spend my
+vacation there with him."
+
+"And give up all your good times at home?" cried Kitty. "He surely
+couldn't expect such a sacrifice as that."
+
+"But it wouldn't be any sacrifice. Not a mite! I haven't seen him for
+such a long time, and I'd love to go. He used to be the dearest little
+fellow, never out of my sight a moment during the day. They used to call
+him 'Betty's shadow.'"
+
+"Why don't you go if you wish it so much?" was on the tip of Gay's
+tongue, but she stopped the question just before it slipped off,
+remembering Betty's dependence on her godmother. Kitty had told her all
+about it one time. Naturally she wouldn't want to ask for the money,
+even for such a short journey, when so much was being spent to keep her
+at school with Lloyd; and naturally she would not want to ask to leave
+Locust at Christmas, when that was the time of all the year when she
+could be of service, and in many ways add greatly to the pleasure of the
+entire household.
+
+The nonsense stopped for a few minutes. No one knew what to say to
+comfort Betty, although they were genuinely sorry, and glanced from time
+to time at the brown head turned away from them toward the window. She
+was looking at the flying landscape through a blur of tears, recalling
+the way little Davy's dimpled fingers had clung to hers, his chubby feet
+followed her. Of course he was much larger and older, she told herself,
+not at all like the little fellow she had left so long ago. He was big
+enough to stand pain now, and probably the worst of his suffering was
+over. Still, she saw only a solemn baby face when she pictured him, and
+heard only the lisping voice, saying as he used to say when stumped toe
+or bruised finger brought the tears: "It hurth your Davy boy. Tie a wag
+on it, Betty." How he had loved her stories! What a pleasure they would
+be to him now in the long days he would be forced to spend in bed.
+
+Suddenly conscious of the silence around her, Betty turned, realizing
+that her depression had cast a shadow on the spirits of all the rest.
+
+"Don't think about my bad news any more," she said, brightly. "It
+probably isn't half as bad as I have been picturing it. My imagination
+always runs away with me. It isn't Davy the baby that's had such an
+awful accident. It was that thought that hurt me so at first. I keep
+forgetting that it's five years since I left there. I'm going to drop
+him a postal card at the next station. I can write to him every day, and
+make a sort of game of the letters with riddles and suggestions of
+things for him to do, and that will help the time pass."
+
+"First call to dinnah in the dinah," called a coloured waiter, passing
+through the car in white jacket and apron.
+
+"Now we'll have to stop all our foolishness," said Allison, sedately, as
+she rose to lead the way to the dining-car. They followed as decorously
+as grandmothers, each realizing the responsibility that devolved on her,
+since they were travelling without a chaperon.
+
+To be sure, Gay choked on an olive when Kitty made some wicked remark
+about the fussy old woman across the aisle, who wouldn't be pleased with
+anything the waiter brought her; and it was too much for their gravity
+when an excessively dignified man at the next table, who had been
+staring at the wall like a wooden Indian, suddenly sneezed so violently
+that his eye-glasses dropped into his soup with a splash.
+
+Otherwise they were models of propriety, and more than one head turned
+to look at the bright girlish faces, and smile at the keen, unspoiled
+enjoyment which they evidently found in life and in each other.
+
+They did not stay long in the observation-car when they went back to it
+after dinner. Other people had come in, and it was not so attractive as
+when they occupied it alone. The lamps had been lighted so early that
+short December day that it seemed much later than it really was, and
+they were all tired. At nine o'clock, when they went to their berths in
+the forward end of the car, they found several sections already made up
+for the night, and the porter was moving on down toward theirs.
+
+The fussy old woman, who had been so hard to please at the table, came
+squeezing her way through the valises that blocked the aisle, and took
+possession of the section opposite Betty and Lloyd.
+
+"Oh, my country!" whispered Lloyd. "I wondah if she's going to keep up
+that grumbling and scolding all night. I'm glad that I am not that poah
+henpecked maid of hers. She certainly makes life misahable for her."
+
+It was nearly two hours before Jenkins, the long-suffering maid,
+succeeded in settling her mistress to her satisfaction behind the
+curtains of her berth. The girls made no attempt to get into the
+dressing-room until the little comedy was over. They laughed until they
+were hysterical over each scene as it occurred. A comedy in three acts,
+Betty called it--the losing of the cold-cream bottle and the finding of
+same in madam's overshoe. The unavailing search for a certain black silk
+handkerchief in which madam was wont to tie her head up in of nights,
+and the substitution of a towel instead, which the porter obligingly
+brought.
+
+Next there was a supposed case of poisoning, Jenkins in her trepidation
+having administered three pink pellets from a bottle instead of two
+white ones from a box. Five minutes' reign of terror after that mistake
+brought the poor maid to a witless state that left her almost helpless.
+Various trips were made to the dressing-room, at which times the old
+lady's face was massaged, her grizzly hair rolled on crimping-pins, and
+her shoulders rubbed with an evil-smelling liniment which permeated the
+whole car. She seemed as oblivious to the presence of the other
+passengers as if she were on a desert island, and, being somewhat deaf,
+made Jenkins repeat her timid replies louder and louder until they were
+almost screaming at each other.
+
+Every one on the car was smiling broadly when at last she subsided
+behind the curtains. The smiles grew to audible mirth when she confided
+in a loud voice to Jenkins, stowed away in the berth above her, that she
+hoped to goodness nobody on board would snore and keep her awake.
+
+Jenkins's answer, floating tremulously down, convulsed the sleepy girls:
+"Hi 'ope not, ma'am. Hit's a bad 'abit, ma'am, halmost, you might say,
+han haffliction."
+
+"What?" came in a thunderous voice from the lower berth, and Jenkins,
+craning her head turtle-wise over the edge of her bed, called back in a
+tremulous squeak: "Hi honly said as 'ow hit were a bad 'abit, ma'am!"
+
+"Hump!" was the answer. "See that you don't do it yourself. I've got my
+umbrella here ready to punch you if you do."
+
+A titter ran from seat to seat. The girls, unable to stifle their
+amusement any longer, seized their bags and hurried down the aisle to
+the dressing-room, where, under cover of the rattle of the train, they
+could laugh as freely as they pleased.
+
+When Lloyd and Betty stole back to their berths a few minutes later,
+they looked at each other with an amused smile. From the opposite
+section came an unmistakable sound, long-drawn and penetrating as a
+cross-cut saw. Madam was evidently asleep. Betty giggled, as from
+Jenkins's perch came a gentle echo.
+
+"'Hi honly said as 'ow hit were a bad 'abit, ma'am,'" whispered Lloyd.
+"Wouldn't you love to jab the old lady herself with an umbrella?"
+
+Gay, in the dressing-room, was carefully counting over her toilet
+articles, as she put them back into her bag. "Soap-box, comb, nail-file,
+tooth-powder--I haven't lost a thing this trip, Allison. I'm beginning
+to feel proud of myself. Here's my watch and here's my tickets, buttoned
+up in this pocket. Mamma had it made on purpose, so in case of a wreck
+at night I'd have them on me. She patted the pocket sewed securely in
+the dark blue silk robe she wore, made in loose kimono fashion.
+
+"Now I'm all ready," she added, dropping her shoes into her bag and
+closing it. In her soft Indian moccasins, beaded like a squaw's, she
+executed a little heel and toe dance in the narrow passage outside,
+while she waited for Allison to gather up her clothes and follow. She
+thought every one else was in bed, and when suddenly the outside door
+opened and she heard some one coming in from the next car, she flew
+down the aisle like a frightened rabbit.
+
+It was only a brakeman who stood just inside the door a moment with his
+lantern, and then went out again. All the lights had been turned down in
+the car, and Gay stumbled several times over shoes and valises
+protruding in the aisle. But finally, with a bound, she made her escape,
+as she supposed, from whoever it was that had caught her dancing in her
+moccasins in the passage.
+
+She gave a headlong dive into her berth. Just then the car lurched
+forward, sending her bag banging against the window, but she did not
+loosen her hold of it, and she was still clinging to it five minutes
+later.
+
+For, with a scream of terror, she rolled out of the berth far faster
+than she had rolled in. It was madam's fat body that writhed under her,
+and her stern voice that yelled "Murder! murder!" in a voice calculated
+to wake the dead.
+
+"'Elp! 'elp!" screamed Jenkins from the upper berth, afraid to look out
+between the curtains, but bravely pushing the button of the porter's
+bell till some one, wakened by the cries and persistent ringing, wildly
+called "Fire!"
+
+"It's train robbahs!" gasped Lloyd, sitting up. Little cold shivers ran
+up and down her back, but she was conscious of a pleasant thrill of
+excitement. Heads were thrust out all up and down the aisle. The bell
+and the cries of murder and 'elp never stopped until the porter and
+Pullman conductor came running to the rescue.
+
+But there was nothing for them to see. At the first yell, Gay had
+tumbled hastily out, still clinging to her bag. Before the old lady had
+sufficiently recovered from her surprise enough to wonder what sort of a
+wild beast had pounced in upon her, Gay was safe in her own berth, drawn
+up in a knot, and trembling behind her closely buttoned curtains. Her
+heart beat so loud that she thought it would certainly betray her.
+
+"You must have had the nightmare," said the conductor, politely, trying
+not to smile as the angry face, under its towel turban, glared out at
+him.
+
+"Nightmare!" blazed the irate old lady. "I'm no fool. Don't you suppose
+that I know when I'm hit? I tell you somebody was trying to sandbag me.
+I thought a Saratoga trunk had fallen in on me. It's your business to
+take care of passengers on this train, and I intend to hold the company
+responsible. I shall certainly sue the railroad for this shock to my
+nervous system as soon as I get home. I have a weak heart and I can't
+stand such performances as this."
+
+[Illustration: "'I TELL YOU SOMEBODY WAS TRYING TO SANDBAG ME'"]
+
+It took a long time to pacify her. Gay lay in her berth, shaking first
+with fright and then with laughter. She could not go to sleep without
+sharing her secret with the other girls, but she was afraid to trust
+herself to speak. She had grown almost hysterical over the affair.
+Finally she crept in beside Lloyd to whisper, brokenly: "_I_ am the
+nightmare that sandbagged the old lady. _I_ am the Saratoga trunk that
+fell on her. Oh, Lloyd, I'll never brag again. I had just told Allison I
+hadn't lost a single thing this trip, and then I turned around and lost
+myself. I got into the wrong berth. Oh! oh! It was so funny to see her,
+all done up in that towel. It'll kill me if I can't stop laughing."
+
+She crept back to her own side of the aisle again, and Lloyd got up to
+repeat it to Betty and Allison, who passed it on to Kitty. It was nearly
+half an hour before they stopped giggling over it, and then Kitty
+started them all afresh by leaning out to say, in a stage whisper, as a
+certain duet was renewed by Jenkins and her mistress, "'Hi honly said as
+'ow hit were a bad 'abit.'"
+
+It was snowing next morning, just a few flakes against the window-pane,
+as they sat in the dining-car at breakfast, but the landscape grew
+whiter as they whirled on toward home.
+
+"Just as it ought to be for Christmas," declared Allison. "Oh, The
+Beeches will look so lovely in the snow, and the big log fire will seem
+so good, I can hardly wait to get there!"
+
+"I know just how it's all going to be," exclaimed Kitty, wriggling
+impatiently in her seat. "It will be this way, Gay. They'll all be down
+at the station to meet us, mother and little Elise and Uncle Harry and
+his dog. Aunt Allison will probably be there, too, and grandmother, if
+she feels well enough. And old black fat Butler will be standing by the
+baggage-room door with his wheelbarrow, waiting to take our trunks. And
+we'll all talk at once. Everybody along the road will be calling
+'Howdy!' to us, and at the post-office Miss Mattie will come out to
+shake hands with us, and tell us how glad she is to see us back. Then
+it'll be just a step, past the church and the manse and the Bakewell
+cottage, and we'll turn in at The Beeches, _and the fun will begin_."
+
+Betty turned to Gay. "That doesn't sound very exciting or especially
+interesting to a stranger, but, oh, Gay, the Valley is so _dear_ when
+you once get to know it. And when you go back, you feel almost as if
+everybody were related to you, they're all so friendly and cordial and
+glad to welcome you home."
+
+Even to impatient schoolgirls homeward bound, the journey's end comes at
+last, so by nightfall it all happened just as Kitty had predicted. Such
+a royal welcome awaited Gay that she felt drawn into the midst of things
+from the moment she stepped from the car.
+
+"You're right, Betty," she whispered as she left her. "It _is_ a dear
+Valley, and I feel already as if I belong here."
+
+The two groups separated when the checks had been sorted out and the
+baggage disposed of. Then, still laughing and talking, Kitty led one on
+its merry way toward The Beeches, and the other whirled rapidly away in
+the carriage toward the lights of Locust.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A PICNIC IN THE SNOW
+
+
+"WHAT a good gray day this is!" exclaimed Betty next morning, turning
+from the window to look around the cheerful breakfast-room, all aglow
+with an open wood-fire. "It's so bleak outside that there is no
+temptation to go gadding, and so cosy indoors that we'll be glad of the
+chance to stay at home and finish tying up our Christmas packages."
+
+"Yes," assented Lloyd, who, having finished her breakfast, was standing
+on the hearth-rug, her back to the fire and her hands clasped behind
+her. "And for once I intend to have mine all ready the day befoah, so I
+need not be rushed up to the last minute. For that reason I am glad that
+mothah had to take the early train to town this mawning, to finish her
+shopping. If she'd been at home, I should have talked all the time,
+without accomplishing a thing."
+
+"I think your tissue-paper and ribbon was put into my trunk," said
+Betty, drumming idly on the window-pane. "I'll go and unpack it in a
+minute, and have it off my mind, as soon as I see who this is coming up
+the avenue."
+
+A tall young fellow had turned in at the gate, and was striding along
+toward the house as if in a great hurry.
+
+"It's Rob Moore!" she exclaimed, in surprise. "I thought he wasn't
+coming home until Christmas eve."
+
+"So did I," answered Lloyd, crossing the room to look over Betty's
+shoulder. "I'll beat you to the front doah, Betty."
+
+There was a wild dash through the hall. Both slim figures bounced
+against the door at the same instant. There was a laughing scuffle over
+the latch, and then the two girls stood arm in arm between the white
+pillars of the porch, gaily calling a greeting.
+
+Rob waved a pair of skates in reply, and quickened his stride until he
+came within speaking distance. One would have thought from his greeting
+that they had seen each other only the day before. Rob never wasted time
+on formalities.
+
+"Hurry up, girls! Get your skates. The ice is fine on the creek, and
+there's a crowd waiting for us down at the depot."
+
+"Who?" demanded Lloyd.
+
+"Oh, the MacIntyre boys and the Walton girls and that little red-headed
+thing that they brought home from school with them. Kitty's going to
+have a picnic on the creek bank for her."
+
+"A picnic in Decembah!" ejaculated Lloyd.
+
+"That's what she said," Rob answered, clicking his skates together as he
+followed the girls into the house. "They telephoned over to me to hustle
+up here and get you girls. They're on their way to the station now.
+We're to meet them in the waiting-room."
+
+"They should have let us know soonah," began Lloyd, "so that we could
+have had a lunch ready. There'll be nothing cooked to take this time of
+day."
+
+"They didn't know it themselves," he interrupted. "Kitty proposed it at
+the breakfast-table, and they just grabbed up whatever they could get
+their hands on and started off."
+
+"We have so much to do to-day," said Betty. "I don't see how we can ever
+get through if we stop for this."
+
+"Let everything slide!" begged Rob. "Do your work to-morrow. This will
+be lots of fun. The ice may not last more than a day or so, and the
+MacIntyre boys are not going to be out here all vacation."
+
+"I suppose we could tie up those packages to-night," said Lloyd, with an
+inquiring look at Betty.
+
+"Of course," Rob answered for her. "And I'll help you with anything you
+have to do. Come on."
+
+"Well, then, you run out to the kitchen and ask Aunt Cindy to give you
+something for a lunch,--anything in sight, and we'll get ready while Mom
+Beck finds our skates."
+
+Rob rubbed his ears apprehensively. "I'd as soon beard the lion in his
+den as Aunt Cindy in her kitchen. She's never forgiven my early thefts."
+
+"Go on, goosey," laughed Lloyd. "Don't you know that since you're
+'growed up,' as Aunt Cindy says, she swears by you? I heard her tell Mom
+Beck last night she reckoned she'd have to make a batch of little sugah
+hah't cakes right away, for Mistah Rob would be coming prowling round
+her cooky jah."
+
+"Am I growed up?" asked Rob gravely, throwing back his shoulders and
+looking into the mirror at the tall reflection it showed him.
+
+"You are in inches and ells," laughed Lloyd, "but you're not always six
+feet tall in yoah actions."
+
+"It's only when I am in your society that I appear so juvenile,"
+retorted Rob. "When I'm away at school with the other fellows, I feel
+and act as old as Daddy, but when I'm back home, where you all seem to
+expect me to be a kid, I naturally adjust myself to that role just to be
+companionable and obliging. You would be afraid of me if I were to turn
+out my whiskers and stand back on my dignity. You know you would."
+
+"Don't try it, Bobby," advised Lloyd. "It wouldn't be becoming. Trot out
+to Aunt Cindy and get the lunch. That's a good little man. We'll be
+ready in just a few minutes."
+
+Even in her baby days, Lloyd had been patronizing at times to her
+good-natured playmate, ordering him about with a princess-like right
+that always seemed part of the game. So now he laughingly shrugged his
+shoulders and started to the kitchen, while Lloyd followed Betty
+up-stairs to change her slippers for heavy-soled walking-boots.
+
+A few minutes later the three were hurrying down the avenue to the gate,
+under the bare windswept branches of the locusts.
+
+"Aunt Cindy had disappeared temporarily," said Rob. "There wasn't a soul
+in the kitchen, so I rummaged around till I found this old basket, and
+filled it with a little of everything in sight. It is a long way to the
+creek. We'll be ready to eat nails by the time we tramp over there in
+this snappy weather."
+
+"It is snappy," agreed Lloyd. "Betty, yoah cheeks are as red as fiah."
+
+The rosy face under the brown tam-o'-shanter smiled back at her. "So are
+yours. Aren't they, Rob? They are as red as her coat."
+
+"Hello!" exclaimed Rob, noticing for the first time the long red coat
+that Lloyd wore. "That's something new, isn't it? I thought you looked
+different, but I couldn't tell exactly what it was. That's a stunner,
+sure enough, Princess. It sort of livens up the landscape."
+
+"I'm glad you like it," laughed Lloyd, "but I don't believe you would
+have seen it at all if Betty hadn't called yoah attention to it. You'll
+nevah get on in society, Bobby, if you don't learn to notice things.
+You'll miss all the chances most boys take advantage of to pay
+compliments and make pretty little speeches."
+
+Rob scowled. "You know I don't go in for that sort of stuff."
+
+"But you ought to," persisted Lloyd, who was in a perverse mood. "I
+considah it my duty to take you in hand and teach you. You may practise
+on Betty and me. Now we've been talking to Gay all term about our
+friends in Lloydsboro Valley, and naturally we want everybody to put
+their best foot foremost and show off their prettiest. Malcolm and Keith
+will leave a charming impression of themselves, because they will make
+her feel in such an easy graceful way that she has made that sawt of an
+impression on them. If she wears an especially pretty dress, or says an
+especially bright thing, or plays unusually well, they will notice it in
+some way so that she will know that they noticed it, and that they were
+pleased. Naturally that will please her, and she will like them bettah
+for it."
+
+Rob faced her with a whimsical expression. "Look here, Lloyd Sherman,
+I've played every kind of a game that you've asked me to ever since I
+learned to walk. I've been your man Friday when you wanted to be
+Robinson Crusoe, and played B'r Fox to your B'r Rabbit. You've scalped
+me and buried me and dug me up. You've made me be Pharaoh with the ten
+plagues of Egypt, or a Christian martyr thrown to the wild beasts, just
+as it pleased your fancy. I've even played dolls with you week at a
+time, but I swear I draw the line at this. I'll do anything in reason to
+help entertain your chum,--ride or dance or skate or get up private
+theatricals,--but I'll _not_ make a ninny of myself trying to be flowery
+and get off complimentary speeches. It comes natural to some people, but
+I'm not built that way. I'd be as awkward at it as a fish out of water."
+
+Lloyd turned her head with a despairing gesture. "Oh, Rob, you're
+hopeless! You don't undahstand at all! Nobody wants you to be flowery,
+and nobody likes flat-footed, out-and-out compliments. They're not nice
+at all. I just meant--well--I scarcely know what I _did_ mean, but you
+know how Malcolm does. It isn't that he says a thing in so many words,
+but he has a way of somehow making you feel that he has noticed nice
+things about you, and that he is _thinking_ compliments."
+
+"Gee whiz!" exclaimed Rob, in a teasing tone. "Say that again, won't you
+please, and say it slowly, so that I can take it all in. Do I get the
+thought? To be agreeable one must not say things, but must cultivate an
+air of having noticed that you are agreeable, and stand off and think
+compliments so hard that you can actually feel them flying through the
+air. Is that your idea?"
+
+"Oh, Rob! Stop your teasing."
+
+"Well, that is what you said, or words to that effect. Didn't she,
+Betty?"
+
+The brown eyes flashed an amused smile at him. They walked along in
+silence for a few minutes, then he said, humbly, but with a twinkle in
+his eye which boded mischief: "Well, I'll do the best I can to please
+you, Lloyd. I'll watch Malcolm till I get the hang of it, then I'll
+stand off and think compliments about your friend till her ears burn and
+she is duly impressed. Grandfather is always saying, 'Who does the best
+his circumstance allows, does nobly. Angels could do no more.'"
+
+"I wish I had never mentioned the subject," pouted Lloyd, as they walked
+on down the frozen pike. "I simply meant to give you a little advice for
+yoah own good, and you've gone and made a joke of it. I am suah you'll
+say or do something befoah the mawning is ovah that will make Gay think
+you are perfectly dreadful."
+
+Rob only laughed in answer, leaving her to infer that she had good
+reason for her fears. As they passed the only store which the Valley
+boasted, Kitty came rushing out, a bright new tin saucepan dangling at
+her side like a drum. It was tied by a piece of twine, and she was
+beating a tattoo upon it with a long-handled iron spoon. Keith
+followed, his overcoat pockets bulging with parcels.
+
+"Are you playing Santa Claus this early?" cried Betty, as he hurried
+across to shake hands with them.
+
+"No; Kitty decided that no social function in the woods was properly a
+picnic without a fire and some kind of a mess to cook. So we stopped at
+the store, and she's loaded me down with stuff for fudge. Malcolm and
+the girls are on ahead in the waiting-room."
+
+"Where's Ranald?" asked Lloyd, as they crossed the railroad track and
+walked along the platform toward the door of the station.
+
+"He's gone hunting with John Baylor, the boy he brought home from school
+with him," answered Kitty. "We can't get him within a stone's throw of
+Gay. I teased him so unmercifully in my letters about the girl who had
+asked for his picture to put in her group of heroes that he won't even
+look in her direction."
+
+As Lloyd greeted Malcolm, whom she had not seen since the close of the
+summer vacation, and then stood talking with him while Allison
+introduced Rob to her guest, she was conscious that Rob was watching
+every motion, and making note of it, to tease her afterward. A few
+moments later, when they were all discussing a choice of places for the
+picnic-grounds, he edged over to her.
+
+"Now I understand what you mean," he said, in a low voice. "Malcolm
+didn't say anything about that red coat. He just gave a sort of quick,
+pleased glance at it, as if it had hit him hard, and made some gallant
+speech about a Kentucky cardinal. I tried my best to follow suit. So
+when I was introduced, I gave the same kind of a glad start when I saw
+her hair, and was about to make a similar reference to a Texas redbird,
+when my courage failed me. So I just stood off and fired the name at her
+in thought till I'm sure she understood."
+
+"You mean thing!" exclaimed Lloyd, under her breath. "Her hair isn't
+red. It's just a deep, rich, bronzy auburn, and perfectly lovely. I do
+wish I'd nevah said anything. Now you'll not act natural, and you won't
+like each othah as I had hoped you would."
+
+A gayer picnic party never started down the pike than the one that went
+laughing along the road that winter morning, under barbed-wire fences,
+through pasture gates, across bare woodlands, and over frozen
+corn-fields. It was a still gray morning, with the chill of snow in the
+air, and presently the snow began to fall in big feathery flakes.
+
+Gay was delighted. She held up her face to let the cold, star-shaped
+crystals settle on it. She caught them on her sleeve to marvel over
+their airy beauty. "It's like frozen thistle-down!" she cried. "I hope
+it will snow all day and all night until everything is covered. I never
+saw a white Christmas."
+
+"This will stop the skating," said Allison, "unless we had a broom to
+sweep the ice as it falls."
+
+Rob offered to go back for one, but they were so far on their way they
+all protested it would not be worth while.
+
+"How much farthah is it?" asked Lloyd, presently. For the last half-mile
+she had had nothing to say, and had fallen behind the others.
+
+"I'm so tiahed I can hardly take another step."
+
+Rob looked at her curiously. It seemed strange for Lloyd to admit that
+she was tired. He had known her to tramp nearly all day after nuts, and
+then be ready for a horseback ride afterward.
+
+"We'll stop just over this hill," he replied. "There's a good place to
+camp. Here! Catch hold of my skate-strap, and I'll help pull you up."
+
+"It helps some," she said, clinging to the strap swung over his
+shoulder, "but I don't believe I'll evah get ovah this hill."
+
+"It looks like a grove of Christmas trees!" cried Gay, as they started
+down the other side toward the creek. Little cedars from two to five
+feet high dotted the hillside, and the snow had drifted across them till
+the branches drooped with the soft white burden. It began blowing
+faster, and coming down like a thick white sheet between them and the
+creek.
+
+Rob, who had often picnicked here on his hunting trips, led the way
+farther down the hill to a cavelike opening under an overhanging ledge
+of rocks.
+
+"This will keep the wind off your backs," he said. "Huddle down here a
+few minutes until we build a fire. Then you'll be all right."
+
+Some charred sticks and ashes between two flat rocks, with an old piece
+of sheet iron laid on top, marked the spot where many meals had been
+cooked. The boys began at once foraging for firewood. There was plenty
+of it all around,--dead limbs and broken twigs,--and soon they had a big
+heap ready to light.
+
+"Now if somebody can donate a piece of paper to start a blaze, we'll
+have you warm in a jiffy," said Rob.
+
+Keith slapped his pockets. "I haven't a scrap," he declared. "Malcolm,
+you might be able to spare that bunch of letters you carry around in
+your pocket. You've read them enough to know them by heart, I should
+think."
+
+"Oh, keep still, can't you?" muttered Malcolm, in an aside. "Don't get
+funny now."
+
+"See him get red!" whispered Keith to Betty. "They're from a girl he met
+at the first college hop last fall. She's older than he is, but he
+thinks she's the one and only."
+
+Then he turned to Malcolm again. "You might at least spare the envelopes
+when it's to keep us from freezing. It would be a big sacrifice, but to
+save your own blood and kin, you know--"
+
+Malcolm stole a quick glance at Lloyd, but she was leaning wearily
+against the ledge of rocks, paying no attention to Keith's remarks.
+Kitty solved the difficulty by diving into Keith's pockets after the
+packages, and emptying the brown sugar and chocolate into the saucepan.
+She handed the wrapping-paper and bag to Rob, saying if that was not
+enough she would scratch the label off the can of evaporated cream.
+
+Carefully holding his hat over the pile of twigs to shield it from the
+wind, Rob applied a match to the paper. It blazed up and caught the
+wood at once, and in a few moments a comfortable fire was crackling in
+front of them. Back in the cavelike hollow, under the rocks, the boys
+found a big, dry log, which other campers had put there for a seat. They
+rolled it forward toward the fire. Some flat stones were soon heated for
+the girls to put their feet on, and, warmed and rested, they began to
+investigate the contents of the baskets.
+
+"Oh, Rob!" groaned Lloyd. "What a lunch you did pick up for a wintah
+day! These slabs of cold pumpkin pie would freeze the teeth of a polah
+beah, and there's nothing else but pickles and cheese and apples and raw
+eggs."
+
+"That's fine!" exclaimed Allison. "We can roast the eggs in the ashes,
+and I've brought bacon to broil over the fire on switches. And here's
+crackers and gingersnaps and salmon--"
+
+"And peanuts," added Kitty, "don't forget them. Or the fudge. We will
+have that ready in a little while."
+
+"Now what could be jollier than this?" cried Gay, as she took the long,
+pointed switch that Rob cut for her, and held a piece of bacon over the
+fire to broil. "It's a thousand times nicer than a picnic in the summer,
+when you get so hot, and the mosquitoes and redbugs and spiders swarm
+all over you."
+
+Lloyd, with a sigh of relief, saw that Rob was "acting natural" at last,
+and he and Gay were showing off to mutual advantage. She was enjoying
+the novel experience so fully that she was in her brightest spirits, and
+he was talking to her with the familiar ease with which he talked to
+Lloyd and Betty, even scolding her with brotherly frankness when she
+dripped bacon grease around too promiscuously.
+
+The eggs were saltless, the bacon smoked and black, because, held in the
+flame as often as against the embers, nearly every piece caught fire and
+had to be blown out. Smoke blew in their eyes, and the snow fell thicker
+and thicker. But, with their feet on the hot stones, their backs to the
+sheltering ledge of rocks, and the fire crackling in front of them, they
+sang and laughed and ate with a zest which no summer picnic could have
+inspired.
+
+No one had remembered to bring a pail for water, and rather than tramp
+over another hill to a distant spring, they quenched their thirst with
+handfuls of snow. The fudge boiled over, and more than half of it was
+lost in the ashes.
+
+"It's a good thing that it did," Allison declared, tossing the empty
+salmon box and a bag of peanut shells into the fire. "Ugh! The mixture
+we've already eaten is enough to kill us! I think we ought to start back
+home now. I'm sure that I heard the one o'clock train whistle."
+
+But Kitty protested. They hadn't been out half long enough, she said. If
+the ice on the creek had been free from snow, they would have skated for
+hours, and she thought as long as that sport had been spoiled, they
+ought to do something to make up for it. Gay had never gathered any
+mistletoe. She thought it would be fun for them all to go around by
+Stone Hollow, and get some off the big trees that grew in the
+surrounding pastures.
+
+Lloyd listened to the ready assent of the others with a sinking heart.
+She had been leaning back against the rocks for some time, taking no
+part in the conversation. She had grown so tired that she dreaded the
+long tramp home, and had been vainly wishing that Tarbaby could suddenly
+appear on the scene, or some one with a conveyance. Even a wheelbarrow
+or a go-cart would have been welcome. She could not remember that she
+had ever felt so exhausted before in all her life.
+
+"But I won't be the one to hang back and spoil every one's fun," she
+said to herself, "They wouldn't let me go home the shorter way by
+myself. It would only break up the pah'ty if I proposed it. But I do not
+see how I can evah drag myself all the way around by Stone Hollow."
+
+At another time they might have noticed that she lagged behind, that she
+had little to say, and that she looked white and tired. But Gay, her
+spirits rising in the wintry air, was in her most rollicking mood. Even
+Kitty had never known her to say so many funny things or to tell so many
+amusing experiences. She followed on behind with Lloyd, watching
+admiringly as Gay's bright face was turned first toward Malcolm, then
+toward Rob, jubilant to see that her guest was captivating them as she
+did every one else who fell under the charm of her vivacious manner.
+
+Betty and Allison were on ahead with Keith, keeping a sharp lookout for
+mistletoe. Lloyd scarcely heard what any one said. She plodded along
+like one in a dream. It was an effort just to lift her feet. Only one
+thing in life seemed desirable just then, that was her warm soft bed at
+home. If she could only creep into that and shut her tired eyes and lie
+there, she wouldn't care if she didn't waken for a month. She felt that
+it would be bliss to sleep through Christmas and the entire vacation.
+
+The long walk came to an end at last. The roundabout route through Stone
+Hollow led them near Locust, and, with their arms full of mistletoe, the
+merry picnickers parted from Lloyd and Betty at the gate. Gay exclaimed
+enthusiastically over the beautiful old avenue, leading under the
+snow-covered locusts to the house, but to Lloyd's relief her invitation
+to come in was refused. There were a dozen reasons why they could not
+stop, but they promised to be over early next morning.
+
+"It has been the very loveliest picnic I ever went to in my whole life,"
+declared Gay, as they turned away. "I'd like to turn around and do it
+all over again."
+
+"So would I," echoed Betty, warmly. "I'm not at all tired."
+
+Lloyd looked at her in vague wonder as they plodded up the avenue. "I
+don't know what's the mattah with me," she said, "that I couldn't keep
+up with you all, unless it's true what Miss Gilmer said. The ice is too
+thin for holiday dissipations, and this picnic was too great a weight
+for it."
+
+Betty glanced at her white face anxiously. "Go and lie down the rest of
+the afternoon," she said. "I'll tie up your packages."
+
+"Oh, if you only would!" exclaimed Lloyd, gratefully. "But it seems too
+much to ask of any one. Don't tell mothah that I got so woh'n out. I'll
+be all right by evening."
+
+"She hasn't come home yet," said Betty, looking ahead of them at the
+smooth expanse of newly fallen snow. "There isn't a track either of foot
+or wheel."
+
+"Then maybe I'll have time for a nap, and be all rested when she comes,"
+said Lloyd. "I don't want her to get any of Miss Gilmer's notions about
+me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A PROGRESSIVE CHRISTMAS PARTY
+
+
+LLOYD stood at the window in the falling twilight and looked out across
+the snow. It had been an ideal Christmas Day. She could feel the chill
+of the white winter world outside as she leaned against the frosty pane,
+but in her scarlet dress, with the holly berries at her belt and in her
+hair, she looked the embodiment of Christmas warmth and cheer, and as if
+no cold could touch her.
+
+The candles had not yet been lighted, but the room was filled with the
+ruddy glow of the big wood fire. It shone warmly on the frames of the
+portraits and the tall gilded harp with its shining strings, and gave a
+burnishing touch to Betty's brown hair, as she stood by the piano,
+fingering for the hundredth time the presents she had received that day.
+Her dress of soft white wool suggested, like Lloyd's, the Yule-tide
+season, for in the belt and shoulder-knots of dull green velvet were
+caught clusters of mistletoe, the tiny waxen berries gleaming like
+pearls.
+
+"Everything is _so_ lovely!" she sighed, happily, picking up her camera
+to admire it once more. It was her godmother's gift, and the thing she
+had most longed to own.
+
+She focussed it on Lloyd, who, in her scarlet dress, stood vividly
+outlined by the firelight against the curtains. "I took three pictures
+this morning while Rob was here, all snow scenes. The house, the locust
+avenue, and a group of little darkies running after your grandfather,
+calling out, 'Chris'mus gif', Colonel!' I think I'd better carry my
+things all up to my room," she added, presently. "There'll be so many
+people here soon, and so much moving around when the hunt begins, that
+they'll be in the way."
+
+"You'll need a wheelbarrow to take them in," answered Lloyd, turning
+from the window to watch her gather them up. "You'd bettah call Walkah
+to help you."
+
+"Santa Claus certainly was good to me," answered Betty, picking up Mr.
+Sherman's gift, a beautiful mother-of-pearl opera-glass. It was like the
+one he had given Lloyd, except for the difference in monograms. She
+rubbed it lovingly with her handkerchief, and laid it beside the camera
+to be carried up-stairs. There were books from the old Colonel, an
+ivory photograph-frame exquisitely carved from Lloyd. Dozens of little
+articles from the girls at school, and remembrances from nearly every
+friend in the Valley. There was more than her arms could hold, and,
+bringing a large tray from the dining-room, she made two trips up and
+down stairs with it before her treasures were all lodged safely in her
+room.
+
+Left alone for the first time that busy day, Lloyd stood a moment longer
+peering out into the snowy twilight, and then crossed the room to the
+table where her gifts were spread out. There had never been so many for
+her since her days of dolls and dishes and woolly lambs. The
+opera-glasses like Betty's were what she had wished for all year. The
+purse her grandfather had slipped into the toe of her stocking was the
+prettiest little affair of gray suède and silver she had ever seen. She
+had thought of a dozen delightful ways to spend the gold eagle which it
+held.
+
+The book-rack which Betty had burnt for her, with her initials on each
+end, was already nearly filled with the books that different friends had
+sent her. Rob's gift had been a book. So had Miss Allison's and Mrs.
+MacIntyre's and the old family doctor's. Malcolm had sent a great bunch
+of American Beauties. She drew the vase toward her and buried her face
+a moment in the delicious fragrance. Then she nibbled a caramel from
+Keith's box of candy. The rosebud sachet-bag which Gay made lay in the
+box of handkerchiefs that good old Mom Beck had given her.
+
+She patted the thick letter from Joyce that told so much of interest
+about Ware's Wigwam. She intended to have the water-colour sketch of
+Squaw's Peak framed to take back to school with her. Mary's fat little
+fingers had braided the Indian basket which came with Joyce's picture,
+and Jack himself had killed the wildcat, whose skin he sent to make a
+rug for her room. Lloyd was proud of that skin. As she stood smoothing
+the tawny fur, the diamond on her finger flashed like fire, and she
+stood turning her hand this way and that, that the glow of the flames
+might fall on her new ring.
+
+It was a beautifully cut stone in an old-fashioned setting, with the
+word "_Amanthis_" engraved inside; but not for a fortune would Lloyd
+have had the little circlet changed to a modern setting. For just so had
+it been slipped on her grandmother's finger at her fifteenth Christmas.
+She had worn it until her daughter's fifteenth Christmas, and now she,
+in turn, had given it to Lloyd. All day it had been a constant joy to
+her. Aside from the pleasure of possessing such a beautiful ring, she
+had a feeling that in its flashing heart was crystallized a triple
+happiness,--the joy of three Christmas days: hers, her mother's, and the
+beautiful young girl with the June rose in her hair, who smiled down at
+her from the portrait over the mantel.
+
+She smiled up at it now in the same confiding way she had done as a
+child, saying, in a low tone: "And when you played on the harp, it
+flashed on yoah hand just as it does on mine." Pleased by the fancy, she
+crossed the room and struck a few chords on the harp, watching the
+firelight flash on the ring as she did so.
+
+          "'Sing me the songs that to me were so deah,
+               Long, long ago, long ago!'"
+
+There was a step in the hall, and the portières were pushed aside as the
+old Colonel came in. She did not stop, for she knew he loved the old
+song, and that she was helping to bring back his happy past, when he
+threw himself into a chair before the fire, and sat looking up at
+Amanthis.
+
+When she had finished the song, she perched herself on the arm of his
+chair, and began ruffling up his white hair with the little hand which
+wore the diamond.
+
+"Well, has it been a happy day for grandpa's little Colonel?" he asked,
+fondly, passing his arm around her.
+
+"Oh, yes, grandfathah! Brim full and running ovah with all sawts of
+lovely surprises. I'm mighty glad I'm living. And the best of it is,
+although the day is neahly ovah, the fun isn't. There's still so much to
+come."
+
+"What kind of a performance is this one on the programme for to-night?"
+he asked. "Betty said I had to go the whole round, but I haven't been
+able to gather a very good idea of what's expected of me."
+
+"It's just a progressive Christmas pah'ty, grandfathah," she explained,
+tweaking his ear as she talked. "We couldn't agree about the celebration
+this yeah. Judge Moore wanted us all to go to Oaklea. Mrs. Walton
+thought they had the best right on account of their guests, so we
+arranged it for everybody to take a turn at entahtaining. At five
+o'clock they're all to come heah for a Christmas hunt. They ought to be
+coming now, for it's neahly that time. At half-past six we'll have
+dinnah at Oaklea. At half-past eight we'll go to The Beeches and finish
+the evening with a general jollification. Then we'll come home by
+moonlight."
+
+"What is a Christmas hunt?" asked the Colonel. "You'll have to enlighten
+my ignorance."
+
+"It's a game that mothah and Betty thought of. Betty has worked like a
+dawg to get the rhymes ready. She scarcely took time to eat yestahday,
+and she gave up going to the charade pah'ty that Miss Allison gave for
+Gay in the aftahnoon. It's this way. We've hidden little gifts all ovah
+the house, from attic to cellah. When the guests come, each one will be
+given a card with a rhyme on it, like this."
+
+Slipping from the arm of the chair, she went out into the hall a moment,
+and came back with a Christmas stocking, trimmed with holly and hung
+with tiny sleigh-bells. "Little Elise Walton is to distribute the cards
+from this. Heah is a sample. Miss Allison happens to be on top."
+
+Adjusting his eye-glasses the Colonel turned so that the firelight shone
+on the card, and read aloud:
+
+          "Seek where bygone summers
+           Have dropped their roses fair.
+           A little Christmas package
+           Is waiting for you there."
+
+"Now where would you look if that cah'd were for you?" she demanded.
+
+"In the conservatory?" he replied, inquiringly.
+
+"That is what Miss Allison will do, probably," answered Lloyd, her
+cheeks dimpling at the thought. "But aftah awhile she will remembah the
+old dragon that mothah always keeps full of rose-leaves just as
+Grandmothah Amanthis did. See?"
+
+She lifted the lid of a rare old cloisonné rose-jar that had stood on
+the end of the mantel for a longer time than Lloyd's memory could reach,
+and took out a small box. Taking off the cover, she disclosed what
+appeared to be a ripe cherry with a bee clinging to its side.
+
+"Take the bee in yoah thumb and fingah and pull," she ordered. "See?
+It's a cunning little tape-measuah for her work-basket."
+
+A sound of sleigh-bells jingling rapidly toward the house made her clap
+the lid on the box and drop it hastily back into the rose-jar.
+
+"There they come!" she cried, "and the candles haven't been lighted.
+Hurry, grandfathah! We can't wait to call Walkah! Throw open the front
+doah!"
+
+Flying to the hall closet for the long taper kept for the purpose, she
+held it an instant toward the blazing logs, and then darting around the
+room, passed from one candelabrum to another, till every waxen candle
+was tipped with its star of light. In her scarlet dress and the holly
+berries, her cheeks glowing and the taper held above her head as she
+tiptoed to reach the highest one, she looked like some radiant acolyte
+of Joy.
+
+Betty, rushing breathlessly down-stairs at the sound of the
+sleigh-bells, paused an instant between the portières at sight of her.
+"Oh, Lloyd!" she cried, clasping her hands. "You've given me the
+loveliest idea! I've only got it by the tail feathers now, but I'll find
+words for it all some day." Then, without waiting to explain, she ran
+out to the porch, where, between the tall pillars, the old Colonel
+waited with elaborate courtesy to receive the coming guests.
+
+As the sleighs glided nearer, Betty looked back through the door swung
+hospitably open to its widest, and saw Lloyd hastily thrusting the taper
+back into the closet.
+
+"She lighted it at the Christmas fire," thought Betty, struggling with
+the tail feathers of her lovely idea, in an effort to grasp all that
+Lloyd's act suggested. "And red is the emblem of joy. It might go this
+way: 'She touched the Christmas tapers with the Yule log's heart of
+flame.' No, it ought to start,--
+
+          "Lighting the candles of Christmas joy,
+           With a spark from the Yule log's fire."
+
+But there was no time for making poetry, with so many voices calling
+"Merry Christmas," and so many outstretched hands grasping hers. In
+another instant the house seemed filled to overflowing, and the dim old
+mirrors were flashing back from every side one of the gayest scenes the
+hospitable old mansion had ever known.
+
+The hunt began almost immediately. As soon as Elise had emptied the
+stocking of its contents, up-stairs and down-stairs and in my lady's
+chamber went old and young at the bidding of the rhymes.
+
+"I feel like a 'goosey gander,' sure enough," said Allison presently.
+"For I've been all over the house, and there's no place left to wander.
+Where would you go if you had this card?"
+
+She thrust hers out toward Gay, who read:
+
+          "Standing with reluctant feet
+           Where Brooks and Little Rivers meet."
+
+Gay puzzled over it a moment, and then suggested that she try the
+library. "I have," answered Allison. "Keith found his package in there,
+behind the picture of a Holland windmill and canal, but there is
+nothing else in the room that suggests water that I have been able to
+find."
+
+"Who wrote 'Little Rivers'?"
+
+Allison stood thinking a moment, and then cried out: "Well, of course!
+Why didn't I think to look among the books?" Flying down-stairs, she
+began glancing along the library shelves until she found the book she
+sought and Brooks's sermons standing side by side. Between them was
+wedged a thin package which proved to contain a picture which she had
+long wanted, a photograph of Murillo's painting of the Madonna.
+
+To Betty's surprise the Christmas stocking held a card for her. She had
+supposed her part of the game would be only making the rhymes and
+helping to hide the gifts. There was no rhyme on her card, simply the
+statement, "Some little men are keeping it for you."
+
+Remembering Allison's experience, she ran up-stairs to Lloyd's room,
+where in a low bookcase were all the juvenile stories that her childhood
+had held dear. A set of Miss Alcott's books stood first, and, taking out
+the well-thumbed copy of "Little Men," she shook it gently, fluttering
+the leaves, and turning it upside down. But the volume held nothing
+except a four-leaf clover, which Lloyd had left there to mark the place
+one summer day. Betty turned away, as puzzled as any of the others whom
+she had helped to mystify.
+
+Then she remembered two little wooden gnomes carved on the Swiss
+match-box and ash-tray in the Colonel's den. She dashed in there, but
+the gnomes kept guard over nothing but a few burnt matches. Nearly half
+an hour went by of bewildered wandering from place to place, until she
+happened to stray into Mr. Sherman's room. She stood by the desk,
+letting her eyes glance slowly over its handsome furnishings. Then, with
+a start of surprise that she had not thought of it before, she bent over
+a paper-weight. It was a crystal ball supported by two miniature bronze
+figures. The tiny Grecian athletes were evidently the little men who
+were keeping something for her, for the toy suit-case standing between
+them bore a tag on which was printed her initials.
+
+The suit-case was not more than two inches long. She supposed it
+contained bonbons. One of the girls had used a dozen like them for place
+cards at a farewell luncheon just before they went away to school. It
+did not open at the first pull, and when, at the second, it came
+forcibly apart, there was no shower of pink and white candies, as she
+had expected. Only a bit of folded paper fell out. Smoothing it on the
+desk, Betty read:
+
+          "Dear little girl, you have helped all the rest
+             To a happy time with your patient hands.
+           Now fly for a week to the Cuckoo's Nest,
+             With godmother's love, for she understands."
+
+Then Betty was glad that she was all alone in the room when she found
+the suit-case, for the tears began to brim up into her eyes and spill
+over on to the paper that had a crisp new greenback pinned to it. The
+tears were all happy ones, but she hardly knew what they were for.
+Whether she was happier because her heart's desire was granted, and she
+could spend her vacation with Davy, or whether it was because of that
+last line, "With godmother's love, _for she understands_."
+
+"Lloyd must have told her what I said that day on the train," she
+thought. It was the crowning happiness of the day for Betty. She was
+singing under her breath when she danced out into the hall to join the
+others.
+
+Some of the articles were so cleverly hidden that she had to give an
+occasional hint to the bewildered seekers. In the seats of chairs, over
+the deer's antlers in the hall, high up in the candelabra, strapped
+inside of umbrellas, poked into glove fingers, all of them were in
+unexpected places. Yet the directions of the verses seemed so plain when
+once understood that the hunters laughed at their own stupidity.
+
+Even Judge Moore and the old Colonel were swept into the game, and Mrs.
+MacIntyre's silvery hair bent just as eagerly as Elise's dark curls over
+each suspected spot and out-of-the-way corner until she found the volume
+of essays that had been hidden for her.
+
+By quarter-past six every one's search had been successful except Rob's.
+"It would take a Christopher Columbus to find this place," he said,
+scowling at his verse. "And I'd be willing to bet anything that it isn't
+the bank that Shakespeare had in mind. Give me a hint, Lloyd." He held
+out the card:
+
+          "I know a bank where the wild thyme grows.
+             Unseen it lies, unsung by bard.
+           Something keeps watch there, no man knows,
+             And over your gift it's standing guard."
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea what it is," she said. "Betty wrote so many
+of them yestahday aftahnoon while I was at the pah'ty, and she wouldn't
+tell me this one. She said she thought you'd suahly guess it, but she
+didn't want you to have a hint from any one. Come ovah to-morrow, and
+we'll find it if we have to turn the house upside down."
+
+The sleighs had made one trip to Oaklea and returned for another load,
+when Rob finally gave up the search. Lloyd and Gay climbed into the same
+seat, and, as they cuddled down among the warm robes, Gay caught Lloyd's
+hand in an impetuous squeeze.
+
+"Oh, I'm having such a good time!" she exclaimed. "I've been in a dizzy
+whirl ever since five o'clock this morning. I never had a sleigh-ride
+before to-day. I don't wonder that Betty calls this the House Beautiful.
+Look back at it now. It's fairy-land!" A light was streaming from every
+window, and the snow sparkled like diamonds in the moonlight.
+
+The drive to Oaklea was so short that the Judge and Mrs. Moore were
+welcoming them at the door before Gay had fairly begun her account of
+the day's happening. Dinner was announced almost immediately, and she
+was ushered into one of the largest dining-rooms she had ever seen, and
+seated at the long table. Such a large Christmas tree formed the
+centrepiece that she could catch only an occasional glimpse through its
+branches of Lloyd, seated on the other side between Malcolm and John
+Baylor.
+
+Gay was between Ranald and Rob. While she kept up a lively chatter,
+first with one and then the other, a sentence floating across the table
+now and then made her long to hear what was being said on the other side
+of the Christmas tree. She heard Malcolm say, in a surprised tone: "Maud
+Minor! No, indeed, I didn't! Why, I scarcely mentioned you. Don't you
+believe--"
+
+A general laugh at one of the old Colonel's stories drowned the rest of
+the sentence, and left Gay wondering which one of Maud's many tales was
+not to be believed.
+
+"I'll ask her after dinner," thought Gay. But it was a long time till
+all the courses that followed the turkey gave way in slow succession to
+plum pudding and the trifles on the Christmas tree. Then Gay had no
+opportunity to ask her question, for Malcolm still stayed by Lloyd's
+side when the company broke up into little groups in the hall and the
+adjoining parlours.
+
+"The children are growing up, Jack," said the old Judge, laying his hand
+on Mr. Sherman's shoulder, as several couples passed on their way to the
+music-room. "There's Rob, now, the young rascal, taller than his
+father; and it seems only yesterday that he was riding pickaback on my
+shoulders, and tooting his first Christmas trumpet in my ears. And young
+MacIntyre there is nearly a full-fledged man. He'll soon be eighteen, he
+tells me. Why, at his age--"
+
+The Judge rambled off into a series of reminiscences which would have
+been very entertaining to the younger man had his eyes not been
+following Lloyd. He did not like to think that she was growing up. He
+wanted to keep her a child. In his fond eyes she was always beautiful,
+but he had never seen her look as well as she did to-night. The scarlet
+dress and the holly berries gave her unusual colour. He fancied that
+there was a deeper flush on her face when Malcolm leaned over her chair
+to say something to her. Then he told himself that it was only fancy.
+Looking up, Lloyd caught sight of her father in the doorway, and flashed
+him a smile so open and reassuring that he turned away, thinking, "My
+honest little Hildegarde! She asked for her yardstick, and I can surely
+trust her to use it as she promised."
+
+Presently Malcolm, hunting through his pockets for a programme he was
+talking about, took out a bunch of letters. As he hastily turned them
+over, several unmounted photographs fluttered out and fell at Lloyd's
+feet. An amused smile dimpled her mouth as her hasty glance showed her
+that they were all of the same girl,--evidently kodak shots he had taken
+himself. Probably that was the girl and these were the letters that
+Keith had teased him about at the picnic.
+
+Neither spoke, and he reddened uncomfortably at her amused smile, as he
+put them back into his pocket. At that moment, Rob turned toward them,
+holding his new watch in his hand.
+
+"I have just been showing Ranald the present Daddy gave me," he said to
+Lloyd. "It reminded me that I hadn't told you,--I've put that same old
+four-leaf clover into the back of this watch that I had in my silver
+one. I wouldn't lose my luck by losing your hoodoo charm for anything in
+the world."
+
+At the sight of the clover Lloyd blushed violently. But it was not the
+little dried leaf that deepened the quick colour in her cheeks. It was
+the thought of the last time he had shown it to her, and the scene it
+recalled at the churchyard stile, when Malcolm had begged for the tip of
+a curl to carry with him always as a talisman; as a token that he was
+really her knight, as he had been in the princess play, and that he
+would come to her on some glad morrow.
+
+"He'll have a pocket full of such talismans by the time he's through
+college," she thought, recalling the kodak pictures she had just seen.
+"I'm _mighty_ glad that I didn't give him one."
+
+Over at The Beeches, Elise and her little friends had arranged to give a
+Christmas play, so promptly at the hour agreed upon the party
+"progressed" in Mrs. Walton's wake. There they found the third royal
+welcome, and the gayest of entertainments. It had been an exciting day
+for all of them, and, as Kitty expressed it, they were all wound up like
+alarm-clocks. They would go off pretty soon with a br-r-r and a bang,
+and then run down.
+
+The play passed off without a hitch in the performance, and ended in a
+blaze of spangles and red light, when the fairy queen, trailing off the
+stage, went through the audience showering on her guests Christmas
+roses, supposed to have been called to life by her magic wand, and
+distributed as souvenirs of her skill.
+
+Then somebody came up to Gay with her violin. With Allison to play her
+accompaniments, she chose her sweetest pieces, and threw her whole soul
+into the rendering of them. She was so grateful to these dear people
+who had taken her in like one of themselves, and given her such a happy,
+happy holiday-time that she did her best, and Gay's best on the violin
+was a treat even to the musical critics in the company. Kitty was so
+proud of her she could not help expressing her pleasure aloud, much to
+Gay's embarrassment. To hide her confusion, she started a merry jig
+tune, so rollicking and irresistible that hands and feet all through the
+rooms began to pat the time. Keith seized his Aunt Allison around the
+waist and waltzed her out into the floor.
+
+"Come on, everybody!" he cried.
+
+Lloyd was standing in the doorway, talking to Doctor Shelby, the
+white-haired physician of the village, one of her oldest and dearest
+friends.
+
+"Go on, Miss Holly-berry," he said. "If I wasn't such a stiff old
+graybeard, I'd be at it myself. There's Ranald wanting to ask you."
+
+Lloyd waltzed off with Ranald, as light on her feet as a bit of
+thistle-down, and the old doctor's eyes followed her fondly.
+
+"She's like Amanthis," he said to himself. "And she will grow more like
+her as the years go by, so spirited and high-strung. But they'll have to
+watch her, or she'll wear herself out."
+
+Presently he missed the flash of the scarlet dress, in and out among
+the others, and he did not see it again until the music had stopped and
+the revel was ending with the chimes, rung softly on the Bells of Luzon.
+As he stepped back to allow several guests to pass him on the way up to
+the dressing-room, he caught sight of Lloyd in an alcove in the back
+hall. She was attempting to draw a glass of ice-water from the cooler.
+Her hands shook, and her face was so pale that it startled him. "What's
+the matter, child?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Nothing," she answered, trying to force a little laugh. "It's just that
+I felt for a minute as if I might faint. I nevah did, you know. I reckon
+it's as Kitty said. We've been wound up all day, and we've run so hah'd
+we've about run down, and we have to stop whethah we want to or not."
+
+He looked at her keenly and began counting her pulse. "You are not to
+get wound up this way any more this winter, young lady," he said,
+sternly. "Go straight home and go to bed, and stay there until day after
+to-morrow. The rest cure is what you need."
+
+"And miss Katie Mallard's pah'ty?" she cried. "Why, I couldn't do it
+even for you, you bad old ogah."
+
+She made a saucy mouth at him, and then, with her most winning smile,
+held out her hand to say good night, for the guests were beginning to
+take their departure. "_Please_, Mistah _My_-Doctah,"--it was the pet
+name she had given him years ago when she used to ride on his
+shoulder,--"please don't go to putting any notions into Papa Jack's head
+or mothah's. I'm just ti'ahed. That's all. I'll be all right in the
+mawning."
+
+"Come, Lloyd," called Mrs. Sherman. "We're ready to start now." She saw
+with a sigh of relief that her mother was bringing her coat toward her,
+so she would not have to climb the stairs for it. She was tired,
+dreadfully tired, she admitted to herself. But it had been such a happy
+day it was worth the fatigue.
+
+As she drove homeward in the sleigh, she slipped her hand out of her
+muff, and turned it in the moonlight to watch the sparkle of the new
+ring. She wondered if the two girls who had worn it in turn before her
+had had half as happy a fifteenth Christmas as she.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE DUNGEON OF DISAPPOINTMENT
+
+
+IT was nearly noon when Lloyd wakened next morning. Her head ached, and
+she wondered dully how anybody could feel lively enough to sing as Aunt
+Cindy was doing, somewhere back in the servants' quarters. The sound of
+a squeaking wheelbarrow had wakened her. Alec was trundling it around
+the house, with the parrot perched on it. The parrot loved to ride, and
+its silly laugh at every jolt of the squeaking barrow usually amused
+Lloyd, but to-day its harsh chatter annoyed her.
+
+"Oh, deah!" she groaned, sitting up in bed and yawning. "I feel as if I
+could sleep for a week. I wouldn't get up at all if it wasn't for Katie
+Mallard's pah'ty. I hate this day-aftah-Christmas feeling, as if the
+bottom had dropped out of everything."
+
+She dressed slowly and went down-stairs. "Where's mothah, Mom Beck?" she
+asked, pausing in the dining-room door. The old coloured woman was
+arranging flowers for the lunch-table.
+
+"She's done gone ovah to Rollington, honey, with the old Cun'l. Walkah's
+mothah is sick, and sent for 'em. I'm lookin' for 'em to come home any
+minute now. Come right along in, honey. I've kep' yoah breakfus' good
+and hot."
+
+"I don't want anything to eat. I'm not hungry now. I'd rathah wait till
+lunch. Where's Betty, Mom Beck?"
+
+"Now listen to that!" ejaculated the old woman, sharply. "Don't you
+remembah? She went off on the early train this mawning to that place you
+all calls the Cuckoo's Nest. I packed her satchel befoah daylight."
+
+"I had forgotten she was going," exclaimed Lloyd, turning to the window
+with a discontented expression, which only the snowbirds on the lawn
+could see. She had come down-stairs expecting to talk over all the
+happenings of the previous day with Betty, and to find her gone gave her
+a vague sense of injury. She knew the feeling was unreasonable, but she
+could not shake it off.
+
+The flash of the new ring gave her a momentary pleasure, but she was in
+a mood that nothing could please her long. When she strolled into the
+drawing-room, everything was in spotless order, and so quiet that the
+stillness was oppressive. Even the fire burned with a steady, noiseless
+glow, without the usual crackle, and the ashes fell on the hearth with
+velvety softness.
+
+Some of her new books lay on a side table. She picked them up and
+glanced through them, catching at a paragraph here and there. But one
+after another she laid them down. She was not in a mood for reading.
+Then she took a candied date from the bonbon dish, but it seemed to lack
+its usual flavour. After nibbling each end, she threw it into the fire.
+Slipping her new opera-glass from its case, she went to the window and
+turned the lens on the distant entrance gate. The road in each direction
+seemed deserted. So she put the glass back in its case, and, after
+strolling restlessly around the room, walked over to the harp and struck
+a few chords.
+
+"It's all out of tune!" she exclaimed, fretfully, thrumming the faulty
+string with impatient fingers. "Everything seems out of tune this
+mawning!"
+
+As she spoke, the string broke with a sudden harsh twang that made her
+jump. She was so startled that the tears came to her eyes, and so
+nervous that she flung herself face downward on the pillows of the
+long-Persian divan, and began sobbing hysterically. The strain of the
+last few weeks had been too much for her. Miss Gilmer's prophecy had
+come true. The ice had given away under the extra weight put upon it.
+
+She was sobbing so hard that she did not hear the sound of carriage
+wheels rolling softly up the avenue through the snow, and when the front
+door banged shut she started again, and began trembling as she had done
+when the harp-string broke. She was crying convulsively now, so hard
+that she could not stop, although she clenched her fists and bit her
+lips in a strong effort to regain self-control.
+
+Mrs. Sherman, her face all aglow from the cold drive, and looking almost
+girlishly fair in her big hat with the plumes, and her dark furs,
+hurried in to the fire. The Colonel, throwing back his scarlet lined
+cape, pushed aside the portière for her to enter. He was the first to
+catch sight of the shaking form on the divan.
+
+"Why, Lloyd, child, what's the matter?" he demanded, anxiously. "What's
+the matter with grandpa's little girl?"
+
+Mrs. Sherman, with a frightened expression, hurried to her, and, bending
+over her, tried to get a glimpse of the tear-swollen face buried so
+persistently in the cushions.
+
+"Nothing's happened! No, I'm not sick," came in smothered tones from the
+depths of the pillows. "It's j-just crying itself, and I--I--I c-can't
+stop-p-p!"
+
+A long shiver passed over her, and Mrs. Sherman, stroking her forehead
+with a soothing hand, waited for her to grow quiet before plying her
+with questions. But the old Colonel paced impatiently back and forth.
+
+"The child _must_ be sick," he declared. "She'll be coming down with a
+fever or something if we don't take vigorous measures to prevent it. I
+shall telephone for Dick Shelby this minute."
+
+He started toward the hall, but a wild wail from Lloyd stopped him.
+
+"I won't have the doctah! I'm not sick, and you sha'n't send for him! I
+j-just cried because the harp-string b-broke so suddenly that it
+s-scared me!"
+
+The Colonel paused and looked at her in amazement. Not since the time
+when she, a five-year-old child, had flung a handful of mud over his
+white clothes had she spoken to him in such a defiant tone. He answered
+soothingly, as if she were still that little child, to be coaxed into
+good behaviour. "Oh, yes, you won't mind the doctor's coming if grandpa
+wants him to. He'll keep you from getting down sick, and spoiling all
+the rest of your vacation. I'll just ask him to step up and look at
+you."
+
+"No, don't!" demanded Lloyd, as he started again toward the hall. "No,
+you sha'n't!" she insisted, springing up and stamping her foot. "I won't
+have the old doctah, and I won't take any of his nasty old medicine!
+He'll make me stay home from Katie's pah'ty this aftahnoon and from the
+matinée to-morrow--and there's nothing the mattah, only I'm cross and
+nervous, and the moah you bothah me the hah'dah it is to stop crying!"
+
+Then ashamed of her petulant outburst, she threw her arms around his
+neck, and sobbed on his shoulder. In the end she had her own way, for
+the glass of hot milk which her mother sent for, as soon as she found
+Lloyd had eaten no breakfast, soothed her overstrung nerves. A brisk
+walk to the post-office in the bracing December air gave her an appetite
+for luncheon. Then she slept again until time to dress for Katie's
+party, so that when the old Colonel watched her start off, she looked so
+bright and was in such buoyant spirits that he wondered vaguely if her
+crying spell could have been the remnant of some childish tantrum
+instead of the forerunner of an illness.
+
+He banished the thought instantly from his loyal old heart, ashamed of
+having applied such a word as tantrum to anything Lloyd might choose to
+do. Of course she had felt ill, he told himself. So wretched that she
+hadn't known what she was saying when she stormed at him so angrily. He
+resolved to watch her closely, and take matters in his own hands if she
+showed any more alarming symptoms.
+
+There was a matinée next day in Louisville, to which Mrs. Sherman took
+all the girls in the neighbourhood. That was the end of the Christmas
+gaieties for Lloyd. Doctor Shelby was at Locust on her return. He came
+out of the old Colonel's den, where he had been sitting for several
+hours, deep in a game of chess, and found her shivering in front of the
+fire with a nervous chill, sobbing hysterically.
+
+She stormed at him almost as she had done at her grandfather, protesting
+that she was only tired and nervous, and that she would be all right as
+soon as she had had her cry out. But she submitted meekly when he
+ordered her mother to put her to bed. The old doctor had always indulged
+her, but there was a sternness in his manner now that made her obey
+him.
+
+He called to see her the next day, and the next. But his visits did not
+seem like professional ones. There was nothing said about medicine or
+symptoms. He only asked her about school and the good times she had been
+having, and the extra studying she had been doing. Then he sat and joked
+and talked with her and her mother, as had been his habit ever since
+Lloyd could remember. The third afternoon she was down in the
+drawing-room when he came.
+
+"We'll soon be having Miss Holly-berry back again," he said, playfully
+pinching her pale cheek.
+
+"And without taking any nasty old medicine," she answered. "I don't mind
+doctahs when they can cure people without giving them pills and
+powdahs."
+
+The Colonel looked up sharply. "What's that?" he asked. "Haven't you
+been giving her anything, Dick? It seems to me the child would get along
+faster if she had a good tonic."
+
+"I am going to prescribe one this morning," the doctor answered. "That's
+what I came up for." He laughed at the look of disgust on Lloyd's face.
+
+"It isn't bad," he assured her, with an indulgent smile. "Why, I know
+dozens of girls who would say that the tonic I am going to prescribe is
+the most agreeable that could be given. I've even had them beg for it.
+This is it, simply to lengthen your Christmas vacation. Didn't I hear a
+certain young lady wishing the other night that she could stretch hers
+out indefinitely?"
+
+Lloyd's dimples deepened. "How much longah will you make it? A week? If
+I stay out much longah than that, it will be such hah'd work to catch up
+with my classes that the game won't be worth the candle."
+
+"But I would make it so long that there would be no necessity of having
+to catch up, as you call it. You could simply make a fresh start in a
+new class."
+
+Lloyd looked up in alarm. "When?" she demanded.
+
+"Um--well, next fall, let us say," he answered, deliberately. "Yes,
+surely by that time you'll be well and sound as a new dollar."
+
+"Next fall!" she gasped, her face growing white and her eyes strangely
+big and dark. "You don't mean--you _couldn't_ mean that I must leave
+school."
+
+"Yes, that's exactly what I mean. You are overtaxing yourself and must
+stop--"
+
+"Oh, I can't!" interrupted Lloyd, speaking very fast. "I _won't_! It's
+cruel to ask it when I've worked so hard to keep from falling behind
+Betty and the girls. Oh, you don't _know_ what it means to me!"
+
+The old doctor looked up in amazement at this unexpected outburst.
+
+"No," he answered, slowly, after a moment's silence. "I don't suppose I
+do. I had no idea it would be a disappointment to you. I would gladly
+save you from it if I could. But listen to me, my little girl, and try
+to be reasonable. You are on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Nothing
+can mean as much to you as your health. What will keeping up with the
+other girls amount to if the strain and the overtaxing makes an invalid
+of you for life, perhaps?
+
+"Mind you, I am not saying that the work itself is too great a tax.
+Madam Chartley's is one of the best regulated schools I have ever
+inquired into. Ordinarily a girl ought to be able to take the course
+with perfect ease. But you see that little spell of la grippe left you
+weak and unfit for any extra strain, and, instead of easing up a bit,
+you went on piling on all that extra load of lessons and Christmas
+preparations and vacation dissipations. It was like trying to walk on a
+broken foot. The more you tried, the worse it got. The mischief is done
+now, and there is no remedy but to stop short off."
+
+Lloyd sat very still for a moment, staring out of the window in a dazed,
+unseeing way, as if not fully understanding all he said. Then she turned
+with a piteous appeal in her face to Mrs. Sherman.
+
+"Mothah, it isn't so, is it? I won't have to give up school now! You
+wouldn't make me, would you, when you know how I love it? Oh, it will
+neahly _kill_ me if you do! Please say no, mothah! _Please_!"
+
+Mrs. Sherman's eyes were full of tears. "My poor little girl," she
+exclaimed as Lloyd threw herself into her arms. "I'm afraid we must do
+as the doctor says. He would not ask such a sacrifice if it were not
+necessary. You know how dearly he has always loved you."
+
+Without waiting to hear any more, Lloyd sprang up and ran out of the
+room. Rushing up-stairs, she bolted her door behind her, and threw
+herself across the bed.
+
+"It is the first great disappointment she has ever had in her life,"
+said her mother, looking after her with a troubled face. "Couldn't you
+make the sentence a little easier, doctor? Couldn't she go back and take
+one study, just to be with the girls?"
+
+He shook his head. "No, Elizabeth. She is too ambitious and high-strung
+for that. One study wouldn't satisfy her. She'd chafe at not being able
+to keep up in everything. She has nothing serious the matter with her
+now, but it would not take long to make a wreck of her health at the
+gait she has been going. There must be no more parties, no more regular
+school work, and even no more music lessons this winter. She must have
+the simplest kind of a life. Keep her out-of-doors all you can. A little
+prevention now will be worth pounds of cure after awhile."
+
+"I suppose you are right, Dick," said the old Colonel, huskily, "but I
+swear I'd give the only arm the Yankees left me to save her from this
+disappointment."
+
+Lying across the bed up-stairs, Lloyd cried and sobbed until she was
+exhausted. The handkerchief clutched in her hand in a damp little ball
+had wiped away the bitterest tears she had ever shed. In her inmost
+heart she knew that the doctor was right. It had been weeks since she
+had felt strong and well. She remembered the way she had lagged behind
+at the picnic, and what an effort it had been to talk and make herself
+agreeable lately. Recalling the last few weeks, it seemed to her that
+she had been in tears half the time. She admitted to herself that she
+would rather be dead than to be an invalid for life like her great-aunt
+Jane. To sit always in a darkened room that smelled of camphor, and to
+talk in a weak, complaining voice that made everybody tired. Of course
+if there was danger of her growing to be like _her_, she would rather
+leave school than run such a risk. But why, oh, _why_ was she forced to
+make such a choice? The other girls didn't have to. She had done no more
+than they to bring about such a state of affairs.
+
+They could go back to dear old Warwick Hall, but she would have to stay
+behind. And she would always be behind, for, even if she went back with
+them another year, it couldn't be the same. They would have done so much
+in the meantime,--gone on so far ahead, made new friends and found new
+interests, and she would have to drop back in the class below, and
+never, never stand on the same footing with them again. It was so hard,
+so cruel, that she should have to face a blighted life at only fifteen.
+
+She unlocked the door presently at her mother's knock, but she didn't
+want to be comforted. Nothing anybody could say could change things, she
+sobbed, or make the disappointment any easier to bear. So Mrs. Sherman
+wisely withdrew, and left her to fight it out alone.
+
+The next time she peeped into the room, Lloyd was asleep, worn out with
+the violence of her grief, so she tiptoed down-stairs, leaving the door
+ajar behind her. The Colonel was pacing up and down the library.
+
+"I declare I can't think of anything but that child's disappointment!"
+he exclaimed, as she came in. "I can't read! I can't settle down to
+anything. I have been trying to think of some pleasure we could give her
+to make up for it in a way. A winter in Florida, maybe. Poor baby! if I
+could only bear it for her, how glad I would be to do it!"
+
+Mrs. Sherman picked up a bit of needlework from the table where she had
+left it, and, sitting down by the window, began to hemstitch.
+
+"I don't know, papa," she said, slowly, "but I'm beginning to fear that
+we have done too much of that for Lloyd; smoothed the difficulties out
+of her way too much; made things too easy. We've fairly held our arms
+around her to shield her not only from harmful things, but from even
+trifling unpleasantness. Maybe if she had had to face the smaller
+disappointments that most children have to bear, the greater ones would
+not seem so overwhelming. She could have met this more bravely."
+
+The Colonel sniffed impatiently. "All foolishness, Elizabeth! All
+foolishness! That may be the case with ordinary children, but not with
+such a sweet, unspoiled nature as Lloyd's."
+
+It was nearly dark when Lloyd wakened. She heard Kitty's voice down in
+the hall, asking to see her, and Gay's exclamation of surprise and
+regret at something her mother said in a low voice. She knew that she
+was telling them the doctor's decision. Then Mom Beck tapped at the door
+to ask if she would see the girls awhile, but she sent her away with a
+mournful shake of the head. She was too miserable even to speak.
+
+The low murmur of voices went on for some time. It grew loud enough for
+her to distinguish the words when the girls came out into the hall again
+to take their departure. Lloyd raised herself on her elbow to listen.
+Kitty was telling something that had happened that afternoon at the
+candy-pull from which they were just returning. A wan smile flitted
+across Lloyd's face, in sympathy with the merry laugh that floated up
+the stairs. But it faded the next instant as she whispered, bitterly:
+"That's the way it will always be. They will go on having good times
+without me, and they'll get so they'll nevah even miss me. I'll be left
+out of everything. There's nothing left to look forward to any moah. Oh,
+it's all so dah'k and gloomy--I know now how Ederyn felt, for I'm just
+like he was, walled up in a dreadful Dungeon of Disappointment."
+
+The fancy pleased her so that she went on making herself miserable with
+it long after the door closed behind Kitty and Gay. Over and over she
+pictured Warwick Hall, which just then seemed the most desirable place
+in all the world. She could see the shining river, as she had watched it
+so many times from her window, flowing past the stately terraces between
+its willow-fringed banks. She could hear the breezy summons of the
+hunter's horn, calling the girls to rambles over the wooded hills or
+through the quaint old garden. She could see the sun streaming into the
+south windows of the English room, with the class gathered around Miss
+Chilton, eager and interested. All the dear, delightful round of
+inspiring work and play would go on day after day for the others, but it
+would go on without her. Henceforth she would be left out of everything
+pleasant and worth while.
+
+She would not go down to dinner. She could not take such a puffed,
+tear-swollen face to the table to make everybody else unhappy, and she
+couldn't throw off her despondent mood. Maybe in a few days, she
+thought, she might be able to hide her feelings sufficiently to appear
+in public, but it would always be with a secret sorrow gnawing at her
+heart. Just now she shrank from sympathy, and she didn't want any one to
+cheer her up. It did not seem possible that she could ever smile again,
+and she wasn't sure that she wanted to.
+
+Mom Beck brought up the daintiest of dinners on a tray, but carried it
+back almost untasted. As soon as she was gone, Lloyd undressed and crept
+into bed.
+
+Sleep was far from her, however, and she lay with her eyes wide open.
+The room was full of soft shadows and the flicker of firelight on the
+furniture. She could think of only one thing, and she brooded over that
+until it seemed to her feverish, disordered fancy that her
+disappointment was the greatest that any one had ever been forced to
+bear.
+
+"Why couldn't it have happened to some girl who didn't care?" she
+thought, bitterly. "Some girl like Maud Minor, who doesn't like school,
+anyhow. It doesn't seem fair when I've tried my best to do exactly
+right, to leave a road of the loving hah't in everybody's memory, to
+keep the tryst--"
+
+That thought brought a fresh reason for grief. There was the string of
+pearls. Now she could not finish her little white rosary. The fire
+flared up and shone brilliantly for a few moments, lighting a group of
+pictures over her bed. They were the photographs she had taken in
+Arizona. There was Ware's Wigwam. The firelight was not bright enough to
+enable her to read the lines Joyce had written under it, but she knew
+the inscription was the Ware family's motto, taken from the "Vicar of
+Wakefield": "Let us be inflexible, and fortune will at last change in
+our favour." A shadow of a smile actually came to her lips as she
+remembered Mary Ware gravely explaining it.
+
+"Why, even Norman knows that if you'll swallow your sobs and _stiffen_
+when you bump your head or anything, it doesn't hurt half as bad as if
+you just let loose and howl."
+
+And there was the photograph of old Camelback Mountain, bringing back
+the story of Shapur, left helpless on the sands of the Desert of
+Waiting, while the caravan passed on without him to the City of his
+Desire. She remembered that when she hung it over her bed she had
+thought, "If ever _I_ come to such a place, this will help me to bear
+it patiently."
+
+Then she thought of Joyce, how bravely and uncomplainingly she had met
+her disappointment. Not only had she left school and given up her
+ambition to be an artist, but she had had to give up the old home she
+loved, all her friends, and everything that made her girlhood bright, to
+go out into the lonely desert and work like a squaw.
+
+The thought of Joyce brought back all the lessons she had learned in the
+School of the Bees. But she sighed presently: "Oh, deah, all those
+things sounded so nice and comforting when they seemed meant for othah
+people. They don't seem so comforting now that I'm in trouble myself.
+It's like the poultice Aunt Cindy made for Walkah's toothache. She was
+disgusted because he didn't stop complaining right away, and said it
+ought to have cured him if it didn't. But it wasn't such a powahful
+remedy when she had the toothache herself. She grumbled moah than
+Walkah. It's all well enough to say that I'll seal up my troubles as the
+bees seal up the things that get into the cells to spoil their honey,
+but now the time is heah, I simply can't!"
+
+Nevertheless, what the School of the Bees taught did help. So did the
+sight of the patient old Camelback Mountain, that had inspired the
+legend of Shapur. And more than all the little group in front of the
+Wigwam helped, as she remembered how bravely they had met their
+troubles.
+
+One by one her happy Arizona days came back to her. After all, it was
+something to have lived fifteen beautiful years untouched by trouble.
+She was thankful for that much, even if the future held nothing more for
+her. If she couldn't be happy, she could at least take Mary's advice and
+"not let loose and howl" about it any more. If she couldn't be bright
+and cheerful, she could "swallow her sobs and stiffen." With the
+resolution to try Mary's remedy for her woes in the morning, she lay
+drowsily watching the firelight flicker across the picture of the
+Wigwam.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+IN THE ATTIC
+
+
+IF the sun had been shining next morning, it would have been easier for
+Lloyd to keep her resolution, and face the family bravely at breakfast.
+But the rain was pouring against the windows; a slow, monotonous rain
+that ran in little rivers over the lawn, melting the snow, and turning
+the white landscape into a dreary scene of mud and bare branches.
+
+Twice on the way down-stairs she paused, thinking that she could not
+possibly sit through the meal without crying, and that it would be
+better to go back and breakfast alone in her room than to be a damper on
+the spirits of the family. Even so slight a thing as the tone of
+sympathy in her grandfather's "good morning" made the tears spring to
+her eyes, but she winked them back, and answered almost cheerfully his
+question as to how she felt.
+
+"Oh, just like the weathah, grandfathah. All gray and drippy; but I'll
+clean up aftah awhile."
+
+She could not smile as she said it, but the effort she made to be
+cheerful made the next attempt easier, and presently she acknowledged to
+herself that Mary was right. It did help, to swallow one's sobs.
+
+After breakfast she stood at the window, watching her father drive away
+to the station in the rain. As the carriage disappeared and there was
+nothing more to watch, she wondered dully how she could spend the long
+morning.
+
+"Some one wants you at the telephone, Lloyd," called the Colonel, on his
+way to his den.
+
+"Oh, good! I hope it is Kitty," she exclaimed, anticipating a long visit
+over the wire.
+
+But it was Malcolm MacIntyre who had rung her up, to bid her good-bye.
+He and Keith were about to start home. They had intended to go up to
+Locust, he told her, for a short call before train time, but it was
+raining too hard. Would she please make their adieus to her mother and
+the rest of the family. He had heard that she was not going back to
+school. Was it true? She was in luck. No? She was disappointed? Well,
+that was too bad. He was awfully sorry. But she mustn't worry over
+missing a few months of school. It wouldn't amount to much in the long
+run. For his part, if he were a girl and didn't have to fit himself for
+a profession, he would be glad to have such a postscript added to his
+Christmas vacation. He'd noticed that usually the postscript to a girl's
+letter had more in it than the letter itself. Possibly it would be that
+way with her vacation. He hoped so.
+
+Although it was in the most cordial tone that he expressed his regret at
+her disappointment, and bade Princess Winsome good-bye until the "good
+old summer-time," it was with a vague feeling of disappointment that
+Lloyd hung up the receiver and turned away from the telephone.
+
+"He doesn't undahstand at all!" she thought. "He hasn't the faintest
+idea how much it means to me to give up school. He thinks that, because
+I'm a girl, I haven't any ambition, and that it doesn't hurt me as it
+would him. Maybe it wouldn't have sounded quite the same if I could have
+seen him say it, but ovah the telephone, somehow--although he was mighty
+nice and polite--it sounded sawt of patronizing."
+
+She went into the library to deliver Malcolm's farewell messages to her
+mother. "He seems so much moah grown up this time than he evah has
+befoah," she added. "I don't like him half as much that way as the way
+he used to be."
+
+Mrs. Sherman was busy about the house all morning, so Lloyd found
+entertainment following her from room to room, as she inspected the
+linen closet, superintended the weekly cleaning of the pantry, and
+rearranged some of the library shelves to make room for the Christmas
+books. But in the afternoon she had a number of letters to write,
+acknowledging the gifts which had been sent her by distant friends, and
+Lloyd was left to her own amusement.
+
+[Illustration: "ONE OF THE BOYS HAD DARED HIM TO CARRY IT."]
+
+The doctor did not want her to read long at a time. The rain was pouring
+too hard for her to venture out-of-doors, and about the middle of the
+afternoon the silence and loneliness of the big house seemed more than
+she could endure.
+
+"I could scream, I'm so nervous and ti'ahed of being by myself," she
+exclaimed. "If just a piece of a day is so hah'd to drag through as this
+has been, how can I stand all the rest of the wintah?"
+
+She was counting up the weeks ahead of her on the big library calendar,
+when, through the window, she caught sight of Rob coming toward the
+house. The rain was running in streams from the bottom of his
+mackintosh, and from a huge umbrella that spread over him like a tent.
+It was an enormous advertising umbrella, taken from one of the delivery
+wagons at the store. One of the boys had dared him to carry it.
+"_Groceries, Dry Goods, Boots and_" appeared in black letters on the
+yellow side turned toward Lloyd. "_Shoes. Jayne's Emporium_," she
+called, supplying the rest of the familiar advertisement from memory.
+
+"What on earth are you doing with that wagon-top ovah you?" she asked
+from the front door, where she stood watching his approach. He was
+striding along whistling as cheerily as if it were a midsummer day. He
+looked up and smiled in response to her call, and twirled the umbrella
+till the rain-drops flew in every direction in a fine spray. Lloyd felt
+as if the sun had suddenly come out from behind the clouds.
+
+"I've come to finish my Christmas hunt," he said, as he stepped up on
+the porch and shook himself like a great water-spaniel.
+
+"Oh," cried Lloyd, "I intended to ask Betty befoah she went away where
+she had hidden yoah present, and she left next mawning so early that I
+was still asleep. Maybe mothah knows."
+
+But Mrs. Sherman, busy with her letters, shook her head. "I haven't the
+faintest idea," she answered. "But I remember she said something about
+Rob's being the hardest one of all to find, so you'll probably be kept
+busy the rest of the day. Don't you children bother either Mom Beck or
+Cindy to help you hunt," she called after them. "They have all they can
+attend to to-day."
+
+"Let's see that verse again, Rob," said Lloyd, as they went out of the
+library into the drawing-room. He fumbled in several pockets and finally
+produced the card.
+
+          "I know a bank where the wild thyme grows.
+             Unseen it lies, unsung by bard.
+           Something keeps watch there, no man knows,
+             And over your gift it's standing guard."
+
+As on Christmas Day, the only bank the verse suggested was in the
+conservatory, a long, narrow ledge of ferns and maidenhair, green with
+overhanging vines and graceful fronds. For nearly half an hour they
+poked around in it, lifting the ferns from the warm, moist earth to see
+if anything lay hidden at their roots. It was like April in the
+conservatory, steamy and warm, and the fragrance of hyacinths and white
+violets made it a delightful place in which to linger.
+
+"Bank--bank--" repeated Lloyd, puzzling over the verse again, when they
+had given up the search in the conservatory and gone back to the
+drawing-room. "It might mean a savings-bank, but there hasn't been one
+in the house since that little red tin one of mine that you dropped into
+the well with my three precious dimes in it. I've felt all these yeahs
+that you owed me thirty cents."
+
+"Now, Lloyd Sherman, there's no use in bringing up that old quarrel
+again," he laughed. "You know we were playing that robbers were coming,
+and we had to lower our gold and jewels into the well, and you tied the
+fishing-line around the bank your own self. So I am not to blame if the
+knot came untied at the very first jerk. We've wasted enough breath
+arguing that point to start a small cyclone."
+
+They laughed again over the recollection of their old quarrel, then Rob
+read the verse once more. Presently he stopped drumming on the table
+with his thumbs, and said, slowly, as if trying to recall something long
+forgotten: "Don't you remember,--it seems ages before we dropped your
+red bank in the well,--that I had a remarkable penny savings-bank? It
+was some sort of a slot machine in the shape of a little iron dog. Daddy
+brought it to me from New York. There was some kind of an indicator on
+the side of it that looked like the face of a watch. That was my
+introduction to puns, for Daddy said it was a _watch_ dog, made to guard
+my pennies. Surely you haven't forgotten old Watch, for after the
+indicator was broken I brought the safe over here, and we kept it on
+the door-mat in front of your playhouse, to guard the premises."
+
+"I should say I do remembah!" answered Lloyd. "Probably it's up in the
+attic now. But what has that to do with the rhyme?"
+
+"Don't you see? That must be the 'bank' where the wild thyme grows. I
+don't know whether Betty refers to the wild time we used to have playing
+in the attic, or the wild time that the watch kept. But I'm certain that
+that is the bank she means."
+
+"Come on, then," cried Lloyd. "Let's go up to the attic and hunt for it.
+I haven't been up there for ovah a yeah."
+
+Rob led the way to the upper hall, and then up the attic stairs, taking
+the steep steps two at a time in long leaps.
+
+"That isn't the way you used to climb these stairs," laughed Lloyd.
+"Don't you know you had to weah little long-sleeved aprons when you came
+ovah to play with me, to keep yoahself clean? You always stepped on the
+front of them and stumbled going up these steps."
+
+A headless and tailless hobby-horse of Rob's, on which they had ridden
+many imaginary miles, stood in one corner, and he crossed over to
+examine it, with an amused smile.
+
+"It certainly didn't take much to amuse us in those days," he said,
+touching the rockers with his foot, and starting the disabled beast to
+bobbing back and forth. "How long has it been since we used to ride this
+thing? Is my hair white? I declare I never had anything make me feel so
+ancient as the sight of this old hobby-horse. I feel older than
+grandfather."
+
+Lloyd had opened a dilapidated hair-covered trunk, and was bending over
+a family of dolls stowed away inside. "Heah is old Belinda!" she
+exclaimed. "And Carrie Belle May, and Rosalie, the Prairie Flowah! 'And,
+oh, Rob! Look at poah Nelly Bly, all wah-paint and feathahs, just as you
+fixed her up for a squaw that day we had an Indian massacre in the grape
+arbour. I had forgotten that we left her in such a fix!"
+
+"I'll never forget that day," answered Rob. "Don't you remember how sore
+I made my arm, trying to tattoo an anchor on it with a darning-needle
+and clothes bluing? What else have you buried in that old trunk?"
+
+Despite his six feet and seventeen years, Rob dropped down on a roll of
+carpet beside the trunk, and watched with interest as Lloyd lifted out
+one article after another over which they had quarrelled, or in whose
+pleasure they had shared in what now seemed a dim and far-away playtime.
+Don't you remember this? Don't you remember that? they asked each other,
+finding so many things to laugh over and recall that they quite forgot
+the object of their search.
+
+Lloyd was sitting with her back against the warm chimney, which ran up
+through the middle of the attic, but presently she began to feel chilly,
+and sent Rob over to a chest, away back under the eaves, for something
+to put around her. It was packed full of old finery they had used on
+various occasions for tableaux and plays. The first thing he pulled out
+was a gorgeous red velvet cloak covered with spangles.
+
+"That will do," she said, as he held it up inquiringly. "It's good and
+warm."
+
+He pushed the chest back into place. Then, straightening up, his glance
+fell on the discarded playhouse, standing back in a dim corner. With a
+whoop he pounced upon it.
+
+"Here's old Watch!" he exclaimed, holding up the little iron dog. "And
+he is the bank where the wild time grows, for here is the gift he is
+standing guard over." Throwing the spangled cloak over Lloyd's
+shoulders, he seated himself again on the roll of carpet, and began to
+untie the little package fastened to the dog's neck with a bit of
+ribbon. Inside many layers of tissue-paper, he came at last to a
+memorandum-book, small enough to fit in his vest-pocket. It was bound in
+soft gray kid, and on the back Betty had burned in old English letters,
+with her pyrography-needle, the motto of Warwick Hall: "I keep the
+tryst." Over it was the crest, a heart, out of which rose a mailed arm,
+grasping a spear.
+
+"Betty did that," said Lloyd. "She traced the letters on first with
+tracing-papah, and then burnt them. I remembah now, she made it a few
+days befoah we came home. She thought we would have our usual tree, and
+she intended to hang this on it for you. Then when we had the hunt
+instead of a tree, she took this way of giving it to you. That is an
+appropriate motto for a memorandum-book, isn't it? You'll appreciate it
+moah when she tells you the story about it. Miss Chilton read it to the
+English class one day, and had us write it from memory for the next
+lesson."
+
+"Then what's the matter with your telling it to me?" asked Rob, eying
+the mailed hand and the spear with interest. "I'll be gone before Betty
+gets back. Go on and tell it. This is an ideal time and place for
+story-telling."
+
+He leaned comfortably back against the warm chimney and half-closed his
+eyes. The patter of the rain on the roof made him drowsy.
+
+"Well," assented Lloyd, "I can't tell it with as many frills and
+flourishes as Betty could, but I remembah it bettah than most stories,
+because I had to write it from memory." Drawing the glittering cloak
+closer around her, she began as if she were reading it, in the very
+words of the green and gold volume:
+
+          "'Now there was a troubadour in the kingdom of
+          Arthur, who, strolling through the land with only
+          his minstrelsy to win him a way, found in every
+          baron's hall and cotter's hut a ready welcome.'"
+
+Here and there she stumbled over some part of it, or told it
+hesitatingly in her own words, but at last she ended it as well as Betty
+herself could have done:
+
+          "So Ederyn won his sovereign's favour, and, by his
+          sovereign's grace permitted, went back to woo the
+          maiden and win her for his bride. Then henceforth
+          blazoned on his shield and helmet he bore the
+          crest, a heart with hand that grasped a spear,
+          and, underneath, the words, 'I keep the tryst.'"
+
+"That's a corking good motto," said Rob as she paused. "I like that
+story, Lloyd, and I'll remember it when I keep the engagements that I
+put down in this little book."
+
+He sat a moment, flipping the leaves and whistling a bar from "The Old
+Oaken Bucket."
+
+"Stop!" commanded Lloyd, suddenly, clapping her hands over her ears, and
+making a wry face. "You're off the key. Haven't I told you a thousand
+times that it doesn't go that way? This is it."
+
+Puckering up her lips, she whistled the tune correctly, and he joined
+in. At the end of the chorus he looked at his watch.
+
+"It's been like old times this afternoon," he said. "I'll tell you what,
+Lloyd, let's come up here once a year after this, just to keep tryst
+with our old playtimes. I'll put that down as the first engagement in my
+memorandum-book. A year from to-day we'll take another look at these
+things."
+
+"All right," assented Lloyd, cheerfully. Then a wistful expression crept
+into her eyes as she peered through the tiny attic window. Twilight was
+falling early on account of the rain. A deep gloom began to settle over
+her spirits also.
+
+"Rob," she said, slowly, "I haven't told you yet. I didn't want to spoil
+our aftahnoon by thinking about it any moah than I could help, and you
+made me almost forget it for a little while. I couldn't talk about it
+when you first came without crying,--this yeah is going to be _such_ a
+long, hah'd one. They aren't going to let me go back to school aftah the
+holidays. The doctah says I am not strong enough, and it is such an
+awful Dungeon of Disappointment that it just breaks my hah't to think
+about it."
+
+To Rob's consternation she laid her head down on old Belinda, who still
+lay limply across her lap, and began to sob. He sat in embarrassed
+silence for a moment, scarcely knowing her for the same little companion
+whom he had taught to meet hurts like a boy. He remembered the many
+times she had winked back the tears over the bruises and bumps and cuts
+she had encountered in following his lead. He was bewildered by the
+unfamiliar mood, and it hurt him to see her so grieved.
+
+"There! there! Don't cry, Lloyd!" he begged, hurt by the sight of the
+fair head bowed so dismally over the old doll. "I know how it would
+knock me out to have to stop now, just when I've got into the swing of
+things, so I know just how you feel. I'm mighty sorry."
+
+Then, as the sobs continued: "I'd go off and whip somebody if it would
+do any good, but it won't. You'll have to brace up as Ederyn did, and
+you'll get out of your dungeon all right."
+
+There was no answer. School was so very dear, and the disappointment so
+very bitter. It had all surged over her again in a great wave. He tried
+again.
+
+"It's tough, I know, but it will be easier if you take it as all the
+Lloyds have taken their troubles, with your teeth set and your head up.
+Somehow, that's the way I've always thought you would take things. Don't
+cry, Lloyd. Don't! It breaks me all up to see you this way, when you've
+always been so game."
+
+She straightened up and wiped her eyes, announcing suddenly: "And I'm
+going to be game now. If there's one thing I nevah could beah, it was
+for you to think I was a coward, and I can't have you thinking it now.
+It's a sawt of tryst I've kept all these yeahs, unconsciously, I
+suppose. Ever since I was a little thing, if I thought 'Bobby expects it
+of me,' I'd do it, no mattah what it was, from jumping a fence to
+climbing on the chimney. I've lived up to yoah expectations many a time
+at the risk of killing myself."
+
+"Indeed you have," he answered, in a tone of hearty admiration. There
+was a tender light in his gray eyes which she did not see, she was so
+busy wiping her own.
+
+"I'm done crying now," she announced, springing to her feet and
+thrusting Belinda back into the trunk. "Come on, let's go down and pop
+some cawn ovah the library fiah. Put this cloak away first."
+
+He pushed the chest back to its place under the eaves and started after
+her, pulling out his handkerchief as he went, to wipe away a stray
+cobweb into which he had thrust his hand. It reminded him of the story.
+
+"You know," he suggested, consolingly, "there's bound to be some way out
+of your dungeon. I'll spend all the rest of the vacation helping you
+twist cobwebs for your rope, if you like."
+
+She made no answer then to his offer of assistance. She felt that she
+could not steady her voice if she tried to speak her appreciation of
+his sympathy.
+
+So she called out, as she dashed past him: "As Joyce used to say at the
+house pah'ty, 'the last one down is a jibbering Ornithorhynchus!'"
+
+Away they went in a mad race, whose noisy clatter made it seem to the
+old Colonel in his den that the rafters were falling in. But on the
+landing she paused an instant.
+
+"It--it helps a lot, Rob," she said, wistfully, "to have you
+undahstand,--to know that you know how it hurts."
+
+"I wish I could really help you," he answered, earnestly. "You're a game
+little chum!"
+
+She flashed back a grateful smile from under her wet eyelashes, and led
+the race on down the next flight of stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+HUMDRUM DAYS
+
+
+ALL through the rest of that week, and through New Year's Day, Lloyd
+managed to keep her resolution bravely. Even when the time came for the
+girls to go back to school without her, she went through the farewells
+like a little Spartan, driving down to the station with tearful Betty,
+who grieved over Lloyd's disappointment as if it had been her own.
+
+When the train pulled out, with the four girls on the rear platform, she
+stood waving her handkerchief cheerily as long as she could see an
+answering flutter. Then she turned away, catching her breath in a deep
+indrawn sob, that might have been followed by others if Rob had not been
+with her. He saw her clench her hands and set her teeth together hard,
+and knew what a fight she was making to choke back the tears, but he
+wisely gave no sign that he saw and sympathized. He only proposed a
+walk over to the blacksmith shop to see the red fox that Billy Kerr had
+trapped and caged. But a little later, when she had regained her
+self-control and was poking a stick between the slats of the coop where
+the fox was confined, to make it stretch itself, he said, suddenly:
+
+"By cricky, you were game, Lloyd! If it had been me, I couldn't have
+gone to the station and watched the fellows go off without me, and joke
+about it the way you did."
+
+Lloyd went on rattling the stick between the slats and made no answer,
+but Rob's approval brightened her spirits wonderfully. It was not until
+the next day, when he, too, went back to school, that she fully realized
+how lonely her winter was going to be. She strolled into her mother's
+room, and threw herself listlessly into a chair by the window.
+
+"What can I do, mothah? I mustn't read long, I mustn't study, Tarbaby is
+lame, so I can't ride, and I've walked as far as I care to this
+mawning."
+
+"What would you like to do?" asked Mrs. Sherman, who was dressing to go
+out.
+
+"Nothing but things that I can't do," was the fretful answer. "It would
+be lots of fun if I could go out in the kitchen and beat eggs, and make
+custah'd pies and biscuits and things. I'd love to cook. I haven't had
+a chance since I was at Ware's Wigwam. But Aunt Cindy scolds and
+grumbles if anybody so much as looks into the kitchen. She says she
+won't have me messing around in her way."
+
+"I know," sighed Mrs. Sherman. "Cindy is getting more fussy and exacting
+every year. But she has cooked for the family so long that she seems to
+think the kitchen is hers. If she were not such a superior cook, I
+wouldn't put up with her whims, but in these days, when everybody is
+having so much trouble with servants, we'll have to humour her. She's a
+faithful old creature. You might cook on the chafing-dish in the
+dining-room. There are all sorts of things you could make on that."
+
+Lloyd shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "But not bread and pies and
+things you do with a rolling-pin. That's the pah't I like."
+
+She sat a moment, swinging her foot in silence, and then broke out:
+
+"If I were a girl in a story-book, this disappointment would turn me
+into such a saintly, helpful creatuah that I'd be called 'The Angel of
+the Home.' I've read about such girls. They keep things in ordah, and
+mend and dust and put flowahs about, and make the house so bright and
+cheerful that people wondah how they evah got along without them. Every
+time they turn around, there are lovely, helpful things for them to do.
+But what can _I_ do in a big house like this moah than I've always tried
+to do? I've tried to be considerate of everybody's comfo't evah since I
+stah'ted out to build a road of the loving hah't in everybody's memory.
+The servants do everything heah, and don't want to be interfered with. I
+wish we were dead poah, and lived in a plain little cottage and did our
+own work. Then I wouldn't have time to get lonesome. I'd be lots
+happiah.
+
+"One day, when Miss Gilmer and I were talking about Ederyn in his
+Dungeon of Disappointment, she said that we could always get out of our
+troubles the same way that he did; that the cobwebs he twisted into
+ropes were disagreeable to touch. Nobody likes to put their hands into
+dusty cobwebs, and that they represent the disagreeable little tasks
+that lie in wait for everybody. She said that, if we'll just grapple the
+things that we dislike most to do, the little homely every-day duties,
+and busy ourselves with them, they'll help us to rise above our
+discontent. I've been trying all mawning to think of some such cobwebs
+for me to take hold of, and there isn't a single one."
+
+Mrs. Sherman smiled at the wobegone face turned toward her. "Fancy any
+one being miserable over such a state of affairs as that!" she laughed.
+"Actually complaining because there's nothing disagreeable for her to
+do! Well, we'll have to look for some cobwebs to occupy you. Maybe if
+you can't find them at home, you can do like the old woman who was
+tossed up in a basket, seventy times as high as the moon. Don't you
+remember how Mom Beck used to sing it to you?
+
+          "'Old woman! Old woman! Old woman, said I,
+            O whither, O whither, O whither so high?
+           _To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky_,
+            But I'll be back again, by and by.'"
+
+She trilled it gaily as she fastened her belt, and took out her hat and
+gloves.
+
+"Fate must have given her just such a cobwebless home as you have, and
+she had to soar high to rise above her troubles. Come on, little girl,
+get your hat and coat, and we'll go in search of something disagreeable
+for you to do; but I hope your quest won't take you seventy times as
+high as the moon."
+
+They drove down to the store to attend to the day's marketing. While
+Mrs. Sherman was ordering her groceries, Lloyd went to the back of the
+store, where one of the clerks was teaching tricks to a bright little
+fox-terrier. She was so interested in the performance that she did not
+know when Miss Allison came in, or how long she and her mother stood
+discussing her.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Sherman, "she has been brave about it. She never
+complained but once, and that to me this morning. But we know how
+unhappy she is. Jack and papa worry about her all the time. They want me
+to take her to Florida. They think she must be given some pleasure that
+will compensate in a way for this disappointment. But it is not at all
+convenient for me to leave home now, and I feel that for her own good
+she should learn to meet such things for herself. It would be far
+easier, I acknowledge, if there was anything at home to occupy her, but
+I cannot allow her to interfere with Mom Beck's work, or Cindy's. They
+resent her doing anything." She repeated the conversation they had had
+that morning.
+
+"Loan her to me for the rest of the day," said Miss Allison. "I can show
+her plenty of cobwebs, the kind she is pining for."
+
+So it happened that a little later, when Miss Allison crossed the road
+to the post-office, and started up the path toward home, Lloyd was with
+her, smiling happily over the prospect of spending the day with the
+patron saint of all the Valley's merrymakings. From Lloyd's earliest
+recollection, Miss Allison had been the life of every party and picnic
+in the neighbourhood. She was everybody's confidante. Like Shapur, who
+gathered something from the heart of every rose to fill his crystal
+vase, so she had distilled from all these disclosures the precious attar
+of sympathy, whose sweetness won for her a way, and gained for her a
+welcome, wherever she went.
+
+As they turned in at the gate, Lloyd looked wistfully across at The
+Beeches, and her eyes filled with tears. Miss Allison slipped her arm
+around her and drew her close with a sympathetic clasp, as they walked
+around the circle of the driveway leading to the house.
+
+"I know just how you feel, dear. Like the little lame boy in that story
+of the 'Pied Piper of Hamelin.' Because he couldn't keep up with the
+others when they followed the piper's tune, he had to sit and watch them
+dance away without him, and disappear into the mountainside. He was the
+only child left in the whole town of Hamelin. It _is_ lonely for you, I
+know, with all the boys and girls of your own age away at school. But
+think how much lonelier Hamelin would have been without that child.
+You'll find out that old people can play, too, though, if you'll take a
+hand in their games. I want to teach you one after awhile, which I used
+to enjoy very much, and still take pleasure in."
+
+Miss Allison led the way up-stairs to her own room. As they passed the
+door leading to the north wing, Lloyd exclaimed: "I'll nevah forget that
+time, the night of the Valentine pah'ty, when Gingah and I went into the
+blue room, and the beah that Malcolm and Keith had tied to the bed-post
+rose up out of the dah'k and frightened us neahly to death."
+
+"We had some lively times that winter with Virginia and the boys,"
+answered Miss Allison. "I kept a record of some of their sorriest
+mishaps. Wait a minute until I speak to the housemaid, and I'll see if I
+can find it."
+
+Miss Allison had been wondering how she could best entertain Lloyd, but
+the problem was solved when she found the journal, in which she had
+written the history of the eventful winter when her sister's little
+daughter Virginia and her brother's two boys had been left in her
+charge. Lloyd had taken part in many of the mischievous adventures, and
+she sat smiling over the novelty of hearing herself described with all
+the imperious ways, naughty temper, and winning charm that had been hers
+at the age of eight.
+
+"It is like looking at an old photograph of oneself," she said, after
+awhile. "It seems so strange to be one of the characters in a book, and
+listen to stories about oneself."
+
+"That reminds me of the game I spoke of," said Miss Allison. "I invented
+it when I was about your age. I had just read 'Cranford,' and the story
+of life in that simple little village seemed so charming to me that I
+wished with all my heart I could step into the book and be one of the
+characters, and meet all the people that lived between its covers. Then
+I heard some one say that there were more interesting happenings and
+queer characters in Lloydsboro Valley than in Cranford. So I began to
+look around for them. I pretended that I was the heroine of a book
+called 'Lloydsboro Valley,' and all that summer I looked upon the people
+I met as characters in the same story.
+
+"It happened that all my young friends were away that summer, and it
+would have been very lonely but for my new game. The organist went away,
+and, although I was only fifteen, I took her place and played the little
+cabinet organ we used then in church and Sunday school. That threw me
+much with the older people, for I had to go to choir-practice to play
+the organ, and also attend the missionary teas. Gradually they drew me
+into a sewing-circle that was in existence then, and a reading club. I
+found it was true that my own little village really had far more
+interesting people in it than any I had read about, and I learned to
+love all the dear, cranky, gossipy old characters in it, because I
+studied them so closely that I found how good at heart they were despite
+their peculiarities and foibles.
+
+"That's what I want you to do this winter, Lloyd. Join the little choir,
+and meet with the King's Daughters, and learn to know these interesting
+neighbours of yours. And," she added, smiling, "I promise you that
+you'll find all the cobwebs you need to help haul you out of your
+dungeon."
+
+"Oh, Miss Allison!" exclaimed Lloyd, looking horrified at the thought.
+"_I_ couldn't sing in the choir and join the King's Daughtahs and all
+that. They're all at least twice as old as I am, and some of them even
+moah."
+
+"Yes, you can," insisted Miss Allison. "We need your voice in the choir,
+and you need the new interest these things would bring into your life.
+So don't say no until after you've given my game a trial. The King's
+Daughters' Circle is to meet here this afternoon, and I want you to help
+me. I'm going to serve hot chocolate and wafers, and, as long as it is
+such a cold, blowy day, I believe I'll add some nut sandwiches to make
+the refreshments a little more substantial."
+
+Privately, Lloyd looked forward to the afternoon as something stupid
+which she must face cheerfully for Miss Allison's sake, but she found
+her interest aroused with the first arrival. It was Libbie Simms, whom
+she had known all her life, in a way, for she could scarcely recall a
+Sabbath when she had not looked across at the dull, homely face in the
+opposite pew, and pitied her because of her queer nose and
+mouse-coloured hair. In the same way she had known Miss McGill, who came
+with Libbie. She had simply been one of the congregation who had claimed
+her attention for a moment each week, as she minced down the aisle like
+an animated rainbow. All she knew about Miss McGill was that she usually
+wore so many shades of purple and pink and blue that the clashing
+colours set one's teeth on edge.
+
+But in five minutes Lloyd had forgotten their peculiarities of feature
+and dress, and was listening with interest to their account of a call
+they had just made in Rollington. They had been to see a poor
+washerwoman who had five children to support. The youngest, a baby who
+had fits, was very ill, about to die. At the mention of Mrs. Crisp,
+Lloyd recalled the forlorn little woman in a wispy crêpe veil, who had
+enlisted her sympathy to such an extent one Thanksgiving Day that she
+and Betty had walked over to Rollington from the Seminary to carry the
+greater part of the turkey and fruit that had been sent them in their
+box of Thanksgiving goodies.
+
+There was so little poverty in the Valley that, when any real case of
+suffering was discovered, it was taken up with enthusiasm. Lloyd
+wondered how she could have thought Libbie Simms so hopelessly ugly,
+when she saw her face light up with unselfish interest in her poor
+neighbours, and heard her suggestions for their relief. And her
+conscience pricked her for making fun of Miss McGill's taste when she
+saw how generous she was, and listened to her humourous description of
+several things that had happened in the Valley. She was certainly
+entertaining, and looked at life through spectacles as rose-coloured as
+her necktie.
+
+The library filled rapidly, and soon a score of needles were at work on
+the flannel garments intended for the Crisp family. Lloyd, on a stool
+between Katherine Marks and Mrs. Walton, sewed industriously, interested
+in the buzz of conversation all around her.
+
+"This is not malicious gossip," explained Mrs. Walton, in an amused
+undertone, smiling with Lloyd and Katherine at a remark which
+unintentionally reached their ears. "But in a little community like
+this, where little happens, and our interests are bound so closely
+together, the smallest details of our neighbours' affairs necessarily
+entertain us. It _is_ interesting to know that Mr. Rawles and his
+great-aunt are not on speaking terms, and it is positively exciting to
+hear that Mr. Wolf and Mrs. Cayne quarrelled over the leaflets used in
+Sunday school, and that she told him to his face that he was a hypocrite
+and no better than an infidel. It doesn't make us love these good people
+any the less to know that they are human like ourselves, and have their
+tempers and their spites and feuds. We know their good side, too. Wait
+till calamity or sickness touches some one of us, and, see how kind and
+sympathetic and tender they all are; every one of them."
+
+"You'll hear more gossip here in one afternoon than at all the Cranford
+tea-tables put together," said Katherine Marks. "But it is a mild sort,
+like the kind going on behind us."
+
+Miss McGill, with her head close to Abby Carter's, was saying: "Oh, but,
+my dear, he gets more suspicious and foxy every day of his life. I don't
+see how Emma Belle puts up with such a cranky old father."
+
+"I know," responded Abby. "They say he drives the cook nearly
+distracted, going into the kitchen every day and lifting the lids off
+all the pots and pans to smell what's cooking for dinner. Then he makes
+a fuss if it's not to his liking."
+
+"Yes," responded Miss McGill, "but that isn't a circumstance to some of
+his ways. I ran in there last night a few minutes, to show Emma Belle a
+pattern she wanted. He got it into his head we were hiding something
+from him, and he actually climbed up on the dining-room table and peeped
+through the transom at us. I nearly fainted when I happened to look up
+and saw that old monkey-like face, with its dense, gloomy whiskers,
+looking down at me. I just screamed and sat jibbering and pointing at
+the transom. I couldn't help it. He gave me such a turn, I didn't get
+over it all night. Emma Belle was so mortified she didn't know what
+to do. It isn't as if he was crazy. He's just mean. That girl has the
+patience of a saint."
+
+[Illustration: "'I NEARLY FAINTED WHEN I HAPPENED TO LOOK UP'"]
+
+Before the afternoon was over, Lloyd decided that Miss Allison was
+right. The Valley held a number of interesting characters, whose
+acquaintance was well worth cultivating if she wanted to be entertained.
+Part of the time, while the needles were flying, Mrs. MacIntyre read
+aloud. Miss Allison called Lloyd into the dining-room when it was time
+to serve the refreshments.
+
+"I'm going to ask a favour of you, dear," she said. "I want you to sing
+for us presently. No, wait a minute," she added, hurriedly, as Lloyd
+drew back with an exclamation of dismay. "Don't refuse till you have
+heard why I ask it. It is on account of Agnes Waring. These meetings are
+the great social events of the winter to her. She never gets to go
+anywhere else except to church. She's passionately fond of music, and I
+always make it a point to prepare a regular programme when the Circle
+meets here. But all my musicians failed me this time, and I cannot bear
+to disappoint her. I know you are timid about singing before older
+people, but this is one of the cobwebs I promised to find for you. It
+will be disagreeable, but I have a good reason for thinking that you
+will find it the first strand of the rope that is to lift you out of
+your dungeon. I'll tell you some things about Agnes after awhile that
+will make you glad you have had such an opportunity."
+
+When Lloyd went back to the library, bearing a pile of snowy napkins,
+she stole several glances at Agnes Waring in her journey around the room
+to distribute them. All that she knew of her was that she was the
+youngest of three sisters who sewed for their living. She was almost as
+slim and girlish in figure as Lloyd, although she was nearly twice as
+old. She had kept the timid, shrinking manner that she had when a child.
+That and her appealing big blue eyes, and almost babyish complexion,
+made her seem much younger than she was. It was a sensitive, refined
+face that Lloyd kept glancing at, one that would have been remarkably
+pretty had it not been so sad.
+
+Lloyd had sung in public several times, but always in some play, when
+the costume which she wore seemed to change her to the character she
+personated. That made it easier. It was one of the hardest things she
+had ever done, to stand up before these twenty ladies who had been
+exchanging criticisms so freely all afternoon, on every subject
+mentioned, and sing the songs which Miss Allison chose for her from the
+Princess play: The Dove Song, with its high, sweet trills of "Flutter
+and fly," and the one beginning:
+
+          "My godmother bids me spin,
+           That my heart may not be sad.
+           Sing and spin for my brother's sake,
+           And the spinning makes me glad."
+
+It was with a very red face that she slipped into her seat after it was
+over, surprised and pleased by the applause she received. They were all
+so cordial in their appreciation, that presently she was persuaded into
+doing what Miss Allison had suggested. When the circle broke up she had
+consented to join the choir, and to meet with them the next Friday
+night, when they went to the Mallards' to practise.
+
+The carriage came for her soon after the last guest departed, and Miss
+Allison stepped in beside her to take the finished garments over to
+Rollington. It was the quaintest of little villages, settled entirely by
+Irish families. Only one lone street straggled over the hill, but it was
+a long one with little whitewashed cabins and cottages thickly set along
+each side. Mrs. Crisp's was the first one on the street, after they left
+the Lloydsboro pike. It was clean, but not half so large or comfortable
+as the negro servants' quarters at Locust.
+
+It was so late that Miss Allison did not go in, only stopped at the door
+to leave the bundle and inquire about the baby, promising to come again
+next morning. Lloyd had a glimpse of the two children next in age to the
+baby. They were playing on the floor with a doll made of a corn-cob
+wrapped in a towel, and a box of empty spools.
+
+"Just think!" she exclaimed as she climbed into the carriage again. "A
+cawn-cob doll! And the attic at home is full of toys that I don't care
+for! I'm going to pick out a basketful to-morrow and bring them down to
+these children. And did you see that poah little Minnie Crisp? Only
+eight yeahs old, and doing the work of a grown woman. She was getting
+suppah while her mothah tended to the sick baby. Oh, I wondah," she
+cried, her face lighting up with the thought. "I wondah if Mrs. Crisp
+would mind if I'd come down to-morrow and cook dinnah for them. That's
+what I've been crazy to do,--to cook. I could bring eggs and sugah and
+all the materials, and make lemon pie and oystah soup and potato
+croquettes. I know how to make lots of things. Oh, do you suppose she
+would be offended?"
+
+"Not in the least," responded Miss Allison, heartily. "She is a very
+sensible little woman who is nearly worn out in her struggle with
+poverty and sickness. She has been too proud and brave to accept help
+before, when she was able to stagger along under her own burden, but now
+she will be very grateful. And the children will look upon you as a
+wonderful mixture of Santa Claus, fairy godmother, and Aladdin's lamp."
+
+Then she turned to peer into the happy face beside her.
+
+"Here are your cobwebs!" she exclaimed, gaily. "A whole skyful, and you
+can sweep away to your heart's content. You need have no more humdrum
+days unless you choose."
+
+Lloyd looked back at the cottage where four towheads at the window
+watched the departing carriage. Then with a smile she leaned out and
+waved her hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF AMANTHIS
+
+
+LLOYD hurried down the road to the post-office, her cheeks almost as red
+as her coat from her brisk walk in the wintry air. It was too cold to
+saunter, or she would have made the errand last as long as possible.
+There would be nothing to do after she had called for the mail. The day
+before she had had her visit to Mrs. Crisp to fill the morning. It
+brought a pleasant thrill now to think of the little woman's gratitude
+and the children's pleasure in the dinner she had cooked in the clean
+bare kitchen. She wished she could go every day and repeat the
+performance, but her family would not allow it. They said it was just as
+injurious for her to waste her strength in charity as it was in study,
+and she must be more temperate in her enthusiasms.
+
+She wished that Miss Mattie would invite her into the tiny office behind
+the rows of pigeonholes and letter-boxes, and let her sit by the window
+awhile. Just watching people pass would be some amusement, more than she
+could find at home.
+
+She was passing the Bisbee place as she made the wish. It was a white
+frame house standing near the road, and commanding a view of both
+station and store, as well as the approach to the post-office. To her
+surprise, some one tapped on the pane of an up-stairs window. Then the
+sash flew up, and Mrs. Bisbee called in her thin, fluttering voice:
+"Lloyd! Lloyd Sherman! If you're going to the post-office, I wish you'd
+ask if there is anything for me. I don't dare set foot out-of-doors this
+cold weather."
+
+Then, fearful of draughts, she banged the window down without waiting
+for a reply. Lloyd smiled and nodded, glad of an opportunity to be of
+service. As she hurried on, she remembered that Miss Allison had spoken
+of this gentle little old lady, with her fluttering voice and placid
+smile, as one of the most interesting and "Cranfordy" characters in the
+Valley, and that, while she never went out in the winter, and seldom in
+the summer, except to church, she kept such a sharp eye on the
+neighbourhood happenings from the watch-tower of her window that Mrs.
+Walton laughingly called it the "Window in Thrums."
+
+It was with the feeling that she was stepping into a story that Lloyd
+opened the gate five minutes later and started up the path. A vigorous
+tapping on the window above, and a beckoning hand motioned her to come
+up-stairs. Hesitating an instant on the porch, she opened the front door
+and stepped into the hall.
+
+"Do come up!" called the old lady, plaintively, from the head of the
+stairs. "I've been wishing so hard for company that I believe my wishing
+must have drawn you. Now that daughter is married and gone, I get so
+lonesome, with Mr. Bisbee in town all day, that I often find myself
+talking to myself just for the sake of sociability. Not a soul has been
+in for the last two days, and usually I have callers from morning till
+night. This is such a good dropping-in place, you know. So central that
+I see and hear everything."
+
+She ushered Lloyd into a room, gay with big-flowered chintz curtains,
+and quaint with old-fashioned carved furniture. There was a high
+four-poster bed in one corner, with a chintz valance around it, and pink
+silk quilled into the tester. The only modern thing in the room was a
+tiled grate, piled full of blazing coals. It threw out such a
+summer-like heat that Lloyd almost gasped. She was glad to accept Mrs.
+Bisbee's invitation to take off her coat and gloves. She moved her chair
+back as far as possible into the bay-window.
+
+"I reckon you feel it's pretty warm in here," said Mrs. Bisbee. "I have
+to keep it that way so that I can sit over here against the window
+without catching cold. I couldn't afford to miss all that's going on in
+the street. It's my only amusement."
+
+She drew her work-basket toward her and picked up the quilt pieces she
+had laid down when she went to welcome Lloyd. She was making a silk
+quilt of the tea-chest pattern, and the basket was full of bright silk
+scraps and pieces of ribbon.
+
+"It's like a panorama, I tell Mr. Bisbee. Oh, by the way, I've been
+aching to find out. Where did you all go that day just before Christmas
+when you started off, a whole party of you, traipsing down the road with
+a new saucepan and baskets and things? I heard you had a picnic in the
+snow. Is that so?"
+
+Lloyd really gasped this time, but not from the heat. She was so
+surprised that Mrs. Bisbee should have taken such an interest in her
+affairs, or in any of the unimportant doings of their set, as to
+remember them longer than the passing moment. Mrs. Bisbee was
+associated in Lloyd's mind with solemn churchly things, like the
+Gothic-backed pulpit chairs or the sombre brown pews. Lloyd had never
+seen her before, except when she was singing hymns, or sitting with
+meekly folded hands through sermon-time. It was almost as surprising to
+find that she was inquisitive and interested in human happenings as it
+would have been to discover that the ivy-covered belfry kept an eye on
+her.
+
+In the midst of her description of the picnic, Mrs. Bisbee leaned
+forward and peered eagerly out of the window over her spectacles.
+
+"I don't want to interrupt you," she said; "I just wanted to make sure
+that that was Caleb Coburn out again. He has been house-bound with
+rheumatism ever since Thanksgiving."
+
+Lloyd looked out in time to see a tall, stoop-shouldered man with a
+bushy beard go slowly across the road. He was buttoned up in a heavy
+overcoat, and limped along with the aid of two canes.
+
+"He's the queerest old fellow," commented Mrs. Bisbee, looking after
+him, with a gentle shake of the head. "Lately he has taken to knitting,
+to pass the time."
+
+"To knitting!" echoed Lloyd, in amazement. "That big man?"
+
+"Yes. He calls it hooking. He has a needle made out of a ham bone. Fancy
+now! Daughter said it was the funniest thing in life to see him propped
+up in bed with a striped skull-cap on, hooking his wife a shawl."
+
+Lloyd laughed, but she followed the stooped figure with a glance of
+sympathy. She knew from experience how hard it was to spend the time in
+enforced idleness. Old Mr. Coburn had always been a familiar figure to
+her. She recognized him on the road as she did the trees and the houses
+which she passed daily, but he had never aroused her interest any more
+than they. Now the knowledge that he was lonely like herself, so lonely
+that, big, bearded man as he was, he had learned to knit in order to
+occupy the dull days, seemed to put them on a common footing.
+
+Lloyd took a long step forward out of her childhood that morning when
+she wakened to the fact that some things are as hard to bear at fifty as
+at fifteen. With a dawning interest she watched the people of the Valley
+go by, one by one,--people whom she had passed heretofore as she had
+passed the fence-posts on the road. It could never be so again, for
+henceforth she would see them in a new light,--the light of
+understanding and sympathy shed on them by Mrs. Bisbee's choice bits of
+gossip or scraps of personal history.
+
+She had watched the procession for nearly an hour, when Agnes Waring
+suddenly turned the corner, and went into the store with a bundle in her
+arms. Mrs. Bisbee, pausing in the act of threading a needle, looked out
+again over her spectacles.
+
+"There goes a girl I'm certainly sorry for. She is a born lady, and
+comes of as good a family as anybody in the Valley, but she has to work
+harder than any darkey in Lloydsboro. She's up at four o'clock these
+winter mornings, milks the cow, chops wood, gets breakfast, and maybe
+walks two or three miles with a big bundle like that, taking home
+sewing, or going out to fit a dress for somebody."
+
+Miss Allison had already awakened Lloyd's interest in Agnes, and she
+leaned forward to watch her, while Mrs. Bisbee went on.
+
+"She's never had any of the pleasures that most girls have. To my
+certain knowledge she's never had a beau or been to a big party or
+travelled farther than Louisville. I suppose you could count on the
+fingers of one hand the times she has been on a train. She's wild about
+music, but she's never had any advantages. By the way, she was in here
+the day after the King's Daughters met at Allison MacIntyre's, to fit a
+wrapper on me. Knowing how few outings she has, I encouraged her to talk
+it all over, as I knew she was glad to do. I declare she made as much of
+it as if it had been the governor's ball. She told me how much she
+enjoyed your singing. She said that, if there was any one person in the
+world whom she envied more than another, it was Lloyd Sherman. Not for
+your looks or the handsome things you have (for the Valley is full of
+pretty girls, and many of them are wealthy), but for the advantages you
+have had in the way of music and travel.
+
+"They have an old piano, about all that was saved out of the wreck when
+their father lost his fortune. She'd give her eyes to be able to play on
+it. But she wasn't much more than a baby when her father died, so she
+missed the advantages the older girls had. You see she is twenty years
+younger than Marietta, and nearly twenty-five years younger than Sarah.
+Poor Agnes! I suppose she will never know anything but work and poverty.
+It's too bad,--such a sweet, refined girl, and as proud as she is
+poor."
+
+Lloyd echoed Mrs. Bisbee's sympathetic sigh, as she looked after the
+hurrying figure in its worn jacket and shabby shoes. She was just coming
+out of the store again.
+
+"I feel so sorry for her sistahs, too," she ventured. "I nevah knew till
+the othah day that Miss Marietta has been an invalid so long. Miss
+Allison told me she had been in bed for fifteen yeahs! It's awful! Why,
+that is as long as my whole lifetime has been."
+
+"She was to have been married," began Mrs. Bisbee, pouring out the
+romance at which Miss Allison had only hinted. "She was engaged to
+Murray Cathright, one of the finest young lawyers I ever knew, steady as
+a meeting-house. He had the respect and confidence of everybody. Well,
+Marietta had her trousseau all ready, and a beautiful one it was. Her
+father had sent to Paris for the wedding-gown, and all her linen was
+hand-embroidered by the nuns in some French convent.
+
+"They certainly had all that heart could wish in those days. It is a
+pity that Agnes was too young to enjoy her share of luxuries. Well, just
+a week before the time set for the wedding, Murray Cathright
+mysteriously disappeared. He had gone away on a short business trip. His
+family traced him to a hotel in Pittsburg, and then lost all clue,
+except that just before leaving the hotel he had asked the clerk for the
+time-tables of an Eastern railroad. There was a terrible wreck on that
+road that same night. The entire train went through a bridge into the
+river, and they thought he must have been swept away with the
+unidentified dead. But it was months before Marietta would believe it.
+
+"She acted as if her mind were a little touched all that summer. Used to
+dress up every evening in the clothes he had liked best, with a flower
+in her hair, and go down to the honeysuckle arbour to wait for him.
+She'd sit there and wait and wait all alone, until her father'd go down
+and lead her in. The next day she'd go through the same performance. It
+ended in a spell of brain fever. She came out of that with her mind all
+right, but she never was strong again. After all the rest of their
+troubles came, she had a stroke of paralysis. It's left her so she can't
+walk. But she can lie there and make buttonholes and pull basting
+threads. She's a perfect marvel, she's so patient and cheerful. People
+like to go there just on that account. You'd never know she had a
+trouble to hear her talk. But I know what she's suffered, and I know
+that she still keeps the wedding-gown. It's laid away in rose leaves
+for her to be buried in."
+
+Mrs. Bisbee paused and spread out the finished quilt-piece on her knee,
+patting it approvingly before choosing the scraps for another block.
+Then she wiped her spectacles. "Sometimes I don't know which I'm the
+sorriest for, Marietta, who had such a good man for a lover as Murray
+Cathright was, and lost him, or Agnes, who's never had anything."
+
+"Why don't people invite her out and give her a good time?" asked Lloyd.
+"Her being a seamstress oughtn't to make any difference to old family
+friends, when she's such a lady."
+
+"It doesn't," answered Mrs. Bisbee. "People used to be nice to those
+girls, and they were always invited everywhere at first. But after
+awhile there was Marietta always in bed, and Agnes a mere baby, and poor
+Miss Sarah with the burden of their support. She had only her needle to
+keep the wolf from the door. She couldn't accept invitations then. There
+was no time. Gradually people stopped asking her. She dropped out of the
+social life of the Valley so completely that Agnes grew up without any
+knowledge of it. All she has known has been hard work. Miss Allison has
+tried to draw her into things, but the older sisters are proud, as I
+said. Agnes cannot dress suitably, and they can make no return of
+hospitalities, so she has never ventured into anything more than the
+King's Daughters' Circle."
+
+"There's Alec with the carriage!" exclaimed Lloyd. "He's stopping at the
+stoah. If I hurry, I can ride back home. I've stayed so long that mothah
+will wondah what has become of me."
+
+"Don't go!" begged Mrs. Bisbee, as Lloyd began drawing on her coat. "I
+don't know when I've enjoyed a morning so much. Since daughter's married
+and gone I miss her young friends so much. She used to have the house
+full of them from morning till night. Now I fairly pine for the sight of
+a fresh young face sometimes. You've livened me up more than you can
+know. _Do_ come again!"
+
+Lloyd went away highly pleased by her cordial reception. She had enjoyed
+being talked to as if she were grown, and these glimpses into the lives
+of her neighbours were more interesting than any her books could give
+her. When she passed the lane leading up to the house where the three
+sisters lived, she wished that she could turn over a leaf and read more
+about them. She wondered if Miss Marietta ever took out the beautiful
+wedding-dress that was to be her shroud. She mused over the newly
+discovered romance all the way home.
+
+If it had not been for that morning's call, and the interest it aroused
+in her neighbours, several things might not have happened, which
+afterward followed each other like links in a chain. Probably Miss Sarah
+would have walked up to Locust just the same, to take home a wrapper she
+had finished, and not finding Mrs. Sherman at home would have stepped
+inside the door a moment to warm by the dining-room fire; and Lloyd,
+with the courtesy that never failed her, would have been as graciously
+polite as her mother could have been. But if it had not been for the
+interest in her that Mrs. Bisbee's story gave, several other happenings
+might not have followed.
+
+As Lloyd looked at the gray-haired woman on whom toil and poverty and
+care had left their marks, and remembered there had been a time when
+Miss Sarah had been as tenderly cared for as herself, a sudden pity
+surged up into her heart. She longed to lighten her load in some way,
+and to give back to her for a moment at least the comforts she had lost.
+With a quick gesture she motioned her away from the dining-room door.
+"No, come in heah!" she exclaimed, leading the way into the
+drawing-room, and pushing a big armchair toward the fire.
+
+Blue and cold from her long walk against the wind, Miss Sarah sank down
+among the soft cushions and leaned back luxuriously.
+
+"It's so ti'ahsome walking against the wind," exclaimed the Little
+Colonel. "When I came in awhile ago, I was puffing and blowing. I'm
+going to make you a cup of hot tea. That's what mothah always takes. No!
+It won't be any _trouble_," she exclaimed, as Miss Sarah protested. "It
+will be the biggest kind of a pleasuah. It will give me a chance to use
+mothah's little tea-ball. I deahly love to wiggle it around in the cup
+and see the watah po'ah out of all the little holes. I've been wishing
+somebody would come, or that I had something to do. Now you have granted
+both wishes. I can have a regulah little tea-pah'ty. Excuse me just a
+minute, please."
+
+Left to herself, Miss Sarah sat looking around at the handsome
+furnishings: the thick Persian rugs, the old portraits, the tall,
+burnished harp in the corner, the bowl of hothouse violets on the table
+at her elbow, until Lloyd returned, bearing a toasting fork and a plate
+of thinly sliced bread. Miss Sarah turned toward her with wistful eyes.
+
+"I have always loved this old room," she said. "This is the first time I
+have been in it for twenty years. It is an old friend. I have spent many
+happy hours here in your grandmother's day. She was always entertaining
+the young people of the Valley. Sometimes that time seems so far away
+that I wonder if it was not all a dream. It was a very beautiful dream,
+at any rate. I often wish Agnes could have had a share in it. She has
+missed so much in not having _her_ friendship."
+
+She nodded toward the portrait over the mantel. "Amanthis Lloyd was my
+ideal woman when I was a young girl like yourself," she added, softly,
+with her eyes on the beautiful features above her.
+
+"I have missed so much, too," said Lloyd, following Miss Sarah's gaze.
+"And yet it seems to me I must have known her. The portrait has always
+seemed alive to me. I used to talk to it sometimes when I was a little
+thing, and I nevah could beah to look at it when I had been naughty. I
+wish you would tell me about her."
+
+She knelt on the hearth-rug as she spoke, and held the long
+toasting-fork toward the fire. "Mothah and grandfathah often talk about
+her, but they don't tell the same things that one outside of the family
+might."
+
+By the time the toast was delicately browned and buttered, Mom Beck came
+in with the tea-tray, and placed it on the table beside the bowl of
+violets.
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Lloyd, seating herself on the other side of the table
+as the old woman left the room. "I didn't think to tell her to bring
+cold turkey and strawberry preserves and fruit cake, but she remembered
+that I didn't eat much lunch, and she is always trying to tempt my
+appetite. She's the best old soul that evah was. Oh, Miss Sarah, I'm so
+glad you came. I haven't had a pah'ty like this for ages. Heah! I'll let
+you wiggle the tea-ball in yoah own cup, so that you can make it as
+strong as you like, because you're company."
+
+The dimples deepened playfully in her cheeks as she passed the tea-ball
+across the table. Miss Sarah smiled, although her eyes felt misty. "You
+dear child!" she exclaimed. "That was Amanthis Lloyd all over again. She
+never reached out and gave pleasure to other people as if she were
+bestowing a favour. She always made it seem as if it were only her own
+pleasure which you were enhancing by sharing. You don't know what an
+interest I have taken in you for her sake, as I've watched you growing
+up here in the Valley. I used to hear remarks about your temper and your
+imperious ways, and day after day, as I've watched you ride past the
+house beside your grandfather, sitting up in the same straight, haughty
+way, I've thought she's well named. She's the Colonel over again.
+
+"But to-day, in this old room, you are startlingly like her in some way,
+I can hardly tell what." She glanced up again at the portrait. "Your
+eyes look at me in the same understanding sort of way. They almost
+unseal the silence of twenty years. I have never said this to any one
+else. But I used to look at her sometimes and think that George Eliot
+must have meant her when she wrote in her 'Choir Invisible' of one who
+could 'be to other souls the cup of strength in some great agony.' She
+was that to me. People always used to go to her with their troubles."
+
+Lloyd bent over her cup, her face flushing. "Then I'm so glad you think
+I'm even a little bit like her," she said, softly. "Nobody evah told me
+that befoah. I've always wanted to be."
+
+The thought gave her a glow of pleasure all through the meal. Long after
+Miss Sarah went away, warmed and quickened in heart as well as body, it
+lingered with her. Afterward it prompted her to pause before the
+portrait with a questioning glance into the clear eyes above her.
+
+"'The cup of strength to other souls in some great agony,'" she
+repeated. "And you were that! Oh, I would love to be, too, if I didn't
+have to suffer too much first to learn how to sympathize and comfort.
+Maybe that is what I am to learn from this wintah's disappointment,--a
+way to help othah people beah their disappointments. If I could do
+that," she whispered, looking wistfully at the face above her, "if only
+one person in the world could remembah me as Miss Sarah remembahs _you_,
+you beautiful Grandmothah Amanthis, it would be worth all the misahable
+time I have had."
+
+Then she turned suddenly and went into the library to look for the poem
+Miss Sarah had quoted. She had never taken the volume from the shelves
+before. She did not care for poetry as Betty did, and it took her some
+time to find the lines she was looking for. But when she found them, she
+took the book back to the drawing-room, and read the page again and
+again, with a quick bounding of the pulses as she realized that here in
+words was the ambition which she had often felt vaguely stirring within
+her. Even if she could not reach the highest ones, and be "the cup of
+strength," or "make undying music in the world," she could at least
+attempt the other aims it held forth. She could at least try "to ease
+the burden of the world." She could live "in scorn for miserable aims
+that end with self."
+
+With the book open on her lap, and her hands clasped around her knees,
+she sat looking steadily into the fire. She did not know what a long,
+long step she was taking out of childhood that afternoon, nor that the
+sweet seriousness of her new purpose shone in her upturned face. But
+when the old Colonel came into the room and found her sitting there in
+the firelight, he paused and then glanced up at the portrait. He was
+almost startled by the striking resemblance,--a likeness of expression
+that he had never noticed before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+"CINDERELLA"
+
+
+LLOYD sat on the window-seat of the stair-landing, looking out on the
+bare February landscape. She was thinking of the poem she had learned
+three weeks before, on the afternoon of Miss Sarah's visit, and it made
+her dissatisfied. When one was all a-tingle, as she had been, with a
+high purpose to help ease the burden of the world and make undying music
+in it, and when one longed to do big, heroic deeds and had ambitions
+high enough to reach the stars, it was hard to be content with the
+commonplace opportunities that came her way.
+
+The things she had been doing seemed so paltry. To carry a glass of
+jelly to the Crisps, a pot of pink hyacinths to Miss Marietta, to write
+a letter for Aunt Cindy, to sit for an hour with Mrs. Bisbee,--these all
+were so trivial and pitifully small that she felt a sense of disgust
+with herself and her efforts. Yawning and swinging her foot, she sat in
+the window-seat several minutes longer, then started aimlessly
+up-stairs to her room. In the upper hall the door leading into the attic
+stairway stood open, and for no reason save that she had nothing else to
+do, she began to mount the steps. She had not been up in the attic since
+Christmas week, when she and Rob had gone to finish his Christmas hunt.
+
+She stood looking around her an instant, then, moved by some
+unaccountable impulse, drew out the chest containing the fancy-dress
+costumes they had used in so many plays and tableaux. One by one she
+shook them out and hung them over Rob's headless hobby-horse, when she
+had finished examining them. There were the velvet knickerbockers and
+blouse she had worn as Little Boy Blue at the Hallowe'en party at the
+Seminary. There was Betty's Dresden Shepherdess dress, and the
+godmother's gown, and the long trailing robe of the Princess Winsome.
+Even the little tulle dress she had worn as the Queen of Hearts at
+Ginger's Valentine party, years ago, came out of the chest as she dived
+deeper into its contents, and a star-spangled costume of red, white, and
+blue, in which she had fluttered as the Goddess of Liberty one Fourth of
+July.
+
+Slippers and buckles and plumes, fans and gloves and artificial
+flowers, were piled up all around her. The hobby-horse was hidden under
+a drapery of velvet and lace and silk. Still the chest held a number of
+old party gowns that had never been cut down to fit their childish
+revels.
+
+As Lloyd shook them out, thinking of the gay scenes they had been a part
+of, the picture of Agnes Waring in her worn jacket and shabby shoes
+flashed across her mind, followed by Mrs. Bisbee's remark: "She's never
+had any of the pleasures that most girls have. Twenty-five years old,
+and to my certain knowledge she's never had a beau or been to a big
+party, or travelled farther than Louisville."
+
+Lloyd pressed her lips together and stood staring at the old finery
+around her, thinking hard. A sudden vision had come to her of this
+modern Cinderella, and of herself as the fairy godmother. Her eyes shone
+and her cheeks grew pink as she stood pondering. If she could only make
+an occasion, it would be easy enough to provide the coach and the
+costume, even the glass slippers. There lay a pair of white satin ones,
+beaded in tiny crystal beads that shone like dewdrops. Suppose she
+should play godmother and send Agnes to a ball. Suppose the shy, timid
+girl should look so fine in her fine feathers that people would stare
+at her and wonder who that beautiful creature was. Suppose a prince
+should be there who never would have noticed her but for the magic glass
+slippers, and then suppose--
+
+Lloyd did not put the rest of the delightful daydream into words, but
+just stood thinking about it a long time, until her expression grew very
+sweet and tender over a little romance which she dreamed might grow out
+of her plan to give Agnes pleasure.
+
+"If I only had thought of it in time to have had a Valentine pah'ty,"
+she exclaimed aloud, "that would have been the very thing. But it is too
+late now. This is the seventeenth." Then she clasped her hands
+delightedly as that date suggested another. "It is five days till
+Washington's Birthday. Maybe there will be time to get up a Martha
+Washington affair. I'll ask Miss Allison about it this very night at
+choir practice. She always has so many new ideas."
+
+Tumbling the costumes back into the trunk, helter-skelter, she danced
+down the stairs, impatient to tell her mother about it. But there were
+guests in the library who had been invited to spend the afternoon and
+stay to dinner, and Lloyd had no opportunity to speak of the subject
+that was uppermost in her thoughts. Immediately after dinner she
+excused herself, to slip into her red coat and furs, while Mom Beck
+lighted the lantern they were to carry.
+
+It was only a short distance to the Mallard place, where the choir was
+to meet that week, so they did not need Alec's escort this time. The
+wind flared their lantern as they went along the quiet country road.
+They could see other lights bobbing along toward them, and, as they
+neared the gate, Lloyd recognized Mrs. Walton's voice. She and Miss
+Allison were coming up with their brother Harry.
+
+"Is that you, Lloyd?" called Mrs. Walton, as they drew nearer. "I hoped
+you would come early, for I have a letter from the girls that I know you
+will want to read. They are full of preparations for a grand affair to
+be given on the twenty-second,--a Martha Washington reception. As usual,
+Kitty wants to depart from the accustomed order of things, and have a
+costume in George's honour, instead of Martha's. She says why not, as
+long as it is his birthday. She's painted a picture of the dress she has
+concocted for the occasion. It is green tarlatan dotted all over with
+little silver paper hatchets, and trimmed with garlands and bunches of
+artificial cherries."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad you brought the pictuah with you to-night!" exclaimed
+Lloyd. "And I'm wild to see the lettah. Kitty always writes such funny
+ones. And I'm glad I met you out heah befoah the choir practice begins.
+I want to ask you about a celebration I have been planning. It's for
+Agnes Waring," she explained, catching step with them as they turned in
+at the gate. "So of co'se I can't talk about it befoah all the othah
+people.
+
+"I happened to be looking ovah a chest of old costumes to-day, thinking
+of all the fun we'd had in them, when I remembahed her and what Mrs.
+Bisbee had told me about her nevah having good times like othah girls.
+She said she'd nevah had any attention, and nevah been to a big pah'ty.
+I thought I'd like to give her one on the twenty-second, because I could
+offah her a costume then without hurting her feelings. I was suah that
+you and Miss Allison could suggest something moah than I had thought of.
+I don't know exactly how to begin. People will think it strange, and
+Agnes might, too, if I gave a pah'ty just for her, when all her friends
+whom I would want to invite are so much oldah than I."
+
+Miss Allison and her sister exchanged glances in the lantern-light, then
+Mrs. Walton said, hesitatingly: "Why--I don't know--I'm sorry, Lloyd,
+that we didn't know before. We've already made plans which I am afraid
+will interfere with yours. The King's Daughters' Circle has arranged to
+have an oyster supper at my house on the afternoon and evening of the
+twenty-second. Most of the people you would want to ask will be busy
+there, for everybody in the Valley lends a hand at these
+entertainments."
+
+They could not see the disappointment that shadowed Lloyd's face as she
+listened to this announcement in silence. But Miss Allison knew it was
+there, and, as they walked on up the path together, she slipped her arm
+around Lloyd's waist.
+
+"Never mind, dear," she said. "You shall not have your beautiful plan
+spoiled by the old oyster supper. We'll combine forces. As Agnes is a
+member of the Circle, maybe you can bring about what you want more
+naturally and easily this way than in any other. The girls who are to
+wait on the table are to powder their hair and wear white kerchiefs and
+Martha Washington caps. But we had intended to ask you to take charge of
+the fancy-work table, as you have more time for getting up elaborate
+costumes. We wanted to ask you to dress in as handsome a costume of that
+period as you could find. We remember what lovely brocade gowns and
+quilted petticoats and old-fashioned fol-de-rols used to be laid away in
+your grandmother's attic that belonged to _her_ grandmother. If you
+like, you may give your place to Agnes, and let her be the belle of the
+ball."
+
+Lloyd returned the pressure of the arm about her with an impulsive hug.
+"Oh, I _knew_ you'd think of something perfectly lovely," she cried.
+"That would be much the best way, for she is so timid and quiet you
+couldn't keep her from being a wall-flowah at an ordinary pah'ty. But
+this way she will have something to do, and she'll have to talk when
+people come to buy things. I wish it were not so long till to-morrow! I
+want to tell her about it this minute."
+
+Usually the choir practice was a bore to Lloyd. She was one of the few
+members who sang by note, and Mrs. Walton, the leader, had to take them
+through the simple anthems over and over again, until they caught the
+tune by ear. Lloyd, knowing that her strong young voice was needed, sang
+dutifully through the tiresome repetitions, but sometimes she wanted to
+put her fingers in her ears to shut out the sound. To-night she did not
+chafe inwardly at the false starts and the monotonous chant, "Oh, be
+thankful! Oh, be thankful!" which had to be sung over numberless times
+in order that the bass and alto singers might learn to come in at the
+proper places with their responsive refrain. She was so absorbed in
+thinking of the pleasure in store for Agnes, and imagining what she
+would say, that she sang the three measures over and over, unheeding how
+long the choir stuck there, or uncaring how many times they seesawed up
+and down on the same tiresome notes.
+
+The excitement began for Agnes next day, when Lloyd delivered Miss
+Allison's invitation, and bore her away in the carriage to search
+through the attic for a costume. She had never been farther than the
+door at Locust. Her journeys thither had been to carry home some
+finished garment. But many an hour of patient sewing had been brightened
+by her sisters' tales of the place. Both Miss Sarah and Miss Marietta
+remembered it affectionately, for the sake of the woman who had welcomed
+them there on so many happy occasions in the past.
+
+Agnes thought she knew just how the interior of Locust would look,
+especially the stately old drawing-room, with its portraits and candles,
+its harp and the faint odour of rose-leaves; and really there was
+something familiar to her in its appearance as she caught a glimpse of
+it on her way up-stairs to Lloyd's room. But she had never imagined such
+a dainty rose of a room as the pink and white bower Lloyd led her into.
+There might have been a throb of resentment that all such beauty and
+luxury had been left out of her life, if there had been time for her to
+look around and compare it with her own scantily furnished room at home.
+
+Lloyd hurried over to the bed, eager to display a gorgeous brocade gown
+of rose and silver laid out there, which Mrs. Sherman had brought down
+from the attic in her absence, and from which Mom Beck had pressed all
+the wrinkles.
+
+"It's as good as new," said Lloyd. "I'm glad that mothah wouldn't let us
+cut it up last yeah, when we wanted to make it fit Katie. There are pink
+slippahs to match, but I hoped you'd rathah weah these. They make me
+think of Cinderella's glass ones, and they're twice as pretty."
+
+She tossed the crystal beaded slippers over to Agnes for her inspection.
+"Try them on," she urged. "I want to see how you'll look."
+
+In a few moments the shabby shoes and the old brown dress lay in a heap
+on the floor like a discarded chrysalis, and Agnes stepped out, a
+dazzled butterfly, in her gorgeous robes of rose and silver.
+
+Lloyd clasped her hands ecstatically. "Oh, Agnes, it's _lovely_! And
+it's almost a perfect fit. If Miss Sarah can just take it up a little on
+the shouldahs, and change the collah a tiny bit, it will look as if it
+were made for you. When yoah hair is powdahed and you have this little
+bunch of plumes in it, you'll be simply perfect. It doesn't mattah if
+the slippahs do pinch a little. They look so pretty you can stand a
+little thing like that for one evening."
+
+Lloyd walked around and around her, till she had admired her to her
+heart's content, and then led her away to show to Mrs. Sherman. "You
+ought to carry yoah head that way all the time," she said. "It's
+becoming to you to 'walk proud,' as old Mammy Easter used to say."
+
+It was with the air of a duchess that Agnes sailed into the
+drawing-room, and with the feeling that at last she had come into her
+own. On every side the dim old mirrors flashed back the reflection of
+the slender figure with its head proudly high. She looked at it
+curiously, scarcely recognizing the delicate, high-bred features for her
+own. There was colour in her face for one thing. The dull browns and
+grays, which she wore for economy's sake, were apt to make her look
+sallow. But this wonderful rose-pink lent a glow to her cheeks, and
+pleasure and expectancy brightened her eyes, and left her a-tingle with
+these new sensations.
+
+"You'll be the feature of the occasion," Mrs. Sherman assured her. "Come
+up to lunch with us Thursday. We'll powder your hair and help you dress,
+and take you down in the carriage with us. Tell your sisters that we'll
+see that you get home safely that night."
+
+So to the other pleasures of the twenty-second was added the
+undreamed-of delight of being invited out to lunch, and forgetting for
+awhile that there were such tiresome things in the world as
+sewing-machines and endless ruffling for other people. Although she wore
+her old brown dress, darned at the elbows, and, with her usual timidity,
+scarcely ventured a remark at the table unless directly questioned, she
+was all aglow with the new experience.
+
+Afterward it was easy to talk and laugh with Lloyd, as they went through
+the conservatory cutting the flowers which were to decorate the tables
+at The Beeches. Hyacinths and lilies-of-the-valley made a spring-time of
+their own under the sheltering skylight. Agnes bent over them with a cry
+of delight. "They make you forget the calendar, don't they?" she said,
+looking shyly up at Lloyd. She wanted to add, "And so do you. You make
+me forget that I am ten years older than you. It seems only pussy-willow
+time by my feelings to-day." But their friendship was too new as yet for
+such personal speeches.
+
+As they went back to the drawing-room with a basket piled full of
+hothouse blooms, Mrs. Sherman called to Lloyd that she needed her
+up-stairs a few moments. Hastily excusing herself, she left Agnes with a
+new magazine for her entertainment. When she came down later, the
+magazine was lying uncut on the table, and Agnes, seated in front of the
+piano, was fingering the keys with light touches which made no sound,
+they pressed the ivory so gently. She started guiltily as Lloyd came in.
+
+"I couldn't help it!" she stammered. "It drew me over here like a
+magnet. It has been the dream of my life to know how to play, but it is
+all such a mystery. I've puzzled over the music in the hymn-book many a
+time, the little notes flying up and down like birds through a fence,
+and then watched Miss Allison's fingers on the organ keys, going up and
+down the same way."
+
+"It is just as easy as reading the alphabet," said Lloyd. "I'll show
+you. Wait till I find my old music primer. It is somewhere in this
+cabinet."
+
+Hastily turning over the exercise books and worn sheets of music that
+filled one of the lower shelves, she dragged out an old dog-eared
+instruction book, which she propped up on the rack in front of Agnes.
+
+"Heah," she said, pointing to a note. "When one of those little birds,
+as you call them, perches on this place on the fence, then you're to
+strike the A key on the piano. If it lights on the line just above it,
+then you strike the next key, B. See?" She ran her fingers lightly up
+the octavo and began again with A. Agnes leaned hungrily over the page,
+reading the printed directions below each simple measure, where the
+fingering was plainly marked.
+
+"Oh, I could learn to do it by studying this!" she cried, her face all
+alight. "I am sure I could. I don't mean that I could ever learn to play
+as you do, or Miss Allison, but I could learn simple things and the
+accompaniments to old songs that Marietta loves. It would be almost as
+great a joy to her and sister Sarah as it would to me, for my learning
+to play has always been one of our favourite air-castles. If you could
+loan me this instruction book for awhile--" She hesitated.
+
+"Of co'se!" cried Lloyd, thrilled by the eagerness of the eyes which met
+hers. "I'll give you a lesson right now, if you like. I'll teach you a
+set of chords you can use for an accompaniment. They are so easy you can
+learn them befoah you go home, and you can surprise Miss Marietta by
+singing and playing for her. They fit evah so many of the ballads."
+
+Turning the leaves of the instructor, she found the simple chords of
+"Annie Laurie," and wrote beside each note the letters that would enable
+Agnes to find them on the keyboard. "This isn't the right way to begin,"
+she said, with a laugh, "but we'll take this short cut just to surprise
+Miss Marietta. You can come back aftahward and learn about time and all
+the othah things that ought to come first. I'll give you a lesson every
+week for awhile, if you like."
+
+The eyes that met hers now were brimming with happy tears.
+
+"If I like," Agnes repeated, with a tremulous catch of the voice. "As if
+I wouldn't jump at the chance to have the key to paradise put into my
+hands. It's the happiest thing that ever happened to me."
+
+With her heart as well as her whole attention given to the effort, it
+was not long before Agnes found her fingers falling naturally into
+place, and she played the chords over and over, humming the tune softly,
+with a pleasure that was pathetic to Lloyd.
+
+"Oh, I could keep on all day and all night!" exclaimed Agnes, when Mrs.
+Sherman called to them that it was time to dress. "I've never been so
+happy in all my life! You don't know what it means to me!" she cried,
+turning a radiant face to Lloyd's. "You've lifted me clear off the
+earth. I wish I could run home before the reception begins and play this
+for Marietta. I want to see her face when I open the old piano."
+
+Lloyd followed her up the stairs, wondering at the girl's uplifted mood.
+She did not see how such a trifle could bring about such a
+transformation in any one's spirits, not realizing that this bit of
+knowledge which Agnes had picked up was to her a veritable key which
+would open the door she had longed for years to enter.
+
+When Agnes swept into the house at The Beeches, she was in such high
+spirits that people looked twice to be sure that they knew the radiant
+girl presiding so gaily over the fancy-work table.
+
+"She is actually talking," Miss McGill whispered to Libbie Simms.
+"Talking and laughing and making jokes like other girls. Somebody has
+surely worked a hoodoo charm on her."
+
+But happiness was the only hoodoo, and, under its expanding influence,
+she fairly bloomed that night. Lloyd, hovering near her, jubilant over
+the success of her popular Cinderella, beamed and dimpled with pleasure,
+and stored away the many compliments she overheard, to repeat to Agnes
+next day. Once she darted into the butler's pantry, where Miss Allison
+was slicing cake, to announce, in an excited whisper: "Agnes has
+actually had three invitations to suppah. She's gone in now with Mistah
+John Bond. I must run back and take charge of the sales, but I just had
+to tell you. Do peep in and see her there at the cawnah table, eating
+ice-cream and talking away as if she'd been used to such attentions all
+her life. Isn't it great? Now people can't shake their heads and say
+poah girl, she's nevah had any attentions like othah girls. Nobody takes
+any interest in her."
+
+Miss Allison turned to give Lloyd's cheek a playful pinch. "You dear
+little fairy godmother! All Cranford will take an interest in her, now
+that she has blossomed out so unexpectedly. Even old Mr. Wade, who never
+says nice things about any one, asked me who our distinguished-looking
+guest was, and, when I told him Agnes Waring, he fairly gasped and
+dropped his eye-glasses. Then he gave his usual contemptuous sniff that
+always makes me want to shake him, and walked away, saying: 'Who'd have
+thought it! Well, well, fine feathers certainly do make fine birds!'"
+
+Lloyd hurried back to her place behind the fancy-work table. Nearly
+every one was out in the room where supper was being served, and except
+for an occasional question from some one who strolled by to ask the
+price of a laundry-bag or a hemstitched centrepiece, no one disturbed
+her. To the music of mandolin, guitar, and piano, played softly behind
+the palms in one corner, she went on with her pleasing day-dreams for
+Agnes. She would make other opportunities for her next week, take her in
+town to a concert or a matinée. She wished she could offer her clothes,
+but she dared not take that step. There would be the Waring pride to
+reckon with if she did.
+
+In the midst of this reverie, Agnes came up all a-flutter, saying,
+shyly: "Lloyd, would you mind if I didn't go back in the carriage with
+you? Your mother wouldn't think it strange, would she? It was because I
+had no other way to get home that she invited me. But Mr. Bond has
+asked to take me home behind his new team. He wants me to see what fine
+travellers his horses are."
+
+"Of co'se mothah wouldn't think it strange!" exclaimed Lloyd.
+"Especially if it is Mistah Bond who wants to take you. She and Papa
+Jack are so fond of him."
+
+"He wants me to join the choir," Agnes went on, in a lower tone, as a
+group of people crowded around the table. "Mrs. Walton and Mrs. Mallard
+and Miss Flora Marks have asked me also. I've pinched myself black and
+blue this evening, trying to make sure that I am awake. Oh, Lloyd,
+you'll never, never know how I have enjoyed it all."
+
+There was no time for further conversation then. People were beginning
+to leave, and were crowding around the table to claim the articles they
+had purchased earlier in the evening. But it was not necessary for Agnes
+to repeat that she was radiantly happy. It showed in every word and
+laugh and gesture. Lloyd went home that night nearer to the Castle of
+Content than she had been for many weeks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A HARD-EARNED PEARL
+
+
+THE reaction came next day, however, when a budget of letters from the
+girls turned her thoughts back to all that she was missing. Betty was
+rooming with Juliet Lynn now, and they were writing a play together in
+spare minutes. Allison had had honourable mention three times in the
+Studio Bulletin, and a number of her sketches had been chosen for
+display on the studio walls. Kitty had surprised them all by the
+interest she had suddenly taken in French, and had translated a poem so
+cleverly that Monsieur Blanc had sent it home for publication in a Paris
+paper. The work was so interesting now, Betty wrote, and the time so
+full, Warwick Hall grew daily more inspiring and more dear.
+
+The old ache came back to Lloyd as she read. She felt that she had
+fallen hopelessly behind the others. She was so utterly left out of all
+their successes. The little efforts she had made to fill her days with
+things worth while suddenly shrivelled into nothing, and she sat with
+the letters in her lap, staring moodily into vacancy.
+
+"What's the use?" she sobbed. "All that I can do heah doesn't amount to
+a row of pins. I am out of it."
+
+Thinking of Warwick Hall and the girls and all that she was missing, she
+sat pitying herself until the tears began to come. She let them trickle
+slowly down her face without attempting to wipe them away or fight them
+back. Nobody was there to see, and she could be as miserable as she
+chose. In the midst of her gloomy reverie she heard the door-bell ring.
+
+Dabbing her handkerchief over her eyes, she started across the room to
+make her escape up-stairs before Mom Beck could open the front door. But
+she was too late. As she pushed aside the portières, she heard Agnes
+Waring ask if she were at home, and Mom Beck immediately ushered her in.
+
+"I came to bring the costume back," she began, hurriedly. "No, I must
+not sit down, thank you. I am on my way to Mrs. Moore's to fit a lining.
+But I just had to stop by and tell you what a lovely time I had
+yesterday and last night. You should have seen Marietta's face this
+morning when I opened the piano and played and sang for her. The tears
+just rolled down her face, but it was because we were so happy.
+
+"She said she had been afraid that I would grow morose and bitter
+because I had so few pleasures, and she is so glad about the music
+lessons and my joining the choir. Mr. Bond is going to come by for me
+next Friday night. Sister Sarah said she had no idea that colours could
+make such a difference in one till she saw me in that costume. She has
+been looking over the silk quilt pieces your mother sent Marietta, and
+she recognized two pieces that are parts of dresses your grandmother
+used to wear. One is a deep rich red,--a regular garnet colour, and the
+other is sapphire blue. She said that if they had belonged to any one
+else but Amanthis Lloyd she couldn't do it,--but instead of cutting them
+up into quilt pieces she--she is going to make them into shirt-waists
+for me."
+
+The colour deepened in Agnes's face as she made the confession, with an
+unconscious lifting of the head that made Lloyd remember Mrs. Bisbee's
+remark about the Waring pride. She hastened to say something to cover
+the awkward pause that followed.
+
+"Grandmothah Amanthis and Miss Sarah were such good friends, even if
+there was so much difference in their ages. I know she would be glad for
+you to use the silk that way. Looking pretty in it and having good times
+in it seems a bettah way to use it as a remembrance of her than putting
+it into a quilt, doesn't it?"
+
+Then, to change the subject, which disconcerted her more than it did
+Agnes, she held up the package of letters.
+
+"I heard from the girls to-day, and they are all getting on so
+beautifully, and making such good records, that it neahly breaks my
+hah't to think I can't be with them." She laughed nervously. "I suppose
+you wondahed what made my eyes so red, when you came in. I've been
+regularly howling. I couldn't help it. I sat heah thinking about deah
+old Warwick Hall, and all that I had to give up, till I was so misahable
+I _had_ to cry."
+
+Agnes, turning toward the window so that her face could not be seen,
+looked out at the bare branches of the locusts.
+
+"I wonder," she began, slowly, "if it would make any difference to
+you--if it would make your disappointment any easier to bear--to know
+how much your being in the Valley this winter has meant to me. Fifty
+years from now one term more or less in your studies won't amount to
+much. It will not count much then that you've solved a few more problems
+in algebra, or learned a little more French, or fallen behind the others
+in a few credit marks, but it will make all the difference in the world
+to me that you were here to open a door for me.
+
+"If you've done nothing more than give me that one music lesson, it has
+showed me the possibility of all that I may accomplish, and started me
+on the road to my heart's desire. If you've done no more than prove to
+me that I can conquer my timidity and be like other girls, and accept
+the little pleasures just at hand for the taking, don't you see that you
+have opened up a way for me that I never could have found alone? And to
+do that for any one, why, it's like teaching him a song that he will
+teach to some one else, and that one will go on repeating, and the next
+and the next, until you've started something that never stops. If I were
+making up the accounts in the Hereafter, I am very sure I'd count it
+more to your credit,--the unselfish way you are helping people than all
+the lessons you could learn in a term at school. I am not saying half
+what I feel. I couldn't. It is too deep down. But, oh, I do want you to
+know that your disappointment has not all been in vain."
+
+The voice that uttered the last sentence was tremulous with feeling.
+Tears were very near the surface now. Before Lloyd could think of any
+reply to her impetuous speech, she had started toward the door.
+
+"Mrs. Moore will wonder what is keeping me," she said, as she turned the
+knob. "Good-bye!"
+
+With a lighter heart than Lloyd could have believed possible half an
+hour earlier, she went up to her room. Dropping the damp little ball of
+a handkerchief into her laundry-bag, she opened a drawer for a fresh
+one. By mistake she drew out, not her handkerchief-box, but one that in
+some previous haste had been pushed into its place,--the sandalwood box
+containing the pearl beads. She took up the uncompleted rosary and began
+slipping the beads back and forth over the string,--the string that
+would have been two-thirds full by this time if she could have gone on
+with school work. Suddenly she looked at it with widening eyes.
+
+"I wondah," she said aloud, "I wondah if I couldn't slip one moah on for
+yestahday. She said herself that it ought to count for moah than school
+work. In a way she said it was like making 'undying music in the
+world.' And what was it old Bishop Chartley said at the carol service?"
+She stood with a little pucker on her forehead, trying to recall his
+words about keeping the White Feast.
+
+"So may we offer our pearls, days unstained by selfishness." That was
+it. She could go on with her rosary then, and, instead of perfect
+lessons at school, she could fill the string in token of days spent
+unselfishly at home. Days not stained by regrets and tears and idle
+repining for what could not be helped.
+
+With a deep sigh of satisfaction, she slipped one more pearl bead down
+the string, and laid it back in the box.
+
+"That is for yestahday. I can't count to-day, for I sat for an houah
+thinking about my troubles and pitying myself and making myself just as
+misahable as possible."
+
+So the little string began to grow again, and, though she was
+half-ashamed of the childish pleasure it gave her, it did help when she
+could see every night a visible token that she had tried to live that
+'day through unselfishly and well,--that she had kept tryst with the
+duty of cheerfulness which we all owe the world.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE RODE OVER TO ROLLINGTON"]
+
+But not all her pearls were earned as easily as the one that marked her
+efforts for Agnes. One day, when she rode over to Rollington with some
+illustrated magazines for the Crisp children, she was met by an
+announcement from Minnie, the oldest one, who had charge of the family
+in her mother's absence.
+
+"Mis' Perkins said I was to tell you she didn't see why folks passed her
+by when she liked wine jelly and good things just as well as some other
+people she knew."
+
+"Who is Mrs. Perkins?" asked Lloyd, astonished by such a message.
+
+Minnie nodded her towhead toward a weather-beaten house of two rooms
+across the street. "She lives over there. She's sick most of the time.
+She saw you cooking in our kitchen that day that you came and got
+dinner, and ma sent her over a piece of the pie you made, and she's been
+sort of sniffy ever since, because nobody does such things for her."
+
+Minnie seemed so anxious that Lloyd should include Mrs. Perkins in her
+visit that finally Lloyd agreed to be escorted over to see her. Wrapping
+the baby in a shawl, and staggering along under its weight, Minnie
+ordered the other children to stay where they were, and led the way
+across the street.
+
+The tilt of Lloyd's dainty nose, as she went in, said more plainly than
+words, "Poah white trash!" For the house had a stuffy smell of liniment
+and bacon grease. An old woman came forward to meet them in her stocking
+feet and a dirty woollen wrapper. Her uncombed gray hair straggled
+around her ears, and her wrinkled face was unwashed and grimy. Lloyd was
+thankful that she did not offer to shake hands. She sat down on the edge
+of a chair, breathing the stuffy air as sparingly as possible.
+
+She had always been taught that old age must be respected, no matter how
+unlovely, and as Mrs. Perkins counted her aches and pains in a weak,
+whining voice, pity got the better of Lloyd's disgust. She began to feel
+sorry for this poor old creature, for whom no one else seemed to have
+any sympathy. She complained bitterly of her neighbours and the
+church-members who professed to be so charitable, but who left her to
+suffer.
+
+Then she praised the lemon pie that Lloyd had made, until Lloyd gladly
+promised to make one for her. "I'll bring it down the last of the week,"
+she promised, later, when she rose to go, and Mrs. Perkins introduced
+the subject again. But that was not what the old woman wanted.
+
+"Why can't you come down here and make it in my kitchen?" she whined,
+"same as you did in Mrs. Crisp's. I get dreadful lonesome setting here,
+and it would be so much company to see you whisking around beating eggs
+and rolling out the crust. Then I could smell it baking, and eat it hot
+out of the oven. It's been many a long day since I've done a thing like
+that. It makes my mouth water, just thinking of it."
+
+"Certainly I could do it heah, if you would like it bettah," promised
+Lloyd, rashly. "Is there anything I can do for you befoah I go?"
+
+"Yes, there is," was the ready answer. "I didn't eat much dinner, and
+I'm that weak and faint I'd like if you'd make me a cup of tea."
+
+"Certainly," answered Lloyd again. "If you'll just tell me where to find
+things."
+
+"I'll be going on," said Minnie Crisp, beginning to wrap the baby up in
+its shawl again. "Those kids will be turning the house upside down if
+I'm not there to watch them."
+
+Nobody paid any attention to her departure, for Lloyd, hanging her coat
+over the back of a dusty chair, had gone into the kitchen before Minnie
+finished making a woollen mummy of the baby.
+
+"The tea is in a paper bag in the corner cupboard," called Mrs. Perkins.
+"Mrs. Moore sent it to me. It's green tea, and I never did care for any
+kind but black. I'd pretty nigh as soon have none as green. You might
+poach me an egg, too, if you feel like it, and make a bit of toast."
+
+With a shiver of disgust, Lloyd looked around her. Everything was dirty.
+She wished she dared run across the street and prepare the lunch in Mrs.
+Crisp's immaculate kitchen. There everything shone from repeated
+scrubbings with soft soap and sand. She enjoyed cooking over there. As
+she opened the cupboard door a roach ran out, and she jumped aside with
+another shiver of disgust. She wanted a pan in which to poach the egg,
+but nothing looked clean enough to use. Finally she chose a battered
+saucepan, but dropped it when she discovered that a spider had woven a
+web inside.
+
+Spiders had always been an abomination to Lloyd. It made her feel cold
+and creepy to touch a cobweb. But the story of Ederyn flashed through
+her thoughts, and she grasped the pan, determined to use it or die in
+the effort. She had started and she would not turn back. It was plainly
+her duty to minister to the wants of this complaining old invalid whom
+others neglected, and she would keep tryst at any cost. With many an
+inward shudder she went on with her task. As the water in the kettle was
+already steaming, it was not long before the lunch was ready, and she
+carried it in.
+
+"It's simply impossible for me to come and make the pie in this dirty
+kitchen," thought Lloyd, "and I can't tell her so. Maybe I could ask
+Mrs. Crisp to invite her ovah and she could see it done there."
+
+While she worried over the problem of introducing the subject tactfully,
+Mrs. Perkins herself opened the way. She hadn't been well enough to do
+any cleaning for several weeks, she said. If she could get a little
+stronger, she intended to do two things: to slick up the place a bit,
+and to go on a visit to Jane O'Grady's up near the black bridge. She had
+been wanting to spend the day with Jane all winter, but didn't have any
+way to get there. It was too far to walk. Lloyd saw her opportunity and
+seized it.
+
+"Why, mothah will send the carriage for you, Mrs. Perkins, any day you
+set. She'd be glad to. Alec can drive you ovah early in the mawning,
+when he is out for the marketing, and go for you befoah dah'k."
+
+"Then you may send to-morrow," said Mrs. Perkins, ungraciously. "I don't
+want to risk putting it off. Folks usually forget such promises
+overnight. So I'd best make sure of it."
+
+Lloyd flushed angrily, but the next instant excused the old woman's
+rudeness on the score of her ill health. She had a plan that she was
+anxious to carry out, and she hurried home to begin, all a-tingle with
+her charitable impulses. She was surprised that her mother should treat
+it so lightly.
+
+"Of course you can have the carriage," said Mrs. Sherman. "But, my good
+little Samaritan, I must warn you. That old woman is a pauper in spirit.
+She hasn't a particle of proper pride. People have done too much for
+her. She'll take all she can get, and grumble because it isn't more. So
+you mustn't be disappointed if, instead of thanks, you get only
+criticism."
+
+But Lloyd, full of the zeal of a true reformer, danced down to the
+servants' quarters to find May Lily, one of the cook's grandchildren.
+May Lily, a neat-looking coloured girl of seventeen, had been one of
+Lloyd's most loyal followers since they made mud pies together on the
+Colonel's white door-steps, and the readiness to serve her now was
+prompted not so much by the promised dollar as the desire to still
+follow her lead. So next morning, soon after Mrs. Perkins's departure in
+the Sherman carriage, a mighty revolution began in the house she left
+behind her.
+
+May Lily, strong and willing, went to work like a small cyclone. Under
+Lloyd's direction, she swept and scrubbed and scoured. The bed was
+aired, the stove was blacked, the windows washed, the tins polished till
+they shone like new. By four o'clock not a cobweb or a speck of dust was
+to be seen in either room. Lloyd sat down to wait for Mrs. Perkins's
+return. She felt that it was safe to breathe now, and she did not have
+to sit gingerly on the edge of the chair. Every piece of furniture had
+been washed and rubbed. She could keep her promise about the pie very
+comfortably now. Everything smelled so clean and wholesome to her that
+she was sure that Mrs. Perkins would notice the change at once and be
+pleased.
+
+Mrs. Perkins did notice the change the moment she entered the door, but
+it was with a displeased face. "Hm! Hm!" she sniffed. "Smells mightily
+of soft soap in here. What have you been doing? I never could bear the
+smell of soft soap or lye. Hm! Hm!"
+
+Then she turned accusingly on Lloyd. "Didn't you know better than to put
+stove-blacking on that stove? When it gets het up, it will smoke to
+fare-ye-well, and start my asthma to going again full tilt. Some folks
+are mighty thoughtless, never have no consideration for other people."
+
+Lloyd shrank back, almost overcome by such a reception. It was like a
+dash of cold water in her face. She was angry and indignant.
+
+"Well," continued Mrs. Perkins, still sniffing around the room, as she
+put her bonnet and shawl away. "Now you're here I'd like it if you would
+put on the teakettle and make me a good strong cup of coffee. Jane
+O'Grady gave me a pound, all parched and ground. I haven't had any
+before to-day for weeks. I'm plumb tuckered out with the visit."
+
+Lloyd hurried to build up the fire, thankful that May Lily had spent
+much time scouring the old coffee-pot. Otherwise she could not have
+brought herself to touch it. It shone like new now. As she poured the
+water into it, three tiny streams spurted out of the side, hissing and
+sputtering over the stove.
+
+"Now just see what you done!" scolded Mrs. Perkins. "You hadn't ought to
+have scoured that coffee-pot so. You'd ought to have let well enough be,
+for you might have known you'd rub holes in it and make it leak."
+
+"I'll get you a new one in place of it at once," said Lloyd, stiffly,
+her indignation rising till she could hardly speak calmly. "I'll go this
+minute."
+
+There was a small grocery store farther up the hill, where a little of
+everything was kept in stock, and Lloyd dashed out bareheaded, glad of
+an excuse to cool her temper. By the time she had made the coffee in the
+new pot, Alec drove up to the door for her.
+
+"You'll come again to-morrow to make that lemon pie, won't you?" asked
+Mrs. Perkins, anxiously.
+
+"No, I can't come till the day aftah."
+
+"What? Thursday?" was the impatient answer. "Time drags awful slow for a
+body that can only sit and wait."
+
+"I have an engagement to-morrow," said Lloyd, stiffly, remembering it
+was the day for Agnes Waring's music lesson. "But you can depend on me
+Thursday."
+
+Mrs. Sherman only laughed when Lloyd repeated her day's adventure at
+home, but the old Colonel fairly snorted with indignation.
+
+"Poor white trash!" he exclaimed. "Don't go near her again!"
+
+"But I promised," answered Lloyd, dolefully. "I must keep my promise."
+
+"Then tell Cindy to make a pie, and let Alec take it down," he
+suggested.
+
+"No, she said she wanted to smell it cooking, and to eat it hot out of
+the oven, and I promised her she might."
+
+The Colonel glared savagely at the fire. "Beggars shouldn't be
+choosers," he muttered, then turned to Mrs. Sherman. "Little daughter,
+are you going to let that poor child of yours be imposed on by that
+creature?"
+
+"I can't interfere with her promise, papa," she answered. "It may be a
+disagreeable experience, but it will not hurt her any more than it hurt
+the old woman to sweep the cobwebs out of the sky. Hers was a thankless
+job, too, but no doubt she was better for the exercise, and she must
+have learned a great deal on such a trip."
+
+It was in the same spirit in which Ederyn cried, "Oh, heart and hand of
+mine, keep tryst! Keep tryst or die!" that Lloyd gathered up the
+necessary materials and started off on Thursday to Mrs. Perkins's
+cottage. This time there was no admiring audience of little towheads
+tiptoeing around the table, as there had been at Mrs. Crisp's. But
+everything was clean, and, with her recipe spread out before her, Lloyd
+followed directions to the letter.
+
+Mrs. Perkins, watching the beating of eggs and stirring of the golden
+filling, the deft mixing of pastry, grew cheerful and entertaining. She
+forgot to complain of her neighbours, and was surprised into the telling
+of some of her girlish experiences that actually brought an amused
+twinkle to her sharp old eyes. Lloyd was vastly entertained. She had,
+too, a virtuous feeling that in keeping her promise she had given
+pleasure to one who rarely met kindness. It gave her a warm inward glow
+of satisfaction.
+
+To her mortification, when she finally drew the pie from the oven, the
+meringue, which had been like a snowdrift a moment before, and which
+should have come out with just a golden glow on it from its short
+contact with the heat, was all shrivelled and brown.
+
+"The nasty little oven was too hot!" cried Lloyd, in disgust.
+
+"Just my luck," whined Mrs. Perkins. "I might have known that I'd never
+get anything I set my heart on. But you can scrape off the meringue, and
+I'll try and make out with the plain pie."
+
+Although she ate generously, she ate grumblingly, disappointed because
+of the scorched meringue, and it wasn't as sweet as she liked.
+
+That night, Lloyd, mortified over her failure, stood long with the white
+rosary in her hand. "Maybe I ought to count the poah pie as I would an
+imperfect lesson," she thought, hesitating, with a bead in her fingers.
+Then she said, defiantly: "But I did my best, and the day has certainly
+been disagreeable enough to deserve two pearls."
+
+After another moment of conscientious weighing of the matter, she
+slipped the bead slowly down the string. "There!" she exclaimed. "I
+suahly went through the black watahs of Kilgore to get that one."
+
+Next day when she stopped in Rollington to pay for the coffee-pot, and
+drove by the Crisps' to ask about the baby, Minnie Crisp told her
+several things. Mrs. Perkins was sick all night, and had told her ma
+that it was the lemon pie that was the cause of the trouble; that it
+would have made a dog sick. "Them was her words," said Minnie,
+solemnly.
+
+"I don't wondah!" cried Lloyd. "The greedy old thing! There was enough
+for foah people, and it was very rich, and she ate it all."
+
+"And she didn't like it because you had May Lily scrub and clean while
+she was gone," added Minnie, with childlike lack of tact. "She talked
+about you dreadful after you went away. Didn't she, ma?"
+
+"Shoo, Minnie!" answered Mrs. Crisp, with a wave of her apron. "Don't
+tell all you know."
+
+"I didn't," answered the child. "I didn't say a word about the names she
+called her,--meddlesome Matty, and all that."
+
+Lloyd took her leave presently, with a flushed face and a sore heart. On
+the way home she stopped at The Beeches, and Mrs. Walton, who saw at a
+glance that something was wrong, soon drew out the story of her
+grievance.
+
+"Don't pay any attention to that old creature," she said, laughing
+heartily, "and forgive my laughing. Everybody in the Valley has had a
+similar experience. The King's Daughters long ago gave her up in
+disgust. She's one of those people who doesn't want to be reformed and
+won't stay helped. Her house will be just as dirty next week as when
+you first went there."
+
+"I didn't suppose there were such people in the world," said Lloyd, in
+disgust.
+
+"You'll find out all sorts of disagreeable things as you get older,"
+sighed Mrs. Walton. "It is one of the penalties of growing up. But still
+it is good to have such experiences, for the wiser we grow the better we
+know how to 'ease the burden of the world,' and that is what we are here
+for."
+
+Lloyd's eyes widened with surprise. Here was another person quoting from
+the poem she had learned. She was glad now that she had committed it to
+memory, since on three occasions it had made people's meaning clearer to
+her.
+
+"Yes," she answered, the dimples stealing into her smile. "But the next
+time I'll find out first if they really want their burden eased, and if
+that burden is dirt, like Mrs. Perkins's, I'll suahly let it alone."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+"SWEET SIXTEEN"
+
+
+THE red coat Lloyd wore that winter was long remembered in the Valley,
+for wherever it went it carried a bright face above it, a cheery
+greeting, and some pleasant word that made the day seem better for its
+passing.
+
+Mrs. Bisbee and the little Crisps were not the only ones who learned to
+watch for it. As all the lonely town of Hamelin must have felt toward
+the one child left to it after the Pied Piper had passed through its
+streets, so all the Valley turned with tender regard to the young girl
+left in its midst. Mothers, whose daughters were away at school, stopped
+to talk to her with affectionate interest. The old ladies whom she
+regularly visited welcomed her as if she were a part of their vanished
+youth. The young ladies took her under their wing, glad to have her in
+the choir and the King's Daughters' Circle, for she was bubbling over
+with girlish enthusiasm and a sincere desire to help.
+
+So she found the cobwebs in the neighbourhood sky, and disagreeable
+enough they were at times, even more disagreeable than her experience
+with Mrs. Perkins. But she swept away with praiseworthy energy, till
+gradually she found that the accumulation of outside interests, like the
+cobweb strands which Ederyn twisted, made a rope strong enough to lift
+her out of herself and her dungeon of disappointment.
+
+After the novelty of giving music lessons had worn off, it grew to be a
+bore. Not the lessons themselves, for Agnes's delight in them never
+flagged. It was the tied-up feeling it gave her to remember that those
+afternoons were not her own. It happened so often that the afternoons
+devoted to Agnes were the ones which of all the week she wanted to have
+free, and she had to give up many small pleasures on account of them.
+
+It grew to be a bore, also, calling on some of the people who claimed a
+weekly visit. She never tired of Mrs. Bisbee's lively comments on her
+neighbours and her interesting tales about them. But there was old Mr.
+and Mrs. Apwall, who, with nothing to do but sit on opposite sides of
+the fire and look at each other, were said to quarrel like cat and dog.
+It mortified Lloyd dreadfully to have them quarrel in her presence, and
+have them pour out their grievances for her to decide which was in the
+wrong.
+
+She always rose to go at that juncture, flushed and embarrassed, and
+vowing inwardly she would never visit them again. But they always
+managed to extract a promise before she got to the door that she would
+drop in again the next time she was passing.
+
+"Somehow you seem to get husband's mind off himself," Mrs. Apwall would
+whisper at parting. "He isn't half so touchy when you've cheered him up
+a spell."
+
+And Mr. Apwall would follow her out through the chilly hall to open the
+front door, and say, huskily: "Come again, daughter. Come again. Your
+visits seem to do the madam a world of good. They give her something to
+talk about beside my fancied failings."
+
+So inwardly groaning, Lloyd would go again, painfully alert to keep the
+conversation away from subjects that invariably led to disputes. And
+inwardly groaning, she went dutifully to the Coburns' at their repeated
+requests. The first few times the garrulous old couple were interesting,
+but the most thrilling tale grows tiresome when one has heard it a
+dozen times. She could scarcely keep from fidgeting in her chair when
+the inevitable story of their feud with the Cayn family was begun. They
+never left out a single petty detail.
+
+No one will ever know how often the thought of the little rosary in the
+sandalwood box helped Lloyd to listen patiently, and to keep tryst with
+the expectations of those about her, so that at nightfall there might be
+another pearl to slip on the silken cord, in token of another day
+unstained by selfishness.
+
+There was rarely time for envying the girls at school now. The days were
+too full. Almost before it seemed possible, the locusts were in bloom
+and it was mid-May by the calendar. In that time perfect health had come
+back to her. There were no more crying spells now, no more hours of
+nervous exhaustion, of fretful impatience over trifles. She went singing
+about the house, with a colour in her cheeks that rivalled the pink of
+the apple blossoms.
+
+"Spring has come indoors as well as out," said Mrs. Sherman one morning.
+"I think that we may safely count that your Christmas vacation is over,
+and you may go back to your music lessons whenever you choose."
+
+The night before her birthday, Lloyd sat with her elbows on her
+dressing-table, peering into the mirror with a very serious face.
+
+"You'll be sixteen yeahs old in the mawning, Lloyd Sherman," she told
+the girl in the glass. "'Sweet sixteen!' You've come to the end of lots
+of things, and to-morrow it will be like going through a gate that
+you've seen ahead of you for a long, long time. A big, wide gate that
+you have looked forward to for yeahs, and things are bound to be
+different on the othah side."
+
+Next morning, just in fun, she trailed down to breakfast in one of her
+mother's white dresses, with her hair piled on the top of her head. It
+was very becoming so, but it made her look so tall and womanly that she
+was sure her grandfather would object to it.
+
+"He'll nevah let me grow up if he can help it," she said, half-pouting,
+as she gave a final glance over her shoulder at the mirror, vastly
+pleased with her young ladylike appearance. "He'll say, 'Tut, tut!
+That's not grandpa's Little Colonel.' But I can't stay his Little
+Colonel always."
+
+She was standing by the window looking down the locust avenue when he
+came in to breakfast, so she did not see his start of surprise at sight
+of her. But his half-whispered exclamation, "_Amanthis!_" told her why
+he failed to make the speech she expected to hear. With her hair done
+high, showing the beautiful curve of her head and throat as she stood
+half-turned toward him, he had caught another glimpse of her startling
+resemblance to the portrait. He could not regret losing his Little
+Colonel if that loss were to give him a living reminder of a beloved
+memory.
+
+After breakfast, when an armful of birthday gifts had been duly admired
+and the donors thanked, and she had spent nearly an hour enjoying them,
+she strolled down the avenue, feeling very much grown up with the long
+dress trailing behind her. She wandered down to the entrance gate,
+hoping to meet Alec, who had gone for the mail. She was sure there would
+be a letter from Betty, for Betty never forgot people's birthdays. Then
+she trailed back again under the white arch of fragrant locust blooms.
+At the half-way seat she sat down and tucked a spray of the blossoms
+into her hair and fastened another at her belt. She had not long to wait
+there, enjoying the freshness of the sweet May morning, for in a few
+minutes Alec came up the avenue with a handful of letters and papers.
+She sorted out her own eagerly, six letters and a package.
+
+She opened Betty's first. It was a long one, ending with a birthday
+greeting in rhyme, and enclosing a handkerchief which she had made
+herself, sheer and fine and daintily hemstitched, with her initials
+embroidered in one corner in the smallest letters possible.
+
+The letters from Allison and Kitty were profusely illustrated all around
+the margins, and by the time Lloyd had read them, and Gay's ridiculous
+summary of school news, she felt as if she had been on a visit to
+Warwick Hall, and had seen all the girls. The next letter was from
+Joyce, a good thick one. But before she read it, curiosity impelled her
+to open the package, which was a flat one, bearing a foreign postmark
+and several Italian stamps. There were two photographs inside. She
+slipped the uppermost one from its envelope.
+
+"Why, it is Eugenia Forbes!" she exclaimed aloud. "But how she has
+changed!"
+
+The picture was not at all like the Eugenia whom Lloyd remembered, the
+thin slip of a girl who had raced up and down the avenue five years
+before at her house-party. She had blossomed into a beautiful young
+woman.
+
+"A regulah Spanish beauty!" Lloyd thought, as she looked at the picture,
+long and admiringly,--the picture of a patrician face with great dark
+eyes and a wealth of dusky hair. The old self-conscious, dissatisfied
+expression was gone. It was a happy face that smiled back at her. It had
+been nearly a year since Lloyd had had a letter from Eugenia. She had
+written from the school near Paris that her father was on his way over
+from America to join her and take her home immediately after her
+graduation. Lloyd had sent a reply addressed to her cousin Carl's
+office, but had heard nothing more.
+
+Thinking that the other photograph was her cousin Carl's, Lloyd
+unwrapped it, wondering if he had changed as much as Eugenia. To her
+surprise, it was not a middle-aged man she saw, with gray moustache and
+kindly tired eyes. It was the handsome boyish face of a stranger, yet so
+startlingly familiar that she looked at it with a puzzled frown.
+
+"Why should Eugenia be sending me this?" she thought. "And where have I
+seen that man befoah?" Then, "Phil Tremont!" she exclaimed aloud the
+next instant. "That's who it reminds me of. It is almost exactly like
+him, only it is oldah-looking, and the nose isn't quite like his."
+
+She turned the picture over. There on the back was written in Eugenia's
+hand the word Venice, and a date underneath the name, Stuart Tremont.
+
+"Phil's brother!" gasped Lloyd, in astonishment. "How strange that she
+should know him!"
+
+Tearing open the envelope lying on the bench beside her, Lloyd unfolded
+a twenty-page letter from Eugenia, written on thin blue foreign
+correspondence paper. Before her glance had travelled half-way down the
+second page, she gave another gasp, and sat staring at an underscored
+sentence in open-mouthed amazement. Then, never waiting to gather up the
+other letters which fluttered into the grass at her feet, as she sprang
+up, she rushed off toward the house as hard as she could go, waving
+Eugenia's letter in one hand and the photographs in the other.
+
+"Mothah!" she called, as she reached the end of the avenue. She was
+tripping over her long skirt, and scattering hairpins at every step, as
+her reckless flight sent her hair tumbling down over her shoulders.
+
+"Mothah!" she shrieked again, as she stumbled up the porch steps.
+
+"Here in my room, dear," came the answer from an upper window. Falling
+all over herself in her undignified haste, Lloyd tore up the stairs. A
+final tangling of skirts sent her headlong into her mother's room, where
+she half-fell in a breathless, laughing heap, and sat at Mrs. Sherman's
+feet with her hair almost hiding her eager face.
+
+"Guess what's happened!" she demanded, breathlessly. "_Eugenia is
+engaged!_ And to Phil Tremont's brother Stuart!"
+
+Then she sat enjoying her mother's surprise, which was almost as great
+as her own. "And she isn't much moah than eighteen," Lloyd exclaimed,
+rocking back and forth on the floor, with her arms clasped around her
+knees, while her mother examined the pictures.
+
+"She looks twenty at least in this picture," answered Mrs. Sherman,
+"even more than that. Eugenia was always old for her years. If you
+remember, she was wearing long dresses when we left her the summer we
+were in Europe together."
+
+"Yes, but it doesn't seem possible that Eugenia is old enough to be
+_married_," insisted Lloyd. "I can hardly believe it is true."
+
+She sat staring dreamily out of the window until a slight breeze
+fluttering the sheets of paper still clutched in her fingers reminded
+her that she had read only two of the twenty pages.
+
+"Heah is what she says about it," began Lloyd, reading slowly, for the
+closely written sheets were hard to decipher.
+
+          "'I know you are going to wonder how it all came
+          about, so I'll begin at the beginning. Last summer
+          papa came on to Paris in time for Commencement. He
+          was so pleased because I took first honours, when
+          he hadn't expected me to take any, that he said he
+          would do as fathers sometimes did in
+          fairy-tales,--grant me three wishes, anything in
+          reason; for he had had an unusually successful
+          year and could well afford it.
+
+          "'Well, I thought and thought, but I couldn't
+          think of anything I really wanted, as I just had
+          an entire new outfit in clothes, so I told him
+          finally I'd like to stop in London long enough to
+          have a tailor make me a riding-habit, and I'd
+          think of the other two wishes sometime during the
+          year. So we went to London. Papa is such an old
+          darling, and we've grown to be real chums. After
+          the tailor had taken my measure, we drove to our
+          banker's for the mail, and who should papa meet
+          there but Doctor Tremont, an American physician
+          whom he knew years ago when they were young men.
+          They belonged to the same college fraternity.
+
+          "'They forgot all about poor little me, sitting
+          over in the corner of the office, and stood and
+          talked about old times, and asked each other about
+          Tom, Dick, and Harry, until I was thoroughly tired
+          of waiting. But after awhile the handsomest young
+          man came into the room, and Doctor Tremont
+          introduced him to papa as his oldest son, Stuart.
+          Then they remembered my humble existence, and papa
+          brought them both over to me. In about two minutes
+          we all felt as if we had known each other always.
+
+          "'Doctor Tremont said he had had a very hard
+          winter in Berlin, making some study of microbes
+          with a noted scientist,--I forget his name. He
+          said Stuart had been closely confined also (he was
+          taking a medical course), and they were off on a
+          hard-earned holiday. They were going coaching up
+          in the lake regions, first in England, then in
+          Scotland, and maybe later would go over to the
+          Isle of Skye.
+
+          "'Would you believe it, before we left the bank,
+          Doctor Tremont had persuaded papa that he needed a
+          vacation also, and almost in no time it was
+          arranged that we should join them on their
+          coaching trip. We had a perfectly ideal time, and
+          Stuart and I got to be the best of friends. We
+          corresponded all summer and fall after that. I
+          didn't expect to see him again for two years,
+          because he intended to stay abroad until he had
+          finished his medical course. But along in the
+          winter papa's health broke down, and the doctor
+          told him he must keep away from business for a
+          year, and ordered him to Baden-Baden for the
+          water.
+
+          "'He was horribly ill after we got there, and I
+          was so frightened and inexperienced that I thought
+          he was going to die, and I telegraphed for Doctor
+          Tremont. It isn't far from Berlin, you know, as we
+          Americans count distances. But the doctor had gone
+          to Paris for several weeks, and Stuart came at
+          once in his place. Of course he wasn't an
+          experienced physician like his father, but he was
+          such a comfort, for he cheered papa up so much,
+          and assured us that the doctor in charge was doing
+          everything that his father could do. And he helped
+          nurse papa, and boosted up my spirits mightily,
+          and was so dear and thoughtful and considerate
+          that, when he went away, I felt as if the bottom
+          had dropped out of everything. You can't imagine
+          how kind and lovely he was all that week. Papa
+          fairly swore by him.
+
+          "'We wrote to each other every week after he went
+          back to Berlin. Early this March papa and I went
+          down into Italy. We shifted about from place to
+          place,--Naples, Sorrento, Rome, Florence, and
+          finally to Venice. I don't know why I never wrote
+          to you those days. You were often in my thoughts,
+          but you know how it is when one is constantly on
+          the wing.
+
+          "'I used to wish daily that Stuart could be with
+          us. He is the most satisfactory of travelling
+          companions, but I didn't know how very much I
+          wished it until one day in Venice. Papa was asleep
+          at the hotel, and I was so lonely that I started
+          out by myself to explore. I left a message with
+          the clerk that I had gone to vespers at Saint
+          Mark's Cathedral. There was a crowd of tourists in
+          the square in front of the cathedral, feeding the
+          pigeons. Hearing their English speech after so
+          many months of nothing but foreign tongues made me
+          homesick. In the whole plaza, no one but myself
+          seemed to be alone. They were walking in groups or
+          couples, and everybody seemed so gay and happy
+          that I was glad to cross over to the cathedral to
+          get out of sight.
+
+          "'The vesper service had just begun, and I stood
+          inside the door listening to the chanting of the
+          monks' voices, and getting more homesick every
+          moment. Just as the tears were ready to brim over,
+          I looked up, and there in the dim light beside me
+          stood Stuart. I thought I must be dreaming, but it
+          was a very happy dream, for I felt that I could
+          never be homesick or unhappy again when he looked
+          down and smiled.
+
+          "'I couldn't believe that I was awake and that he
+          was really there, until we got outside the
+          cathedral and he began to talk. Then he told me
+          that he had gone to the hotel, and they had given
+          him the message I had left for papa. It never
+          occurred to me to wonder why he had come to
+          Venice. It just seemed so natural and lovely that
+          he should be there that I never even asked him
+          why. He called a gondola, and we got in and went
+          drifting down the canals under the bridges and
+          past the old palaces, with the sunset turning
+          everything around us to rose-colour and gold. Oh,
+          I can't begin to tell you how perfectly heavenly
+          it all was. There was a new moon in the sky when
+          we turned back to the hotel, and, though Stuart
+          _hadn't_ proposed in the same way that Laurie did
+          to Amy in "Little Women," he had told me why he
+          came so far to find me, and I liked his way a
+          great deal better than Laurie's.
+
+          "'Wasn't it all romantic? Papa was awfully
+          surprised to see him, and nearly as glad as I, and
+          I told him that now I'd claim the other wishes he
+          had promised me at Commencement, and take the two
+          in one. I wished that he would say yes to the
+          question Stuart had come to ask him. Dear old dad,
+          he always keeps his promises, so he said yes after
+          awhile. After Stuart had explained that he didn't
+          intend to ask him to give me up. When he finishes
+          his medical course here next year, he has a
+          position waiting for him near New York City. We're
+          to have a little home on the Hudson, and papa is
+          to live with us. So is Doctor Tremont, when he
+          gets through with his microbe business. We are
+          done with hotels for ever.
+
+          "'I cannot remember ever having had a home, Lloyd.
+          I have always lived either in a hotel or at
+          boarding-school. And Stuart says the only one he
+          can remember distinctly was the one presided over
+          by his great-aunt Patricia, and she never did
+          understand boys. This summer I shall spend with
+          papa in Switzerland. He is about well now. Then in
+          the fall, when he goes back to New York, I am
+          going to a delightful school near Berlin which I
+          have just heard of. It is a school where none but
+          the daughters of the German nobility are
+          received, as a rule. They make an exception
+          sometimes in the case of Americans like myself.
+          There they are taught all the housewifely arts
+          that delight a good frau's soul. Don't laugh at
+          me, Lloyd. I'm going to learn how to broil and
+          brew and conduct a well-regulated establishment
+          from attic to cellar.
+
+          "'A year from this June, Cousin Jack and Cousin
+          Elizabeth are to bring you and Betty on to New
+          York to be my bridesmaids. I'd love to have Joyce,
+          too, if it were possible for her to leave home.
+          She has been so good to Stuart's brother Phil.
+          Isn't it strange that we should all be so linked
+          together? I'd like to have all of you girls that I
+          met at your never-to-be-forgotten house-party.
+          That was where I had my first taste of a real
+          home, and found out that there is something to
+          live for besides the things that money can buy.
+
+          "'I have looked so often lately at my little
+          Tusitala ring. I have been a better girl because
+          of that ring, Lloyd, and I intend it shall be the
+          inspiration of all my married life,--to help me
+          leave a road of the loving heart in the memory of
+          every one around me.
+
+          "'I wish everybody in the world could be as happy
+          as I am. I am sending Stuart's picture, so that
+          you can see for yourself what a fine, splendid
+          fellow you are to have for a cousin some day. Give
+          my love to your father and mother and Betty, and
+          do write soon and tell me that you are glad.
+                               "'Your loving cousin,
+                                               "'EUGENIA.'"
+
+Lloyd looked up from the reading of the letter, wondering what sort of
+an expression she would find on her mother's face. To her surprise, it
+was one of approval, and there were tears in her eyes.
+
+"Poor motherless child!" said Mrs. Sherman, softly. "I shall write to
+her to-day. I don't approve of early marriages, but Eugenia has always
+been more mature than most girls of her age, and she does need a home
+sadly. The care and pleasure of one will develop her character in a way
+that nothing else will. Let me see. She will be nearly twenty next June.
+Yes, I have no doubt but that, with this next year's training in
+housekeeping which she intends to take, she will be far better fitted
+for home-making than many an older woman."
+
+"And may Betty and I be bridesmaids?" interrupted Lloyd, eagerly, a
+starlike expectancy shining in her eyes.
+
+Mrs. Sherman considered a moment, then answered, slowly: "There is no
+reason why you should not be, so long as you are willing to go as little
+maids, and not young ladies. I am very jealous for your girlhood, Lloyd
+dear. I must guard against anything that would shorten it in the least.
+Mother's baby must not grow up too fast."
+
+"I don't want to grow up fast, honestly!" cried Lloyd, scrambling to her
+feet and tripping over the long skirts again as she threw her arms
+around her mother's neck. "I'm not dignified enough yet to fit yoah
+dresses, and my hair simply won't stay up. Sweet sixteen doesn't seem
+half as old when you really get there as you think that it is going to.
+I'll do my hair down and weah short skirts as long as you want me to,
+but, oh, I'm so glad that I'm going to be a bridesmaid! It will be
+_such_ fun. I must write to Betty this minute to tell her that you are
+willing."
+
+That night Lloyd sat before her dressing-table again, this time with the
+new photographs propped up in front of her. Stuart's picture almost
+seemed to bring Phil before her eyes, and for a moment, instead of the
+familiar walls of her room, she saw the moonlighted desert, and smelled
+the orange-blossoms, and heard a strong young voice ringing out across
+the silence of the sandy cactus plains:
+
+          "Till the sun grows cold,
+           And the stars are old,
+           And the leaves of the Judgment
+             Book unfold."
+
+"Wouldn't it be strange," she thought, "if he were really the one
+written for me in the stars, as Betty said in the beginning, and that we
+should meet at Eugenia's wedding again, and that some day, a long time
+after, I should find that he is the prince? But it couldn't be Phil,"
+she said to herself after another glance. "He doesn't measuah up to Papa
+Jack's yardstick. Neithah does Malcolm now, for that mattah," she mused,
+with her chin in her hand. "Jack Ware might, or Rob, but they seem moah
+like brothahs than anything else, and would not fit my ideal of a prince
+at all."
+
+"'As the falcon's feathahs fit the falcon,'" she quoted, dreamily. "It
+would have to be some strangah that I've nevah yet seen, to do that. Or,
+maybe Mammy Easter's grandmothah was right when she read my fortune in
+the teacups. Maybe I'll be an old maid. I wish I knew. I _wish_ I knew!"
+
+She peered wistfully into the mirror, as if she half-expected to see a
+shadowy hand stretch out of its dim background, and lift the veil of the
+future to her eager gaze. "The thoughts of youth are long, long
+thoughts." Lloyd's flew back to Eugenia's romance for an instant, then
+drifted far beyond the two in the gondola, with the Venetian sunset
+turning all their little world to rose-colour and gold.
+
+[Illustration: "'NO MATTAH WHAT LIES AHEAD . . . I'LL NOT DISAPPOINT
+THEM'"]
+
+One is a mariner at sixteen, sailing toward an undiscovered country,
+with seaweed and driftwood on the crest of every wave beginning to
+whisper, "Land ahead." Toward the dim outline of that untried shore,
+Lloyd drifted now in her reverie.
+
+"I _wish_ I could know what the next sixteen yeahs hold for me," she
+whimpered. "I hope it will be something bettah than I could choose for
+myself. Mothah and Papa Jack expect so much of me."
+
+Then her glance fell on the unfinished rosary, and, picking up the
+string of tiny pearls, she looped it around her throat, and faced the
+girl in the mirror with resolute eyes.
+
+"No mattah what lies ahead," she said, bravely, "I'll not disappoint
+them. I'll keep the tryst!"
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+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
+Scissors," put into a single volume.
+
+
+          The Little Colonel's House Party.
+               (Trade Mark)
+
+Illustrated by Louis Meynell.
+
+
+          The Little Colonel's Holidays.
+               (Trade Mark)
+
+Illustrated by L. J. Bridgman.
+
+
+          The Little Colonel's Hero.
+               (Trade Mark)
+
+Illustrated by E. B. Barry.
+
+
+          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.
+
+New plates, handsomely illustrated, with eight full-page drawings in
+color.
+
+          "The books are as satisfactory to the small girls,
+          who find them adorable, as for the mothers and
+          librarians, who delight in their
+          influence."--_Christian Register._
+
+        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
+THEIR DAUGHTERS.
+
+
+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
+these four stories, which were originally included in four of the
+"Little Colonel" books.
+
+
+Joel: A Boy of Galilee. By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON. Illustrated by L. J.
+Bridgman.
+
+        New illustrated edition, uniform with the Little Colonel
+          Books, 1 vol., large 12mo, cloth decorative       $1.50
+
+A story of the time of Christ, which is one of the author's best-known
+books.
+
+
+=Asa Holmes=; OR, AT THE CROSS-ROADS. A sketch of Country Life and
+Country Humor. By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON. With a frontispiece by Ernest
+Fosbery.
+
+        Large 16mo, cloth, gilt top,                        $1.00
+
+          "'Asa Holmes; or, At the Cross-Roads' is the most
+          delightful, most sympathetic and wholesome book
+          that has been published in a long while."--_Boston
+          Times._
+
+
+=The Rival Campers=; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF HENRY BURNS. By RUEL PERLEY
+SMITH. Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,             $1.50
+
+Here is a book which will grip and enthuse every boy reader. It is the
+story of a party of typical American lads, courageous, alert, and
+athletic, who spend a summer camping on an island off the Maine coast.
+
+          "The best boys' book since 'Tom Sawyer.'"--_San
+          Francisco Examiner._
+
+
+=The Rival Campers Afloat=; OR, THE PRIZE YACHT VIKING. By RUEL PERLEY
+SMITH.
+
+        Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,            $1.50
+
+This book is a continuation of the adventures of "The Rival Campers" on
+their prize yacht _Viking_. An accidental collision results in a series
+of exciting adventures, culminating in a mysterious chase, the loss of
+their prize yacht, and its recapture by means of their old yacht,
+_Surprise_.
+
+
+=The Rival Campers Ashore.= By RUEL PERLEY SMITH, author of "The Rival
+Campers," "The Rival Campers Afloat," etc.
+
+        Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,            $1.50
+
+"The Rival Campers Ashore" deals with the adventures of the campers and
+their friends in and around the town of Benton. Mr. Smith introduces a
+new character,--a girl,--who shows them the way to an old mill, around
+which the mystery of the story revolves. The girl is an admirable
+acquisition, proving as daring and resourceful as the campers
+themselves.
+
+
+=The Young Section-Hand=; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF ALLAN WEST. By BURTON E.
+STEVENSON, author of "The Marathon Mystery," etc.
+
+  Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by L. J. Bridgman, $1.50
+
+Mr. Stevenson's hero is a manly lad of sixteen, who is given a chance as
+a section-hand on a big Western railroad, and whose experiences are as
+real as they are thrilling.
+
+
+=The Young Train Dispatcher.= By BURTON E. STEVENSON, author of "The
+Young Section-hand," etc.
+
+        Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,            $1.50
+
+The young hero has many chances to prove his manliness and courage in
+the exciting adventures which befall him in the discharge of his duty.
+
+
+=Captain Jack Lorimer.= By WINN STANDISH.
+
+  Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by A. B. Shute,   $1.50
+
+Jack is a fine example of the all-around American high-school boy. He
+has the sturdy qualities boys admire, and his fondness for clean, honest
+sport of all kinds will strike a chord of sympathy among athletic
+youths.
+
+
+=Jack Lorimer's Champions=; or, sports on Land and Lake. By WINN
+STANDISH, author of "Captain Jack Lorimer," etc.
+
+        Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,            $1.50
+
+All boys and girls who take an interest in school athletics will wish to
+read of the exploits of the Millvale High School students, under the
+leadership of Captain Jack Lorimer.
+
+Captain Jack's Champions play quite as good ball as do some of the teams
+on the large leagues, and they put all opponents to good hard work in
+other summer sports.
+
+Jack Lorimer and his friends stand out as the finest examples of
+all-round American high school boys and girls.
+
+
+=Beautiful Joe's Paradise=; OR, THE ISLAND OF BROTHERLY LOVE. A sequel
+to "Beautiful Joe." By MARSHALL SAUNDERS, author of "Beautiful Joe."
+
+        One vol., library 12mo, cloth, illustrated,            $1.50
+
+          "This book revives the spirit of 'Beautiful Joe'
+          capitally. It is fairly riotous with fun, and as a
+          whole is about as unusual as anything in the
+          animal book line that has seen the light. It is a
+          book for juveniles--old and young."--_Philadelphia
+          Item._
+
+
+='Tilda Jane.= By MARSHALL SAUNDERS.
+
+        One vol., 12mo, fully illustrated, cloth decorative,   $1.50
+
+          "It is one of those exquisitely simple and
+          truthful books that win and charm the reader, and
+          I did not put it down until I had finished
+          it--honest! And I am sure that every one, young or
+          old, who reads will be proud and happy to make the
+          acquaintance of the delicious waif.
+
+          "I cannot think of any better book for children
+          than this. I commend it unreservedly."--_Cyrus
+          Townsend Brady._
+
+
+=The Story of the Graveleys.= By MARSHALL SAUNDERS, author of "Beautiful
+Joe's Paradise," "'Tilda Jane," etc.
+
+  Library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by E. B. Barry,   $1.50
+
+Here we have the haps and mishaps, the trials and triumphs, of a
+delightful New England family, of whose devotion and sturdiness it will
+do the reader good to hear.
+
+
+=Born to the Blue.= By FLORENCE KIMBALL RUSSEL.
+
+        12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,                  $1.25
+
+The atmosphere of army life on the plains breathes on every page of this
+delightful tale. The boy is the son of a captain of U. S. cavalry
+stationed at a frontier post in the days when our regulars earned the
+gratitude of a nation.
+
+
+=In West Point Gray.= By FLORENCE KIMBALL RUSSEL.
+
+        12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,                  $1.25
+
+West Point forms the background for the second volume in this series,
+and gives us the adventures of Jack as a cadet. Here the training of his
+childhood days in the frontier army post stands him in good stead; and
+he quickly becomes the central figure of the West Point life.
+
+
+=The Sandman: His Farm Stories.= By WILLIAM J. HOPKINS. With fifty
+illustrations by Ada Clendenin Williamson.
+
+        Large 12mo, decorative cover,                         $1.50
+
+          "An amusing, original book, written for the
+          benefit of very small children. It should be one
+          of the most popular of the year's books for
+          reading to small children."--_Buffalo Express._
+
+
+=The Sandman: More Farm Stories.= By WILLIAM J. HOPKINS.
+
+        Large 12mo, decorative cover, fully illustrated,      $1.50
+
+Mr. Hopkins's first essay at bedtime stories met with such approval that
+this second book of "Sandman" tales was issued for scores of eager
+children. Life on the farm, and out-of-doors, is portrayed in his
+inimitable manner.
+
+
+=The Sandman: His Ship Stories.= By WILLIAM J. HOPKINS, author of "The
+Sandman: His Farm Stories," etc.
+
+        Large 12mo, decorative cover, fully illustrated,      $1.50
+
+          "Mothers and fathers and kind elder sisters who
+          put the little ones to bed, and rack their brains
+          for stories, will find this book a
+          treasure."--_Cleveland Leader._
+
+          "Children call for these stories over and over
+          again."--_Chicago Evening Post._
+
+
+=Pussy-Cat Town.= By MARION AMES TAGGART.
+
+   Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in
+     colors,                                                      $1.00
+
+"Pussy-Cat Town" is a most unusual delightful cat story. Ban-Ban, a pure
+Maltese who belonged to Rob, Kiku-san, Lois's beautiful snow-white pet,
+and their neighbors Bedelia the tortoise-shell, Madame Laura the widow,
+Wutz Butz the warrior, and wise old Tommy Traddles, were really and
+truly cats.
+
+
+=The Roses of Saint Elizabeth.= By JANE SCOTT WOODRUFF, author of "The
+Little Christmas Shoe."
+
+   Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in
+     colors by Adelaide Everhart,                                 $1.00
+
+This is a charming little story of a child whose father was caretaker of
+the great castle of the Wartburg, where Saint Elizabeth once had her
+home.
+
+
+=Gabriel and the Hour Book.= By EVALEEN STEIN.
+
+   Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in
+     colors by Adelaide Everhart,                                 $1.00
+
+Gabriel was a loving, patient, little French lad, who assisted the monks
+in the long ago days, when all the books were written and illuminated by
+hand in the monasteries.
+
+
+=The Enchanted Automobile.= Translated from the French by MARY J.
+SAFFORD.
+
+  Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in
+     colors by Edna M. Sawyer,                                    $1.00
+
+The enchanted automobile was sent by the fairy godmother of a lazy,
+discontented little prince and princess to take them to fairyland, where
+they might visit their story-book favorites.
+
+
+=The Red Feathers.= By THEODORE ROBERTS, author of "Brothers of Peril,"
+etc.
+
+          Cloth decorative, illustrated,   $1.50
+
+"The Red Feathers" tells of the remarkable adventures of an Indian boy
+who lived in the Stone Age, many years ago, when the world was young,
+and when fairies and magicians did wonderful things for their friends
+and enemies.
+
+
+=The Wreck of the Ocean Queen.= By James Otis, author of "Larry Hudson's
+Ambition," etc.
+
+          Cloth decorative, illustrated,       $1.50
+
+This story takes its readers on a sea voyage around the world; gives
+them a trip on a treasure ship; an exciting experience in a terrific
+gale; and finally a shipwreck, with a mutineering crew determined to
+take the treasure to complicate matters.
+
+But only the mutineers will come to serious harm, and after the reader
+has known the thrilling excitement of lack of food and water, of attacks
+by night and day, and of a hand-to-hand fight, he is rescued and brought
+safely home again,--to realize that it's only a story, but a stirring
+and realistic one.
+
+
+=Little White Indians.= By FANNIE E. OSTRANDER.
+
+          Cloth decorative, illustrated,    $1.25
+
+The "Little White Indians" were two families of children who "played
+Indian" all one long summer vacation. They built wigwams and made camps;
+they went hunting and fought fierce battles on the war-trail.
+
+A bright, interesting story which will appeal strongly to the
+"make-believe" instinct in children, and will give them a healthy,
+active interest in "the simple life."
+
+
+
+
+PHYLLIS' FIELD FRIENDS SERIES
+
+_By LENORE E. MULETS_
+
+Six vols., cloth decorative, illustrated by Sophie Schneider. Sold
+separately, or as a set.
+
+          Per volume,    $1.00
+          Per set,        6.00
+
+          =Insect Stories.=
+          =Stories of Little Animals.=
+          =Flower Stories.=
+          =Bird Stories.=
+          =Tree Stories.=
+          =Stories of Little Fishes.=
+
+In this series of six little Nature books, it is the author's intention
+so to present to the child reader the facts about each particular
+flower, insect, bird, or animal, in story form, as to make delightful
+reading. Classical legends, myths, poems, and songs are so introduced as
+to correlate fully with these lessons, to which the excellent
+illustrations are no little help.
+
+
+THE WOODRANGER TALES
+
+_By G. WALDO BROWNE_
+
+          =The Woodranger.=
+          =The Young Gunbearer.=
+          =The Hero of the Hills.=
+          =With Rogers' Rangers.=
+
+  Each 1 vol., large 12mo, cloth, decorative cover, illustrated,
+     per volume,                                                  $1.25
+     Four vols., boxed, per set,                                   5.00
+
+"The Woodranger Tales," like the "Pathfinder Tales" of J. Fenimore
+Cooper, combine historical information relating to early pioneer days in
+America with interesting adventures in the backwoods. Although the same
+characters are continued throughout the series, each book is complete in
+itself, and, while based strictly on historical facts, is an interesting
+and exciting tale of adventure.
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE COUSIN SERIES
+
+
+The most delightful and interesting accounts possible of child life in
+other lands, filled with quaint sayings, doings, and adventures.
+
+Each one vol., 12mo, decorative cover, cloth, with six or more full-page
+illustrations in color.
+
+          Price per volume,   $0.60
+
+_By MARY HAZELTON WADE (unless otherwise indicated)_
+
+          =Our Little African Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Alaskan Cousin=
+            By Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
+
+          =Our Little Arabian Cousin=
+            By Blanche McManus
+
+          =Our Little Armenian Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Brown Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Canadian Cousin=
+            By Elizabeth R. Macdonald
+
+          =Our Little Chinese Cousin=
+            By Isaac Taylor Headland
+
+          =Our Little Cuban Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Dutch Cousin=
+            By Blanche McManus
+
+          =Our Little English Cousin=
+            By Blanche McManus
+
+          =Our Little Eskimo Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little French Cousin=
+            By Blanche McManus
+
+          =Our Little German Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Hawaiian Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Hindu Cousin=
+            By Blanche McManus
+
+          =Our Little Indian Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Irish Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Italian Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Japanese Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Jewish Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Korean Cousin=
+            By H. Lee M. Pike
+
+          =Our Little Mexican Cousin=
+            By Edward C. Butler
+
+          =Our Little Norwegian Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Panama Cousin=
+            By H. Lee M. Pike
+
+          =Our Little Philippine Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Porto Rican Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Russian Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Scotch Cousin=
+            By Blanche McManus
+
+          =Our Little Siamese Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Spanish Cousin=
+            By Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
+
+          =Our Little Swedish Cousin=
+            By Claire M. Coburn
+
+          =Our Little Swiss Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Turkish Cousin=
+
+
+[Illustration: THE LITTLE COLONEL TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFFICE]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Frontispiece, "BOB" changed to "ROB" to match text. (EXCLAIMED ROB, IN)
+
+Page 50, "dreadfuly" changed to "dreadfully" (so dreadfully effusive)
+
+Page 176, "wth" changed to "with" (with the ruddy glow)
+
+Page 256, "amost" changed to "almost" (Lloyd almost gasped)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation, by 
+Annie Fellows Johnston
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION ***
+
+***** This file should be named 26215-8.txt or 26215-8.zip *****
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacatoin, by Annie Fellows Johnston.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation, by 
+Annie Fellows Johnston
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation
+
+Author: Annie Fellows Johnston
+
+Illustrator: Etheldred B. Barry
+
+Release Date: August 8, 2008 [EBook #26215]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 393px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="393" height="600" alt="Cover" title="Cover" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS<br />
+VACATION</h1>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class='bbox'>
+<div class='center'>Works of<br />
+ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON<br />
+&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+The Little Colonel Series<br />
+
+(<i>Trade Mark, Reg. U.S. Pat. Of.</i>)<br />
+Each one vol., large 12mo, cloth, illustrated<br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Books By Johnston">
+<tr><td align='left'>The Little Colonel Stories</td><td align='right'>$1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 3em;">(Containing in one volume the three stories, "The Little Colonel," "The Giant Scissors," and "Two Little Knights of Kentucky.")</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Little Colonel's House Party</td><td align='right'>1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Little Colonel's Holidays</td><td align='right'>1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Little Colonel's Hero</td><td align='right'>1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Little Colonel at Boarding-School</td><td align='right'>1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Little Colonel in Arizona</td><td align='right'>1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation</td><td align='right'>1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor</td><td align='right'>1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding</td><td align='right'>1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">The above 9 vols., <i>boxed</i></span></td><td align='right'>13.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><i>In Preparation</i>&mdash;A New Little Colonel Book</td><td align='right'>1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Little Colonel Good Times Book</td><td align='right'>1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />Illustrated Holiday Editions</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>Each one vol., small quarto, cloth, illustrated, and printed in colour</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Little Colonel</td><td align='right'>$1.25</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Giant Scissors</td><td align='right'>1.25</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Two Little Knights of Kentucky</td><td align='right'>1.25</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Big Brother</td><td align='right'>1.25</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />Cosy Corner Series</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>Each one vol., thin 12mo, cloth, illustrated</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Little Colonel</td><td align='right'>$.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Giant Scissors</td><td align='right'>.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Two Little Knights of Kentucky</td><td align='right'>.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Big Brother</td><td align='right'>.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Ole Mammy's Torment</td><td align='right'>.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Story of Dago</td><td align='right'>.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Cicely</td><td align='right'>.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Aunt 'Liza's Hero</td><td align='right'>.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Quilt that Jack Built</td><td align='right'>.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Flip's "Islands of Providence"</td><td align='right'>.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mildred's Inheritance</td><td align='right'>.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />Other Books</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Joel: A Boy of Galilee</td><td align='right'>$1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>In the Desert of Waiting</td><td align='right'>.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Three Weavers</td><td align='right'>.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Keeping Tryst</td><td align='right'>.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Legend of the Bleeding Heart</td><td align='right'>.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Asa Holmes</td><td align='right'>1.00</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Songs Ysame (Poems, with Albion Fellows Bacon)</td><td align='right'>1.00</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+L. C. PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />
+200 Summer Street &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;        Boston, Mass.<br />
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 324px;"><a name="front" id="front"></a>
+<img src="images/i001.jpg" width="324" height="500" alt="&quot;&#39;GEE WHIZ!&#39; EXCLAIMED ROB, IN A TEASING TONE, &#39;SAY THAT AGAIN, WON&#39;T YOU PLEASE?&#39;&quot;   (See page 163)" title="&quot;&#39;GEE WHIZ!&#39; EXCLAIMED ROB, IN A TEASING TONE, &#39;SAY THAT AGAIN, WON&#39;T YOU PLEASE?&#39;&quot;   (See page 163)" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;&#39;GEE WHIZ!&#39; EXCLAIMED <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'BOB'">ROB</ins>, IN A TEASING TONE, &#39;SAY THAT AGAIN, WON&#39;T YOU PLEASE?&#39;&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(<a href="#Page_163"><i>See&nbsp;page&nbsp;163</i></a>)</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 365px;">
+<img src="images/titlepage.jpg" width="365" height="600" alt="Title Page" title="Title Page" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+<div class='copyright'>
+<i>Copyright, 1905</i><br />
+By <span class="smcap">L. C. Page &amp; Company</span><br />
+(Incorporated)<br />
+&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+<i>All rights reserved</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Published October, 1905<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ninth Impression, June, 1908<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'><small>CHAPTER</small></td><td align='right'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>I.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Warwick Hall</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>II.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">"The Old Girls' Welcome to the New"</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>III.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Excursion</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">"Keep Tryst"</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>V.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Memory-Book and a Souvenir Spoon</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Christmas Carols</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Homeward Bound</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_138">138</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Picnic in the Snow</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IX.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Progressive Christmas Party</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>X.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Dungeon of Disappointment</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_198">198</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In the Attic</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Humdrum Days</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In the Footsteps of Amanthis</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_254">254</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIV.</td><td align='left'>"<span class="smcap">Cinderella</span>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_273">273</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Hard-Earned Pearl</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_292">292</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XVI.</td><td align='left'>"<span class="smcap">Sweet Sixteen</span>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_315">315</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="List of Illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>Page</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"'<span class="smcap">Gee whiz!' exclaimed Rob, in a teasing tone. 'Say that again, won't you please</span>?'" (<a href="#Page_163"><i>See page 163</i></a>)</td><td align='right'><a href="#front"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"<span class="smcap">Madam's conversation led far away from the crest and its lesson</span>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"<span class="smcap">Studying the face of the handsome young fellow with interest</span>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"'<span class="smcap">I tell you somebody was trying to sandbag me</span>'"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"<span class="smcap">One of the boys had dared him to carry it</span>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"'<span class="smcap">I nearly fainted when I happened to look up</span>'"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"<span class="smcap">She rode over to Rollington</span>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_299">299</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"'<span class="smcap">No mattah what lies ahead .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I'll not disappoint them</span>'"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_333">333</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>THE LITTLE COLONEL'S<br />
+CHRISTMAS VACATION</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>WARWICK HALL</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Warwick Hall</span> looked more like an old English
+castle than a modern boarding-school for girls.
+Gazing at its high towers and massive portal, one
+almost expected to see some velvet-clad page or
+lady-in-waiting come down the many flights of
+marble steps leading between stately terraces to the
+river. Even a knight with a gerfalcon on his wrist
+would not have seemed out of place, and if a slow-going
+barge had trailed by between the willow-fringed
+banks of the Potomac, it would have seemed
+more in keeping with the scene than the steamboats
+puffing past to Mount Vernon, with crowds of excursionists
+on deck.</p>
+
+<p>The gorgeous peacocks strutting along the terraces
+in the sun were partly responsible for this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+impression of medi&aelig;val grandeur. It was for that
+very purpose that Madam Chartley, the head of the
+school, kept the peacocks. That was one reason,
+also, that she proudly retained the coat of arms in
+the great stained glass window over the stairs,
+when circumstances obliged her to turn her ancestral
+home into a boarding-school. She thought a
+sense of medi&aelig;val grandeur was good for girls,
+especially young American girls, who are apt to
+be brought up without proper respect for age, either
+of individuals or institutions.</p>
+
+<p>In the dining-room, two long lines of portraits
+looked down from opposite walls. One was headed
+by a grim old earl, and the other by an equally grim
+old Pilgrim father of <i>Mayflower</i> fame. The two
+lines joined over the fireplace in the portraits of
+Madam Chartley's great-grandparents. It was for
+this great-grandmother, a daughter of the Pilgrims
+and a beautiful Washington belle, that Warwick
+Hall had been built; for she refused to give up
+her native land entirely, even for the son of an earl.</p>
+
+<p>At his death, when the title and the English estates
+were inherited by a distant cousin, the only
+male heir, this place on the Potomac was all that
+was left to her and her daughter. It had been
+closed for two generations. Now it had come down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+at last to Madam Chartley. Although it found her
+too poor to keep up such an establishment, it also
+found her too proud to let her heritage go to strangers,
+and practical enough to find some way by
+which she might retain it comfortably. That way
+was to turn it into a first-class boarding-school.
+She was a graduate of one of the best American
+colleges. The patrician standards inherited from
+her old world ancestors, combined with the energy
+and common sense of the new, made her an ideal
+woman to undertake the education of young girls,
+and Warwick Hall was an ideal place in which to
+carry out her wise theories.</p>
+
+<p>The Potomac was red with the glow of the sunset
+one September evening, when four girls, on their
+way back to Washington after a day's sightseeing,
+hurried to the upper deck of the steamboat. Some
+one had called out that Warwick Hall was in sight.
+In their haste to reach the railing, they scarcely
+noticed a tall girl in blue, already standing there,
+who obligingly moved along to make room for
+them.</p>
+
+<p>She scrutinized them closely, however, for she
+had seen them in the cabin a little while before, and
+their conversation had been so amusing that she
+longed to make their acquaintance. Her face bright<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>ened
+expectantly at their approach, and, as they
+leaned over the railing, she studied them with growing
+interest. The oldest one was near her own
+age, she decided after a careful survey, about seventeen;
+and they were all particular about the little
+things that count so much with fastidious schoolgirls.
+She approved of each one of them from
+their broad silk shoe-laces to the pink tips of their
+carefully manicured finger-nails.</p>
+
+<p>As the boat swung around a bend in the river,
+bringing the castle-like building into full view, a
+chorus of delighted exclamations broke out all along
+the deck. The four girls hung over the railing with
+eager faces.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, Lloyd, look!" cried one of them, excitedly.
+"Peacocks on the terraces! It's the finishing
+touch to the picture. We'll feel like Lady Clare
+walking down those marble steps. There surely
+must be a milk-white doe somewhere in the background."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Betty, Betty!" was the laughing answer.
+"You'll do nothing now but quote Tennyson and
+write poetry from mawning till night."</p>
+
+<p>"They're from Kentucky," thought the girl in
+blue. "I'm sure of it from the way they talk."</p>
+
+<p>As the boat glided slowly along, Lloyd threw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+her arm around the girl beside her, with an impulsive
+squeeze.</p>
+
+<p>"Kitty Walton," she exclaimed, "aren't you
+<i>glad</i> that the old Lloydsboro Seminary burned
+down? If it hadn't, we wouldn't be on ouah way
+now to that heavenly-looking boahding-school!"</p>
+
+<p>The sudden hug loosened Kitty's hat, held insecurely
+by one pin, and in another instant the strong
+breeze would have carried it over into the river
+had not the girl in blue caught it as it swept past
+her. She handed it back with a friendly smile,
+glad of an opportunity to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"You are new pupils for Warwick Hall, aren't
+you?" she asked, when Kitty had laughingly
+thanked her. "I hope so, for I'm one of the old
+girls. This will be my third year."</p>
+
+<p>"How perfectly lovely!" exclaimed Kitty.
+"We've been fairly crazy to meet some one from
+there. Do tell us if it is as fine as it looks, and
+as the catalogue says."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the very nicest place in the world," was
+the enthusiastic reply. "There are hardly any rules,
+and none of them are the kind that rub you up
+the wrong way. We don't have to wear uniforms,
+and we're not marched out to walk in wholesale
+lots like prisoners in a chain-gang."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's what I used to despise at the Seminary,"
+interrupted Lloyd. "I always felt like pah't of a
+circus parade, or an inmate of some asylum, out for
+an airing. Keeping in step and keeping in line
+with a lot of othahs made a punishment out of
+the walk, when it would have been such a pleasuah
+if we could have skipped along as we pleased. I
+felt resentful from the moment the gong rang for
+us to stah't. It had such a bossy, tyrannical sawt of
+sound."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll not find it that way at Warwick Hall,"
+was the emphatic answer. "There are bells for
+rising and chapel and meals, but the signal for exercise
+is a hunter's horn, blown on the upper terrace.
+There's something so breezy and out-of-doors
+in the sound that it is almost as irresistible a call
+as the Pied Piper of Hamelin's. You ought to see
+the doors fly open along the corridors, and the girls
+pour out when that horn blows. We can go in
+twos or threes or squads, any way we please, and in
+any direction, so long as we keep inside the grounds.
+There's an orchard to stroll through, and a wooded
+hillside, and a big meadow. On bad days there is
+over half a mile of gravel road that runs through
+the grounds to the trolley station, or we can take
+our exercise going round and round the garden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+walks. The garden is over there at the left of the
+Hall," she explained, waving her hand toward it.
+"Do you see that pergola stretching along the
+highest terrace? That is where the garden begins,
+and the ivy running over it was started from a slip
+that Madam Chartley brought from Sir Walter
+Scott's home at Abbotsford.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the stateliest old garden you ever saw,
+and the pride of the school. There's a sun-dial in
+it, and hollyhocks from Ann Hathaway's cottage,
+and rhododendrons from Killarney. There's all
+the flowers mentioned in the old songs. Madam
+has brought slips and roots and seeds from all sorts
+of places, so that nearly every plant is connected
+with some noted place or person. I simply love
+it. In warm weather I get up early in the morning,
+and study my Latin out in the honeysuckle arbour.
+Latin is my hardest study, but it doesn't seem half
+so hard out there among the bees and hummingbirds,
+where it's all so sweet and still."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, will they let you do things like that?"
+came the same amazed question from all four at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>"You wait and see," was the encouraging reply.
+"That isn't the beginning."</p>
+
+<p>The four exchanged ecstatic glances.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we haven't introduced ourselves," exclaimed
+Kitty, bethinking herself of formalities.
+"I am Katherine Walton, and this is my big sister,
+Allison. That is Lloyd Sherman and Elizabeth
+Lewis. They're almost as good as sisters, for they
+live together, and Lloyd's mother is Betty's godmother.
+And we're all from the same place, Lloydsboro
+Valley, Kentucky."</p>
+
+<p>"And I am Juliet Lynn from Wisconsin. That
+is, I lived there till papa had to come to Washington.
+He's a Congressman now. I was sure that
+you were from Kentucky, and I've been hoping that
+you were new girls for the Hall ever since I heard
+you talking about some house-party where you all
+did such funny things."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, that was one we had this summer at
+The Beeches," began Kitty, glibly, "when we all
+took turns&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But, with a big-sister frown of warning, Allison
+said, in a low aside: "For pity's sake, don't stop
+to tell all that long rigmarole over <i>now</i>. We want
+to hear some more about the school."</p>
+
+<p>"What is Madam Chartley herself like?" she
+asked, turning to Juliet. "She must be something
+of an old dragon if she can keep forty girls straight
+with so few rules. We've pictured her as a big<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+British matron, dignified and imposing,&mdash;a sort
+of lioness rampant, you know, with a stern air, as
+if she was about to say in a deep voice, 'England&mdash;expects&mdash;every&mdash;man&mdash;to&mdash;do&mdash;his&mdash;duty,&mdash;sir!'"</p>
+
+<p>"But she isn't that way at all!" cried Juliet,
+almost indignantly. "She's just as American as
+you are, for she was born and educated in this
+country. She has the gentlest voice and sweetest
+manner. Her hair is snow-white, and there's something
+awfully aristocratic about her, for she is&mdash;sort
+of&mdash;well, I hardly know how to express it,
+but just what you'd expect the 'daughter of a hundred
+earls' to be, you know. But you won't feel
+one bit in awe of her. The girls simply adore
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"But isn't she something to be afraid of when
+you break the rules?" queried Kitty, anxiously.
+"When you have midnight feasts and pillow-case
+prowls and all that?"</p>
+
+<p>Juliet shook her head. "We don't do those
+things. I tell you it isn't like any other boarding-school
+you ever heard of."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I know I sha'n't like it," declared Kitty.
+"All my life I've looked forward to going off to
+school just for the jolly good times I'd have. You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+see we were only day-pupils at Lloydsboro Seminary,
+and there wasn't a chance for that kind of
+fun, except the one term when Lloyd and Betty
+boarded in the school while their family was away
+from home. We managed to stir up a little excitement
+then, and I'd hoped for all sorts of thrilling
+adventures here. I'm horribly disappointed that
+it's so tame and goody-goody."</p>
+
+<p>Juliet's face coloured resentfully. "It isn't tame
+at all!" she declared. "It's only that we are always
+so busy doing pleasant things and going to interesting
+places that nobody cares for stolen spreads.
+Some girls don't like the place just at first, because
+it's so different from what they've been used to.
+But by the end of the term they're so in love with
+Warwick Hall and everything about it that nothing
+could induce them to change schools. There's
+only one girl I ever heard of who didn't like it."</p>
+
+<p>"And why didn't she?" asked Lloyd and Allison,
+in the same breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she came from some ranch away out
+West, Wyoming or Nevada or some of those places,
+where she'd been as free and easy as a squaw, and
+she couldn't stand so much civilization. You see,
+from the minute you enter Warwick Hall you feel
+somehow that you're a guest of Madam Chartley's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+instead of a pupil. She uses the old family silver
+and the china has her great-grandfather's crest on
+it, and she brought over a London butler who grew
+up in the family service. She keeps him for the
+same reason that she keeps the peacocks, I suppose.
+They give such a grand air to the place.</p>
+
+<p>"Lida Wilsy&mdash;that's the girl from the ranch&mdash;couldn't
+live up to so much stateliness, especially
+of the stony-eyed butler. Hawkins was too much
+for her. She told her roommate that she thought
+it was foolish to have so many forks and spoons
+at each place. One was enough for anybody to
+get through a dinner with. Life was too short for
+so much fuss and feathers. She never could learn
+which to use first, and she would get her silverware
+so hopelessly mixed up that by the time dessert was
+brought on maybe she would have nothing to eat
+it with but an oyster fork. I've seen her ready to
+go under the table from embarrassment. Not that
+she cared so much what the girls thought. She
+joked about it to them. Her father owned the biggest
+part of a silver mine, and they could have had
+Tiffany's whole stock of forks if they'd wanted
+them. It was Hawkins she was afraid of. Of
+course he was too well trained to show what he
+thought of her mistakes, but you couldn't help feel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>ing
+his high and mighty inward scorn of such ignorance.
+It fairly oozed from his finger-tips."</p>
+
+<p>Kitty's black eyes sparkled, anticipating times
+ahead when she would certainly make it lively for
+Hawkins.</p>
+
+<p>"There's grandfathah!" cried Lloyd, catching
+sight of a white-haired old gentleman who had
+just come up on deck. "I want to tell him about
+the garden before we lose sight of it."</p>
+
+<p>Juliet's glance followed her with interest as she
+darted away, for it was a distinguished-looking
+old gentleman who lifted his hat with elaborate
+courtesy at her approach. He was dressed in white
+duck, and the right coat-sleeve hung empty.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Colonel Lloyd," explained Allison, noting
+Juliet's glance of curiosity. "He's bringing us all
+to school, for it wasn't convenient for mother or
+Mrs. Sherman to come."</p>
+
+<p>"They don't look alike," remarked Juliet, surveying
+them with a puzzled expression. "But
+what is it about them&mdash;there is such a startling
+resemblance?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody notices it," said Kitty. "When
+Lloyd was smaller, they used to call her the Little
+Colonel all the time, but especially when she was
+in a temper. They call her Princess now."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Princess," echoed Juliet. "That name suits
+her exactly."</p>
+
+<p>She cast another admiring glance at the slender,
+fair-haired girl, standing with her hand in her
+grandfather's arm, pointing out the beauties of the
+place they were slowly passing.</p>
+
+<p>"And she will suit Warwick Hall," she added,
+with a sudden burst of schoolgirl enthusiasm, "just
+as the peacocks suit it, and the coat of arms, and
+Madam Chartley herself. She's got that same
+'daughter-of-a-hundred-earls' air about her that
+Madam has."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it all sounds so delightful and fascinating,"
+sighed Betty, pushing back the brown hair that blew
+in little curls about her face, and smiling at the
+slowly disappearing Hall with a happy light in her
+brown eyes. "I can hardly wait for to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>The boat had glided on until only the high,
+square tower was left in view, with the red sunset
+glow upon it.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'The splendour falls on castle walls<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And snowy summits old in story'"&mdash;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>Betty sang half under her breath, with a farewell
+flutter of her handkerchief, as the boat rounded a
+bend in the river which hid the tower from sight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+Already she was in love with the place, and already,
+as Lloyd had predicted, she was fitting some line
+of Tennyson to it at every turn.</div>
+
+<p>Acquaintance progressed rapidly in the next half-hour.
+Long before they reached Washington, Juliet
+knew, not only that she had guessed Allison's
+age correctly at seventeen, that Betty was sixteen,
+and Lloyd and Kitty a year younger, but that each
+girl in her own way would make a desirable friend.
+Incidentally she learned that Allison and Kitty had
+lived in the Philippines, and were daughters of the
+brave General Walton who had lost his life there
+in his country's service. When they parted at the
+boat-landing, it was with delightful anticipations
+of the next day, and with each one eager to renew
+an acquaintance so pleasantly begun.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>If Warwick Hall suggested ancient stateliness on
+the outside, it was informal and frivolous enough
+within, when forty girls were taking possession
+of their rooms on the opening day of the school
+year. In and out like a flock of twittering sparrows,
+the old pupils darted from one room to another,
+exchanging calls and greetings, laughing over old
+jokes and reminiscences, and settling down into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+familiar corners with an ease that the new girls
+envied.</p>
+
+<p>Juliet Lynn, quickly establishing herself in her
+last year's quarters, started down the corridor to
+announce at every door that she was the first one
+unpacked and settled. All the other rooms were
+in hopeless confusion, beds, chairs, and floors being
+piled with the contents of open trunks.</p>
+
+<p>At the first door where she paused, a shower of
+shoes and slippers was the only answer to her triumphant
+announcement. At the next a laughing
+cry of "Help! help!" greeted her. At the third
+she was informed that there was standing-room
+only.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you believe it, Juliet!" called a gay voice
+from the chiffonier, where an earlier visitor was
+perched. "There's always room at the top. I've
+discovered where Min keeps her butter-scotch.
+Come in and have some."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm going the rounds to see what everybody
+is about," she answered. "You're all in such
+a mess now, I'd rather look in later. I'm one
+of the early settlers, and have been in order for
+ages."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the odds so long as you're happy?"
+called the girl on the chiffonier. "Besides, it's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+no better next door. They'll invite you to make
+yourself at home under the bed, as they did me.
+Come on back and tell us your summer's experiences.
+Min has had one dizzy whirl of adventures
+after another."</p>
+
+<p>But Juliet kept on down the hall. She wanted to
+find what rooms had been assigned to the girls
+whom she had met the day before on the boat, and
+to hear their first impressions of Warwick Hall.
+Presently, through a half-open door, she caught
+sight of Betty, sitting at an open window overlooking
+the river. With chin in hand and elbows
+resting on the sill, she was gazing dreamily out at
+the willow-fringed banks, so absorbed in her
+thoughts that she did not hear Juliet's first knock.
+But at the second she started up and called cordially:
+"Oh, I'm so glad to see you! Come
+in!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you're all unpacked and put away, too!"
+exclaimed Juliet, in surprise, looking around the
+orderly room. "I thought that I was the only one,
+but I see you've even hung your pictures."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we don't know any of the other girls yet,
+so we didn't lose any time running back and forth
+to their rooms, as everybody else is doing. We've
+been through ever so long. Lloyd is out exploring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+the grounds with Allison, but I was too tired after
+all the sightseeing we have done. I'd be glad not
+to stir out of my room for a week."</p>
+
+<p>She pushed a rocking-chair hospitably toward
+her guest, and leaned back in the opposite one.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to sit down," said Juliet. "I'm
+just exploring. I think it's so much fun to poke
+around the first day and see how everybody is fixed.
+You don't mind, do you, if I walk around and look
+at your pictures?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed!" answered Betty, cordially.
+"Help yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she
+sat up straight in her chair, and adjusted the side-combs
+which were slipping out of her curly hair.
+It was a pleasing reflection that the mirror showed
+her, of a slim girl in a linen shirt-waist and a dark
+brown skirt just reaching to her ankles. But it held
+her gaze only long enough for her to see that her
+belt was properly pulled down and her stock all
+that could be desired. The friendly brown eyes and
+the trusting little mouth never needed readjustment.
+They always met the world with a smile, and thus
+far the world had always smiled back at them.</p>
+
+<p>"Last year," said Juliet, as she wandered around,
+"the girl who had this room simply plastered the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+walls with posters. It was so sporty-looking. She
+had hunting scenes between these windows, and
+there was a frieze of hounds and a yard of puppies
+where you have that panel of photographs. Oh,
+what perfectly beautiful places!" she cried, moving
+nearer. "Do tell me about them. Is that where
+you live?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, this is our Lloydsboro Valley corner&mdash;the
+Happy Valley we call it," answered Betty, crossing
+the room to point out the various places: "Locust,"
+her home and Lloyd's, a stately white-pillared
+mansion at the end of a long locust avenue; "The
+Beeches," where the Waltons lived; the vine-covered
+stone church; the old mill; the post-office, and
+a row of snap shots showing Lloyd and her
+mounted on their ponies, Tarbaby and Lad.</p>
+
+<p>"What good times you must have there!" sighed
+Juliet, presently.</p>
+
+<p>Betty opened a drawer in the writing-desk and
+took out six little books, bound in white kid, her
+initials stamped in gold on each cover.</p>
+
+<p>"Just see how many!" she exclaimed. "I
+started to keep a record of all my good times when
+I went to Lloyd's first house-party. When godmother
+gave me this volume, number one, I thought
+it would take a lifetime to fill it, but so many lovely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+things happened that summer that it was full in
+a little while. Then I went abroad in the fall, and
+that trip filled a volume. Now I am beginning the
+seventh."</p>
+
+<p>Juliet stared at the pile of white books in amazement.
+"What a lot of work!" she cried. "Doesn't
+it take every bit of pleasure out of your good times,
+thinking that you'll have to write all about it afterward?
+I tried to keep a diary once, but it looked
+more like the report of a weather bureau than anything
+else, and my small brother got hold of it and
+mortified me nearly to death one night when we
+had company, by quoting something from it. It
+sounded dreadfully sentimental, although it hadn't
+seemed so when I wrote it. That's the trouble in
+keeping a journal, don't you think so? You'll often
+put down something that seems important at the
+time, but that sounds silly afterward."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Betty, hesitatingly. "I always enjoy
+going back to read the first volumes. It's interesting
+to see how one changes from year to year in
+opinions as well as handwriting. See how little
+and cramped the letters are in this first volume. It's
+good exercise, and, as I expect to write a book some
+day, every bit of practice helps."</p>
+
+<p>Betty made the announcement as simply as if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+she had said she intended to darn a stocking some
+day, and Juliet looked at her in open-mouthed wonder.
+She had never encountered a girl of that species
+before, and more than ever she felt that her
+friendship would be worth cultivating. When she
+finally took her departure, there was no time for
+any further tour of inspection, but she ran into
+several rooms on the way back to her own to say,
+hastily: "Girls, do all you can to get that Kentucky
+quartette into our sorority! I'll tell you about
+them later. We must give them a grand rush to-morrow
+night at the old girls' welcome to the new.
+I hope I'll get to take Elizabeth Lewis. My <i>dears</i>,
+she's a perfect genius! She's written poems and
+plays that have been published, and she's at work
+on a <i>book!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>As Juliet closed the door behind her, Betty took
+up the new volume in the series of little white records,
+and began turning the blank pages. Like the
+new school year, it lay spread out before her, white
+and fair, hers to write therein as she chose.</p>
+
+<p>"And I'll try my hardest to make it the best and
+happiest record of them all," she said to herself.
+As she dipped her pen into the ink, there was a
+knock at the door, and a white-capped maid looked
+in.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Madam Chartley would be pleased to see you
+at once in the pink room, miss," she announced,
+and Betty, much surprised, rose to answer the unexpected
+summons.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>"THE OLD GIRLS' WELCOME TO THE NEW"</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">As</span> Betty opened the door, she ran into Kitty
+Walton, who at sight of her struck an attitude
+on the threshold, crossing her hands on her breast,
+and rolling her eyes upward until only the whites
+were visible.</p>
+
+<p>"What new pose is this, you goose?" laughed
+Betty, shaking her gently by one shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't laugh," was the solemn answer. "This
+is pious resignation to fate." Then her hands
+dropped and she turned to Betty tragically.</p>
+
+<p>"I've just come from an interview with Madam
+Chartley," she explained. "And what do you think?
+That blessed old soul expects me to live up to the
+motto on her teacups! But how can I give Hawkins
+his just due <i>if</i> I do? I had the loveliest things
+planned for his tormenting, but I'd be ashamed to
+look her in the face if she ever found me out after
+this interview.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Betty, I don't want to renounce the world
+and the flesh and all the other bad things this early
+in the term, but I'm afraid that I've already done it.
+She's laid a spell on all of us."</p>
+
+<p>"Has she sent for Lloyd and Allison, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Allison was the first victim. She came
+back in a regular dare-to-be-a-Daniel mood, and
+announced that she intended to start in, heart and
+soul, for the studio honours this year. Then Lloyd
+had her turn, and she came back looking like Joan
+of Arc when she'd been listening to the voices. I
+vowed she shouldn't have that effect on me, but
+here I am, perfectly docile as you see, fangs drawn
+and claws cut. I tremble for the effect on you,
+sweet innocent. Your wings will sprout before you
+get back."</p>
+
+<p>Betty laughed and hurried past her down the
+stairs. Evidently it was Madam's custom to make
+the acquaintance of her new girls in this way, one
+at a time. Only fifteen freshmen were admitted
+each year, so it was possible for her to take a personal
+interest in every pupil.</p>
+
+<p>Betty's heart fluttered expectantly as she paused
+an instant in the door of the pink room. Madam
+Chartley had looked very imposing and dignified
+as she presided at the lunch-table that noon, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+the stately Hawkins behind her chair and the stately
+portraits looking down from the walls.</p>
+
+<p>She looked now as if she might be the original
+of one of these old portraits herself, as she sat there
+in the high-backed chair, with the griffins carved
+on its teakwood frame. Her gray gown trailed
+around her in graceful folds. There was a soft
+fall of lace at wrists and throat, and her white hair
+had a sheen like silver against the pink brocade with
+which the chair was upholstered.</p>
+
+<p>With a smile which seemed to take Betty straight
+into her confidence, she held out her hand and drew
+her to a seat beside her. An old-fashioned silver
+tea-service stood on a table at her elbow, and when
+the maid had brought hot water, she busied herself
+in filling a cup for Betty.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" she said, as she passed it to her.
+"There's nothing like a cozy chat over a cup of
+tea for warming acquaintances into friends."</p>
+
+<p>Betty wondered, as she took a proffered slice of
+lemon, if Madam began all her interviews in this
+way, and if she was to hear the same little sermon
+about the crest on the ancestral teacups that Kitty
+had heard. It certainly was an interesting crest.
+She lifted the fragile bit of china for a closer survey.
+A mailed arm, rising out of a heart, clasped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+a spear in its hand, and under it ran the motto, "I
+keep tryst."</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 283px;">
+<img src="images/i002.jpg" width="283" height="500" alt="&quot;MADAM&#39;S CONVERSATION LED FAR AWAY FROM THE CREST AND ITS LESSON&quot;" title="&quot;MADAM&#39;S CONVERSATION LED FAR AWAY FROM THE CREST AND ITS LESSON&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;MADAM&#39;S CONVERSATION LED FAR AWAY FROM THE CREST AND ITS LESSON&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But Madam's conversation led far away from
+the crest and its lesson. At first it was about a
+quaint old English inn, where is served delicious
+toasted scones with five o'clock tea. When she
+mentioned that, it was as if they had discovered
+a mutual friend, for Betty cried out joyfully that
+she had been there, and had spent a long rainy
+afternoon in one of its rooms, where Scott had written
+many chapters of "Kenilworth." Betty remembered
+afterward that not a word was said about
+school and its obligations. It was of the Old
+Curiosity Shop they spoke, and the House of
+Seven Gables. Madam promised to show her the
+autographs of Dickens and Hawthorne, which she
+had in her collection, and a pen which had once
+belonged to George Eliot.</p>
+
+<p>Then Betty found that Madam had known Miss
+Alcott, and, before she realized what she was doing,
+she had thrown herself down impulsively on the
+stool at her feet, and, with both hands clasping the
+griffin's head on the arm of the high-backed chair,
+was asking a dozen eager questions about "Little
+Women" and the author who had been her first
+inspiration to write.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nearly an hour later, when she went back to her
+room, it was with something singing in her heart
+that made her very solemn and very happy. It
+was the immortal music of the Choir Invisible.
+She had been in the unseen company of earth's
+best and noblest, and felt in her soul that some day
+she, too, would have a right to be counted in that
+chorus, having done something really great and
+worth while.</p>
+
+<p>That evening after dinner Kitty bounced into
+the room where Allison sat talking with Lloyd and
+Betty during recreation hour.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow night there's to be the Old Girls'
+Welcome to the New!" she cried. "Come on in,
+Juliet, and tell them about it."</p>
+
+<p>Juliet thrust her head through the half-open door.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't time to stop," she answered, "but I'll
+tell this much. It's the first of the great social
+functions. Everybody wears her party clothes and
+a sweet smile. It's the first lesson of the year in
+How to attain Ease under New and Exacting Conditions.
+No matter how the seniors snub you later
+on, in order to teach you your proper place, you'll
+all be birds of a feather that one time, and flock
+together as peaceably as pet hens.</p>
+
+<p>"Each new girl has an escort appointed by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+entertaining committee, who sends her flowers and
+calls for her and sees that her programme is filled.
+So there are never any wallflowers the first night.
+No, Allison, it isn't a dance. The programmes are
+for progressive conversation. Somewhere in the
+background there's a piano playing waltzes and two-steps,
+and so forth, but you talk out the numbers
+instead of dancing them. Changing partners so
+often keeps you from getting bored, and strangers
+can tell who is talking to them, for there are the
+names on their programmes. You can refer to
+that when anybody comes up to claim you. I'm
+to take Lloyd, and Sybil Green is to take Kitty.
+I haven't found out the other assignments yet. I'll
+let you know as soon as I do. Continued in our
+next."</p>
+
+<p>With an airy wave of the hand she withdrew,
+leaving them to an animated discussion of what
+to wear.</p>
+
+<p>"You must remember that this isn't the only
+time you're to appear in public, Katherine Walton,"
+said Allison, severely, when Kitty proposed her best
+array. "There's to be a reception at the White
+House next week, and Friday night we're to go in
+to Washington to see Jefferson in 'Rip Van
+Winkle,' and there's to be a studio tea soon, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+a recital, and all sorts of things. I saw the bulletin
+of the term's entertainments in the hall this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>We</i>'ll never be seen at those things," insisted
+Kitty.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll scarcely be a drop in the bucket. But
+to-morrow night, isn't the whole affair for us?
+We'll be the whole show. We'll be <i>it</i>, Allison, and
+'it's my night to howl.' I intend to wear my rose-pink
+mull and a rosebud in my raving tresses, and
+carry the gorgeous spangled fan that the dear old
+admiral gave me in Manila. So there!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then don't come near me," said Allison, with
+a warning shake of her head, "for I am going to
+wear my cerise cr&ecirc;pe de chine. It's lovely by itself,
+but by the side of anything the shade of your pink
+mull it's the most hideous, sickly colour you ever
+saw. I <i>wish</i> you'd wear that pale green dress,
+Kitty. You look sweet in that, and it goes so well
+with mine."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear sister," laughed Kitty, "I don't
+expect to spend any time getting acquainted with
+<i>you</i>. I'll probably not be near you the whole evening.
+It's not expected that, just because we are
+from Kentucky, we have to pose as those two
+devoted creatures on the State seal,&mdash;stand around<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+with our hands clasped, exclaiming 'United we
+stand, divided we fall!' to every one that comes
+up."</p>
+
+<p>"Nevah mind, Allison," said Lloyd, laughing at
+Kitty's dramatic gestures and her sister's worried
+expression. "I'll play 'State seal' with you. I
+have a pale green almost the shade of Kitty's, and
+I'll wear the coral clasps and chains that were Papa
+Jack's mothah's. He gave them to me just before
+I left home. I'll show them to you."</p>
+
+<p>She began to rummage through her trunk. Betty
+sat looking at the ceiling, trying to decide the momentous
+question of dress for herself. Finally she
+announced: "I'll just wear white, then I'll harmonize
+with everybody, and can run up to the first
+one of you I happen to see when I need a spark
+of courage. I know I'll be terribly embarrassed.
+It makes me cold right now to think of meeting
+so many strangers."</p>
+
+<p>But Betty's courage needed no reinforcing next
+evening, when Maria Overlin, one of the seniors,
+took her in charge. The reception took place in
+what had been the ballroom, in the days when Warwick
+Hall was noted for its brilliant entertainments.
+Even its first hostess could not have received her
+distinguished guests with courtlier grace than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+Madam Chartley received her pupils, when, to the
+music of a stately minuet, they filed past her down
+the long line of teachers.</p>
+
+<p>For once, each of the new girls, no matter how
+timid or inexperienced in social ways, tasted the
+sweets of popularity, and the four whom Juliet
+Lynn had dubbed the Kentucky quartette were overwhelmed
+with attentions.</p>
+
+<p>Juliet, who had hoped to escort Betty, was glad
+that Lloyd had fallen to her lot when she saw what
+an admiring little court flocked around her wherever
+she turned. In the pale green dress, with its
+clasps of pink coral carved in the shape of tiny
+butterflies, she looked more princess-like than ever.
+She wore a bracelet of the coral butterflies also, and
+a slender circlet of them about her throat. They
+gave a soft pink flush to her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had she passed the receiving line than
+she was surrounded by a group of white-gowned
+girls clamouring for an introduction and a place
+on her programme.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose initials are these?" she whispered to
+Juliet presently when the card was all filled and
+there were still several girls asking to be allowed
+to write their names on it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't I give Miss Bartlett this line where
+there's nothing but G. M. scrawled on it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, no!" exclaimed Juliet. "That's for
+Gabrielle Melville. It would never do for you two
+to miss each other to-night. I put them down for
+her, as she's to play later in the evening on the
+violin, you know, and I knew she'd never get here
+in time to do it herself. She always has such frantic
+times dressing. Just struggles into her things,
+never can find half her clothes, and what she does
+manage to fall into catches and rips in the struggle.
+Her hat is always over one ear, and her belts never
+make connection in the back, but she's so adorable
+that nobody minds her wild toilets. They laugh
+and say, 'Oh, it's just Gay.' That's her nickname,
+you know. Here's Emily Chapman coming to claim
+you. Emily, you can tell Lloyd some things about
+Gay, can't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I rather think so," laughed Emily. "We
+roomed together last year, and I got her again
+this term. It took a fight, though, for she's the
+most popular girl in school."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she pretty?" asked Lloyd.</p>
+
+<p>"We think so, don't we, Juliet? If she had any
+enemies, they might say that she has red hair and
+a pug nose. But that would be exaggerating. Her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+hair is that beautiful bronzy auburn that crinkles
+around her face and blows in her eyes till she always
+seems to be bringing a breeze with her."</p>
+
+<p>"And her nose isn't pug exactly," chimed in
+Juliet. "There's just a darling, saucy little tip to
+it, that seems to suit her. She wouldn't be half as
+pretty with the approved Gibson girl kind, no matter
+how perfect it was."</p>
+
+<p>"And her complexion is so lovely," Emily resumed,
+enthusiastically. "And her eyes are a jolly,
+laughing kind of brown, with an amber sparkle in
+them, except when she gets into one of her intense,
+serious moods. Then they are almost black, they're
+so deep and velvety. She's never twice in the same
+mood. Oh! There she comes now."</p>
+
+<p>A side door opened, and a slim little thing all
+in white, with a violin under her arm and a distracted
+pucker on her face, hurried up to the piano.
+Nervously feeling her belt to make sure that she
+was presentable before turning her back on the
+audience, she whispered to the girl who was to play
+her accompaniments, and began tuning the violin.
+Then, tucking it under her chin as if she loved it,
+she listened an instant to the piano prelude, and
+drew her bow softly across the strings.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" whispered Emily. "It's that Mexi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>can
+swallow song. She always has such a rapt
+expression on her face when she plays that. She
+makes me think of St. Cecilia. She's so earnest
+in all she does. If it's no more than making fudge,
+she throws her whole soul into it, just that way.
+She's as intense as if the fate of a nation depended
+on whatever she happens to be doing."</p>
+
+<p>As Lloyd joined loudly in the applause which
+followed the performance, another girl came up to
+claim her attention. It was Myra Carr, the senior
+who had taken Allison under her wing.</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't Gay play splendidly?" she exclaimed,
+not knowing that she had been the previous topic
+of conversation. "We think she's a genius. She
+improvises little things sometimes in the twilight
+that are so sweet and sad they make you cry. Then
+she's unconventional enough to be a genius. She's
+always shocking people without meaning to, and so
+careless, she'd lose her head if nature hadn't attended
+to the fastenings.</p>
+
+<p>"We all love her dearly, but we vowed the last
+time we went sightseeing that she should never go
+with us again unless she let us tie her up in a bag,
+so that nothing could drop out by the way. First
+she lost her hat. It blew off the trolley-car, one
+of those 'seeing Washington' affairs, you know.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+She had to go bareheaded all the rest of the way.
+Then she lost her pocketbook, and such a time as
+we had hunting that. The time before, she lost a
+locket that had been a family heirloom, and we
+missed our train and got caught in a shower looking
+for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Where does she live?" asked Lloyd, watching
+the bright face that was making its way toward
+them across the crowded room.</p>
+
+<p>"At Fort Sam Houston, down in San Antonio.
+Her father is an army officer at that post."</p>
+
+<p>There was no time for further discussion, for
+Gabrielle was coming toward her with outstretched
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Juliet's Princess, isn't it?" she asked,
+with a smile that captivated Lloyd at once, flashing
+over the whitest of little teeth. "You're getting all
+sorts of titles to-night. I heard a girl speak of you
+as a mermaid in that pale sea-green gown and corals,
+but I've come over here on purpose to call you
+the 'Little Colonel.' You don't know how much
+good it does me to hear a military title once more.
+Out at the fort it's all majors and captains and such
+things."</p>
+
+<p>Then, dropping her grown-up society manner,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+she suddenly giggled, turning to include Emily in
+the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, girls, I had the worst time getting dressed
+this evening that I ever had in my life. When I
+unpacked my trunk yesterday, everything was so
+wrinkled that there was only one dress I could wear
+without having it pressed; this white one. So I
+laid it out, but, when I went to put it on to-night,
+I found that mamma had made a mistake in packing,
+and put in Lucy's skirt instead. Lucy is my
+older sister," she explained to Lloyd. "We each
+had a dotted Swiss this summer, made exactly alike,
+but Lucy is so much taller than I that her skirts
+trail on me. Just look how imposing!"</p>
+
+<p>She swept across the floor and back to show the
+effect of her trail.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course there was nothing to do at that late
+hour but pin it up in front and go ahead. I'm
+afraid every minute that I'll trip and fall all over
+myself, but I do feel so dignified when I feel my
+train sweeping along behind me. The pins keep
+falling out all around the belt, and I can't help
+stepping on the hem in front. I love trains," she
+added, switching hers forward with a grand air
+that was so childlike in its enjoyment that Lloyd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+felt impelled to hug her. "It gives you such a
+dressed-up, peacocky feeling."</p>
+
+<p>Then she looked up in her most soulful, intense
+way, as if she were asking for important information.
+"Do you know whether it's true or not?
+<i>Does</i> a peacock stop strutting if it happens to see
+its feet? My old nurse told me that, and said that
+it shows that pride always goes before a fall. I
+never was where they kept peacocks before I came
+to Warwick Hall, and I've spent hours watching
+Madam's to see if it is true. But they are always
+so busy strutting, I've never been able to catch
+them looking at their feet."</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at her own feet as she spoke, then
+gasped and, covering her face with her hands, sank
+limply into a chair in the corner behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" cried Juliet, alarmed by
+the sudden change.</p>
+
+<p>"Look! Oh, just <i>look!</i>" was the hysterical answer,
+as she thrust out both feet, and sat pointing
+at them tragically, with fingers and thumbs of both
+hands outspread.</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder they felt queer. I was so intent on
+getting my dress pinned up, and in rushing out in
+time to play, that I couldn't take time to analyze
+my feelings and discover the cause of the queerness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+Madeline blew in at a critical point to borrow a pin,
+and that threw me off, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>From under the white skirt protruded two feet
+as unlike as could well be imagined. One was cased
+in dainty white kid, the other in an old red felt
+bedroom slipper, edged with black fur.</p>
+
+<p>"And it would have been all the same," sighed
+Gay, "if I had been going to an inaugural ball
+to hobnob with crowned heads. And I had hoped
+to make <i>such</i> a fine impression on the Little Colonel,"
+she added, in a plaintive tone, with a childlike
+lifting of the face that Lloyd thought most charming.</p>
+
+<p>If the mistake had been made by any other girl
+in the school, it would not have seemed half so
+ridiculous, but whatever Gay did was irresistibly
+funny. A laughing crowd gathered around her,
+as she sat with the red slipper and the white one
+stretched stiffly out in front of her, bewailing her
+fate.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow," she remarked, "I'll always have the
+satisfaction of knowing that I put my best foot foremost,
+and if they had been alike I couldn't have
+done that. Now could I?" And the girls laughed
+again, because it was Gay who said it in her own
+inimitable way, and because the old felt slipper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+looked so ridiculous thrust out from under the
+dainty white gown. As others came crowding up
+to see what was causing so much merriment in that
+particular corner, Gay attempted to slip out and go
+to her room to correct her mistake. But Sybil
+Green, pushing through the outer ring, came up
+with Allison and Kitty.</p>
+
+<p>"Gay," she began, "here are the girls that you
+especially wanted to meet: General Walton's daughters."</p>
+
+<p>Gay's face flushed with pleasure, and, forgetting
+her errand, she impulsively stretched out a hand to
+each, and held them while she talked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so glad to meet you!" she cried. "I
+wish that I had known that you girls were here
+yesterday before papa left. He is Major Melville,
+and he was such a friend of your father's. He
+was on that long Indian campaign with him in
+Arizona, and I've heard him talk of him by the
+hour. And last week"&mdash;here she lowered her
+voice so that only Allison and Kitty heard, and
+were thrilled by the sweet seriousness of it. "Last
+week he took me out to Arlington to carry a great
+wreath of laurel. When he'd laid it on the grave,
+he stood there with bared head, looking all around,
+and I heard him say, in a whisper, 'No one in all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+Arlington has won his laurels more bravely than
+you, my captain.' You see it was as a captain that
+papa knew him best. He would have been so
+pleased to have seen you girls."</p>
+
+<p>Kitty squeezed the hand that still held hers and
+answered, warmly: "Oh, you dear, I hope we'll
+be as good friends as our fathers were!" And
+Allison answered, winking back the tears that had
+sprung to her eyes: "Thank you for telling us
+about the laurel. Mother will appreciate it so
+much."</p>
+
+<p>While this conversation was going on at Lloyd's
+elbow, Betty came up to her on the other side.
+"Please see if my dress is all right in the back,"
+she whispered. "It feels as if it were unfastened."
+Then, as Lloyd assured her it was properly buttoned,
+she added, in an undertone: "Have you met
+Maud Minor? She's one of the new girls."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'm going to introduce you as soon as I
+can. She knows Malcolm MacIntyre."</p>
+
+<p>"Knows Malcolm!" exclaimed Lloyd, in amazement.
+"Where on earth did she ever meet him?"</p>
+
+<p>"At the seashore last summer. She can't talk
+about anything else. She thinks he is so handsome
+and has such beautiful manners and is so adorably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+romantic. Those are her very words. She has
+his picture. Evidently he has talked to her about
+you, for she's so curious to know you. She asked
+a string of questions that I thought were almost
+impertinent."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is she?" asked Lloyd.</p>
+
+<p>"There, that girl in white crossing the room
+with the fat one in lavender."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd gave a long, critical look, and then said,
+slowly: "She's the prettiest girl in the room, and
+she makes me think of something I've read, but
+I can't recall it."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," said Betty, "but you'll laugh at me
+if I say Tennyson again. It's from 'Maud'&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'I kissed her slender hand.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: .5em;">She took the kiss sedately.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: .5em;">Maud is not seventeen,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: .5em;">But she is tall and stately.'</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"But she is not as sedate as she looks," added
+Betty, truthfully. "I'd like her better if she didn't
+gush. That's the only word that will express it.
+And it seemed queer for her to take me into her
+confidence the minute she was introduced. Right
+away she gave me to understand that she'd had a
+sort of an affair with Malcolm. She didn't say
+so in so many words, but she gave me the impression<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+that he had been deeply interested in her, in
+a romantic way, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd looked at Maud again, more critically this
+time, and with keener interest. Then her thoughts
+flew back to the churchyard stile where they had
+paused in their gathering of Christmas greens one
+winter day. For an instant she seemed to see the
+handsome boy looking down at her, begging a token
+of the Princess Winsome, and saying, in a low
+tone, "I'll be whatever you want me to be, Lloyd."</p>
+
+<p>Juliet's voice broke in on her reverie. "Miss
+Sherman, allow me to present Miss Minor."</p>
+
+<p>Maud was slightly taller than Lloyd, but it was
+not her extra inches alone which seemed to give her
+the air of looking down on every one. It was her
+patronizing manner. Lloyd resented it. Instinctively
+she drew herself up and responded somewhat
+haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, I've been simply <i>dying</i> to meet you,"
+began Maud, effusively. "Ever since I found out
+that you were the girl Malcolm MacIntyre used to
+be so fond of."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd responded coldly, certain that Malcolm had
+not discussed their friendship in a way to warrant
+this outburst from a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know his brothah Keith, too?" she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+asked. "We're devoted to both the boys. You
+might say we grew up togethah, for they visited
+in the Valley so much. We've been playmates since
+we were babies. You must meet the Walton girls.
+They are Malcolm's cousins, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Before Maud realized how it came about, Lloyd
+had graciously turned her over to Allison and Kitty,
+and made her escape with burning cheeks and a
+resentful feeling. Maud's words kept repeating
+themselves: "So adorably romantic. The girl
+Malcolm <i>used to be</i> so fond of!" They made her
+vaguely uncomfortable. She wondered why.</p>
+
+<p>For another hour she went on making acquaintances
+and adding to her store of information about
+Warwick Hall. They couldn't have chafing-dishes
+in their rooms, one frivolous sophomore told her.
+The insurance companies objected after one girl
+spilled a bottle of alcohol and set fire to the curtains.
+But once a week those who pined for candy
+could make it over the gas-stove in the Domestic
+Science kitchen. Those who were too lazy to make
+it could buy it Monday afternoons from Mammy
+Easter, an old coloured woman who lived in a cabin
+on the place. She was famous for her pralines,
+the sophomore declared. "We have jolly charades
+and impromptu tableaux up in the gymnasium<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+sometimes. Oh, school at the Hall is one grand
+lark!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you believe it," said the spectacled junior
+who monopolized Lloyd next. "It's a hard dig to
+keep up to the mark they set here. But I must say
+it is an agreeable kind of a dig," she added.</p>
+
+<p>"It's good just to wake up in the morning and
+know there's going to be another whole day of it.
+The classes are so interesting, and the teachers so
+interested in us, that they bring out the very best
+in everybody. Even a grasshopper would have its
+ambition aroused if it stayed in this atmosphere
+long."</p>
+
+<p>She peered at Lloyd through her glasses as if
+to satisfy herself that she would be understood,
+and then added, confidentially: "I can fairly feel
+myself grow here. I feel the way I imagine the
+morning-glories do when they find themselves
+climbing up the trellis. They just stretch out their
+hands and everything helps them up,&mdash;the sun
+and the soil, the wind and the dew. And here at
+Warwick Hall there's so much to help. Even the
+little glimpses we get over the garden wall into the
+outside world of Washington, with its politics and
+great men. But those two people over there help
+me most of all." She nodded toward Madam<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+Chartley and Miss Chilton, the teacher of English,
+who were now seated together on a sofa near the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"When I look at them I feel that the morning-glory
+vine must climb just as high as it possibly
+can, and shake out a wealth of bells in return for
+all that has been given toward its growth. Don't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Lloyd, slightly embarrassed by
+the soulful gaze turned on her through the spectacles.
+"Betty would enjoy knowing you," she
+exclaimed. "She is always saying and writing
+such things."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I thought that you were the one that
+writes," answered the junior. "Aren't you the
+one the freshmen are going to elect class editor
+for their page of the college paper?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed!" protested Lloyd, laughing at the
+idea. "Come across the room with me and I'll find
+Betty for you."</p>
+
+<p>"There won't be time to-night," responded the
+junior, "for there goes the music that means good
+night. They always play 'America' as a signal
+that it's time to go."</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you so quiet?" asked Betty, a
+little later, as they slowly undressed. She had chattered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+along, commenting on the events of the evening,
+ever since they came to their room, but Lloyd
+had seemed remarkably unresponsive.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing," yawned Lloyd. "I was just
+thinking of that fairy-tale of the three weavers. I'll
+turn out the light."</p>
+
+<p>As she reached up to press the electric button,
+she thought again, for the twentieth time, "I wonder
+what it was that Malcolm told Maud Minor."
+Then she nestled down among the pillows, saying,
+sleepily, to herself: "Anyway, I'm mighty glad
+that I nevah gave him that curl he begged for."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>AN EXCURSION</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was a Sabbath afternoon in October, sunny
+and still, with a purple haze resting on the distant
+woodlands across the river. A warm odour of ripe
+apples floated across the old peach orchard, for a
+few rare pippin-trees stood in its midst, flaunting
+the last of their fruitage from gnarled limbs, or
+hiding it in the sear grass underneath.</p>
+
+<p>Here and there groups of bareheaded girls wandered
+in the sun-flecked shade, exchanging confidences
+and stooping now and then to pounce joyfully
+upon some apple that had hitherto evaded
+discovery. Betty, who had been reading aloud for
+nearly an hour to a little group under one of the
+largest trees, closed her book with a yawn. Lloyd
+and Kitty leaned lazily back against the mossy
+trunk, and Allison, with her arms around her knees,
+gazed dreamily across the river. The only one
+who did not seem to have fallen under the drowsy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+spell of the Indian summer afternoon was Gay.
+Up in the tree above them, she lay stretched out
+along a limb, peering down through the leaves like
+a saucy squirrel.</p>
+
+<p>"What a Sleepy Hollow tale that was!" she
+exclaimed. "It just suits the day, but it has hypnotized
+all of you. Do wake up and be sociable."</p>
+
+<p>She began breaking off bits of twigs and dropping
+them down on the heads below. One struck
+Lloyd's ear, and she brushed it off impatiently,
+thinking it was a bug. Gay laughed and began
+teasingly:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"There was a young maiden named Lloyd,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Whom reptiles always annoyed.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">An innocent worm would cause her to squirm,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And cloyed&mdash;toyed&mdash;employed&mdash;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>I'm stuck, Betty. Come to the rescue with a
+rhyme."</div>
+
+<p>"So with germicide she's overjoyed," supplied
+Betty, promptly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," said Kitty, waking up.
+"Let's each make a Limerick. Five minutes is
+the limit, and the one that hasn't his little verse
+ready when the time is up will have to answer truthfully
+any question the others agree to ask."</p>
+
+<p>"No," objected Lloyd. "I'd be suah to be it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+I can make the rhymes, but the lines limp too dreadfully
+for any use."</p>
+
+<p>"We won't count that," promised Kitty, looking
+at her chatelaine watch. "Now, one, two, three!
+Fire away!"</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a little space, broken only
+by the soft cooing of a far-away dove. Then Betty
+looked up with a satisfied smile. The anxious
+pucker smoothed out of Lloyd's forehead, and Allison
+nodded her readiness.</p>
+
+<p>"Lloyd first," called Kitty, looking at her watch
+again.</p>
+
+<p>A mischievous smile brought the dimples to the
+Little Colonel's face as she began:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"There's a girl in our school called Kitty,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Evidently not from the city.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">With screeches and squawkin's</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">She upset the nerves of poah old Hawkins.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Oh, her behaviour was not at all pretty."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>A burst of laughter greeted Lloyd's attempt at
+verse-making, for the subject which she had chosen
+recalled one of Kitty's outbreaks the first week of
+school, when the temptation to upset Hawkins's
+dignity was more than she could resist. No one
+of them who had seen Hawkins's wild exit from
+the linen closet the night she hid on the top shelf,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+and raised his hair with her blood-curdling moans
+and spectral warnings (having blown out his candle
+from above), could think of the occurrence without
+laughing till the tears came to their eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Allison," said Kitty, when the final giggle
+had died away. "It's your turn." Allison referred
+to the lines she had scribbled on the back of a magazine:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"There is a young maiden, they say,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Who grows more beloved every day.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">When we talk or we ramble, there's always a scramble</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To be next to the maid who is <i>Gay</i>."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Whew! Thanks awfully!" came the embarrassed
+exclamation from the boughs above, and
+Betty cried, in surprise: "Why, I wrote about her,
+too. I said:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Like the bow on the strings when she plays,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">So she crosses with music our days.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Our hearts doth she tune to the gladness of June,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And the smile that brings sunshine is Gay's."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"My dear, that's no Limerick, that's poetry!"
+exclaimed Kitty, and Gay called down: "It's awfully
+nice of you, girls, but please change the subject.
+I'm so covered with confusion that I'm about
+to fall off this limb."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, here's something mean enough to brace
+you up," answered Kitty. "It's about Maud
+Minor. It's hateful of me to write it, but I happened
+to see her going down the terrace steps and it just
+popped into my head:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"There is a young lady named Maud,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Whose manners are overmuch thawed.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">She'll beat an oil-well. When they'd gushed for a spell</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>It</i> would take a back seat and applaud."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"What's the matter, Kitty?" asked Betty, "I
+thought you admired her immensely."</p>
+
+<p>"I did that first week, but it's just as I say.
+She gushes over me so, simply because I am Malcolm's
+cousin. I know very well that I am not
+the dearest, cutest, brightest, most beautiful and
+angelic being in the universe, and she isn't sincere
+when she insists that I am. She overdoes it, and
+is so <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'dreadfuly'">dreadfully</ins> effusive that I want to run whenever
+she comes near me. I wish she wasn't going
+on the excursion to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't worry me," said Gay. "I meet
+her on her own ground and fire back her own adjectives
+at her, doubled and twisted. She has let
+me alone for some time."</p>
+
+<p>The discussion of Maud led their thoughts away
+from Gay's Limerick, and Kitty forgot to ask for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+it. They sat in silence again, and the plaintive calling
+of the dove sounded several times before any
+one spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"It's so sweet and peaceful here," said Betty,
+softly. "It makes me think of Lloydsboro Valley.
+I could shut my eyes and almost believe I was back
+in the old Seminary orchard."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad we're not," said Allison. "For then
+we'd miss to-morrow's excursion. And I like having
+our holiday on Monday instead of Saturday,
+as we did there."</p>
+
+<p>"What excursion are you talking about?" asked
+Gay, lazily swinging her foot over the limb.</p>
+
+<p>Betty explained. "We're going to see some rare
+old books and illuminated manuscripts. Miss Chilton
+has a friend in Washington who has one of
+the finest private collections in the country, and
+she offered to take any of the freshman class who
+cared to go. Ten of us have accepted the invitation.
+We're going to the Congressional Library
+in the morning, take lunch at some restaurant, and
+then call on this lady early in the afternoon. It
+will be the only chance to see them, as she is going
+abroad very soon, and the house will be closed for
+the winter."</p>
+
+<p>"There are other things in the collection besides<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+books," said Allison "Some queer old musical instruments,&mdash;a
+harpsichord and a lute, and an old
+violin worth its weight in gold. Some of the
+most noted violinists in the world have played
+on it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know!" cried Gay, raising herself to
+a sitting position and throwing away the core of
+the apple she had been eating. "That's the excursion
+I missed last year when I sprained my ankle.
+I never was so disappointed in my life. I'm going
+right now to ask Miss Chilton to take me, too.
+I'm wild to get my fingers on that violin."</p>
+
+<p>Swinging lightly down from the limb to the
+ground, she twisted around like a contortionist in
+a vain attempt to see her back.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" she exclaimed, feeling her belt with
+a sigh of relief. "For a wonder there's nothing
+torn or busted this trip. I must be reforming
+Girls, what do you think! I haven't lost a single
+thing for a whole week."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't brag," warned Lloyd. "Mom Beck
+would say you'd bettah scratch on wood if you
+don't want yoah luck to change."</p>
+
+<p>Gay shrugged her shoulders at the superstition,
+but she reached over and lightly scratched the pencil
+thrust through Betty's curly hair.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There goes the first bell for vespers," said
+Kitty, as they strolled slowly back toward the Hall,
+five abreast and arm in arm. With one accord they
+began to hum the hymn with which the service
+always opened,&mdash;"Day is dying in the west."</p>
+
+<p>"It's going to be a fair day to-morrow," prophesied
+Gay, pausing an instant on the chapel steps.
+"There's Miss Chilton. I'll run over and ask her
+now."</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right," she whispered several minutes
+later, when she slipped into the seat next Lloyd.
+"I can go. It'll be the greatest kind of a lark."</p>
+
+<p>As Sybil Green passed through the hall next
+morning, where the excursionists were assembling,
+Gay stopped her and began slowly revolving on
+her heels. "Now view me with a critic's eye," she
+commanded. "Gaze on me from chapeau to shoe
+sole, and bear witness that I am properly girded
+up for the occasion. See how severely neat and
+plain I am. See how beautifully my belts make connection
+in the back. Three big, stout safety-pins
+will surely keep my skirt and shirt-waist together
+till nightfall, and there's not a thing about me that
+I can possibly lose."</p>
+
+<p>She was still turning around and around. "Not
+a watch, ring, pin, or bangle! Not even a pocket<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>book.
+Miss Chilton is carrying my car-fare, and
+my handkerchief is up my sleeve."</p>
+
+<p>"You might lose your balance or your presence
+of mind," laughed Sybil. "You'll have to watch
+her, girls. How spick and span you all look," she
+added, as they trooped past, behind Miss Chilton,
+most of them in freshly laundered shirt-waist suits,
+for the Indian summer day was as warm and sunny
+as June.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be just about Gay's luck to run into
+a watering-cart or lean up against a freshly painted
+door, in that pretty pongee suit," she thought,
+watching them out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>But for once Gay's lucky star was in the ascendant.
+The trip to the library left her without spot
+or wrinkle, and as she followed Miss Chilton into
+the restaurant she could not help smiling at her
+reflection in the mirror. It looked so trim and neat.</p>
+
+<p>The restaurant was crowded. The waiters rushed
+back and forth, balancing their great trays on their
+finger-tips in a reckless way that made Gay dodge
+every time they passed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you needn't laugh," she exclaimed, when
+some one jokingly called attention to her. "I'm
+born to trouble; and I have a feeling that something
+is going to happen before the day is over."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Something did happen almost immediately, but
+not to Gay. Two of the pompous coloured men
+collided just as they were passing Miss Chilton's
+table. One tray dropped to the floor with a tremendous
+crash of breaking dishes. The other was
+caught dexterously in mid-air, but not before its
+contents had turned a somersault and wrought ruin
+all around it. A bowl of tomato soup splashed over
+Lloyd's immaculate shirt-waist and ran in two long
+red streaks across the shoulders of her duck jacket,
+which she had hung on her chair-post. Her little
+gasp of dismay was followed by one from Maud
+Minor, whose dainty gray silk waist was spattered
+plentifully with coffee.</p>
+
+<p>There was a profusion of apologies from the
+waiters and a momentary confusion as the wreck
+was cleared away. In the midst of it, Miss Chilton
+was pleased and gratified to hear a low-pitched
+voice at the table behind her say: "Those are Warwick
+Hall girls. I recognize their chaperon, but
+I would have known them anywhere from the ladylike
+way they treated the affair. So quiet and self-controlled,
+not a bit of fuss or excitement, and it
+probably means that the day's outing will be spoiled
+for two of them."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The girls proceeded with their dessert, but Miss
+Chilton sat considering.</p>
+
+<p>"If you girls were only familiar with the city,"
+she said at last, looking at her watch, "I could
+let you go to some shop and get new shirt-waists,
+and you could meet me at my friend's afterward.
+But even if you could find your way to the shop,
+I would be afraid to risk your finding her house.
+You would have to change cars and walk a block
+after leaving the last one. I must keep my engagement
+with her promptly, for she is an extremely
+busy woman, and has granted this view of her
+library as a personal favour to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Do let me take them, Miss Chilton," urged
+Gay, eagerly. "I'm the only old girl in the crowd.
+I learned my way all about town during last Christmas
+vacation. We could meet you in time to see
+part of the things. All I care for is that violin.
+<i>Please</i> say yes. I'll be the strictest, most dignified
+chaperon you ever heard of."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Chilton laughed at the expression of ferocity
+which Gay's face suddenly assumed to convince
+her that she could play the part she begged for.</p>
+
+<p>"Really that seems to be the only way out of
+the difficulty," she answered. "I'll give you a note
+to the department store which Madam Chartley<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+always patronizes, so that you can have your purchases
+charged."</p>
+
+<p>"What if we can't find anything to fit," suggested
+Maud, "and it should take such a long time
+to alter them that we'd be too late to meet you?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Chilton considered again. "It's almost
+preposterous to imagine that, but it is always well
+to provide for every emergency. If anything unforeseen
+should happen to delay you, or you can't
+find the proper things to make yourselves presentable,
+just go to the station and take the first car
+back to the school. I'll inquire of the ticket agent,
+and if you've left a card saying 'gone on,' I'll
+know that you are safe. If you've left no word,
+I'll put these girls on the car for home, and come
+back and institute a search for you."</p>
+
+<p>While the others busied themselves with finger-bowls,
+she wrote a hasty note on a leaf torn from
+her memorandum book, which she gave to Maud.
+Then she handed a card to Gay.</p>
+
+<p>"You are the pilot, so here is my friend's address
+on this card. I've marked the line of cars
+you're to take, and the avenue where you change."</p>
+
+<p>"Better let Lloyd take it," suggested Kitty. But,
+with a saucy grimace, Gay folded it and slipped
+it under her belt.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There!" she said, fastening it with a big black
+pin she borrowed from Allison. "I've woven that
+pin in and out, first in the ribbon and then through
+the card, till it's as tight as if it had grown there."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you take us down an alley?" asked Lloyd.
+"It mawtifies me dreadfully to have to go down
+the street looking like this."</p>
+
+<p>"The car-line that passes this door goes directly
+to the department store," answered Gay. "It's only
+a few blocks away, but we'll take it. That tomato
+soup on you certainly does look gory."</p>
+
+<p>Maud had taken the veil from her hat and thrown
+it over her shoulders in a way to hide the coffee
+stains. "Never mind," she said, carelessly, as they
+left the restaurant. "Just hold your head up and
+sail along with your most princess-like air, and
+people will be so busy admiring you that they won't
+have time to look at your soupy waist."</p>
+
+<p>"Ugh! It smells so greasy and horrid," sniffed
+the Little Colonel, ignoring Maud's remark. "It's
+just like dishwatah and bacon rinds. I want to get
+away from it as soon as possible."</p>
+
+<p>"Misses' white shirt-waists?" repeated the saleswoman
+in the big department store, when they
+reached it a few minutes later. "Certainly. Here
+is something pretty. The newest fall goods."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She led them to a counter piled high with boxes,
+and they made a hasty selection. Some alteration
+was needed in the collar of the one Lloyd chose,
+and in the sleeves of Maud's. While they waited
+in the fitting-room, turning over some back numbers
+of fashion-plates and magazines, Gay amused herself
+by wandering around the millinery department,
+trying on hats. Presently she found one so becoming
+that she ran back to them, delighted.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't once in a thousand years that I find a
+picture hat that looks well with my pug nose!"
+she cried. "But gaze on this!"</p>
+
+<p>She revolved slowly before them, so radiantly
+pleased over her discovery that she looked unusually
+pretty. Both girls exclaimed over its becomingness.
+Then Lloyd's gaze wandered from the airy structure
+of chiffon and flowers down Gay's back to her
+waist-line.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, child!" she exclaimed. "You've lost
+your belt. Every one of those three safety-pins is
+showing, and they each look a foot long!"</p>
+
+<p>Gay's hand flew wildly to the back of her dress,
+but she felt in vain for a belt under which to hide
+the pins. She turned toward them with a hopeless
+drooping of the shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>How</i> did I lose it?" she demanded, helplessly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+"It had the safest, strongest kind of a clasp. When
+do you suppose I did it, and where? I must have
+been a sight parading the street this way like an
+animated pincushion."</p>
+
+<p>She passed her hand over the obtrusive pins
+again. "I certainly had it on when we left the
+restaurant. Yes, and after we got on the car to
+come here, for I remember just after you paid the
+fare I ran my fingers down inside of it to make
+sure that Miss Chilton's card was still safely pinned
+to it."</p>
+
+<p>Then she rolled up her eyes and fell limply back
+against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Girls!" she exclaimed, in a despairing voice,
+"the card is lost with it, too. I've no more idea
+than the man in the moon where Miss Chilton's
+friend lives, or what her name is, or what car-line
+to take to get there. Do either of you remember
+hearing her say anything that would throw any
+light on the subject?"</p>
+
+<p>Neither Lloyd nor Maud could remember, and
+the three stood staring at each other with startled
+faces.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe you dropped your belt coming up in
+the elevator," suggested Maud. "You might inquire.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+As soon as we get our clothes on, we'll
+help you hunt."</p>
+
+<p>Gay flew to lay aside the picture hat for her own,
+and, with her hands clutching her dress to hide
+the unsightly safety-pins, started on her search
+through the store.</p>
+
+<p>"We came straight past the ribbon counter and
+the embroideries to the silks, and then we turned
+here and took the elevator," she said to herself,
+retracing her steps. But inquiries of the elevator
+boy and every clerk along the line failed to elicit
+any information about the lost belt.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it was only an ordinary belt that no one
+would look at the second time," she explained to
+those who asked for a description. "Just dark blue
+ribbon with a plain oxidized silver clasp. But there
+was an address pinned to it that is very important
+for me to find."</p>
+
+<p>The floor-walker obligingly joined in the search,
+going to the door and scanning the pavement and
+the street-crossing at which they had left the car,
+but to no purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"I can buy a new belt and have it charged," she
+said to Lloyd, when she came back to report, "but
+there is no way to get the lost address. If I could
+only remember the name, I could look for it in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+the directory, but I never heard it. Miss Chilton
+always spoke of the lady as 'my friend.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard her speak it once," said Lloyd, "but I
+can't remembah it now."</p>
+
+<p>"Go over the alphabet," suggested Maud. "Say
+all the names you can think of beginning with A
+and then B, and so on. Maybe you will stumble
+across one that you recognize as the right one."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd shook her head. "No, it was an unusual
+name, a long foreign-sounding one. I wondahed
+at the time how she could trip it off her tongue so
+easily."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we're lost! Hopelessly, helplessly undone!"
+moaned Gay. "All our lovely outing
+spoiled! You won't get to see the books, nor I
+the violin. I know you are hating me horribly.
+There's nothing to do but go back to Warwick
+Hall, and leave a note with the ticket agent for
+Miss Chilton."</p>
+
+<p>The tears stood in her eyes, and she looked so
+broken-hearted that Lloyd put her arms around her,
+insisting that it didn't make a mite of difference
+to her. That she didn't care much for the old books,
+anyhow, and for her not to grieve about it another
+minute.</p>
+
+<p>Maud's face darkened as she listened. Presently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+she said: "I don't care particularly about the books,
+either, but I don't see any use of our losing the
+entire holiday. You know your way about the city,
+Gay; I have some car-fare in my purse, and so
+has Lloyd. We can go larking by ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>The dressmaker came back with Maud's waist.
+She put it on, and Gay went for her belt. While
+Lloyd was still waiting for her waist, Maud sauntered
+out of the fitting-room, and asked permission
+to use the telephone. She was still using it when
+Gay joined them.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute," Maud called to her invisible
+auditor, and, still holding the receiver, turned
+toward the girls.</p>
+
+<p>"Such grand luck!" she exclaimed, in a low
+tone. "I just happened to think of a young fellow
+I know here in town&mdash;Charlie Downs. He is
+always ready for anything going, and, when I telephoned
+him the predicament we are in, he said right
+away he would meet us down here and take us all
+to the matin&eacute;e."</p>
+
+<p>"Charlie Downs," echoed Gay. "I never heard
+of him."</p>
+
+<p>"That doesn't make any difference," Maud answered,
+hurriedly. Then, in a still lower tone, with
+her back to the telephone: "He's all right. He's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+a sort of a distant relative of mine,&mdash;that is, his
+cousin married into our family. I can vouch for
+Charlie. He's a young medical student, and he's
+in old Doctor Spencer's office. Everybody knows
+Doctor Spencer, one of the finest specialists in the
+country."</p>
+
+<p>She turned toward the telephone again, but Gay
+stopped her. "It's out of the question, Maud, for
+us to accept such an invitation. It's kind of him
+to ask us, but you're in my charge, and I'll have to
+take the responsibility of refusing."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I never heard the like of that!" said
+Maud, angrily, looking down on Gay in such a
+scornful, disgusted way that Lloyd would have
+laughed had the situation not been so tragic. Gay,
+trying to be commanding, reminded her of an anxious
+little hen, ruffling its feathers because the obstinate
+duckling in its brood refused to come out
+of the water.</p>
+
+<p>"Madam Chartley wouldn't like it," urged Gay.</p>
+
+<p>"Then she should have made rules to that effect.
+You know there's not a single one that would stand
+in the way of our doing this."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, there is. It's an unwritten one, but it's
+the one law of the Hall that Madam expects every
+one to live up to."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"May I ask what?" Maud's tone was freezingly
+polite.</p>
+
+<p>"The motto under the crest. It's on everything
+you know, the old earl's teacups, the stationery, and
+everything&mdash;'Keep tryst.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Fiddlesticks for the old earl's teacups!" said
+Maud, shrugging her shoulders. "It's unreasonable
+to expect us to keep tryst with Miss Chilton
+now."</p>
+
+<p>"Not that," said Gay, ready to cry. "We're
+to keep tryst with what she expects of us. She
+expects us to do the right thing under all circumstances,
+and you know the right thing now is to
+go home. We were recognized at the restaurant
+as Warwick Hall girls, and we might be again at
+the matin&eacute;e. What would people think of the
+school if they saw three of the girls there with a
+strange young man without a chaperon?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're the chaperon. If you'd do to take us
+shopping, you'd do for that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Maud, don't be unreasonable," urged Gay.
+"It's entirely different. Don't be offended, please,
+but we can't go. It's simply out of the question."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed it isn't," answered Maud, turning again
+to the telephone. "Go home if you want to, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+Lloyd and I will do as we please. I'll accept for
+us."</p>
+
+<p>This time Lloyd stopped her. "Wait! Let's
+telephone out to the Hall and ask Madam."</p>
+
+<p>Maud shrugged her shoulders. "You know very
+well she'd say no if you asked her beforehand."
+Then the two heard one side of her conversation
+over the telephone.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Charlie! Sorry to keep you waiting so
+long."</p>
+
+<p>"The girls are afraid to go."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose so."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm perfectly willing. I'll ask them."</p>
+
+<p>Then turning again, with the receiver in her
+hand: "He says that the matin&eacute;e will probably be
+over before the second train out to the Hall, and,
+if it isn't, we can leave a little earlier and be at
+the station before Miss Chilton gets there, and she
+need never know but what we've just been streetcar
+riding, as we first planned."</p>
+
+<p>"Then that settles it!" exclaimed Lloyd. "If
+he said that, I wouldn't go with him for anything
+in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" demanded Maud. Her eyes flashed
+angrily.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Because&mdash;because," stammered Lloyd. "Well,
+it'll make you mad, but I can't help it. Papa Jack
+said one time that an honourable man would never
+ask me to do anything clandestine. And it would
+be sneaking to do as he proposes."</p>
+
+<p>Maud was white with rage, and the hand that
+held the receiver trembled. "Have the goodness
+to keep your insulting remarks to yourself in the
+future, Miss Sherman."</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't go," begged Gay. "I feel so responsible
+for getting you home safely, and it <i>would</i>
+be sneaking, you know, to pretend we'd been simply
+trolley-riding when we'd been off with him."</p>
+
+<p>"You're nasty little cats to say such things!"
+stormed Maud. "I don't want to have anything
+more to do with either of you. Go on home and
+leave me alone. Hello! Hello, Charlie!"</p>
+
+<p>They heard her make an engagement to meet him
+at the drug-store on the next corner. Then she
+sailed out of the store past them, without a glance
+in their direction. Gay began fumbling up her
+sleeve for her handkerchief. The tears were gathering
+too fast to be winked back.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all my fault," she sobbed. "Oh, if I hadn't
+lost that unlucky belt. To think that I begged to
+be a chaperon, and then wasn't fit to be trusted."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lloyd tried vainly to comfort her. A little later
+two disconsolate-looking girls took the first afternoon
+train out to Warwick Hall, and stole up to
+Lloyd's room. As Betty was with Miss Chilton,
+no one knew of their arrival, and they spent several
+uncomfortable hours agonizing over the question
+of what they should say when they were called
+to account. They decided at last that they would
+give no more information about Maud than that
+a distant relative had called for her.</p>
+
+<p>At five o'clock, Miss Chilton reached the ticket-office
+with her little brood, and found Lloyd's card
+with the words "gone on" scribbled in one corner.
+Lloyd and Gay, watching at the window for their
+arrival, saw with sinking hearts that Maud was
+not with them. They hoped that she would come
+on the same train, and would be forced to make her
+own explanations. But they were not called upon
+to explain her disappearance. Miss Chilton, almost
+distracted with an attack of neuralgic headache,
+went to her room immediately, and sent down word
+that she would not appear at dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll surely come on the next train," Gay
+whispered to Lloyd, but the whistle sounded at the
+station, and they watched the clock in vain. Ample
+time passed for one to have walked the distance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+twice from the station to the Hall, but no one
+came.</p>
+
+<p>It was half-past six when they filed down to
+dinner. The halls were lighted, and all the chandeliers
+in the great dining-room glowed.</p>
+
+<p>As they passed the window on the stair-landing,
+Lloyd pressed her face against the pane and peered
+out into the darkness. Gay, just behind her, paused
+and peered also.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you suppose has happened?" she
+whispered. "It's as dark as a pocket, and Maud
+hasn't come yet."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>"KEEP TRYST"</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lloyd</span> and Betty were starting to undress when
+there was a light tap at the door, and Gay's head
+appeared. In response to their eager call, she came
+in, and, shutting the door behind her, stood with
+her back against it.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I can't sit down," she answered. "It's
+too late to stop. I only ran in to tell you that Maud
+got home about five minutes ago. 'Charlie' came
+with her as far as the door and Madam has just
+sent for her to demand an explanation. She told
+her roommate that she knew she was in for a scolding,
+and that, as one might as well be killed for
+a sheep as a lamb, she made her good time last as
+long as she could. After the matin&eacute;e they had a
+little supper at some roof-garden or caf&eacute; or something
+of the kind, where there was a band concert.
+Then he brought her out on the car, and they
+strolled along the river road home. The moon was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+just beginning to come up. She's had a beautiful
+time, and thinks she has done something awfully
+cute, but she'll think differently by the time Madam
+is through with her."</p>
+
+<p>"Will she be very terrible?" asked Lloyd, pausing
+with brush in hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," answered Gay. "Nothing like
+this has happened since I have been at the Hall,
+but I've heard her say that this is not a reform
+school, and girls who have to be punished and
+scolded are not wanted here. If they can't measure
+up to the standard of good behaviour, they can't
+stay. As long as this is the first offence, she'll
+probably be given another trial, but I'd not care to
+be in her shoes when Madam calls her to judgment."</p>
+
+<p>No one ever knew what passed between the two
+in the up-stairs office, but Maud sailed down to
+breakfast next morning as if nothing had happened.
+The only difference in her manner was when Lloyd
+and Gay took their places opposite her at the table.
+They glanced across with the usual good morning,
+but she looked past them as if she neither saw nor
+heard.</p>
+
+<p>"Cut dead!" whispered Lloyd. Gay giggled, as
+she unfolded her napkin. "I'm very sure she has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+no cause to be angry with us. We are the ones
+who ought to act offended."</p>
+
+<p>Soon after breakfast they were called into Miss
+Chilton's room, but to their great relief found that
+she already knew what had happened, and that they
+were to be questioned only about their own part
+in the affair. So presently Gay passed out to her
+Latin recitation, and Lloyd wandered around the
+room, waiting for the literature class to assemble.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Chilton's room was the most attractive one
+in the Hall. It looked more like a cheerful library
+than a schoolroom. Low book-shelves lined the
+walls, with here and there a fine bust in bronze or
+Carrara marble. Pictures from many lands added
+interest, and the wicker chairs, instead of being
+arranged in stiff rows, stood invitingly about, as
+if in a private parlour. There were always violets
+on Miss Chilton's desk, and ferns and palms in the
+sunny south windows. The recitations were carried
+on in such a delightfully informal way that
+the girls looked forward to this hour as one of the
+pleasantest of the day.</p>
+
+<p>This morning, to their surprise, instead of questioning
+them about the topic they had studied, Romance
+of the Middle Ages, she announced that she
+had a story which Madam Chartley had requested<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+her to read to them, and she wished such close attention
+paid to it that afterward each one could
+write it from memory for the next day's lesson.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a reason for wishing to impress this little
+tale indelibly on your minds," she said, "so I shall
+offer this inducement for concentrating your attention
+upon it: five credits to each one who can hand
+in a full synopsis of the story, and ten to the one
+who can reproduce it most literally and fully."</p>
+
+<p>There was a slight flutter of expectancy as the
+class settled itself to listen, and, opening the little
+green and gold volume where a white ribbon kept
+the place, she began to read:<br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<p>"Now there was a troubadour in the kingdom
+of Arthur, who, strolling through the land with
+only his minstrelsy to win him a way, found in
+every baron's hall and cotter's hut a ready welcome.
+And while the boar's head sputtered on the spit,
+or the ale sparkled in the shining tankards, he told
+such tales of joust and journey, and feats of brave
+knight errantry, that even the scullions left their
+kitchen tasks, and, creeping near, stood round the
+door with mouths agape to listen.</p>
+
+<p>"Then with his harp-strings tuned to echoes of
+the wind on winter moors, he sang of death and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+valour on the field, of love and fealty in the hall,
+till those who listened forgot all save his singing
+and the noble knights whereof he sang.</p>
+
+<p>"One winter night, as thus he carolled in a great
+earl's hall, a little page crept nearer to his bench
+beside the fire, and, with his blue eyes fixed in wonderment
+upon the graybeard's face, stood spellbound.
+Now Ederyn was the page's name, an
+orphan lad whose lineage no man knew, but that
+he came of gentle blood all eyes could see, although
+as vassal 'twas his lot to wait upon the great earl's
+squire.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the Yule-tide, and the wassail-bowl passed
+round till boisterous mirth drowned oftentimes the
+minstrel's song, but Ederyn missed no word. Scarce
+knowing what he did, he crept so close he found
+himself with upturned face against the old man's
+knee.</p>
+
+<p>"'How now, thou flaxen-haired,' the minstrel
+said, with kindly smile. 'Dost like my song?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, sire,' the youth made answer, 'methinks
+on such a wing the soul could well take flight to
+Paradise. But tell me, prithee, is it possible for
+such as <i>I</i> to gain the title of a knight? How doth
+one win such honours and acclaim and reach the
+high estate that thou dost laud?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The minstrel gazed a little space into the Yule
+log's flame, and stroked his long hoar beard. Then
+made he answer:</p>
+
+<p>"'Some win their spurs and earn the royal accolade
+because the blood of dragons stains their
+hands. From mighty combat with these terrors
+they come victorious to their king's reward. And
+some there be sore scarred with conquest of the
+giants that ever prey upon the borders of our fair
+domain. Some, who have gone on far crusades to
+alien lands, and there with heart of gold and iron
+hand have proved their fealty to the Crown.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then Ederyn sighed, for well he knew his
+stripling form could never wage fierce combat with
+a dragon. His hands could never meet the brawny
+grip of giants. 'Is there no other way?' he faltered.</p>
+
+<p>'I wot not,' was the answer. 'But take an old
+man's counsel. Forget thy dreams of glory, and
+be content to serve thy squire. For what hast such
+as thou to do with great ambitions? They'd prove
+but flames to burn away thy daily peace.'</p>
+
+<p>"With that he turned to quaff the proffered
+bowl and add his voice to those whose mirth already
+shook the rafters. Nor had he any further
+speech with Ederyn. But afterward the pretty lad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+was often in his thoughts, and in his wanderings
+about the land he mused upon the question he had
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Another twelvemonth sped its way, and once
+again the Yule log burned within the hall, and once
+again the troubadour knocked at the gate, all in
+the night and falling snow. And as before, with
+merry jests they led him in and made him welcome.
+And as before, was every mouth agape from
+squire's to scullion's, as he sang.</p>
+
+<p>"Once more he sang of knights and ladyes fair,
+of love and death and valour; and Ederyn, the
+page, crept nearer to him till the harp-strings ceased
+to thrill. With head upon his hands, he sat and
+sighed. Not even when the wassail-bowl was
+passed with mirth and laughter did he look up.
+And when the graybeard minstrel saw his grief,
+he thought upon his question of the Yule-tide gone.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ah, now, thou flaxen-haired,' he whispered in
+his ear. 'I bear thee tidings which should make
+thee sing for joy. There is a way for even such
+as thou to win the honours thou dost covet. I heard
+it in the royal court when last I sang there at the
+king's behest.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then all aquiver with his eagerness did Ederyn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+kneel, with face alight, beside the minstrel's knee
+to hear.</p>
+
+<p>"'Know this,' began the graybeard. ''Tis the
+king's desire to 'stablish round him at his court
+a chosen circle whose fidelity hath stood the utmost
+test. Not deeds of prowess are required of these
+true followers, with no great conquests doth he tax
+them, but they must prove themselves trustworthy,
+until on hand and heart it may be graven large,
+"<i>In all things faithful.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"'To Merlin, the enchanter, he hath left the
+choice, who by some strange spell I wot not of will
+send an eerie call through all the kingdom. And
+only those will hear who wake at dawn to listen
+in high places. And only those will heed who keep
+the compass needles of their souls true to the north
+star of a great ambition. The time of testing will
+be long, the summons many. To duty and to sorrow,
+to disappointment and defeat, thou may'st be
+called. No matter what the tryst, there is but one
+reply if thou wouldst win thy knighthood. Give
+heed and I will teach thee now that answer.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then smiting on his harp, the minstrel sang,
+so softly under cover of the noise, that only Ederyn
+heard. Through all the song ran ever this refrain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+It seemed a brooklet winding in and out through
+some fair meadow:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"''Tis the king's call. O list!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: .5em;">Thou heart and hand of mine, keep tryst&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Keep tryst or die!'</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Then Ederyn, with his hand upon his heart,
+made solemn oath. 'Awake at dawn and listening
+in high places will I await that call. With the compass
+needle of my soul true to the north star of
+a great ambition will I follow where it leads, and
+though through fire and flood it take me, I'll make
+but this reply:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"''Tis the king's call. O list!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: .5em;">Thou heart and hand of mine, keep tryst&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Keep tryst or die!'</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Pressing the old man's hand in gratitude (he
+could say no word for the strange fulness in his
+throat that well-nigh choked him), he rose from
+his knees and left the hall to muse on what had
+passed.</p>
+
+<p>"That night he climbed into the tower, and,
+with his face turned to the east, kept vigil all alone.
+Below, the rioters waxed louder in their mirth.
+The knife was in the meat, the drink was in the
+horn. But he would not join their revels, lest morning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+find him sunk in sodden sleep, heavy with feasting
+and witless from wine.</p>
+
+<p>"As gray dawn trailed across the hills, he started
+to his feet, for far away sounded the call for which
+he had been waiting. It was like the faint blowing
+of an elfin horn, but the words came clearly.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ederyn! Ederyn! One awaits thee at nightfall
+in the shade of the yew-tree by the abbey tower!
+Keep tryst!'</p>
+
+<p>"Now the abbey tower was the space of forty
+furlongs from the domain of the earl, and full well
+Ederyn knew that only by especial favour of his
+squire could he gain leave of absence for this jaunt.
+So, from sunrise until dusk, he worked with will,
+to gain the wished-for leave. Never before did
+buckles shine as did the buckles of the squire entrusted
+to his polishing. Never did menial tasks
+cease sooner to be drudgery, because of the good-will
+with which he worked. And when the day
+was done, so well had every duty been performed,
+right willingly the squire did grant him grace, and
+forthwith Ederyn sped upon his mission.</p>
+
+<p>"The way was long, and, when he reached the
+abbey tree, he fell a-trembling, for there a tall wraith
+stood within the shadows of the yew. No face
+had it that he could see, its hands no substance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+but he met it bravely, saying: 'I am Ederyn, come
+to keep the king's tryst.'</p>
+
+<p>"And then the spectre's voice replied: 'Well
+hast thou kept it, for 'tis known to me the many
+menial tasks thou didst perform ere thou couldst
+come upon thy quest. In token that we two have
+met, here is my pledge that thou may'st keep to
+show the king.'</p>
+
+<p>"He felt a light touch on the bosom of his inner
+vestment, and suddenly he stood alone beside the
+gruesome abbey. Clammy with fear, he knew not
+why, he drew his mantle round him and sped home
+as one speeds in a fearsome dream. And that it
+was a dream he half-believed, when later, in the
+hall, he served at meat those gathered round the
+old earl's board. But when he sought his bed, and
+threw aside his outer garment, there on his coarse,
+rough shirt of hodden gray a pearl gleamed white
+above his heart, where the wraith's cold hand had
+touched him. It was the token to the king that
+he had answered faithfully his call.</p>
+
+<p>"Again before the dawn he climbed into the
+tower, and, listening when the voices of the world
+were still, heard clear and sweet, like far-blown elfin
+horn, another summons.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ederyn! Ederyn! One awaits thee at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+midnight hour beside black Kilgore's water. Keep
+tryst!'</p>
+
+<p>"Again to gain his squire's permission he toiled
+with double care. This time his task was counting
+all the spears and halberds, the battle-axes and the
+coats of mail that filled the earl's great armament.
+And o'er and o'er he counted, keeping careful tally
+with a bit of keel upon the iron-banded door, till
+the red lines that he marked there made his eyes
+ache and his head swim. At last the task was finished,
+and so well the squire praised him, and for
+his faithfulness again was fain to speed him on his
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a woful journey to the waters of Kilgore.
+Sleep weighed on Ederyn's eyelids, and haltingly
+he went the weary miles, footsore and worn. But
+midnight found him on the spot where one awaited
+him, another wraith-like envoy of the king, and it,
+too, left a touch upon his heart in token he had
+kept the tryst. And when he looked, another pearl
+gleamed there beside the first.</p>
+
+<p>"So many a day went by, and Ederyn failed not
+in his homely tasks, but carried to his common
+round of duties all his might, as if they were great
+feats of prowess. Thus gained he liberty to keep
+the tryst with every messenger the king did send.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Once he fared forth along a dangerous road
+that led he knew not where, and, when he found
+it crossed a loathly swamp all filled with slime and
+creeping things, fain would he have fled. But,
+pushing on for sake of his brave oath, although
+with fainting heart, he reached the goal at last.
+This time his token made him wonder much. For
+when he wakened from his swoon, a shining star
+lay on his heart above the pearls.</p>
+
+<p>"Now it fell out the squire to whom this Ederyn
+was page was killed in conflict with a robber band,
+and Ederyn, for his faithfulness, was taken by the
+earl to fill that squire's place. Soon after that, they
+left the hall, and journeyed on a visit to a distant
+lord. 'Twas to the Castle of Content they came,
+where was a joyous garden. And now no menial
+tasks employed the new squire's time. Here was
+he free to wander all the day through vistas of
+the joyous garden, or loiter by the fountain in the
+courtyard and watch the maidens at their tasks, having
+fair speech with them among the flowers. And
+one there was among them, so lily-like in face, so
+gentle-voiced and fair, that Ederyn well-nigh forgot
+his oath, and felt full glad when for a space
+the king's call ceased to sound. And gladder was
+he still, when, later on, the earl's long visit done,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+he left young Ederyn behind to serve the great lord
+of the castle, for so the two friends had agreed,
+since Ederyn had pleased the old lord's fancy.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet was he faithful to his vow, and failed not
+every dawn to mount to some high place, when all
+the voices of the world were still, and listen for
+the sound of Merlin's horn. One morn it came:</p>
+
+<p>"'Ederyn! Ederyn! One waits thee far away.
+By the black cave of Atropos, when the moon fulls,
+keep thy tryst!'</p>
+
+<p>"Now 'twas a seven days' journey to that cave,
+and Ederyn, thinking of the lily maid, was loath
+to leave the garden. He lingered by the fountain
+until nightfall, saying to himself: 'Why should
+I go on longer in these foolish quests, keeping tryst
+with shadows that vanish at the touch? No nearer
+am I to a knight's estate than, when a stripling
+page, I listened to the minstrel's tales.'</p>
+
+<p>"The fountain softly splashed within the garden.
+From out the banquet-hall there stole the sound
+of tinkling lutes, and then the lily maiden sang.
+Her siren voice filled all his heart, and he forgot
+his oath to duty. But presently a star reflected in
+the fountain made him look up into the jewelled
+sky, where shone the polar constellation. And there
+he read the oath he had forgotten: 'With the compass<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+needle of my soul true to the north star of
+my great ambition, I will follow where it leads.'</p>
+
+<p>"Thrusting his fingers in his ears to silence the
+beloved voice of her who sang, he madly rushed
+from out the garden into the blackness of the night.
+The Castle of Content clanged its great gate behind
+him. He shivered as he felt the jar through all
+his frame, but, never taking out his fingers, on he
+ran, till scores of furlongs lay between him and
+the tempting of that siren voice.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a strange and fearsome wood that lay
+between him and the cave. All things seemed
+moaning and afraid. He saw no forms, but everywhere
+the shadows shuddered, and moans and
+groans pursued him till nameless fears clutched at
+his heart with icy chill. Then suddenly the earth
+slipped way beneath his feet, and cold waves closed
+above his head. He knew now he had fallen in
+the pool that lies upon the far edge of the fearsome
+wood,&mdash;a pool so deep and of such whirling motion
+that only by the fiercest struggle may one
+escape. Gladly he would have allowed the waters
+to close over him, such cold pains smote his heart,
+had he not seemed to hear the old minstrel's song.
+It aroused him to a final effort, and he gasped between
+his teeth:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"''Tis the king's call! O list!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: .5em;">Thou heart and hand of mine, keep tryst&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Keep tryst or die!'</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"With that, in one mighty struggle he dragged
+himself to land. A bow-shot farther on he saw the
+cave, and by sheer force of will crept toward it.
+What happened then he knew not till the moon
+rose full and high above him. A form swathed all
+in black bowed over him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ederyn,' she sighed. 'Here is thy token that
+the king may know that thou hast met me face to
+face.'</p>
+
+<p>"He thought it was a diamond at first, that
+sparkled there beside the star, but when he looked
+again, lo, nothing but a tear.</p>
+
+<p>"Then went he back unto the joyous garden
+by slow degrees, for he was now sore spent. And
+after that the summons came full often. Whenever
+all the world seemed loveliest and life most
+sweet, then was the call most sure to come. But
+never once he faltered. Never was he faithless to
+the king's behest. Up weary mountain steps he
+toiled to find the sombre face of Disappointment
+there in waiting, and Suffering and Pain were often
+at his journey's end, and once a sore Defeat. But
+bravely as the months went by he learned to smile<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+into their eyes, no matter which one handed out
+to him the pledge of Duty well performed.</p>
+
+<p>"One day, when he no longer was a beardless
+youth, but grown to pleasing stature and of great
+brawn, he heard the hoped-for call of which he
+long had dreamed: 'Ederyn! Ederyn! The king
+himself awaits thee. Midsummer morn at lark-song,
+keep tryst beside the palace gate.'</p>
+
+<p>"As travellers on the desert, spent and worn,
+see far across the sand the palm-tree's green that
+marks life-giving wells, so Ederyn hailed this summons
+to the king. The soul-consuming thirst that
+long had urged him on grew fiercer as the well of
+consummation came in sight. Hope shod his feet
+with wings, as thus with every nerve a-strain he
+pushed toward the final tryst. So fearful was he
+some mishap might snatch the cup away ere it had
+touched his thirsty lips, that three full days before
+the time he reached the Vale of Avalon, and sat
+him down outside the entrance to the palace.</p>
+
+<p>"Now there came prowling through the wood
+that edged the fair domain the gnarled dwarfs that
+do the will of Shudderwain. And Shudderwain,
+of all the giants thereabouts, most cruel was and to
+be feared. Knowing full well what pleasure it
+would give the bloody monster, these dwarfs laid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+evil hands on Ederyn. Sleeping they found him,
+and bound him with hard leathern thongs, and then
+with gibes and impish laughter dragged him into
+a dungeon past the help of man.</p>
+
+<p>"Two days and nights he lay there, raging at
+fate and at his helplessness, till he was well-nigh
+mad, bethinking him of all his baffled hopes. And
+like a madman gnawed he on the leathern thongs
+till he was free, and beat his hands against the
+stubborn rock that would not yield, and threw himself
+against the walls that held him in.</p>
+
+<p>"The dwarfs from time to time peered through
+the slatted window overhead and mocked him,
+pointing with their crooked thumbs.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ha! ha! Thou'lt keep no tryst,' they chattered.
+'But if thou'lt swear upon thy oath to go
+back to the joyous garden, and hark no more for
+Merlin's call, we'll let thee loose from out this
+Dungeon of thy Disappointment.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then was Ederyn tempted, for the dungeon
+was foul indeed, and his heart cried out to go back
+to the lily maiden. But once more in his ears he
+thrust his fingers and cried:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'To the king's call alone I'll list!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: .5em;">Oh, heart and hand of mine, keep tryst&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Keep tryst or die!'</span><br /></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>"On the third night, with the quiet of despair
+he threw him prone upon the dungeon floor and
+held his peace, no longer gnawing on his thongs
+or beating on the rock. A single moonbeam straggled
+through the slatted window, and by its light
+he saw a spider spinning out a web. Then, looking
+dully around, he saw the dungeon was hung
+thick with other webs, foul with the dust of years.
+Great festoons of the cobweb film shrouded his
+prison walls. As up and down the hairy creature
+swung itself upon its thread, the hopeless eyes of
+Ederyn followed it.</p>
+
+<p>"All in a twinkling he saw how he might profit
+by the spider's teaching, and clapped his hand across
+his mouth to keep from shouting out his joy, so
+that the dwarfs could hear. Now once more like
+a madman rushing at the walls, he tore down all
+the dusty webs, and twisted them together in long
+strands. These strands he braided in thick ropes
+and tied them, knotting them and twisting and
+doubling once again. All the while he kept bewailing
+the stupid way in which he wasted time.
+'Three days ago I might have quit this den,' he
+sighed, 'had I but used the means that lay at hand.
+Full well I knew that heaven always finds a way
+to help the man who helps himself. No creature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+lives too mean to be of service, and even dungeon
+walls must harbour help for him who boldly grasps
+the first thing that he sees and makes it serve him.'</p>
+
+<p>"So fast and furiously he worked that, long before
+the moonbeam faded, his cobweb rope was strong
+enough to bear his weight, and long enough to
+reach twice over to the slatted window overhead.
+By many trials he at last succeeded in throwing it
+around a spike that barred the window, and, climbing
+up, he forced the slats apart and clambered
+through. Then tying the rope's end to the window,
+he slid down all the dizzy cliffside in which the
+dwarfs had dug the dungeon, and dropped into the
+stream that ran below.</p>
+
+<p>"Lo, when he looked around him it was dawn.
+Midsummer morn it was, and, plunging through the
+wood, he heard the lark's song rise, and reached
+the palace gate just as it opened to the blare of
+trumpets for the king's train to ride forth. When
+Ederyn saw the royal cavalcade, he shrunk back
+into the wayside bushes, so ill-befitting did it seem
+that he should come before the king in tattered
+garments, with blood upon his hands where the
+sharp rocks had cut, and with foul dungeon stains.</p>
+
+<p>"But that the king might know he'd ever proven
+faithful, he sank upon his knees and bared his breast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+at his approach. There all the pledges glistened in
+the sunlight, in rainbow hues. There Pain had
+dropped her heart's blood in a glittering ruby, and
+Honour set her seal upon him in a golden star.
+A diamond gleamed where Sorrow's tear had fallen,
+and amethysts glowed now with purple splendour
+to mark his patient meeting with Defeat. But
+mostly were the pledges little pearls for little duties
+faithfully performed; and there they shone, and,
+as the people gazed, they saw the jewels take the
+shape of letters, so that the king read out before
+them all, '<i>Semper fidelis</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then drew the king his royal sword and lightly
+smote on Ederyn's shoulder, and cried: 'Arise, Sir
+Knight, Sir Ederyn the Trusty. Since I may trust
+thee to the utmost in little things as well as great,
+since thou of all men art most worthy, henceforth
+by thy king's heart thou shalt ride, ever to be his
+faithful guard and comrade.'</p>
+
+<p>"So there before them all he did him honour,
+and ordered that a prancing steed be brought and
+a good sword buckled on his side.</p>
+
+<p>"Thus Ederyn won his sovereign's favour.
+Soon, by his sovereign's grace permitted, he went
+back to the joyous garden to woo the lily maiden.
+When he had won his bride and borne her to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+palace, then was his great reward complete for all
+his years of fealty to his vow. Then out into the
+world he went to guard his king. Henceforth
+blazoned on his shield and helmet he bore the crest&mdash;a
+heart with hand that grasped a spear, and,
+underneath these words:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>'I keep the tryst!'</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Slipping the white ribbon back between the pages
+to mark the place, Miss Chilton laid the little green
+and gold volume on the table, and smiled at the
+circle of attentive faces.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure you understand why I have read this
+story," she said. "It is the motto of the school.
+Tradition has it that Sir Ederyn was an ancient
+member of Madam Chartley's family. At any rate,
+it has borne his crest for many, many generations,
+and there could be no better motto for a school.
+The world expects us to do certain things. We
+must keep tryst with these expectations. You all
+know what happened yesterday. Madam looks for
+a certain course of conduct from her girls. She
+does not make rules. She only expects what the
+inborn instinct of a true lady would prompt you
+to do or to be. I am sure that after this explanation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+none of you will fail to keep tryst with her
+expectations."</p>
+
+<p>That was the only public reference to Maud's
+escapade. She left the room with a very red face
+when the class was dismissed. The little story
+put her so plainly in the wrong before the other
+girls that it made her cross and uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>Every member of the class had five marks to
+her credit, and Betty was the lucky one whose almost
+literal reproduction of the story gave her ten.
+She copied it all down in her white record afterward,
+adding a verse that she had once seen in
+an autograph album:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Life is a rosary</span><br />
+Strung with the beads of little deeds,<br />
+Done humbly, Lord, as unto thee."<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>She repeated the verse aloud to Lloyd. "I'd
+like to make that kind of a rosary. I'd like to act
+out that story. It just strikes my fancy. It would
+be such a satisfaction to lay aside a token each
+night, as Ederyn did, that I had kept tryst with
+duty,&mdash;had perfect lessons, or lived through a
+day just as nearly right as I possibly could."</p>
+
+<p>She went on writing after she had made the
+remark, but Lloyd, pleased by the thought, sat star<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>ing
+at the lamp. It was nearly bedtime, and presently,
+putting aside her book, she rose and crossed
+over to the bureau. In a sandalwood box in the
+top drawer was a broken fan-chain of white beads&mdash;tiny
+Roman pearls that she had bought in a
+shop in the Via Crucia. She had intended to string
+them sometime, mixing with them here and there
+some curious blue beads she had seen made at a
+glass-blower's in Venice&mdash;large blue ones with tiny
+roses on the sides.</p>
+
+<p>Betty, busy with her diary, did not notice how
+long Lloyd stood with her back toward her, pouring
+the little Roman pearls from one hand to the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems almost babyish," Lloyd was saying to
+herself. "But othah girls keep memory-books and
+such things, and this is such a pretty idea. No
+one need know. Yes, I'll begin the rosary this very
+night, for every lesson was perfect to-day, and I
+truly tried my best in everything."</p>
+
+<p>Hesitating an instant longer, she rummaged
+through the drawer for a piece of fine white silk
+cord which she remembered having placed there.
+When she found it, she knotted one end securely,
+and then slowly slipped one little pearl bead down
+against the knot.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There!" she thought, with a hasty glance over
+her shoulder at Betty, as she dropped the string back
+into its box. "There's one token that I've kept
+tryst, even if I nevah earn any moah. I'm going
+to have that string half-full by vacation."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>A MEMORY-BOOK AND A SOUVENIR SPOON</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> string of white beads grew steadily, but
+work went hand in hand with play at Warwick
+Hall, as Kitty's memory-book testified. She brought
+it out to liven the recreation hour one rainy afternoon,
+late in the term, when they were house-bound
+by the weather. Its covers, labelled "Gala Days
+and Bonfire Nights," were bulging with souvenirs
+of many memorable occasions. She sat on the
+floor with it spread open on her lap. Betty was
+on one side and Lloyd on the other, while Gay
+leaned against her back and looked over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Kitty opened her treasure-house of mementos
+with a giggle, for on the first page was a water-colour
+sketch of Gay as she had appeared on the
+welcoming night. She had painted her with two
+enormous feet protruding from her flowing skirts,
+one cased in a party slipper with an exaggerated
+French heel, the other in a down-trodden bedroom
+slipper painted a brilliant crimson.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You mean thing!" cried Gay, laughing over
+the ridiculous caricature of herself.</p>
+
+<p>"That isn't a circumstance to some of them,"
+remarked Allison, who was virtuously spending
+her recreation hour in sewing buttons on her gloves
+and mending a rip in the lining of her coat-sleeve.
+"Wait till you come to the programme of the
+recital given by the students of voice, violin, and
+piano. The pictures she made all around the margin
+of it are some of the best she has done. The
+sketch of Susie Tyndall, tearing her hair and shrieking
+out the 'Polish Boy,' is simply killing."</p>
+
+<p>"Kitty Walton," exclaimed Gay, as she bent over
+the grotesquely decorated programme, "where do
+you keep this book o' nights? I'll surely have to
+steal it. Think what it will be worth to us when
+we are old ladies. There's one thing certain, you
+could never pose as a saintly old grandmother with
+such a record for mischief as this to bear witness
+against you."</p>
+
+<p>Kitty looked up with a startled expression.
+"You know, it never occurred to me before that
+I'd ever look at this book through spectacles. I
+wonder if I'll find it as amusing then, when I'm
+dignified and rheumatic, as I do now."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure <i>that</i> will be pleasant to recall," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+Betty, pointing to a withered rose pinned to the
+next page. "That will properly impress your
+grandchildren."</p>
+
+<p>Underneath the rose was written the date of a
+private reception granted the Warwick Hall girls
+at the White House.</p>
+
+<p>"I had such a lovely time that afternoon," sighed
+Betty. "It was so much nicer to go as we did,
+for a friendly little visit under Madam's wing, than
+to have pushed by in a big public mob. Wasn't
+Cora Basket funny? She was so overawed by the
+honour that she fairly turned purple. Her roommate
+vows that, when she wrote home, she began,
+'Preserve this letter! The hand that is now writing
+it has been shaken by the President of the
+United States of America!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Cordie Brown was funnier than Cora," said
+Allison. "She wanted to impress people with the
+idea that the affair was nothing to her. That it
+rather bored her, in fact. She went around with
+her nose in the air, trying to appear so superior
+and indifferent, as if crowned heads and their ilk
+made her tired."</p>
+
+<p>"What's this?" demanded Lloyd, as they turned
+the next leaf, through which a single long black<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+hair had been drawn. Underneath was the gruesome
+legend, "Dead men tell no tales."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's only a 'hair from the tail of the dog
+of the child of the wife of the wild man of Borneo,'"
+laughed Kitty, attempting to turn the page;
+but Lloyd, laying both palms across it, held it fast.</p>
+
+<p>"You know it's not, you naughty thing. You've
+been up to some prank."</p>
+
+<p>"It a p. j. A private joke," explained Kitty,
+bending over the book and laughing till her forehead
+touched her knees. "I'm dying to tell you,
+for it's the funniest thing in the collection. It happened
+at the Hallowe'en party, and I promised not
+to tell."</p>
+
+<p>"Promised whom?" demanded Betty.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't tell that, either," was all that Kitty would
+say. She flipped over the next leaf. A gilded wishbone
+was fastened to the page by the bit of red
+ribbon run through it.</p>
+
+<p>"That's 'In Memoriam' of the grand spread
+at the Thanksgiving Day feast. And this button
+pasted on just below it, popped off the glove of
+Mademoiselle La Tosto the afternoon she came to
+the Studio Tea and Art reception. You know how
+the girls buzzed around her like a swarm of bees,
+begging for her autograph. I'd rather have this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+button than a dozen autographs, for it dropped off
+her glove as she clapped her hands in that vivacious
+Frenchy way of hers, when she saw my caricature
+of Paderewski that the girls stuck up on the wall.
+Understand, young ladies, she was <i>applauding</i> it.
+I walked on air all afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"Why undah the sun have you saved this tea
+leaf?" asked Lloyd, pointing to one pasted carefully
+in the corner of the next page.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you remember the day that we went down
+to Mammy Easter's cabin, and her old black grandmother
+was there, and told our fortunes? She
+was a regular old hag, Gay. I wish you could have
+seen her,&mdash;teeth all gone; skin puckered as a dried
+apple; she looked more monkey than human. But
+she's a fine fortune-teller. I made a few hieroglyphics
+to recall what she said. This mark is
+supposed to be a coach and four. She said that
+Allison was to wed wid de quality and ride in a
+car'age, but sorrow would be her po'shun if she
+walked proud. She said that I'm bawn to trouble
+as de spah'ks fly upwa'd, case I won't hah'k to
+counsel, and that I mustn't marry the first man that
+axes me, and I mustn't marry the second man that
+axes me, but the third man that axes me, him I
+can safely marry. This tea leaf stands for the third<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+man. I'm to have three sons and one daughter,
+and my luck will come to me through running water
+when the weather-vane points west."</p>
+
+<p>Kitty pointed to several pencil scratches beside
+the tea leaf, intended to signify a brook and a
+weather-vane on a steeple.</p>
+
+<p>"What did she say about Betty?" asked Gay.</p>
+
+<p>Kitty studied the next line of hieroglyphics a
+moment. "Oh, I see now. I intended this for
+a ship. She said there was a veil done hanging
+ovah her future, so she couldn't rightly tell, but
+she could see ships coming and going and crowds
+of people, and she could see that her fortune was
+mixed up with a great many other persons. She
+said that the teacup held gold for her, and the signs
+all 'pinted friendly.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And Lloyd?" queried Gay, trying to decipher
+the next line of pencil marks. "Surely that's not
+a cat I see."</p>
+
+<p>"A cat, a teapot, and a ball of knitting," laughed
+Kitty. "I supposed that Lloyd's fortune would
+be something thrilling, but according to the old
+darky, it's to be the tamest of all. She said, 'I see
+a rising sun, and a row of lovahs, but I don't see
+you a-taking any of 'em, honey. Yo' ways am
+ways of pleasantness and all yo' paths am peace,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+but I'se powahful skeered dat you'se gwine to be
+an ole maid. I sholy is.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Is that so, Lloyd?" asked Gay, leaning over
+Kitty's shoulder to laugh at the Little Colonel's
+teased expression. Kitty answered for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Not if we can help it. We want her for a
+cousin, and we think that she ought to marry Malcolm
+just for the sake of being able to claim us
+as her dear relations. Look how she's blushing,
+girls."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not!" was the indignant answer. "You're
+just trying to make me get red, because you know
+I do it so easily."</p>
+
+<p>She turned the page hastily and began to talk
+about its contents to change the subject. There
+were scraps of ribbon, as they went farther on,
+a burnt match, a peacock feather, a tiny block of
+wood with a hole shot through it, a strand of embroidery
+silk, a faded pansy,&mdash;a hundred bits of
+worthless rubbish which an unknowing hand would
+have swept into the waste-basket; but to Kitty each
+one was a key to unlock some happy memory of
+her swiftly passing school-days. As the four heads,
+brown and golden, black and auburn, bent over the
+book, the rain beat against the windows in torrents.</p>
+
+<p>With needle in air, Allison sat a moment watch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>ing
+the water stream down the pane. "This makes
+me think of that afternoon in old Lloydsboro Seminary,"
+she said, musingly, "when Ida Shane read
+the 'Fortunes of Daisy Dale' aloud to us. I wonder
+what has become of Ida. She was living in
+a little country town up in the mountains the last
+time I heard of her, taking in sewing and doing her
+own work."</p>
+
+<p>"She's the girl who caused so much excitement
+at the Seminary," Betty explained to Gay. "The
+one who got our Shadow Club into disgrace. She
+tried to elope one night, but the teachers found
+it out and sent her home. It didn't do any good,
+for she ran away with Ned Bannon the next summer,
+and they were married by a justice of the
+peace. I don't see how Ida could do it when she'd
+always been so romantic, and planned to have her
+wedding just like Daisy Dale's, in cherry blossom
+time, and in the little stone church at Lloydsboro,
+with the vines over the belfry. It's so quaint and
+English looking, just like the one that Daisy was
+married in. Instead of being all in white, she was
+married in the dress she happened to have on when
+she ran away,&mdash;just an old black walking skirt
+and plaid shirt-waist. No veil, no trail, and no
+orange-blossoms, and she had counted on having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+all three. It was so prosy and commonplace after
+the grand things she had planned."</p>
+
+<p>"She's had it prosy enough ever since, too,"
+remarked Allison. "Ned drinks so hard that he
+can't keep a position. She didn't reform him one
+single bit, and I reckon she understands now why
+her aunt objected so strongly to her marrying him.
+Poor Ida, to think of her having to take in sewing
+to keep her from actual starvation! It's awful!"</p>
+
+<p>"Poah Ida!" echoed Lloyd. "I don't see how
+she does it. When she was in the Seminary, she
+couldn't do anything with her needle but embroidah.
+I used to have Mom Beck do her mending and
+darning when she did mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank fortune <i>my</i> mending is done!" exclaimed
+Allison, dropping her thimble into her
+work-bag, and throwing her coat across a chair.
+"It's almost time for the bell. I must take Juliet
+Lynn the papers I promised her."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd and Betty, looking at the clock, scrambled
+to their feet, and a moment after only Gay and
+Kitty were left on the rug with the memory-book
+open between them.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think that Lloyd really cares for your
+cousin?" asked Gay.</p>
+
+<p>"No," was the emphatic answer. "You can make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+her blush that way about anybody, and I love to
+tease her. When she first came back from Arizona,
+I used to think she liked Phil Tremont, a boy she
+met out there, and then I thought maybe it was
+Joyce's brother Jack. She talked so much about the
+duck hunts they had together, and what a splendid
+fellow he was, and how much her father admired
+him. But the Princess is so particular that
+I believe the old darky told her fortune truly. If
+she's so particular at fifteen, 'I'se powahful skeered
+she's gwine to be an old maid. I sholy is.' For
+what will she be at twice fifteen?"</p>
+
+<p>Gay laughed at the imitation of the old coloured
+woman, then asked: "But doesn't your cousin
+come up to her standard? According to Maud
+Minor he is as handsome as a Greek god, as accomplished
+as all the Muses put together, and as entertaining
+as a four-ring circus."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Malcolm's all right," answered Kitty.
+"We're awfully fond of him, but we're not so crazy
+about him as to think all that. I have a picture of
+him somewhere in my box of photographs, if you'd
+like to see it."</p>
+
+<p>Climbing on a chair to reach the box on the top
+of the wardrobe, she took it down and began rummaging
+through it. In a moment she tossed a photograph<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+to Gay, who still sat on the floor, Turk
+fashion.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 280px;">
+<img src="images/i003.jpg" width="280" height="500" alt="&quot;STUDYING THE FACE OF THE HANDSOME YOUNG FELLOW WITH INTEREST&quot;" title="&quot;STUDYING THE FACE OF THE HANDSOME YOUNG FELLOW WITH INTEREST&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;STUDYING THE FACE OF THE HANDSOME YOUNG FELLOW WITH INTEREST&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Here is one he had taken years ago when he
+and Keith used to play they were two little Knights
+of Kentucky, and went around trying to set the
+wrongs of the world to rights."</p>
+
+<p>While Gay was still exclaiming over it, she threw
+down another. "Here's the one I was looking for.
+It was taken this summer at Narragansett Pier on
+his polo pony."</p>
+
+<p>Gay seized it, studying the face of the handsome
+young fellow with interest. "Why, he's almost
+grown!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he's nearly eighteen, and he is even better
+looking than that picture. And here's Keith, the
+one I'm so fond of. We always have so much fun
+when they come out to grandmother's for the holidays."</p>
+
+<p>The box slipped and the entire contents showered
+over the floor. Gay helped her to put them
+back into the box, glancing at each one as she
+did so. One in a cadet uniform attracted her attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's this? Now <i>he's</i> the one I'd like to
+know. I suppose it's because I've lived at an army<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+post always that I adore anything military. <i>He</i>
+looks interesting."</p>
+
+<p>Kitty leaned over to look. "Oh, that's my
+brother Ranald. He's away at military school.
+Won't he be teased when I tell him what you said?
+He's dreadfully bashful with girls, though you'd
+think he oughtn't to be. He was under fire ever
+so many times with papa in the Philippines when
+he was a little chap. You know he was the youngest
+captain in the army, at one time, and was on
+General Grant's staff when he was still in short
+trousers."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course, I know," cried Gay, enthusiastically.
+"I heard some officers talking about it
+one night at dinner just after it happened. Papa
+toasted 'The Little Captain' in such a pretty speech
+that the officers who had fought with your father
+cheered. But I never dreamed then that I'd ever
+know his sister, or be sitting here holding his picture,
+talking about him. I'm going to take possession
+of this," she added, when all the other photographs
+were back in the box.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't care, do you? I'd like it to add to
+my collection of heroes. I'll put it in a frame made
+of brass buttons and crossed guns and all sorts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+of ornaments that the officers have given me off
+of their uniforms."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't care," answered Kitty. "Allison
+has one like it, and I can get another any time
+by writing home for it. I wish you would take
+it, for that would give me such a fine thing to tease
+him about. I could worry him nearly distracted."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care how much you tease him so long
+as I may keep the picture," laughed Gay. "I'm
+a thousand times obliged to you."</p>
+
+<p>As she sat looking at it, she exclaimed, suddenly:
+"Kitty Walton, you're an awfully lucky girl to
+have such nice boys in your family. I wish I knew
+them. I haven't a brother or even a forty-second
+cousin."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you can know them if you'll come home
+with me to spend the Christmas vacation. Ranald
+always brings a boy home with him for the holidays,
+and mother said Allison and I might bring
+a friend. I'm sure she'd rather have you than anybody
+else, she knows your father and mother so
+well."</p>
+
+<p>The amber lights in Gay's brown eyes deepened.
+"Oh, I'd <i>love</i> to!" she cried. "I'd dearly love
+to! It's too far to go away back to San Antonio
+for such a short time, and I hated to think of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+holidays, knowing I'd have to stay here at the Hall,
+with all you girls gone. Are you sure your mother
+won't object?"</p>
+
+<p>"You wait and see," advised Kitty. "You don't
+know mammy! You'll not have any doubt of your
+welcome when her letter comes."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it would be too lovely for anything!" exclaimed
+Gay, listening with a far-away look in her
+eyes, as Kitty began outlining plans for the coming
+holidays. Presently, in sheer joy at the prospect,
+they pulled each other up from the floor, and,
+springing on to the bed, danced a Highland fling
+in the middle of it, till a slat fell out with a terrifying
+crash.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>With the coming of December the holiday gaieties
+began. A spirit of festivity lurked in the very
+air. A mock Christmas tree was one of the yearly
+features of the school, when each pupil's pet fad
+or peculiarity was suggested by appropriate gifts.
+Preparations for the tree began early in the month,
+and whispered consultations were carried on in
+every corner, with much giggling and profound
+assurances of secrecy.</p>
+
+<p>The practising of Christmas carols went on in
+the music-rooms, and snatches of them floated down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+the halls and through the building, till the blithe
+young hearts were filled to overflowing with the
+cheer and good-will of the sweet old melodies.
+Now the usual Monday sightseeing gave way to
+shopping, and every moment that could be snatched
+from school work was given to crochet-needles and
+embroidery-hoops, to the finishing of an endless
+variety of gifts, and the wrapping of same in mysterious
+packages.</p>
+
+<p>One Monday Betty did not join the others in
+their weekly shopping expedition. Her few purchases
+had been made, and she wanted the day to
+work on unfinished gifts. She was making most
+of them with her needle. She was glad afterward
+that she had decided to stay when a slow winter
+rain began to fall. It melted the light snow-fall
+which whitened the ground into a disagreeable
+compound of slush and mud.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost dark when Kitty and Allison burst
+into the room, their arms full of bundles, and began
+displaying their purchases. Lloyd followed more
+slowly, and, dropping her packages on the floor
+by the radiator, stood trying to warm her fingers
+through her wet gloves. Presently, in the midst
+of the exhibition, with her hat still on, she flung
+herself across her bed, piled up as it was with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+strings and crumpled wrapping-paper. "Excuse
+me if I mash your bargains, Kitty," she said, weakly,
+closing her eyes. "But I'm as limp as a rag! So
+ti'ahed&mdash;I feel as if I were falling to pieces. We
+tramped around in the wet so long, and then inside
+the stores there were such crowds that we were
+pushed and jammed and stepped on everywhere we
+turned. It seemed to me we waited hours for our
+change. Then the car we came out on was so ovah-heated
+that we almost stifled. I'm suah I caught
+cold when the icy wind struck us aftah we left
+the station."</p>
+
+<p>She shivered as she spoke. Betty sprang up and
+began tugging at her wet wraps.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't lie there that way," she begged. "Let
+me help you get into some dry clothes, and ask the
+housekeeper for a glass of hot milk."</p>
+
+<p>At first Lloyd protested that she was too tired
+to move. Betty could be as persistent as a mosquito
+at times. She insisted until Lloyd finally allowed
+her to have her way, and got up wearily to put
+on the dry skirts and stockings which she brought
+to her. A hot dinner made her feel somewhat better,
+but her face was flushed when they went up-stairs
+for the study hour. Betty saw her wipe her
+eyes as she took out her Latin grammar, and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>stantly
+forgave the petulant way in which Lloyd
+had answered her several times during the evening.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't try to study, Lloyd," she urged. "I
+know you don't feel well."</p>
+
+<p>"No," acknowledged the Little Colonel, "every
+bone in my body aches, and my head is simply splitting."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me run down to the sanitarium and ask
+Miss Gilmer to come up and see if she can't do
+something for you," began Betty, but Lloyd interrupted
+her, stamping her foot with a touch of her
+old childish imperiousness.</p>
+
+<p>"You sha'n't go! I'm not sick! I've just caught
+a plain cold."</p>
+
+<p>"But people don't catch just plain colds nowadays,"
+persisted Betty. "They always catch microbes
+at the same time, that are apt to turn into
+la grippe and pneumonia and all sorts of dreadful
+things. 'A stitch in time saves nine,' you know,"
+she added, wisely, quoting from the motto embroidered
+on her darning-bag, which happened to be
+hanging on a chair-post in the corner. "'An ounce
+of prevention is worth a pound of cure' every
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, for mercy's sake, Betty," cried Lloyd, impatiently,
+"let me alone and don't be so preachy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+I'm not going to repoa't a little thing like a headache
+and a soah throat to the nurse. She'd put
+me to bed and keep me there for a week. I'd get
+behind with my lessons, and lose all the holiday fun.
+Like as not mothah and Papa Jack would come
+straight aftah me, and take me home befoah we'd
+had the mock Christmas tree or any of the things
+I've been looking forward to so long."</p>
+
+<p>Betty picked up her algebra again without an
+audible reply, but inwardly she was saying: "I
+know she is sick, or she wouldn't be so cross."</p>
+
+<p>The next day found Lloyd with such high fever
+that she was installed at once in the sanitarium.
+"It is la grippe that she has," the nurse told Betty.
+"It is the real thing, and not what people always
+claim to have with an ordinary cold. The worst
+will probably be over in a few days, but it will leave
+her so exhausted and so susceptible to other things
+that I shall keep her with me for a week at least."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd rebelled at first, but she had to submit as
+her fever mounted higher, and the world grew, to
+her blurred fancy, one great, throbbing ache. She
+was glad to give herself up to Miss Gilmer's soothing
+touches. Mrs. Sherman did not come, for a
+letter from the school physician assured her that
+Lloyd was receiving every care and attention that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+she could have had at home, and the case was quite
+a simple one.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Gilmer, the nurse, was a big motherly
+woman, who seemed to radiate comfort and cheer,
+as a stove does heat. After the first few days, Lloyd
+would have enjoyed the time spent with her in
+the cheerful room assigned her had she not been
+haunted by the thought that she was falling behind
+her classes.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pretty good sawt of a world, aftah all,"
+she said one day, as she sat propped up among the
+pillows, enjoying a dainty mid-afternoon lunch
+Madam Chartley had personally prepared and sent
+in hot from the chafing-dish. Bouillon in the thinnest
+of fragile china, and a toasted scone which
+recalled delightfully the little English inn she had
+visited near Kenilworth ruins. By some oversight,
+no spoon had been sent in on the tray, and Miss
+Gilmer supplied the deficiency by bringing one of
+her own from a little cabinet in the next room.</p>
+
+<p>"It has a history," Miss Gilmer said, and Lloyd
+looked at it with interest before dipping it into the
+cup.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, the handle is a May-pole!" she exclaimed,
+with pleasure. "And the date down among
+the garlands is the queen's birthday, isn't it? I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+remembah we were up in the Burns country that
+day, when we saw the school-children celebrating
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"To think of an American girl remembering that
+date!" cried Miss Gilmer, in a pleased tone. "It
+is a great day on my calendar, for it was then that
+I met Madam Chartley, for the first time, on the
+queen's birthday. She has been my good angel
+ever since. It was she who sent me that May-pole
+spoon, as a souvenir of that meeting."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, would you tell me about it?" asked Lloyd.
+"It sounds so interesting."</p>
+
+<p>Taking up some needlework from a basket on
+the table, Miss Gilmer leaned back as if to begin
+a long story.</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't so much to tell, after all," she said,
+pausing to thread her needle. "It was long ago,
+when Madam Chartley was Alicia Raeburn, and I
+was a bashful little English schoolgirl at St. Agnes
+Hall. Alicia had come from America to visit her
+uncle, who was proctor of the cathedral. His
+grounds joined the school premises on the south,
+and I often used to peep through the hedge and
+watch her strolling around the garden. She was
+older than I, and the difference in our ages seemed
+greater then than now, for I was still wearing short<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+frocks, and she had just put on long ones. I had
+heard that she was to be presented at court next
+season. That, and the fact that she was an American,
+and very beautiful, and that she looked lonely
+strolling around the old proctor's garden by herself,
+threw a glamour of romance about her.</p>
+
+<p>"I would have given a fortune to have made her
+acquaintance, and I spent hours down by the brook
+dreaming innocent little day-dreams in which I pictured
+such meetings. Suddenly heliotrope became
+my favourite flower instead of roses, because she
+so often wore a bunch of it tucked in the belt of
+her gray dress. Indeed, because she so often wore
+it, I grew to regard it as sacred to her alone, and
+felt that no one else had a right to wear it. Fortunately,
+at that season of the year it grew only
+in the proctor's conservatory, so that the schoolgirls
+could not obtain it. I would have inwardly resented
+it, if any one of them had taken such a liberty as
+to wear her flower. She seemed to me the most
+beautiful and perfect creature I had ever seen, and
+I worshipped her from afar, and imitated her in
+every way possible. I don't suppose you can understand
+such an infatuation."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I do undahstand," interrupted Lloyd,
+eagerly. She was thinking of Ida Shane, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+way she had fallen under the spell of her charming
+personality. Even yet the odour of violets brought
+back the same little thrill it had awakened when
+violets seemed made for Ida's exclusive wearing.
+Miss Gilmer's feeling for the beautiful Alicia Raeburn
+was no deeper than hers had been for Ida.
+She could readily understand about the heliotrope.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," Miss Gilmer went on, "you can
+imagine my state of mind when at last I actually
+met her. It was on the queen's birthday. At our
+school, instead of having the May-pole dance on
+May-day, we waited until the queen's birthday, and
+on that occasion Alicia was one of the invited
+guests. It was quite by accident she spoke to me.
+She dropped her handkerchief, and I sprang to pick
+it up. But she must have seen the adoration in my
+poor little embarrassed face, for I went quite red
+I am sure. I could fairly feel the hot blood surge
+over me. She said something pleasant to cover my
+confusion, and then swept her skirts aside for me
+to share her seat. She wanted to ask some questions
+about the customs of the school, she said.</p>
+
+<p>"That was the beginning of our acquaintance.
+Next day she waved her handkerchief over the
+hedge to me, and the next called me over for a little
+chat. She was lonely in the great garden. After<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+awhile I plucked up courage to tell her how I had
+watched her through the hedge, and dreamed about
+meeting her. I could not put it into words, but
+she could readily see that the good Victoria and
+the queen of the May were not the sovereigns who
+claimed my dearest allegiance. It was the 'Queen
+Rose of the rosebud garden of girls,' the beautiful
+Alicia Raeburn.</p>
+
+<p>"She went away that summer, but we had grown
+to be such friends that she promised to write to
+me once a year, in order that I might not lose her
+entirely out of my life. She knew what a lonely
+little orphan I was, and she never denied me the
+joy of that yearly letter. They were full of her
+travels and the interesting experiences of her life,
+for she married a young English officer and went
+to India.</p>
+
+<p>"They came back to England once. I saw her
+then. It was at a great ball given for the Prince
+of Wales when he honoured the little cathedral town
+with a visit. She could hardly believe that I was
+the little schoolgirl who had eyed her so adoringly
+through the hedge. I had grown so large. But
+she found from others what a lonely life I had,
+and, knowing how much her friendship meant, she
+still gave me the pleasure of that yearly letter, writ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>ten
+on the queen's birthday. That she should remember
+through all her busy years shows one of
+the finest traits of her character.</p>
+
+<p>"Once she was too ill to write, but the message
+came just the same. She sent this spoon with the
+May-pole handle, and on her card was scrawled the
+one line, 'I keep the tryst.' She had told me the
+story of their family crest. You don't know how
+many times in the next few years the sight of that
+card and the souvenir spoon helped me. Her fidelity
+to a promise made me rely on her and her friendship
+when all others failed me. My guardian died and
+left my property in such shape that I found I would
+have to support myself, and I began to take training
+for a professional nurse. When she heard of it,
+she wrote and told me that she, too, had been
+obliged by her husband's death to earn her own
+living, and that she had established this school in
+her great-grandmother's old mansion. She offered
+me the position of professional nurse here. I came
+on the next steamer, and have been here ever
+since.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know how many times I've thought
+how different my life would have been if she had
+failed in that one little matter of sending a yearly
+letter. No doubt it was a bore to her oftentimes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+but it was the line that kept us in touch and finally
+drew me to this happy anchorage. Alicia Chartley
+is a great woman, my dear. She has left her imprint
+on every girl who has passed through this
+school, and there'll be a long line of them to rise
+up and call her blessed. Not so much for the fine
+ladies she has made of them with her high-bred
+ways and ideals, but for the example she has set
+them always in that one thing. No matter in how
+small a duty, she has never once failed to keep the
+tryst."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd would have liked to ask some questions
+about Madam's girlhood, but some one called Miss
+Gilmer into the office just then, so, taking the tray
+with its empty cup and plate, she passed out. Lloyd
+thumped her pillows and lay looking out of the
+window at the sparrows on the balcony railing.
+All the ache was gone, and, with a delightful sense
+of drowsiness and of well-being, she began slipping
+into a little doze. Even illness had its bright side,
+she thought, languidly. She liked Miss Gilmer's
+reminiscences. They opened into a world so delightfully
+English. When she came back she would
+ask for more stories. Down from the distant music-room
+stole the faint echo of one of the carols. She
+opened her eyes to listen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"God rest you, merry Christians,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Let nothing you dismay,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">For Christ our Lord and Saviour</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Was born on Christmas Day."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Lloyd liked that carol. "'Let nothing you dismay,'"
+she repeated, softly. "No, it doesn't really
+make any difference what happens," she thought,
+closing her eyes again and curling up like a sleepy
+kitten. "It will all come right in the end, as it did
+with Miss Gilmer. I'll not worry about missing
+so many lessons and so many pearls on my rosary.
+I'll just be thankful for Christmas and all it brings."</p>
+
+<p>Again through her drowsy senses echoed the
+refrain, and she dropped to sleep, repeating, slowly,
+"'Let&mdash;nothing&mdash;you&mdash;dismay!'"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>CHRISTMAS CAROLS</h3>
+
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">This</span> is the worst time of all the yeah to be
+sick," fretted the Little Colonel, pausing in her restless
+journey around the room. She had been pacing
+from window to fireplace in the nurse's office, and
+from fireplace to window again, watching the clock
+and the slowly westering sun, as if watching would
+hasten the day to its close.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Gilmer, who was placidly knitting, changed
+needles without looking up. "That is what people
+always say. I've never yet found one whose calendar
+had a time when illness would be convenient."</p>
+
+<p>"But now, just befoah the holidays, a thousand
+things are waiting to be done. I'm behind a whole
+week with my studies, and my Christmas presents
+that I'm going to make are scarcely begun. You
+haven't even let me look at the material. I feel
+like a caged lion, and I'd like to roah and claw and
+ramp around till I'd smashed my bah's."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You'll have your liberty soon," laughed Miss
+Gilmer. "I think it will be safe to let you go down
+to the dining-room this evening, and I'll give you
+your honourable discharge in the morning. But,
+if I were in your place, I would make no attempt
+to catch up with the classes this term. I would
+lock the unfinished presents away in a drawer, and
+not give any this Christmas. You ought to spend
+the holidays as quietly as possible, doing nothing
+but rest."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd turned toward her with an exclamation of
+dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Miss Gilmer! That's impossible! We've
+planned for a gayer Christmas vacation than we've
+evah had befoah. Every day will be full to the
+brim. And I <i>must</i> make up the recitations I have
+missed. I've had such good repoah'ts all term that
+I can't beah to spoil everything right at the end.
+When I was in bed, feeling so bad, I made up my
+mind I wouldn't worry about them, but now I feel
+as good as new, only a little weak, and one always
+feels weak aftah fevah. It's to be expected. You
+know I wasn't dangerously ill."</p>
+
+<p>"No," admitted Miss Gilmer, "but your little
+illness has left you with less strength than you think
+you have. You are like an ice-pond that is just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+beginning to freeze over. A very light weight will
+break it through at that stage, but if there is no
+strain until it has frozen properly, it can bear the
+weight of the most heavily loaded wagons."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd slipped into a chair and stared dismally
+at the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"But I am strongah than you think, Miss Gilmer.
+Except one time when I had the measles, I'd never
+been sick in my life till last week. I don't believe
+it's good for people to coddle themselves and worry
+all the time for feah they are going to be ill."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," answered the nurse, "I fully agree with
+you in that, still I should not be doing my duty if
+I did not put up a warning signal when I see danger
+ahead. I do see it now. You are getting on
+very nicely, but the ice is very thin,&mdash;far too thin
+for any such extra weights as double study hours
+and holiday dissipations. If you don't walk lightly,
+there'll be a nervous breakdown."</p>
+
+<p>Some one called Miss Gilmer away before she
+could finish her warning, and Lloyd sat facing the
+fire and this unpleasant bit of counsel for nearly
+half an hour. A verse from her favourite carol
+came echoing through the halls from the distant
+music-room, for it was practice hour again, but this
+time it did not fit her mood, and it brought no cheer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+It was all well enough for those girls up-stairs,
+happy and well and able to do as they pleased, to
+be singing "Let <i>nothing</i> you dismay," but she
+couldn't help being dismayed at Miss Gilmer's opinion
+of her condition. She was ready to cry, thinking
+how all her holidays would be spoiled should
+she follow the nurse's advice.</p>
+
+<p>With her chin in her hand and her elbow on the
+arm of the chair, she sat picturing her doleful
+Christmas if she could have no part in the giving,
+and must be left out of all the merrymaking they
+had planned. Tears welled up into her eyes, and
+her miserable reverie might have ended in a downpour
+had it not been interrupted by the entrance
+of Gay and Betty. Having taken a hasty run across
+the terraces, they had obtained permission to spend
+the rest of the recreation hour with Lloyd.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't waste a minute now," exclaimed Gay,
+as she pulled out her knitting-work and began clicking
+her ivory needles through a rainbow shawl she
+was making. "I believe Betty sleeps with her embroidery
+hoops under her pillow, and I know that
+Allison paints in her sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"What would you do if you were in my place?"
+mourned Lloyd. She repeated the nurse's dismal
+warning.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Boo! She magnifies her office," said Gay,
+glancing over her shoulder to make sure that they
+were alone. "I suppose it is perfectly natural that
+she should. When you're with Miss White, she
+makes you feel that there's nothing in life to live
+for but Latin. When you're with Miss Hooker,
+mathematics is the chief end of man. With Professor
+Stroebel the violin is the one and only. So
+of course a professional nurse is in duty bound to
+make hygiene the first consideration. Don't listen
+to them, listen to me. I change my mind a dozen
+times a day, and have a new fad every fortnight,
+so it stands to reason that my advice is more broad-minded
+than the advice of a person who rides only
+one hobby, and rides that in a rut."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd laughed at Gay's foolishness, but groaned
+when Betty told her how far the classes had advanced
+during her absence from recitations.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have to work like a beavah this next week
+to catch up. I stah'ted out to have perfect repoah'ts,
+and I feel that I must stick to it, as Ederyn did
+when he heard the king's call. It is an obligation
+that I <i>must</i> meet. I must keep tryst or die."</p>
+
+<p>Gay looked at her admiringly. "I knew you
+were like that," she exclaimed. "If there is anything
+I envy it is strength of character."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The admiring glance and Gay's remark carried
+greater weight than all the nurse's warning. There
+was another reason now for persevering in her determination.
+Gay expected it of her, and she could
+not fall below Gay's expectation of what a strong
+character should accomplish.</p>
+
+<p>Gay, having finished a white stripe across the
+shawl, opened the sweet-grass Indian basket hanging
+on her chair-post, and took out several skeins
+of zephyr of a delicate sea-shell pink.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me hold it while you wind," begged Lloyd.
+"It's such an exquisite shade, like the heart of a
+la France rose. It makes me think of the stories
+mothah used to tell me. Everything in them had
+to be pink, from the little girl's dress to the bow
+on her kitten's neck. Her slippahs, parasol, flowahs
+in the garden, papah on the wall, icing on the cake,
+everything had to be pink."</p>
+
+<p>"What a funny little creature you must have
+been," laughed Gay, secretly making note of Lloyd's
+favourite colour, and resolving to change the names
+on two packages laid away in her trunk. The blue
+sachet-bag with the forget-me-nots should go to
+Betty instead of Lloyd, as she had originally intended.
+Lloyd should have the one with the garlands
+of pink rosebuds.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"My room at home is furnished in pink," Lloyd
+went on. "Oh, Gay, I'm wild for you to see Locust.
+I'm going to have you and the Walton girls and
+Katie Mallard, one of our neighbahs, spend two
+days and nights with us. While I've been cooped
+up heah getting well, I've planned some of the loveliest
+things to do that you evah dreamed of. It's
+going to be the gayest vacation that evah was."</p>
+
+<p>When Miss Gilmer returned at the end of the
+hour, Lloyd looked so much brighter and better
+that she gave her an unexpected furlough.</p>
+
+<p>"There, run along to your room with the other
+girls. I'll expect you back at bedtime, for I want
+to keep you under my wing one more night, but
+you're at liberty till then on one condition,&mdash;you're
+not to look into a book."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll promise! Oh, I'll promise!" cried Lloyd,
+impetuously throwing her arms around the nurse.
+"You're <i>such</i> a deah! Not that I'm anxious to
+get away from you," she added, fearing that her
+delight might be misunderstood. "But I just want
+to get <i>out!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>True to her promise, Lloyd opened no books,
+but, flying to her room, she took out one of the
+uncompleted Christmas gifts, a pair of bedroom
+slippers, and worked with feverish haste until dinner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+was ready. It was good to be at the table again
+with the other girls after her week of solitary meals
+in the nursery. Afterward it was a temptation to
+linger in the library talking with them, but the
+thought of the many tasks undone sent her hurrying
+back to her room.</p>
+
+<p>Betty followed presently with the Walton girls,
+and they all worked steadily on their various gifts
+until the bell rang for the evening study hour.
+Then Allison and Kitty reluctantly departed, and
+Betty took out her algebra. Lloyd crocheted in
+silence for half an hour longer, her fingers flying
+faster and faster in her eagerness to complete the
+task. Finally she laid it down with a sigh of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" she exclaimed aloud. "That's done.
+They're all ready for the bows. Now, thank fortune,
+I can check them off my list."</p>
+
+<p>Betty looked up with an absent-minded smile,
+nodded approvingly at the finished slippers standing
+on the table, and then went on with her problems.
+Lloyd opened her bureau-drawer to search
+for the ribbon which she had bought for the bows.
+As she rummaged through it, her hand touched the
+little sandalwood box that held the unfinished rosary.
+She glanced over her shoulder. Betty was
+deep in her algebra. So, taking out the string of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+beads, she passed it slowly through her fingers.
+Then she held it up, and, looping it around her
+throat, looked in the mirror.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it's mighty childish of me," she said
+to herself, "but I can't enjoy my vacation if I go
+home with a single one of this term's pearls missing.
+I've <i>got</i> to make up those lessons, no mattah
+what the nurse says. I can rest aftahward."</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later she presented herself at Miss
+Gilmer's door with the announcement that she
+would go to bed an hour earlier than usual, in order
+to get a good start for the next day.</p>
+
+<p>All that week she worked with a restless energy
+that kept her keyed to the highest pitch of effort.
+She scarcely ate, and her sleep was broken, but
+her eyes were so bright and her manner so animated,
+that Betty wrote home that Lloyd's little
+spell of illness seemed to have done her good.</p>
+
+<p>By studying before breakfast, and snatching
+every minute she could spare from other duties,
+she managed to have perfect recitations in each
+study, and at the same time to make up the lessons
+she had missed. Five o'clock Saturday afternoon
+found her with the last task done. She slipped
+ten more little Roman pearls over the silken cord;
+five for the week's advance work, and five for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+days she had missed. Then with a sigh of relief
+she put the sandalwood box into her trunk,
+already partly packed for home-going, and flung
+herself wearily across the bed.</p>
+
+<p>The mock Christmas tree had been lighted the
+evening before, and the gifts distributed. She had
+not enjoyed it as she had expected to, although
+some of the jokes were excruciatingly funny, and
+the girls had laughed until they were limp. She
+was too tired to laugh much. She was glad that
+Sunday was coming before the day of leave-taking.
+She made up her mind that she would skip dinner,
+and ask Betty just to slip her something from the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>Then she remembered that this was the night the
+carols were to be sung in the chapel. She could
+not miss that. It was the prettiest service of all
+the year, the old girls said. Some one had told
+her it was a custom for everybody to wear white
+to the carol-singing, but it was hard to remember
+things, maybe she had only dreamed it. She wished
+that she did not have to remember things, but
+could lie there without moving, until morning.
+What was it her mother used to sing to her?
+"Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas."
+Oh! The white seal's lullaby. That was what she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+wanted. How good it would feel to be rocked by
+the restful motion of the waves, to be caught in that
+long sleepy sweep of the slow-swinging seas.</p>
+
+<p>When she opened her eyes again it was to find
+the room lighted, and Betty dressing for the carol
+service. She had slept an hour.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll never do to miss the carols," Betty assured
+her, when she suggested skipping dinner.
+"Come on, I'll help you dress. Just tell me what
+you want to wear, and I'll lay out your things
+while you're shaking your wits together. You'll
+feel better after you've had a hot dinner." So
+struggling with the weariness which nearly overpowered
+her, Lloyd forced herself to follow Betty's
+example, and go down to the dining-room when
+the bell rang. An hour later she fell into line
+with the other girls, as, all in white, they filed into
+the chapel.</p>
+
+<p>"How Christmasey it looks and smells," she
+whispered to Allison, as the doors swung open and
+a breath from the pine woods greeted them. The
+chancel was wreathed and festooned with masses
+of evergreen. To-night tall white candles furnished
+the only light. Far down the dim aisles they twinkled
+like stars against the dark background of cedar
+and hemlock.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Betty was glad that they had entered early. The
+deep silence of those moments of waiting, the dim
+light of the Christmas tapers, and the fragrance of
+the pine seemed as much a part of the service as
+anything which followed. In the expectant hush
+that filled the little chapel, she pictured the three
+kings riding through the night, until she could
+almost see the shadowy desert and hear the tread
+of the camels who bore the wise men on their starlit
+quest. She saw the hillside of Judea, where the
+shepherds kept their night-watch by their flocks,
+and all the mystery and wonder of the first great
+Christmastide seemed to vibrate through her heart,
+as the deep organ prelude suddenly filled the air
+with the jubilant chords of "Joy to the world, the
+Lord has come."</p>
+
+<p>Presently the music changed, and the girls looked
+around expectantly. From far down distant halls
+and corridors came a chorus of girlish voices: "Oh,
+little town of Bethlehem." So sweet and far away
+it was, the audience in the chapel involuntarily
+leaned forward to listen. Across the campus it
+sounded, gradually drawing nearer and clearer,
+until, with a triumphant burst of melody, the doors
+swung open and the white-robed choir swept in.</p>
+
+<p>Only the best voices in the school had been chosen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+for this choir, and weeks of training preceded the
+service. One after another they sang the sweet
+old tunes of the Christmas waits until they reached
+Lloyd's favourite, "Let nothing you dismay." She
+listened to it with pleasure now, since her greatest
+cause for dismay had been removed. She had kept
+tryst with the term's obligations, as the last pearl
+on the rosary could testify.</p>
+
+<p>In the hush that followed that carol, an old man,
+with silvery hair and benign face, rose under the
+tall candles of the chancel.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the bishop," whispered Gay to Lloyd.
+"Old Bishop Chartley. He is Madam's uncle, and
+he always comes down for this service."</p>
+
+<p>Then even her irrepressible tongue grew still, for,
+in a deep voice that filled the chapel, he began to
+read the story of the three wise men who followed
+the star with their gifts of gold and frankincense
+and myrrh, until it led them to Bethlehem's manger.
+An old, old story, but it bloomed anew once more,
+as it has bloomed every year since first the wondering
+wise men started on their quest.</p>
+
+<p>The bishop closed the Book. "How shall we
+keep the King's birthday?" he asked. "What gifts
+shall we bring? To-day in a quaint old tale, beloved
+in boyhood, I found the answer. It is the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+story of a strange country called Cathay, and this
+is the way it runs:</p>
+
+<p>"'The ruler thereof is one Kublan Khan, a
+mighty warrior. His government is both wise and
+just, and is administered to rich and poor alike,
+without fear or favour. On the king's birthday
+the people observe what is called the White Feast.
+Then are the king and his court assembled in a
+great room of the palace, which is all white, the
+floor of marble and the walls hung with curtains
+of white silk. All are in white apparel, and they
+offer unto the king white gifts, to show that their
+love and loyalty are without a stain. The rich bring
+to their lord pearls, carvings of ivory, white chargers,
+and costly broidered garments. The poor present
+white pigeons and handfuls of rice. Nor doth
+the great king regard one gift above another, so
+long as all be white. And so do they keep the king's
+birthday.'"</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd, leaning forward, listened with such breathless
+interest that it attracted Gay's attention.
+"That's just like your pink story," she whispered.
+Lloyd gave her fingers a responsive squeeze, but
+never took her eyes from the benign old face. The
+bishop was applying the story to the audience before
+him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"As these pagans of Cathay kept the feast of
+Kublan Kahn, so we may make of Christmas a
+White Feast, whose offerings are without stain.
+We need make no weary pilgrimages across the
+trackless sands, as did those Eastern sages. 'Inasmuch
+as ye have done it unto the least of these my
+brethren' (these are the King's own words), 'ye have
+done it unto me.' At our very doors we may give
+to Him, through His poor and needy.</p>
+
+<p>"But there is another way. You are all familiar
+with the motto of this house, and the legend which
+gave rise to it. Clad in the white garments of
+Righteousness, we may keep the tryst as Ederyn
+kept it, and bring to the King the white pearls of
+a well-spent life. Days unstained by selfishness,
+days filled up with duties faithfully performed.
+It matters not how small and commonplace our
+efforts seem, the rice and the pigeons of the poor
+showed Kublan Kahn his subjects' loyalty as fully
+as the ivory carvings and the costly broidered garment.
+Nor doth the great King regard one gift
+of ours above another, so long as all be white. If
+only on our breasts the tokens Duty gives us spell
+out the words, '<i>semper fidelis</i>,' then ours will be
+the royal accolade: 'Well done, thou good and
+faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+Lord.' To give <i>ourselves</i>, unstained and gladly,
+thus may we keep the White Feast on the birthday
+of the King."</p>
+
+<p>Then the choir stood again, but Lloyd scarcely
+noticed what it sang. She was thinking of the
+bishop's story, and her secret hidden away in the
+sandalwood box. She was so glad now that she
+had strung the pearls. She had begun it because
+it pleased her fancy to act out the story of Ederyn,
+but now the sacred meaning the old bishop gave
+the story thrilled her through and through. The
+King's call suddenly seemed very sweet and personal.
+Henceforth she would string the pearls in
+answer to that call.</p>
+
+<p>When they all knelt in the closing prayer, she
+fervently echoed the bishop's petition: "Grant
+that we make of this Christmastide a White Feast,
+and that all our days may be worthy of thy acceptance,
+unstained by selfishness and full of deeds
+to show our love and loyalty."</p>
+
+<p>The white-robed choir filed slowly out, their
+music sounding fainter and fainter until it died
+away across the campus, and the white-robed audience
+was left kneeling in silence. There were tears
+in Gay's eyes when she arose. Such music always
+stirred her to the depths. Kitty went back to her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+room humming one of the carols, and Betty stole
+away to write the bishop's sermon in her little white
+record, while the memory of it was still warm in
+her heart.</p>
+
+<p>At Miss Gilmer's request, Lloyd waited a moment
+in the vestibule. At first she wished that Miss
+Gilmer had not detained her. She wanted to go
+on with Allison, who had her by the arm. Afterward,
+however, she was glad of the waiting. It
+gave her an opportunity to meet the venerable
+bishop.</p>
+
+<p>"So you are going home to-morrow for the holidays,"
+he said, genially, as he held out his hand.
+"Godspeed, daughter. May you keep the White
+Feast with joy."</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Lloyd that that "Godspeed" followed
+her like a benediction.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>HOMEWARD BOUND</h3>
+
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"O Warwick Hall, dear Warwick Hall,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thy happy hours we'll oft recall!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">No time or change can break thy tie,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Though for awhile we say good-bye&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Good-bye! Good-bye!"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Amid</span> a flutter of handkerchiefs and a babel of
+parting cries, each 'bus-load of girls departed from
+the Hall to the station singing the farewell song
+of the school.</p>
+
+<p>A dozen times on the way home Allison, humming
+it unconsciously, found the rest of the party
+joining in. It was an uneventful journey, but a
+merry one to the five girls, travelling for the first
+time without a chaperon. For the first few hours
+they had the observation car to themselves. Even
+the porter mysteriously disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"He's curled up asleep somewhere, rest his soul,"
+said Gay, when she had rung for him several times.</p>
+
+<p>"All the better," answered Kitty. "We don't
+really need the table, and it's nice to have him out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+of the way. This is as good as travelling in a private
+car. We can 'stand on our head in our little
+trundle-bed, and nobody nigh to hinder.' Oh, girls,
+I'm so crazy glad that we're on our way home that
+I'm positively obliged to do something to let off
+steam. I've exhausted my vocabulary trying to express
+my delight, so there's nothing left but to
+howl."</p>
+
+<p>"Or to wriggle," suggested Gay. "Why not
+try facial expression? How is this for transcendent
+joy?"</p>
+
+<p>The grotesque smile which she turned upon them
+was so ridiculous that they screamed with laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Gay, do stop!" begged Betty. "You're
+as bad as a comic valentine."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to see you do any better," retorted Gay.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's all try," suggested Kitty. "Line up in
+front of this mirror, girls. Now all look pleasant,
+please. Now let your smiles express rapture. Now,
+frenzied delight!"</p>
+
+<p>Fascinated by their own ugliness, the five girls
+stood in a row distorting their pretty faces with
+hideous grins and grimaces until they were weak
+from laughing. The banging of the car door sent
+them scuttling into their seats. A portly old gentleman
+passed through the car to the rear platform,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+and, slamming the door behind him, stood looking
+down the rapidly vanishing track. Evidently it
+was too breezy a view-point for the old gentleman,
+even with his coat-collar turned up and hat pulled
+down to meet his ears, for in a moment he came in
+and passed back to his seat in a forward car. The
+girls sat demurely looking out of the windows until
+he was gone, then they faced each other, giggling.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose he had caught us making those idiotic
+faces," exclaimed Allison. "He would have taken
+us for a lot of escaped lunatics."</p>
+
+<p>"No, he wouldn't," insisted Gay. "He was a
+real benevolent-looking old fellow, the kind that
+understands young people, and he'd know that it
+was just that Christmas has gone to our heads, and
+made us a little flighty. I'm sure that his name
+is James, and that he has six old maid daughters.
+He lives out West, and he's taking home a trunk
+full of presents for them."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's guess what he has for them," said Kitty.
+"I'll say that the oldest one is named Emmaline,
+and he is taking her a squirrel fur muff."</p>
+
+<p>"And the next one is Agnes Dorothea," said
+Betty, taking her turn, as if it were a game. "She's
+the delicate one of the family, and a sort of invalid.
+So he bought her a lavender shoulder shawl that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+caught his fatherly eye in a show window, because
+it was so soft and fluffy. But it will shrink and
+fade the first time it is washed till Agnes Dorothea
+will look like a homeless cat if she wears it. Still
+she will persist in putting it on because dear father
+brought it to her from Washington."</p>
+
+<p>"He'd certainly think you all were crazy if he
+could heah yoah remah'ks," laughed Lloyd.</p>
+
+<p>"Speaking of shawls," cried Gay, "that reminds
+me of that rainbow shawl in my bag. I haven't
+taken a stitch in it since we started, and I intended
+to knit all the way home. I simply have to, if I'm
+to get it done in time."</p>
+
+<p>Taking out the square of linen in which the
+fleecy zephyr was wrapped, she settled herself by
+the rear window in a big arm-chair, with her feet
+drawn up under her, and fell to work with all her
+might.</p>
+
+<p>"It's so nice and cosy to have the car all to ourselves,"
+sighed Allison, stretching out luxuriously
+on the sofa. Betty, bending over her embroidery,
+smiled tenderly at a picture that her memory showed
+her just then. She was comparing this journey
+with the first one she had ever taken. And she
+saw in her thoughts a little brown-eyed girl of
+eleven, setting forth on her first venture into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+wide world, with a sunbonnet tied over her curls,
+and an old-fashioned covered basket on her arm.
+What a dread undertaking that journey had been
+from the Cuckoo's Nest to the House Beautiful.
+She remembered how frightened she was, and how
+she had studied the picture of Red Ridinghood,
+printed in colours on the border of her handkerchief,
+until she was afraid to speak even to the
+conductor. She saw a possible wolf in every
+stranger.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow her thoughts kept going back to that
+time, even in the midst of Gay's most amusing nonsense,
+and Kitty's brightest repartee. Even when
+Allison began to sing "O Warwick Hall," and
+she chimed in with the others, "Dear Warwick
+Hall," she was not thinking of school, but of the
+Cuckoo's Nest, and Davy, and the old weather-beaten
+meeting-house, in whose window she had
+passed so many summer afternoons, reading the
+musty dog-eared books she found in the little red
+bookcase.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you smiling about, Betty, all to yoahself?"
+asked Lloyd. "You look as if you are a
+thousand miles away."</p>
+
+<p>Betty glanced up with a little start. "Oh, I was
+just thinking about the Cuckoo's Nest, and wishing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+that I could see Davy's face when they open the
+Christmas box I sent. There are only trifles in it,
+but the box will mean a lot to them, for Cousin
+Hetty never has time to make anything of Christmas."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd sat up with a sudden exclamation. "Oh,
+Betty, I <i>beg</i> yoah pah'don. There's a lettah for
+you in my bag from some of them that I forgot to
+give you. Hawkins came up with it just as we
+drove off, and there was so much excitement and
+confusion I nevah thought of it again till this minute.
+I'm mighty sorry I forgot."</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't make any difference," Betty assured
+her. "Good news can afford to wait, and, if it's
+bad news, it would have spoiled all the first part
+of this trip."</p>
+
+<p>She tore open the envelope and glanced down
+the page. Lloyd, looking up, saw a distressed expression
+cross her face and the brown eyes fill with
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's poor little Davy that's in trouble," said
+Betty, answering Lloyd's anxious question. "He
+had his leg badly hurt last week, broken in two
+places. He was riding one of those heavy old farm
+horses, hurrying home to get out of a storm. Going
+down a steep, slippery hill, it stumbled and fell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+on him. He'll have to lie in bed for weeks, with
+his knee in plaster, and he's so tired of it already,
+and <i>so</i> lonesome. Nobody has any time to sit with
+him. I know how it is. I was sick myself once
+at the Cuckoo's Nest. Oh, I'd give anything if I
+could spend my vacation there with him."</p>
+
+<p>"And give up all your good times at home?"
+cried Kitty. "He surely couldn't expect such a
+sacrifice as that."</p>
+
+<p>"But it wouldn't be any sacrifice. Not a mite!
+I haven't seen him for such a long time, and I'd
+love to go. He used to be the dearest little fellow,
+never out of my sight a moment during the day.
+They used to call him 'Betty's shadow.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you go if you wish it so much?"
+was on the tip of Gay's tongue, but she stopped
+the question just before it slipped off, remembering
+Betty's dependence on her godmother. Kitty had
+told her all about it one time. Naturally she
+wouldn't want to ask for the money, even for such
+a short journey, when so much was being spent to
+keep her at school with Lloyd; and naturally she
+would not want to ask to leave Locust at Christmas,
+when that was the time of all the year when she
+could be of service, and in many ways add greatly
+to the pleasure of the entire household.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The nonsense stopped for a few minutes. No one
+knew what to say to comfort Betty, although they
+were genuinely sorry, and glanced from time to
+time at the brown head turned away from them
+toward the window. She was looking at the flying
+landscape through a blur of tears, recalling the
+way little Davy's dimpled fingers had clung to hers,
+his chubby feet followed her. Of course he was
+much larger and older, she told herself, not at all
+like the little fellow she had left so long ago. He
+was big enough to stand pain now, and probably
+the worst of his suffering was over. Still, she saw
+only a solemn baby face when she pictured him,
+and heard only the lisping voice, saying as he used
+to say when stumped toe or bruised finger brought
+the tears: "It hurth your Davy boy. Tie a wag
+on it, Betty." How he had loved her stories!
+What a pleasure they would be to him now in the
+long days he would be forced to spend in bed.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly conscious of the silence around her,
+Betty turned, realizing that her depression had cast
+a shadow on the spirits of all the rest.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think about my bad news any more,"
+she said, brightly. "It probably isn't half as bad
+as I have been picturing it. My imagination always
+runs away with me. It isn't Davy the baby that's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+had such an awful accident. It was that thought
+that hurt me so at first. I keep forgetting that
+it's five years since I left there. I'm going to drop
+him a postal card at the next station. I can write
+to him every day, and make a sort of game of the
+letters with riddles and suggestions of things for
+him to do, and that will help the time pass."</p>
+
+<p>"First call to dinnah in the dinah," called a
+coloured waiter, passing through the car in white
+jacket and apron.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we'll have to stop all our foolishness,"
+said Allison, sedately, as she rose to lead the way
+to the dining-car. They followed as decorously as
+grandmothers, each realizing the responsibility that
+devolved on her, since they were travelling without
+a chaperon.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, Gay choked on an olive when Kitty
+made some wicked remark about the fussy old
+woman across the aisle, who wouldn't be pleased
+with anything the waiter brought her; and it was
+too much for their gravity when an excessively
+dignified man at the next table, who had been staring
+at the wall like a wooden Indian, suddenly
+sneezed so violently that his eye-glasses dropped
+into his soup with a splash.</p>
+
+<p>Otherwise they were models of propriety, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+more than one head turned to look at the bright
+girlish faces, and smile at the keen, unspoiled enjoyment
+which they evidently found in life and in
+each other.</p>
+
+<p>They did not stay long in the observation-car
+when they went back to it after dinner. Other
+people had come in, and it was not so attractive
+as when they occupied it alone. The lamps had
+been lighted so early that short December day that
+it seemed much later than it really was, and they
+were all tired. At nine o'clock, when they went to
+their berths in the forward end of the car, they
+found several sections already made up for the
+night, and the porter was moving on down toward
+theirs.</p>
+
+<p>The fussy old woman, who had been so hard to
+please at the table, came squeezing her way through
+the valises that blocked the aisle, and took possession
+of the section opposite Betty and Lloyd.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my country!" whispered Lloyd. "I wondah
+if she's going to keep up that grumbling and
+scolding all night. I'm glad that I am not that
+poah henpecked maid of hers. She certainly makes
+life misahable for her."</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly two hours before Jenkins, the long-suffering
+maid, succeeded in settling her mistress<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+to her satisfaction behind the curtains of her berth.
+The girls made no attempt to get into the dressing-room
+until the little comedy was over. They
+laughed until they were hysterical over each scene
+as it occurred. A comedy in three acts, Betty called
+it&mdash;the losing of the cold-cream bottle and the
+finding of same in madam's overshoe. The unavailing
+search for a certain black silk handkerchief in
+which madam was wont to tie her head up in of
+nights, and the substitution of a towel instead, which
+the porter obligingly brought.</p>
+
+<p>Next there was a supposed case of poisoning,
+Jenkins in her trepidation having administered three
+pink pellets from a bottle instead of two white ones
+from a box. Five minutes' reign of terror after
+that mistake brought the poor maid to a witless
+state that left her almost helpless. Various trips
+were made to the dressing-room, at which times
+the old lady's face was massaged, her grizzly hair
+rolled on crimping-pins, and her shoulders rubbed
+with an evil-smelling liniment which permeated the
+whole car. She seemed as oblivious to the presence
+of the other passengers as if she were on a desert
+island, and, being somewhat deaf, made Jenkins
+repeat her timid replies louder and louder until they
+were almost screaming at each other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Every one on the car was smiling broadly when
+at last she subsided behind the curtains. The smiles
+grew to audible mirth when she confided in a loud
+voice to Jenkins, stowed away in the berth above
+her, that she hoped to goodness nobody on board
+would snore and keep her awake.</p>
+
+<p>Jenkins's answer, floating tremulously down,
+convulsed the sleepy girls: "Hi 'ope not, ma'am.
+Hit's a bad 'abit, ma'am, halmost, you might say,
+han haffliction."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" came in a thunderous voice from the
+lower berth, and Jenkins, craning her head turtle-wise
+over the edge of her bed, called back in a
+tremulous squeak: "Hi honly said as 'ow hit were
+a bad 'abit, ma'am!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hump!" was the answer. "See that you don't
+do it yourself. I've got my umbrella here ready to
+punch you if you do."</p>
+
+<p>A titter ran from seat to seat. The girls, unable
+to stifle their amusement any longer, seized their
+bags and hurried down the aisle to the dressing-room,
+where, under cover of the rattle of the train,
+they could laugh as freely as they pleased.</p>
+
+<p>When Lloyd and Betty stole back to their berths
+a few minutes later, they looked at each other with
+an amused smile. From the opposite section came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+an unmistakable sound, long-drawn and penetrating
+as a cross-cut saw. Madam was evidently asleep.
+Betty giggled, as from Jenkins's perch came a gentle
+echo.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hi honly said as 'ow hit were a bad 'abit,
+ma'am,'" whispered Lloyd. "Wouldn't you love
+to jab the old lady herself with an umbrella?"</p>
+
+<p>Gay, in the dressing-room, was carefully counting
+over her toilet articles, as she put them back
+into her bag. "Soap-box, comb, nail-file, tooth-powder&mdash;I
+haven't lost a thing this trip, Allison.
+I'm beginning to feel proud of myself. Here's my
+watch and here's my tickets, buttoned up in this
+pocket. Mamma had it made on purpose, so in
+case of a wreck at night I'd have them on me. She
+patted the pocket sewed securely in the dark blue
+silk robe she wore, made in loose kimono fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'm all ready," she added, dropping her
+shoes into her bag and closing it. In her soft Indian
+moccasins, beaded like a squaw's, she executed a
+little heel and toe dance in the narrow passage outside,
+while she waited for Allison to gather up her
+clothes and follow. She thought every one else
+was in bed, and when suddenly the outside door
+opened and she heard some one coming in from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+next car, she flew down the aisle like a frightened
+rabbit.</p>
+
+<p>It was only a brakeman who stood just inside
+the door a moment with his lantern, and then went
+out again. All the lights had been turned down in
+the car, and Gay stumbled several times over shoes
+and valises protruding in the aisle. But finally,
+with a bound, she made her escape, as she supposed,
+from whoever it was that had caught her dancing
+in her moccasins in the passage.</p>
+
+<p>She gave a headlong dive into her berth. Just
+then the car lurched forward, sending her bag banging
+against the window, but she did not loosen her
+hold of it, and she was still clinging to it five minutes
+later.</p>
+
+<p>For, with a scream of terror, she rolled out of
+the berth far faster than she had rolled in. It was
+madam's fat body that writhed under her, and her
+stern voice that yelled "Murder! murder!" in a
+voice calculated to wake the dead.</p>
+
+<p>"'Elp! 'elp!" screamed Jenkins from the upper
+berth, afraid to look out between the curtains, but
+bravely pushing the button of the porter's bell till
+some one, wakened by the cries and persistent ringing,
+wildly called "Fire!"</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 303px;">
+<img src="images/i004.jpg" width="303" height="500" alt="&quot;&#39;I TELL YOU SOMEBODY WAS TRYING TO SANDBAG ME&#39;&quot;" title="&quot;&#39;I TELL YOU SOMEBODY WAS TRYING TO SANDBAG ME&#39;&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;&#39;I TELL YOU SOMEBODY WAS TRYING TO SANDBAG ME&#39;&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"It's train robbahs!" gasped Lloyd, sitting up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+Little cold shivers ran up and down her back, but
+she was conscious of a pleasant thrill of excitement.
+Heads were thrust out all up and down the aisle.
+The bell and the cries of murder and 'elp never
+stopped until the porter and Pullman conductor
+came running to the rescue.</p>
+
+<p>But there was nothing for them to see. At the
+first yell, Gay had tumbled hastily out, still clinging
+to her bag. Before the old lady had sufficiently
+recovered from her surprise enough to wonder what
+sort of a wild beast had pounced in upon her, Gay
+was safe in her own berth, drawn up in a knot, and
+trembling behind her closely buttoned curtains.
+Her heart beat so loud that she thought it would
+certainly betray her.</p>
+
+<p>"You must have had the nightmare," said the
+conductor, politely, trying not to smile as the angry
+face, under its towel turban, glared out at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Nightmare!" blazed the irate old lady. "I'm
+no fool. Don't you suppose that I know when I'm
+hit? I tell you somebody was trying to sandbag
+me. I thought a Saratoga trunk had fallen in on
+me. It's your business to take care of passengers
+on this train, and I intend to hold the company
+responsible. I shall certainly sue the railroad for
+this shock to my nervous system as soon as I get<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+home. I have a weak heart and I can't stand such
+performances as this."</p>
+
+
+<p>It took a long time to pacify her. Gay lay in her
+berth, shaking first with fright and then with laughter.
+She could not go to sleep without sharing her
+secret with the other girls, but she was afraid to
+trust herself to speak. She had grown almost hysterical
+over the affair. Finally she crept in beside
+Lloyd to whisper, brokenly: "<i>I</i> am the nightmare
+that sandbagged the old lady. <i>I</i> am the Saratoga
+trunk that fell on her. Oh, Lloyd, I'll never brag
+again. I had just told Allison I hadn't lost a single
+thing this trip, and then I turned around and lost
+myself. I got into the wrong berth. Oh! oh! It
+was so funny to see her, all done up in that towel.
+It'll kill me if I can't stop laughing."</p>
+
+<p>She crept back to her own side of the aisle again,
+and Lloyd got up to repeat it to Betty and Allison,
+who passed it on to Kitty. It was nearly half an
+hour before they stopped giggling over it, and then
+Kitty started them all afresh by leaning out to say,
+in a stage whisper, as a certain duet was renewed
+by Jenkins and her mistress, "'Hi honly said as
+'ow hit were a bad 'abit.'"</p>
+
+<p>It was snowing next morning, just a few flakes
+against the window-pane, as they sat in the dining-car<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+at breakfast, but the landscape grew whiter as
+they whirled on toward home.</p>
+
+<p>"Just as it ought to be for Christmas," declared
+Allison. "Oh, The Beeches will look so lovely in
+the snow, and the big log fire will seem so good,
+I can hardly wait to get there!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know just how it's all going to be," exclaimed
+Kitty, wriggling impatiently in her seat.
+"It will be this way, Gay. They'll all be down
+at the station to meet us, mother and little Elise
+and Uncle Harry and his dog. Aunt Allison will
+probably be there, too, and grandmother, if she
+feels well enough. And old black fat Butler will
+be standing by the baggage-room door with his
+wheelbarrow, waiting to take our trunks. And
+we'll all talk at once. Everybody along the road
+will be calling 'Howdy!' to us, and at the post-office
+Miss Mattie will come out to shake hands with
+us, and tell us how glad she is to see us back. Then
+it'll be just a step, past the church and the manse
+and the Bakewell cottage, and we'll turn in at The
+Beeches, <i>and the fun will begin</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Betty turned to Gay. "That doesn't sound very
+exciting or especially interesting to a stranger, but,
+oh, Gay, the Valley is so <i>dear</i> when you once get
+to know it. And when you go back, you feel almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+as if everybody were related to you, they're all
+so friendly and cordial and glad to welcome you
+home."</p>
+
+<p>Even to impatient schoolgirls homeward bound,
+the journey's end comes at last, so by nightfall it
+all happened just as Kitty had predicted. Such
+a royal welcome awaited Gay that she felt drawn
+into the midst of things from the moment she
+stepped from the car.</p>
+
+<p>"You're right, Betty," she whispered as she left
+her. "It <i>is</i> a dear Valley, and I feel already as if
+I belong here."</p>
+
+<p>The two groups separated when the checks had
+been sorted out and the baggage disposed of. Then,
+still laughing and talking, Kitty led one on its merry
+way toward The Beeches, and the other whirled
+rapidly away in the carriage toward the lights of
+Locust.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A PICNIC IN THE SNOW</h3>
+
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">What</span> a good gray day this is!" exclaimed
+Betty next morning, turning from the window to
+look around the cheerful breakfast-room, all aglow
+with an open wood-fire. "It's so bleak outside that
+there is no temptation to go gadding, and so cosy
+indoors that we'll be glad of the chance to stay at
+home and finish tying up our Christmas packages."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," assented Lloyd, who, having finished her
+breakfast, was standing on the hearth-rug, her back
+to the fire and her hands clasped behind her.
+"And for once I intend to have mine all ready
+the day befoah, so I need not be rushed up to the
+last minute. For that reason I am glad that mothah
+had to take the early train to town this mawning,
+to finish her shopping. If she'd been at home, I
+should have talked all the time, without accomplishing
+a thing."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I think your tissue-paper and ribbon was put
+into my trunk," said Betty, drumming idly on the
+window-pane. "I'll go and unpack it in a minute,
+and have it off my mind, as soon as I see who this
+is coming up the avenue."</p>
+
+<p>A tall young fellow had turned in at the gate,
+and was striding along toward the house as if in
+a great hurry.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Rob Moore!" she exclaimed, in surprise.
+"I thought he wasn't coming home until Christmas
+eve."</p>
+
+<p>"So did I," answered Lloyd, crossing the room
+to look over Betty's shoulder. "I'll beat you to
+the front doah, Betty."</p>
+
+<p>There was a wild dash through the hall. Both
+slim figures bounced against the door at the same
+instant. There was a laughing scuffle over the latch,
+and then the two girls stood arm in arm between
+the white pillars of the porch, gaily calling a greeting.</p>
+
+<p>Rob waved a pair of skates in reply, and quickened
+his stride until he came within speaking distance.
+One would have thought from his greeting
+that they had seen each other only the day before.
+Rob never wasted time on formalities.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry up, girls! Get your skates. The ice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+is fine on the creek, and there's a crowd waiting
+for us down at the depot."</p>
+
+<p>"Who?" demanded Lloyd.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the MacIntyre boys and the Walton girls
+and that little red-headed thing that they brought
+home from school with them. Kitty's going to
+have a picnic on the creek bank for her."</p>
+
+<p>"A picnic in Decembah!" ejaculated Lloyd.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what she said," Rob answered, clicking
+his skates together as he followed the girls into the
+house. "They telephoned over to me to hustle up
+here and get you girls. They're on their way to
+the station now. We're to meet them in the waiting-room."</p>
+
+<p>"They should have let us know soonah," began
+Lloyd, "so that we could have had a lunch ready.
+There'll be nothing cooked to take this time of day."</p>
+
+<p>"They didn't know it themselves," he interrupted.
+"Kitty proposed it at the breakfast-table,
+and they just grabbed up whatever they could get
+their hands on and started off."</p>
+
+<p>"We have so much to do to-day," said Betty.
+"I don't see how we can ever get through if we stop
+for this."</p>
+
+<p>"Let everything slide!" begged Rob. "Do your
+work to-morrow. This will be lots of fun. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+ice may not last more than a day or so, and the
+MacIntyre boys are not going to be out here all
+vacation."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we could tie up those packages to-night,"
+said Lloyd, with an inquiring look at Betty.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," Rob answered for her. "And I'll
+help you with anything you have to do. Come on."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, you run out to the kitchen and ask
+Aunt Cindy to give you something for a lunch,&mdash;anything
+in sight, and we'll get ready while Mom
+Beck finds our skates."</p>
+
+<p>Rob rubbed his ears apprehensively. "I'd as
+soon beard the lion in his den as Aunt Cindy in her
+kitchen. She's never forgiven my early thefts."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, goosey," laughed Lloyd. "Don't you
+know that since you're 'growed up,' as Aunt Cindy
+says, she swears by you? I heard her tell Mom
+Beck last night she reckoned she'd have to make
+a batch of little sugah hah't cakes right away, for
+Mistah Rob would be coming prowling round her
+cooky jah."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I growed up?" asked Rob gravely, throwing
+back his shoulders and looking into the mirror
+at the tall reflection it showed him.</p>
+
+<p>"You are in inches and ells," laughed Lloyd,
+"but you're not always six feet tall in yoah actions."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's only when I am in your society that I appear
+so juvenile," retorted Rob. "When I'm away
+at school with the other fellows, I feel and act as
+old as Daddy, but when I'm back home, where you
+all seem to expect me to be a kid, I naturally adjust
+myself to that role just to be companionable and
+obliging. You would be afraid of me if I were
+to turn out my whiskers and stand back on my
+dignity. You know you would."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't try it, Bobby," advised Lloyd. "It
+wouldn't be becoming. Trot out to Aunt Cindy
+and get the lunch. That's a good little man. We'll
+be ready in just a few minutes."</p>
+
+<p>Even in her baby days, Lloyd had been patronizing
+at times to her good-natured playmate, ordering
+him about with a princess-like right that always
+seemed part of the game. So now he laughingly
+shrugged his shoulders and started to the kitchen,
+while Lloyd followed Betty up-stairs to change her
+slippers for heavy-soled walking-boots.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later the three were hurrying
+down the avenue to the gate, under the bare windswept
+branches of the locusts.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Cindy had disappeared temporarily," said
+Rob. "There wasn't a soul in the kitchen, so I
+rummaged around till I found this old basket, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+filled it with a little of everything in sight. It is
+a long way to the creek. We'll be ready to eat
+nails by the time we tramp over there in this snappy
+weather."</p>
+
+<p>"It is snappy," agreed Lloyd. "Betty, yoah
+cheeks are as red as fiah."</p>
+
+<p>The rosy face under the brown tam-o'-shanter
+smiled back at her. "So are yours. Aren't they,
+Rob? They are as red as her coat."</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" exclaimed Rob, noticing for the first
+time the long red coat that Lloyd wore. "That's
+something new, isn't it? I thought you looked
+different, but I couldn't tell exactly what it was.
+That's a stunner, sure enough, Princess. It sort
+of livens up the landscape."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you like it," laughed Lloyd, "but I
+don't believe you would have seen it at all if Betty
+hadn't called yoah attention to it. You'll nevah
+get on in society, Bobby, if you don't learn to notice
+things. You'll miss all the chances most boys take
+advantage of to pay compliments and make pretty
+little speeches."</p>
+
+<p>Rob scowled. "You know I don't go in for that
+sort of stuff."</p>
+
+<p>"But you ought to," persisted Lloyd, who was
+in a perverse mood. "I considah it my duty to take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+you in hand and teach you. You may practise on
+Betty and me. Now we've been talking to Gay all
+term about our friends in Lloydsboro Valley, and
+naturally we want everybody to put their best foot
+foremost and show off their prettiest. Malcolm
+and Keith will leave a charming impression of themselves,
+because they will make her feel in such an
+easy graceful way that she has made that sawt of
+an impression on them. If she wears an especially
+pretty dress, or says an especially bright thing, or
+plays unusually well, they will notice it in some
+way so that she will know that they noticed it, and
+that they were pleased. Naturally that will please
+her, and she will like them bettah for it."</p>
+
+<p>Rob faced her with a whimsical expression.
+"Look here, Lloyd Sherman, I've played every kind
+of a game that you've asked me to ever since I
+learned to walk. I've been your man Friday when
+you wanted to be Robinson Crusoe, and played
+B'r Fox to your B'r Rabbit. You've scalped me
+and buried me and dug me up. You've made
+me be Pharaoh with the ten plagues of Egypt, or
+a Christian martyr thrown to the wild beasts, just
+as it pleased your fancy. I've even played dolls
+with you week at a time, but I swear I draw the
+line at this. I'll do anything in reason to help entertain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+your chum,&mdash;ride or dance or skate or get
+up private theatricals,&mdash;but I'll <i>not</i> make a ninny
+of myself trying to be flowery and get off complimentary
+speeches. It comes natural to some people,
+but I'm not built that way. I'd be as awkward at
+it as a fish out of water."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd turned her head with a despairing gesture.
+"Oh, Rob, you're hopeless! You don't undahstand
+at all! Nobody wants you to be flowery, and nobody
+likes flat-footed, out-and-out compliments.
+They're not nice at all. I just meant&mdash;well&mdash;I
+scarcely know what I <i>did</i> mean, but you know how
+Malcolm does. It isn't that he says a thing in so
+many words, but he has a way of somehow making
+you feel that he has noticed nice things about you,
+and that he is <i>thinking</i> compliments."</p>
+
+<p>"Gee whiz!" exclaimed Rob, in a teasing tone.
+"Say that again, won't you please, and say it
+slowly, so that I can take it all in. Do I get the
+thought? To be agreeable one must not say things,
+but must cultivate an air of having noticed that you
+are agreeable, and stand off and think compliments
+so hard that you can actually feel them flying
+through the air. Is that your idea?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Rob! Stop your teasing."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, that is what you said, or words to that
+effect. Didn't she, Betty?"</p>
+
+<p>The brown eyes flashed an amused smile at him.
+They walked along in silence for a few minutes,
+then he said, humbly, but with a twinkle in his eye
+which boded mischief: "Well, I'll do the best I
+can to please you, Lloyd. I'll watch Malcolm till
+I get the hang of it, then I'll stand off and think
+compliments about your friend till her ears burn
+and she is duly impressed. Grandfather is always
+saying, 'Who does the best his circumstance allows,
+does nobly. Angels could do no more.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I had never mentioned the subject,"
+pouted Lloyd, as they walked on down the frozen
+pike. "I simply meant to give you a little advice
+for yoah own good, and you've gone and made a
+joke of it. I am suah you'll say or do something
+befoah the mawning is ovah that will make Gay
+think you are perfectly dreadful."</p>
+
+<p>Rob only laughed in answer, leaving her to infer
+that she had good reason for her fears. As they
+passed the only store which the Valley boasted,
+Kitty came rushing out, a bright new tin saucepan
+dangling at her side like a drum. It was tied by
+a piece of twine, and she was beating a tattoo upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+it with a long-handled iron spoon. Keith followed,
+his overcoat pockets bulging with parcels.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you playing Santa Claus this early?" cried
+Betty, as he hurried across to shake hands with
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"No; Kitty decided that no social function in
+the woods was properly a picnic without a fire and
+some kind of a mess to cook. So we stopped at
+the store, and she's loaded me down with stuff for
+fudge. Malcolm and the girls are on ahead in the
+waiting-room."</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Ranald?" asked Lloyd, as they crossed
+the railroad track and walked along the platform
+toward the door of the station.</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone hunting with John Baylor, the boy
+he brought home from school with him," answered
+Kitty. "We can't get him within a stone's throw
+of Gay. I teased him so unmercifully in my letters
+about the girl who had asked for his picture to put
+in her group of heroes that he won't even look in
+her direction."</p>
+
+<p>As Lloyd greeted Malcolm, whom she had not
+seen since the close of the summer vacation, and
+then stood talking with him while Allison introduced
+Rob to her guest, she was conscious that
+Rob was watching every motion, and making note<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+of it, to tease her afterward. A few moments later,
+when they were all discussing a choice of places
+for the picnic-grounds, he edged over to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I understand what you mean," he said, in
+a low voice. "Malcolm didn't say anything about
+that red coat. He just gave a sort of quick, pleased
+glance at it, as if it had hit him hard, and made
+some gallant speech about a Kentucky cardinal. I
+tried my best to follow suit. So when I was introduced,
+I gave the same kind of a glad start when
+I saw her hair, and was about to make a similar
+reference to a Texas redbird, when my courage
+failed me. So I just stood off and fired the
+name at her in thought till I'm sure she understood."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean thing!" exclaimed Lloyd, under her
+breath. "Her hair isn't red. It's just a deep, rich,
+bronzy auburn, and perfectly lovely. I do wish
+I'd nevah said anything. Now you'll not act natural,
+and you won't like each othah as I had hoped
+you would."</p>
+
+<p>A gayer picnic party never started down the
+pike than the one that went laughing along the
+road that winter morning, under barbed-wire fences,
+through pasture gates, across bare woodlands, and
+over frozen corn-fields. It was a still gray morning,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+with the chill of snow in the air, and presently the
+snow began to fall in big feathery flakes.</p>
+
+<p>Gay was delighted. She held up her face to let
+the cold, star-shaped crystals settle on it. She
+caught them on her sleeve to marvel over their airy
+beauty. "It's like frozen thistle-down!" she cried.
+"I hope it will snow all day and all night until
+everything is covered. I never saw a white Christmas."</p>
+
+<p>"This will stop the skating," said Allison, "unless
+we had a broom to sweep the ice as it falls."</p>
+
+<p>Rob offered to go back for one, but they were
+so far on their way they all protested it would not
+be worth while.</p>
+
+<p>"How much farthah is it?" asked Lloyd, presently.
+For the last half-mile she had had nothing
+to say, and had fallen behind the others.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so tiahed I can hardly take another step."</p>
+
+<p>Rob looked at her curiously. It seemed strange
+for Lloyd to admit that she was tired. He had
+known her to tramp nearly all day after nuts, and
+then be ready for a horseback ride afterward.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll stop just over this hill," he replied.
+"There's a good place to camp. Here! Catch hold
+of my skate-strap, and I'll help pull you up."</p>
+
+<p>"It helps some," she said, clinging to the strap<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+swung over his shoulder, "but I don't believe I'll
+evah get ovah this hill."</p>
+
+<p>"It looks like a grove of Christmas trees!" cried
+Gay, as they started down the other side toward
+the creek. Little cedars from two to five feet high
+dotted the hillside, and the snow had drifted across
+them till the branches drooped with the soft white
+burden. It began blowing faster, and coming down
+like a thick white sheet between them and the creek.</p>
+
+<p>Rob, who had often picnicked here on his hunting
+trips, led the way farther down the hill to a
+cavelike opening under an overhanging ledge of
+rocks.</p>
+
+<p>"This will keep the wind off your backs," he
+said. "Huddle down here a few minutes until we
+build a fire. Then you'll be all right."</p>
+
+<p>Some charred sticks and ashes between two flat
+rocks, with an old piece of sheet iron laid on top,
+marked the spot where many meals had been
+cooked. The boys began at once foraging for firewood.
+There was plenty of it all around,&mdash;dead
+limbs and broken twigs,&mdash;and soon they had a
+big heap ready to light.</p>
+
+<p>"Now if somebody can donate a piece of paper
+to start a blaze, we'll have you warm in a jiffy,"
+said Rob.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Keith slapped his pockets. "I haven't a scrap,"
+he declared. "Malcolm, you might be able to spare
+that bunch of letters you carry around in your
+pocket. You've read them enough to know them
+by heart, I should think."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, keep still, can't you?" muttered Malcolm,
+in an aside. "Don't get funny now."</p>
+
+<p>"See him get red!" whispered Keith to Betty.
+"They're from a girl he met at the first college
+hop last fall. She's older than he is, but he thinks
+she's the one and only."</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned to Malcolm again. "You might
+at least spare the envelopes when it's to keep us
+from freezing. It would be a big sacrifice, but to
+save your own blood and kin, you know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Malcolm stole a quick glance at Lloyd, but she
+was leaning wearily against the ledge of rocks, paying
+no attention to Keith's remarks. Kitty solved
+the difficulty by diving into Keith's pockets after
+the packages, and emptying the brown sugar and
+chocolate into the saucepan. She handed the wrapping-paper
+and bag to Rob, saying if that was not
+enough she would scratch the label off the can of
+evaporated cream.</p>
+
+<p>Carefully holding his hat over the pile of twigs
+to shield it from the wind, Rob applied a match to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+the paper. It blazed up and caught the wood at
+once, and in a few moments a comfortable fire was
+crackling in front of them. Back in the cavelike
+hollow, under the rocks, the boys found a big, dry
+log, which other campers had put there for a seat.
+They rolled it forward toward the fire. Some flat
+stones were soon heated for the girls to put their
+feet on, and, warmed and rested, they began to investigate
+the contents of the baskets.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Rob!" groaned Lloyd. "What a lunch
+you did pick up for a wintah day! These slabs
+of cold pumpkin pie would freeze the teeth of a
+polah beah, and there's nothing else but pickles and
+cheese and apples and raw eggs."</p>
+
+<p>"That's fine!" exclaimed Allison. "We can
+roast the eggs in the ashes, and I've brought bacon
+to broil over the fire on switches. And here's
+crackers and gingersnaps and salmon&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And peanuts," added Kitty, "don't forget them.
+Or the fudge. We will have that ready in a little
+while."</p>
+
+<p>"Now what could be jollier than this?" cried
+Gay, as she took the long, pointed switch that Rob
+cut for her, and held a piece of bacon over the fire
+to broil. "It's a thousand times nicer than a picnic
+in the summer, when you get so hot, and the mosquitoes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+and redbugs and spiders swarm all over
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd, with a sigh of relief, saw that Rob was
+"acting natural" at last, and he and Gay were
+showing off to mutual advantage. She was enjoying
+the novel experience so fully that she was in
+her brightest spirits, and he was talking to her with
+the familiar ease with which he talked to Lloyd and
+Betty, even scolding her with brotherly frankness
+when she dripped bacon grease around too promiscuously.</p>
+
+<p>The eggs were saltless, the bacon smoked and
+black, because, held in the flame as often as against
+the embers, nearly every piece caught fire and had
+to be blown out. Smoke blew in their eyes, and
+the snow fell thicker and thicker. But, with their
+feet on the hot stones, their backs to the sheltering
+ledge of rocks, and the fire crackling in front of
+them, they sang and laughed and ate with a zest
+which no summer picnic could have inspired.</p>
+
+<p>No one had remembered to bring a pail for water,
+and rather than tramp over another hill to a distant
+spring, they quenched their thirst with handfuls
+of snow. The fudge boiled over, and more
+than half of it was lost in the ashes.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a good thing that it did," Allison declared,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+tossing the empty salmon box and a bag of peanut
+shells into the fire. "Ugh! The mixture we've
+already eaten is enough to kill us! I think we ought
+to start back home now. I'm sure that I heard the
+one o'clock train whistle."</p>
+
+<p>But Kitty protested. They hadn't been out half
+long enough, she said. If the ice on the creek had
+been free from snow, they would have skated for
+hours, and she thought as long as that sport had
+been spoiled, they ought to do something to make
+up for it. Gay had never gathered any mistletoe.
+She thought it would be fun for them all to go
+around by Stone Hollow, and get some off the big
+trees that grew in the surrounding pastures.</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd listened to the ready assent of the others
+with a sinking heart. She had been leaning back
+against the rocks for some time, taking no part
+in the conversation. She had grown so tired that
+she dreaded the long tramp home, and had been
+vainly wishing that Tarbaby could suddenly appear
+on the scene, or some one with a conveyance.
+Even a wheelbarrow or a go-cart would have been
+welcome. She could not remember that she had
+ever felt so exhausted before in all her life.</p>
+
+<p>"But I won't be the one to hang back and spoil
+every one's fun," she said to herself, "They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+wouldn't let me go home the shorter way by myself.
+It would only break up the pah'ty if I proposed it.
+But I do not see how I can evah drag myself all
+the way around by Stone Hollow."</p>
+
+<p>At another time they might have noticed that she
+lagged behind, that she had little to say, and that
+she looked white and tired. But Gay, her spirits
+rising in the wintry air, was in her most rollicking
+mood. Even Kitty had never known her to say so
+many funny things or to tell so many amusing experiences.
+She followed on behind with Lloyd,
+watching admiringly as Gay's bright face was
+turned first toward Malcolm, then toward Rob,
+jubilant to see that her guest was captivating them
+as she did every one else who fell under the charm
+of her vivacious manner.</p>
+
+<p>Betty and Allison were on ahead with Keith,
+keeping a sharp lookout for mistletoe. Lloyd
+scarcely heard what any one said. She plodded
+along like one in a dream. It was an effort just
+to lift her feet. Only one thing in life seemed desirable
+just then, that was her warm soft bed at
+home. If she could only creep into that and shut
+her tired eyes and lie there, she wouldn't care if
+she didn't waken for a month. She felt that it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+would be bliss to sleep through Christmas and the
+entire vacation.</p>
+
+<p>The long walk came to an end at last. The roundabout
+route through Stone Hollow led them near
+Locust, and, with their arms full of mistletoe, the
+merry picnickers parted from Lloyd and Betty at
+the gate. Gay exclaimed enthusiastically over the
+beautiful old avenue, leading under the snow-covered
+locusts to the house, but to Lloyd's relief her
+invitation to come in was refused. There were a
+dozen reasons why they could not stop, but they
+promised to be over early next morning.</p>
+
+<p>"It has been the very loveliest picnic I ever went
+to in my whole life," declared Gay, as they turned
+away. "I'd like to turn around and do it all over
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"So would I," echoed Betty, warmly. "I'm not
+at all tired."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd looked at her in vague wonder as they
+plodded up the avenue. "I don't know what's the
+mattah with me," she said, "that I couldn't keep
+up with you all, unless it's true what Miss Gilmer
+said. The ice is too thin for holiday dissipations,
+and this picnic was too great a weight for it."</p>
+
+<p>Betty glanced at her white face anxiously. "Go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+and lie down the rest of the afternoon," she said.
+"I'll tie up your packages."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if you only would!" exclaimed Lloyd,
+gratefully. "But it seems too much to ask of any
+one. Don't tell mothah that I got so woh'n out.
+I'll be all right by evening."</p>
+
+<p>"She hasn't come home yet," said Betty, looking
+ahead of them at the smooth expanse of newly fallen
+snow. "There isn't a track either of foot or wheel."</p>
+
+<p>"Then maybe I'll have time for a nap, and be all
+rested when she comes," said Lloyd. "I don't want
+her to get any of Miss Gilmer's notions about me."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>A PROGRESSIVE CHRISTMAS PARTY</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lloyd</span> stood at the window in the falling twilight
+and looked out across the snow. It had been
+an ideal Christmas Day. She could feel the chill
+of the white winter world outside as she leaned
+against the frosty pane, but in her scarlet dress,
+with the holly berries at her belt and in her hair,
+she looked the embodiment of Christmas warmth
+and cheer, and as if no cold could touch her.</p>
+
+<p>The candles had not yet been lighted, but the
+room was filled <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'wth'">with</ins> the ruddy glow of the big wood
+fire. It shone warmly on the frames of the portraits
+and the tall gilded harp with its shining
+strings, and gave a burnishing touch to Betty's
+brown hair, as she stood by the piano, fingering
+for the hundredth time the presents she had received
+that day. Her dress of soft white wool suggested,
+like Lloyd's, the Yule-tide season, for in the belt
+and shoulder-knots of dull green velvet were caught
+clusters of mistletoe, the tiny waxen berries gleaming
+like pearls.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Everything is <i>so</i> lovely!" she sighed, happily,
+picking up her camera to admire it once more. It
+was her godmother's gift, and the thing she had
+most longed to own.</p>
+
+<p>She focussed it on Lloyd, who, in her scarlet
+dress, stood vividly outlined by the firelight against
+the curtains. "I took three pictures this morning
+while Rob was here, all snow scenes. The house,
+the locust avenue, and a group of little darkies running
+after your grandfather, calling out, 'Chris'mus
+gif', Colonel!' I think I'd better carry my
+things all up to my room," she added, presently.
+"There'll be so many people here soon, and so
+much moving around when the hunt begins, that
+they'll be in the way."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll need a wheelbarrow to take them in,"
+answered Lloyd, turning from the window to watch
+her gather them up. "You'd bettah call Walkah
+to help you."</p>
+
+<p>"Santa Claus certainly was good to me," answered
+Betty, picking up Mr. Sherman's gift, a
+beautiful mother-of-pearl opera-glass. It was like
+the one he had given Lloyd, except for the difference
+in monograms. She rubbed it lovingly with
+her handkerchief, and laid it beside the camera to
+be carried up-stairs. There were books from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+old Colonel, an ivory photograph-frame exquisitely
+carved from Lloyd. Dozens of little articles from
+the girls at school, and remembrances from nearly
+every friend in the Valley. There was more than
+her arms could hold, and, bringing a large tray
+from the dining-room, she made two trips up and
+down stairs with it before her treasures were all
+lodged safely in her room.</p>
+
+<p>Left alone for the first time that busy day, Lloyd
+stood a moment longer peering out into the snowy
+twilight, and then crossed the room to the table
+where her gifts were spread out. There had never
+been so many for her since her days of dolls and
+dishes and woolly lambs. The opera-glasses like
+Betty's were what she had wished for all year.
+The purse her grandfather had slipped into the toe
+of her stocking was the prettiest little affair of gray
+su&egrave;de and silver she had ever seen. She had
+thought of a dozen delightful ways to spend the
+gold eagle which it held.</p>
+
+<p>The book-rack which Betty had burnt for her,
+with her initials on each end, was already nearly
+filled with the books that different friends had sent
+her. Rob's gift had been a book. So had Miss
+Allison's and Mrs. MacIntyre's and the old family
+doctor's. Malcolm had sent a great bunch of American<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+Beauties. She drew the vase toward her and
+buried her face a moment in the delicious fragrance.
+Then she nibbled a caramel from Keith's box of
+candy. The rosebud sachet-bag which Gay made
+lay in the box of handkerchiefs that good old Mom
+Beck had given her.</p>
+
+<p>She patted the thick letter from Joyce that told
+so much of interest about Ware's Wigwam. She
+intended to have the water-colour sketch of Squaw's
+Peak framed to take back to school with her.
+Mary's fat little fingers had braided the Indian
+basket which came with Joyce's picture, and Jack
+himself had killed the wildcat, whose skin he sent
+to make a rug for her room. Lloyd was proud of
+that skin. As she stood smoothing the tawny fur,
+the diamond on her finger flashed like fire, and she
+stood turning her hand this way and that, that the
+glow of the flames might fall on her new ring.</p>
+
+<p>It was a beautifully cut stone in an old-fashioned
+setting, with the word "<i>Amanthis</i>" engraved inside;
+but not for a fortune would Lloyd have had
+the little circlet changed to a modern setting. For
+just so had it been slipped on her grandmother's
+finger at her fifteenth Christmas. She had worn it
+until her daughter's fifteenth Christmas, and now
+she, in turn, had given it to Lloyd. All day it had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+been a constant joy to her. Aside from the pleasure
+of possessing such a beautiful ring, she had a feeling
+that in its flashing heart was crystallized a
+triple happiness,&mdash;the joy of three Christmas days:
+hers, her mother's, and the beautiful young girl
+with the June rose in her hair, who smiled down
+at her from the portrait over the mantel.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled up at it now in the same confiding
+way she had done as a child, saying, in a low tone:
+"And when you played on the harp, it flashed on
+yoah hand just as it does on mine." Pleased by the
+fancy, she crossed the room and struck a few chords
+on the harp, watching the firelight flash on the ring
+as she did so.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'Sing me the songs that to me were so deah,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Long, long ago, long ago!'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>There was a step in the hall, and the porti&egrave;res
+were pushed aside as the old Colonel came in. She
+did not stop, for she knew he loved the old song,
+and that she was helping to bring back his happy
+past, when he threw himself into a chair before
+the fire, and sat looking up at Amanthis.</p>
+
+<p>When she had finished the song, she perched herself
+on the arm of his chair, and began ruffling up
+his white hair with the little hand which wore the
+diamond.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, has it been a happy day for grandpa's
+little Colonel?" he asked, fondly, passing his arm
+around her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, grandfathah! Brim full and running
+ovah with all sawts of lovely surprises. I'm mighty
+glad I'm living. And the best of it is, although
+the day is neahly ovah, the fun isn't. There's still
+so much to come."</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of a performance is this one on the
+programme for to-night?" he asked. "Betty said
+I had to go the whole round, but I haven't been able
+to gather a very good idea of what's expected of
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"It's just a progressive Christmas pah'ty, grandfathah,"
+she explained, tweaking his ear as she
+talked. "We couldn't agree about the celebration
+this yeah. Judge Moore wanted us all to go to
+Oaklea. Mrs. Walton thought they had the best
+right on account of their guests, so we arranged
+it for everybody to take a turn at entahtaining. At
+five o'clock they're all to come heah for a Christmas
+hunt. They ought to be coming now, for it's
+neahly that time. At half-past six we'll have dinnah
+at Oaklea. At half-past eight we'll go to The
+Beeches and finish the evening with a general jollification.
+Then we'll come home by moonlight."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What is a Christmas hunt?" asked the Colonel.
+"You'll have to enlighten my ignorance."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a game that mothah and Betty thought of.
+Betty has worked like a dawg to get the rhymes
+ready. She scarcely took time to eat yestahday, and
+she gave up going to the charade pah'ty that Miss
+Allison gave for Gay in the aftahnoon. It's this
+way. We've hidden little gifts all ovah the house,
+from attic to cellah. When the guests come, each
+one will be given a card with a rhyme on it, like
+this."</p>
+
+<p>Slipping from the arm of the chair, she went
+out into the hall a moment, and came back with
+a Christmas stocking, trimmed with holly and hung
+with tiny sleigh-bells. "Little Elise Walton is to
+distribute the cards from this. Heah is a sample.
+Miss Allison happens to be on top."</p>
+
+<p>Adjusting his eye-glasses the Colonel turned so
+that the firelight shone on the card, and read aloud:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Seek where bygone summers<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Have dropped their roses fair.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A little Christmas package</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Is waiting for you there."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Now where would you look if that cah'd were
+for you?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"In the conservatory?" he replied, inquiringly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That is what Miss Allison will do, probably,"
+answered Lloyd, her cheeks dimpling at the thought.
+"But aftah awhile she will remembah the old
+dragon that mothah always keeps full of rose-leaves
+just as Grandmothah Amanthis did. See?"</p>
+
+<p>She lifted the lid of a rare old cloisonn&eacute; rose-jar
+that had stood on the end of the mantel for a
+longer time than Lloyd's memory could reach, and
+took out a small box. Taking off the cover, she
+disclosed what appeared to be a ripe cherry with a
+bee clinging to its side.</p>
+
+<p>"Take the bee in yoah thumb and fingah and
+pull," she ordered. "See? It's a cunning little
+tape-measuah for her work-basket."</p>
+
+<p>A sound of sleigh-bells jingling rapidly toward
+the house made her clap the lid on the box and drop
+it hastily back into the rose-jar.</p>
+
+<p>"There they come!" she cried, "and the candles
+haven't been lighted. Hurry, grandfathah! We
+can't wait to call Walkah! Throw open the front
+doah!"</p>
+
+<p>Flying to the hall closet for the long taper kept
+for the purpose, she held it an instant toward the
+blazing logs, and then darting around the room,
+passed from one candelabrum to another, till every
+waxen candle was tipped with its star of light. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+her scarlet dress and the holly berries, her cheeks
+glowing and the taper held above her head as she
+tiptoed to reach the highest one, she looked like
+some radiant acolyte of Joy.</p>
+
+<p>Betty, rushing breathlessly down-stairs at the
+sound of the sleigh-bells, paused an instant between
+the porti&egrave;res at sight of her. "Oh, Lloyd!" she
+cried, clasping her hands. "You've given me the
+loveliest idea! I've only got it by the tail feathers
+now, but I'll find words for it all some day." Then,
+without waiting to explain, she ran out to the porch,
+where, between the tall pillars, the old Colonel
+waited with elaborate courtesy to receive the coming
+guests.</p>
+
+<p>As the sleighs glided nearer, Betty looked back
+through the door swung hospitably open to its widest,
+and saw Lloyd hastily thrusting the taper back
+into the closet.</p>
+
+<p>"She lighted it at the Christmas fire," thought
+Betty, struggling with the tail feathers of her lovely
+idea, in an effort to grasp all that Lloyd's act suggested.
+"And red is the emblem of joy. It might
+go this way: 'She touched the Christmas tapers
+with the Yule log's heart of flame.' No, it ought
+to start,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Lighting the candles of Christmas joy,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">With a spark from the Yule log's fire."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>But there was no time for making poetry, with
+so many voices calling "Merry Christmas," and
+so many outstretched hands grasping hers. In another
+instant the house seemed filled to overflowing,
+and the dim old mirrors were flashing back from
+every side one of the gayest scenes the hospitable
+old mansion had ever known.</p>
+
+<p>The hunt began almost immediately. As soon
+as Elise had emptied the stocking of its contents,
+up-stairs and down-stairs and in my lady's chamber
+went old and young at the bidding of the
+rhymes.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel like a 'goosey gander,' sure enough,"
+said Allison presently. "For I've been all over
+the house, and there's no place left to wander.
+Where would you go if you had this card?"</p>
+
+<p>She thrust hers out toward Gay, who read:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Standing with reluctant feet<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Where Brooks and Little Rivers meet."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Gay puzzled over it a moment, and then suggested
+that she try the library. "I have," answered Allison.
+"Keith found his package in there, behind
+the picture of a Holland windmill and canal, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+there is nothing else in the room that suggests
+water that I have been able to find."</p>
+
+<p>"Who wrote 'Little Rivers'?"</p>
+
+<p>Allison stood thinking a moment, and then cried
+out: "Well, of course! Why didn't I think to
+look among the books?" Flying down-stairs, she
+began glancing along the library shelves until she
+found the book she sought and Brooks's sermons
+standing side by side. Between them was wedged
+a thin package which proved to contain a picture
+which she had long wanted, a photograph of Murillo's
+painting of the Madonna.</p>
+
+<p>To Betty's surprise the Christmas stocking held
+a card for her. She had supposed her part of the
+game would be only making the rhymes and helping
+to hide the gifts. There was no rhyme on her card,
+simply the statement, "Some little men are keeping
+it for you."</p>
+
+<p>Remembering Allison's experience, she ran up-stairs
+to Lloyd's room, where in a low bookcase
+were all the juvenile stories that her childhood had
+held dear. A set of Miss Alcott's books stood first,
+and, taking out the well-thumbed copy of "Little
+Men," she shook it gently, fluttering the leaves,
+and turning it upside down. But the volume held
+nothing except a four-leaf clover, which Lloyd had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+left there to mark the place one summer day. Betty
+turned away, as puzzled as any of the others whom
+she had helped to mystify.</p>
+
+<p>Then she remembered two little wooden gnomes
+carved on the Swiss match-box and ash-tray in the
+Colonel's den. She dashed in there, but the gnomes
+kept guard over nothing but a few burnt matches.
+Nearly half an hour went by of bewildered wandering
+from place to place, until she happened to
+stray into Mr. Sherman's room. She stood by the
+desk, letting her eyes glance slowly over its handsome
+furnishings. Then, with a start of surprise
+that she had not thought of it before, she bent over
+a paper-weight. It was a crystal ball supported
+by two miniature bronze figures. The tiny Grecian
+athletes were evidently the little men who were
+keeping something for her, for the toy suit-case
+standing between them bore a tag on which was
+printed her initials.</p>
+
+<p>The suit-case was not more than two inches long.
+She supposed it contained bonbons. One of the
+girls had used a dozen like them for place cards
+at a farewell luncheon just before they went away
+to school. It did not open at the first pull, and
+when, at the second, it came forcibly apart, there
+was no shower of pink and white candies, as she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+had expected. Only a bit of folded paper fell out.
+Smoothing it on the desk, Betty read:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Dear little girl, you have helped all the rest<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">To a happy time with your patient hands.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Now fly for a week to the Cuckoo's Nest,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">With godmother's love, for she understands."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Then Betty was glad that she was all alone in
+the room when she found the suit-case, for the tears
+began to brim up into her eyes and spill over on
+to the paper that had a crisp new greenback pinned
+to it. The tears were all happy ones, but she hardly
+knew what they were for. Whether she was happier
+because her heart's desire was granted, and
+she could spend her vacation with Davy, or whether
+it was because of that last line, "With godmother's
+love, <i>for she understands</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Lloyd must have told her what I said that day
+on the train," she thought. It was the crowning
+happiness of the day for Betty. She was singing
+under her breath when she danced out into the hall
+to join the others.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the articles were so cleverly hidden that
+she had to give an occasional hint to the bewildered
+seekers. In the seats of chairs, over the deer's antlers
+in the hall, high up in the candelabra, strapped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+inside of umbrellas, poked into glove fingers, all
+of them were in unexpected places. Yet the directions
+of the verses seemed so plain when once understood
+that the hunters laughed at their own stupidity.</p>
+
+<p>Even Judge Moore and the old Colonel were
+swept into the game, and Mrs. MacIntyre's silvery
+hair bent just as eagerly as Elise's dark curls over
+each suspected spot and out-of-the-way corner until
+she found the volume of essays that had been hidden
+for her.</p>
+
+<p>By quarter-past six every one's search had been
+successful except Rob's. "It would take a Christopher
+Columbus to find this place," he said, scowling
+at his verse. "And I'd be willing to bet anything
+that it isn't the bank that Shakespeare had
+in mind. Give me a hint, Lloyd." He held out
+the card:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"I know a bank where the wild thyme grows.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Unseen it lies, unsung by bard.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Something keeps watch there, no man knows,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And over your gift it's standing guard."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"I haven't the faintest idea what it is," she said.
+"Betty wrote so many of them yestahday aftahnoon
+while I was at the pah'ty, and she wouldn't
+tell me this one. She said she thought you'd suahly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+guess it, but she didn't want you to have a hint
+from any one. Come ovah to-morrow, and we'll
+find it if we have to turn the house upside down."</p>
+
+<p>The sleighs had made one trip to Oaklea and
+returned for another load, when Rob finally gave
+up the search. Lloyd and Gay climbed into the
+same seat, and, as they cuddled down among the
+warm robes, Gay caught Lloyd's hand in an impetuous
+squeeze.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm having such a good time!" she exclaimed.
+"I've been in a dizzy whirl ever since
+five o'clock this morning. I never had a sleigh-ride
+before to-day. I don't wonder that Betty calls
+this the House Beautiful. Look back at it now.
+It's fairy-land!" A light was streaming from every
+window, and the snow sparkled like diamonds in
+the moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>The drive to Oaklea was so short that the Judge
+and Mrs. Moore were welcoming them at the door
+before Gay had fairly begun her account of the
+day's happening. Dinner was announced almost
+immediately, and she was ushered into one of the
+largest dining-rooms she had ever seen, and seated
+at the long table. Such a large Christmas tree
+formed the centrepiece that she could catch only
+an occasional glimpse through its branches of Lloyd,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+seated on the other side between Malcolm and John
+Baylor.</p>
+
+<p>Gay was between Ranald and Rob. While she
+kept up a lively chatter, first with one and then the
+other, a sentence floating across the table now and
+then made her long to hear what was being said
+on the other side of the Christmas tree. She heard
+Malcolm say, in a surprised tone: "Maud Minor!
+No, indeed, I didn't! Why, I scarcely mentioned
+you. Don't you believe&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A general laugh at one of the old Colonel's stories
+drowned the rest of the sentence, and left Gay
+wondering which one of Maud's many tales was not
+to be believed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll ask her after dinner," thought Gay. But
+it was a long time till all the courses that followed
+the turkey gave way in slow succession to plum
+pudding and the trifles on the Christmas tree. Then
+Gay had no opportunity to ask her question, for
+Malcolm still stayed by Lloyd's side when the company
+broke up into little groups in the hall and the
+adjoining parlours.</p>
+
+<p>"The children are growing up, Jack," said the
+old Judge, laying his hand on Mr. Sherman's shoulder,
+as several couples passed on their way to the
+music-room. "There's Rob, now, the young rascal,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+taller than his father; and it seems only yesterday
+that he was riding pickaback on my shoulders, and
+tooting his first Christmas trumpet in my ears.
+And young MacIntyre there is nearly a full-fledged
+man. He'll soon be eighteen, he tells me. Why,
+at his age&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The Judge rambled off into a series of reminiscences
+which would have been very entertaining
+to the younger man had his eyes not been following
+Lloyd. He did not like to think that she was growing
+up. He wanted to keep her a child. In his
+fond eyes she was always beautiful, but he had never
+seen her look as well as she did to-night. The scarlet
+dress and the holly berries gave her unusual
+colour. He fancied that there was a deeper flush
+on her face when Malcolm leaned over her chair
+to say something to her. Then he told himself that
+it was only fancy. Looking up, Lloyd caught sight
+of her father in the doorway, and flashed him a
+smile so open and reassuring that he turned away,
+thinking, "My honest little Hildegarde! She
+asked for her yardstick, and I can surely trust her
+to use it as she promised."</p>
+
+<p>Presently Malcolm, hunting through his pockets
+for a programme he was talking about, took out
+a bunch of letters. As he hastily turned them over,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+several unmounted photographs fluttered out and
+fell at Lloyd's feet. An amused smile dimpled her
+mouth as her hasty glance showed her that they
+were all of the same girl,&mdash;evidently kodak shots
+he had taken himself. Probably that was the girl
+and these were the letters that Keith had teased
+him about at the picnic.</p>
+
+<p>Neither spoke, and he reddened uncomfortably
+at her amused smile, as he put them back into his
+pocket. At that moment, Rob turned toward them,
+holding his new watch in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I have just been showing Ranald the present
+Daddy gave me," he said to Lloyd. "It reminded
+me that I hadn't told you,&mdash;I've put that same old
+four-leaf clover into the back of this watch that
+I had in my silver one. I wouldn't lose my luck
+by losing your hoodoo charm for anything in the
+world."</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of the clover Lloyd blushed violently.
+But it was not the little dried leaf that deepened
+the quick colour in her cheeks. It was the thought
+of the last time he had shown it to her, and the
+scene it recalled at the churchyard stile, when Malcolm
+had begged for the tip of a curl to carry with
+him always as a talisman; as a token that he was
+really her knight, as he had been in the princess<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+play, and that he would come to her on some glad
+morrow.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll have a pocket full of such talismans by
+the time he's through college," she thought, recalling
+the kodak pictures she had just seen. "I'm
+<i>mighty</i> glad that I didn't give him one."</p>
+
+<p>Over at The Beeches, Elise and her little friends
+had arranged to give a Christmas play, so promptly
+at the hour agreed upon the party "progressed"
+in Mrs. Walton's wake. There they found the
+third royal welcome, and the gayest of entertainments.
+It had been an exciting day for all of them,
+and, as Kitty expressed it, they were all wound
+up like alarm-clocks. They would go off pretty soon
+with a br-r-r and a bang, and then run down.</p>
+
+<p>The play passed off without a hitch in the performance,
+and ended in a blaze of spangles and red
+light, when the fairy queen, trailing off the stage,
+went through the audience showering on her guests
+Christmas roses, supposed to have been called to
+life by her magic wand, and distributed as souvenirs
+of her skill.</p>
+
+<p>Then somebody came up to Gay with her violin.
+With Allison to play her accompaniments, she chose
+her sweetest pieces, and threw her whole soul into
+the rendering of them. She was so grateful to these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+dear people who had taken her in like one of themselves,
+and given her such a happy, happy holiday-time
+that she did her best, and Gay's best on the
+violin was a treat even to the musical critics in the
+company. Kitty was so proud of her she could
+not help expressing her pleasure aloud, much to
+Gay's embarrassment. To hide her confusion, she
+started a merry jig tune, so rollicking and irresistible
+that hands and feet all through the rooms began
+to pat the time. Keith seized his Aunt Allison
+around the waist and waltzed her out into the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, everybody!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd was standing in the doorway, talking to
+Doctor Shelby, the white-haired physician of the
+village, one of her oldest and dearest friends.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, Miss Holly-berry," he said. "If I
+wasn't such a stiff old graybeard, I'd be at it myself.
+There's Ranald wanting to ask you."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd waltzed off with Ranald, as light on her
+feet as a bit of thistle-down, and the old doctor's
+eyes followed her fondly.</p>
+
+<p>"She's like Amanthis," he said to himself.
+"And she will grow more like her as the years go
+by, so spirited and high-strung. But they'll have
+to watch her, or she'll wear herself out."</p>
+
+<p>Presently he missed the flash of the scarlet dress,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+in and out among the others, and he did not see it
+again until the music had stopped and the revel was
+ending with the chimes, rung softly on the Bells
+of Luzon. As he stepped back to allow several
+guests to pass him on the way up to the dressing-room,
+he caught sight of Lloyd in an alcove in the
+back hall. She was attempting to draw a glass of
+ice-water from the cooler. Her hands shook, and
+her face was so pale that it startled him. "What's
+the matter, child?" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," she answered, trying to force a little
+laugh. "It's just that I felt for a minute as if I
+might faint. I nevah did, you know. I reckon it's
+as Kitty said. We've been wound up all day, and
+we've run so hah'd we've about run down, and we
+have to stop whethah we want to or not."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her keenly and began counting her
+pulse. "You are not to get wound up this way
+any more this winter, young lady," he said, sternly.
+"Go straight home and go to bed, and stay there
+until day after to-morrow. The rest cure is what
+you need."</p>
+
+<p>"And miss Katie Mallard's pah'ty?" she cried.
+"Why, I couldn't do it even for you, you bad old
+ogah."</p>
+
+<p>She made a saucy mouth at him, and then, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+her most winning smile, held out her hand to say
+good night, for the guests were beginning to take
+their departure. "<i>Please</i>, Mistah <i>My</i>-Doctah,"&mdash;it
+was the pet name she had given him years ago
+when she used to ride on his shoulder,&mdash;"please
+don't go to putting any notions into Papa Jack's
+head or mothah's. I'm just ti'ahed. That's all.
+I'll be all right in the mawning."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Lloyd," called Mrs. Sherman. "We're
+ready to start now." She saw with a sigh of relief
+that her mother was bringing her coat toward her,
+so she would not have to climb the stairs for it.
+She was tired, dreadfully tired, she admitted to
+herself. But it had been such a happy day it was
+worth the fatigue.</p>
+
+<p>As she drove homeward in the sleigh, she slipped
+her hand out of her muff, and turned it in the moonlight
+to watch the sparkle of the new ring. She
+wondered if the two girls who had worn it in turn
+before her had had half as happy a fifteenth Christmas
+as she.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DUNGEON OF DISAPPOINTMENT</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was nearly noon when Lloyd wakened next
+morning. Her head ached, and she wondered dully
+how anybody could feel lively enough to sing as
+Aunt Cindy was doing, somewhere back in the
+servants' quarters. The sound of a squeaking
+wheelbarrow had wakened her. Alec was trundling
+it around the house, with the parrot perched on it.
+The parrot loved to ride, and its silly laugh at every
+jolt of the squeaking barrow usually amused Lloyd,
+but to-day its harsh chatter annoyed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, deah!" she groaned, sitting up in bed and
+yawning. "I feel as if I could sleep for a week.
+I wouldn't get up at all if it wasn't for Katie Mallard's
+pah'ty. I hate this day-aftah-Christmas feeling,
+as if the bottom had dropped out of everything."</p>
+
+<p>She dressed slowly and went down-stairs.
+"Where's mothah, Mom Beck?" she asked, pausing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+in the dining-room door. The old coloured
+woman was arranging flowers for the lunch-table.</p>
+
+<p>"She's done gone ovah to Rollington, honey,
+with the old Cun'l. Walkah's mothah is sick, and
+sent for 'em. I'm lookin' for 'em to come home
+any minute now. Come right along in, honey.
+I've kep' yoah breakfus' good and hot."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want anything to eat. I'm not hungry
+now. I'd rathah wait till lunch. Where's Betty,
+Mom Beck?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now listen to that!" ejaculated the old woman,
+sharply. "Don't you remembah? She went off
+on the early train this mawning to that place you
+all calls the Cuckoo's Nest. I packed her satchel
+befoah daylight."</p>
+
+<p>"I had forgotten she was going," exclaimed
+Lloyd, turning to the window with a discontented
+expression, which only the snowbirds on the lawn
+could see. She had come down-stairs expecting to
+talk over all the happenings of the previous day
+with Betty, and to find her gone gave her a vague
+sense of injury. She knew the feeling was unreasonable,
+but she could not shake it off.</p>
+
+<p>The flash of the new ring gave her a momentary
+pleasure, but she was in a mood that nothing could
+please her long. When she strolled into the drawing-room,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+everything was in spotless order, and
+so quiet that the stillness was oppressive. Even
+the fire burned with a steady, noiseless glow, without
+the usual crackle, and the ashes fell on the
+hearth with velvety softness.</p>
+
+<p>Some of her new books lay on a side table. She
+picked them up and glanced through them, catching
+at a paragraph here and there. But one after
+another she laid them down. She was not in a
+mood for reading. Then she took a candied date
+from the bonbon dish, but it seemed to lack its
+usual flavour. After nibbling each end, she threw
+it into the fire. Slipping her new opera-glass from
+its case, she went to the window and turned the
+lens on the distant entrance gate. The road in each
+direction seemed deserted. So she put the glass
+back in its case, and, after strolling restlessly around
+the room, walked over to the harp and struck a
+few chords.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all out of tune!" she exclaimed, fretfully,
+thrumming the faulty string with impatient fingers.
+"Everything seems out of tune this mawning!"</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke, the string broke with a sudden
+harsh twang that made her jump. She was so
+startled that the tears came to her eyes, and so nervous
+that she flung herself face downward on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+pillows of the long-Persian divan, and began sobbing
+hysterically. The strain of the last few weeks
+had been too much for her. Miss Gilmer's prophecy
+had come true. The ice had given away under
+the extra weight put upon it.</p>
+
+<p>She was sobbing so hard that she did not hear
+the sound of carriage wheels rolling softly up the
+avenue through the snow, and when the front door
+banged shut she started again, and began trembling
+as she had done when the harp-string broke.
+She was crying convulsively now, so hard that she
+could not stop, although she clenched her fists and
+bit her lips in a strong effort to regain self-control.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sherman, her face all aglow from the cold
+drive, and looking almost girlishly fair in her big
+hat with the plumes, and her dark furs, hurried in
+to the fire. The Colonel, throwing back his scarlet
+lined cape, pushed aside the porti&egrave;re for her to enter.
+He was the first to catch sight of the shaking form
+on the divan.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Lloyd, child, what's the matter?" he
+demanded, anxiously. "What's the matter with
+grandpa's little girl?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sherman, with a frightened expression, hurried
+to her, and, bending over her, tried to get a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+glimpse of the tear-swollen face buried so persistently
+in the cushions.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing's happened! No, I'm not sick," came
+in smothered tones from the depths of the pillows.
+"It's j-just crying itself, and I&mdash;I&mdash;I c-can't
+stop-p-p!"</p>
+
+<p>A long shiver passed over her, and Mrs. Sherman,
+stroking her forehead with a soothing hand,
+waited for her to grow quiet before plying her
+with questions. But the old Colonel paced impatiently
+back and forth.</p>
+
+<p>"The child <i>must</i> be sick," he declared. "She'll
+be coming down with a fever or something if we
+don't take vigorous measures to prevent it. I shall
+telephone for Dick Shelby this minute."</p>
+
+<p>He started toward the hall, but a wild wail from
+Lloyd stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't have the doctah! I'm not sick, and
+you sha'n't send for him! I j-just cried because
+the harp-string b-broke so suddenly that it s-scared
+me!"</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel paused and looked at her in amazement.
+Not since the time when she, a five-year-old
+child, had flung a handful of mud over his white
+clothes had she spoken to him in such a defiant tone.
+He answered soothingly, as if she were still that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+little child, to be coaxed into good behaviour. "Oh,
+yes, you won't mind the doctor's coming if grandpa
+wants him to. He'll keep you from getting down
+sick, and spoiling all the rest of your vacation. I'll
+just ask him to step up and look at you."</p>
+
+<p>"No, don't!" demanded Lloyd, as he started
+again toward the hall. "No, you sha'n't!" she insisted,
+springing up and stamping her foot. "I
+won't have the old doctah, and I won't take any
+of his nasty old medicine! He'll make me stay
+home from Katie's pah'ty this aftahnoon and from
+the matin&eacute;e to-morrow&mdash;and there's nothing the
+mattah, only I'm cross and nervous, and the moah
+you bothah me the hah'dah it is to stop crying!"</p>
+
+<p>Then ashamed of her petulant outburst, she threw
+her arms around his neck, and sobbed on his shoulder.
+In the end she had her own way, for the glass
+of hot milk which her mother sent for, as soon
+as she found Lloyd had eaten no breakfast, soothed
+her overstrung nerves. A brisk walk to the post-office
+in the bracing December air gave her an appetite
+for luncheon. Then she slept again until time
+to dress for Katie's party, so that when the old
+Colonel watched her start off, she looked so bright
+and was in such buoyant spirits that he wondered
+vaguely if her crying spell could have been the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+remnant of some childish tantrum instead of the
+forerunner of an illness.</p>
+
+<p>He banished the thought instantly from his loyal
+old heart, ashamed of having applied such a word
+as tantrum to anything Lloyd might choose to do.
+Of course she had felt ill, he told himself. So
+wretched that she hadn't known what she was saying
+when she stormed at him so angrily. He resolved
+to watch her closely, and take matters in his
+own hands if she showed any more alarming symptoms.</p>
+
+<p>There was a matin&eacute;e next day in Louisville, to
+which Mrs. Sherman took all the girls in the neighbourhood.
+That was the end of the Christmas
+gaieties for Lloyd. Doctor Shelby was at Locust
+on her return. He came out of the old Colonel's
+den, where he had been sitting for several hours,
+deep in a game of chess, and found her shivering
+in front of the fire with a nervous chill, sobbing
+hysterically.</p>
+
+<p>She stormed at him almost as she had done at
+her grandfather, protesting that she was only tired
+and nervous, and that she would be all right as soon
+as she had had her cry out. But she submitted
+meekly when he ordered her mother to put her to
+bed. The old doctor had always indulged her, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+there was a sternness in his manner now that made
+her obey him.</p>
+
+<p>He called to see her the next day, and the next.
+But his visits did not seem like professional ones.
+There was nothing said about medicine or symptoms.
+He only asked her about school and the good
+times she had been having, and the extra studying
+she had been doing. Then he sat and joked and
+talked with her and her mother, as had been his
+habit ever since Lloyd could remember. The third
+afternoon she was down in the drawing-room when
+he came.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll soon be having Miss Holly-berry back
+again," he said, playfully pinching her pale cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"And without taking any nasty old medicine,"
+she answered. "I don't mind doctahs when they
+can cure people without giving them pills and powdahs."</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel looked up sharply. "What's that?"
+he asked. "Haven't you been giving her anything,
+Dick? It seems to me the child would get along
+faster if she had a good tonic."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to prescribe one this morning," the
+doctor answered. "That's what I came up for."
+He laughed at the look of disgust on Lloyd's
+face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It isn't bad," he assured her, with an indulgent
+smile. "Why, I know dozens of girls who would
+say that the tonic I am going to prescribe is the
+most agreeable that could be given. I've even had
+them beg for it. This is it, simply to lengthen your
+Christmas vacation. Didn't I hear a certain young
+lady wishing the other night that she could stretch
+hers out indefinitely?"</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd's dimples deepened. "How much longah
+will you make it? A week? If I stay out much
+longah than that, it will be such hah'd work to
+catch up with my classes that the game won't be
+worth the candle."</p>
+
+<p>"But I would make it so long that there would
+be no necessity of having to catch up, as you call
+it. You could simply make a fresh start in a new
+class."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd looked up in alarm. "When?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Um&mdash;well, next fall, let us say," he answered,
+deliberately. "Yes, surely by that time you'll be
+well and sound as a new dollar."</p>
+
+<p>"Next fall!" she gasped, her face growing white
+and her eyes strangely big and dark. "You don't
+mean&mdash;you <i>couldn't</i> mean that I must leave
+school."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's exactly what I mean. You are overtaxing
+yourself and must stop&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I can't!" interrupted Lloyd, speaking very
+fast. "I <i>won't!</i> It's cruel to ask it when I've
+worked so hard to keep from falling behind Betty
+and the girls. Oh, you don't <i>know</i> what it means
+to me!"</p>
+
+<p>The old doctor looked up in amazement at this
+unexpected outburst.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he answered, slowly, after a moment's
+silence. "I don't suppose I do. I had no idea it
+would be a disappointment to you. I would gladly
+save you from it if I could. But listen to me, my
+little girl, and try to be reasonable. You are on the
+verge of a nervous breakdown. Nothing can mean
+as much to you as your health. What will keeping
+up with the other girls amount to if the strain and
+the overtaxing makes an invalid of you for life, perhaps?</p>
+
+<p>"Mind you, I am not saying that the work itself
+is too great a tax. Madam Chartley's is one of the
+best regulated schools I have ever inquired into.
+Ordinarily a girl ought to be able to take the course
+with perfect ease. But you see that little spell of
+la grippe left you weak and unfit for any extra
+strain, and, instead of easing up a bit, you went<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+on piling on all that extra load of lessons and Christmas
+preparations and vacation dissipations. It was
+like trying to walk on a broken foot. The more
+you tried, the worse it got. The mischief is done
+now, and there is no remedy but to stop short off."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd sat very still for a moment, staring out
+of the window in a dazed, unseeing way, as if not
+fully understanding all he said. Then she turned
+with a piteous appeal in her face to Mrs. Sherman.</p>
+
+<p>"Mothah, it isn't so, is it? I won't have to give
+up school now! You wouldn't make me, would
+you, when you know how I love it? Oh, it will
+neahly <i>kill</i> me if you do! Please say no, mothah!
+<i>Please!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sherman's eyes were full of tears. "My
+poor little girl," she exclaimed as Lloyd threw herself
+into her arms. "I'm afraid we must do as
+the doctor says. He would not ask such a sacrifice
+if it were not necessary. You know how dearly
+he has always loved you."</p>
+
+<p>Without waiting to hear any more, Lloyd sprang
+up and ran out of the room. Rushing up-stairs,
+she bolted her door behind her, and threw herself
+across the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the first great disappointment she has ever
+had in her life," said her mother, looking after her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+with a troubled face. "Couldn't you make the
+sentence a little easier, doctor? Couldn't she go
+back and take one study, just to be with the girls?"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. "No, Elizabeth. She is too
+ambitious and high-strung for that. One study
+wouldn't satisfy her. She'd chafe at not being able
+to keep up in everything. She has nothing serious
+the matter with her now, but it would not take long
+to make a wreck of her health at the gait she has
+been going. There must be no more parties, no
+more regular school work, and even no more music
+lessons this winter. She must have the simplest
+kind of a life. Keep her out-of-doors all you can.
+A little prevention now will be worth pounds of
+cure after awhile."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you are right, Dick," said the old
+Colonel, huskily, "but I swear I'd give the only
+arm the Yankees left me to save her from this disappointment."</p>
+
+<p>Lying across the bed up-stairs, Lloyd cried and
+sobbed until she was exhausted. The handkerchief
+clutched in her hand in a damp little ball had wiped
+away the bitterest tears she had ever shed. In her
+inmost heart she knew that the doctor was right.
+It had been weeks since she had felt strong and well.
+She remembered the way she had lagged behind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+at the picnic, and what an effort it had been to talk
+and make herself agreeable lately. Recalling the
+last few weeks, it seemed to her that she had been
+in tears half the time. She admitted to herself
+that she would rather be dead than to be an invalid
+for life like her great-aunt Jane. To sit always in
+a darkened room that smelled of camphor, and to
+talk in a weak, complaining voice that made everybody
+tired. Of course if there was danger of her
+growing to be like <i>her</i>, she would rather leave school
+than run such a risk. But why, oh, <i>why</i> was she
+forced to make such a choice? The other girls
+didn't have to. She had done no more than they
+to bring about such a state of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>They could go back to dear old Warwick Hall,
+but she would have to stay behind. And she would
+always be behind, for, even if she went back with
+them another year, it couldn't be the same. They
+would have done so much in the meantime,&mdash;gone
+on so far ahead, made new friends and found new
+interests, and she would have to drop back in the
+class below, and never, never stand on the same
+footing with them again. It was so hard, so cruel,
+that she should have to face a blighted life at only
+fifteen.</p>
+
+<p>She unlocked the door presently at her mother's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+knock, but she didn't want to be comforted. Nothing
+anybody could say could change things, she
+sobbed, or make the disappointment any easier to
+bear. So Mrs. Sherman wisely withdrew, and left
+her to fight it out alone.</p>
+
+<p>The next time she peeped into the room, Lloyd
+was asleep, worn out with the violence of her grief,
+so she tiptoed down-stairs, leaving the door ajar
+behind her. The Colonel was pacing up and down
+the library.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare I can't think of anything but that
+child's disappointment!" he exclaimed, as she came
+in. "I can't read! I can't settle down to anything.
+I have been trying to think of some pleasure we
+could give her to make up for it in a way. A winter
+in Florida, maybe. Poor baby! if I could only bear
+it for her, how glad I would be to do it!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sherman picked up a bit of needlework from
+the table where she had left it, and, sitting down
+by the window, began to hemstitch.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, papa," she said, slowly, "but
+I'm beginning to fear that we have done too much
+of that for Lloyd; smoothed the difficulties out of
+her way too much; made things too easy. We've
+fairly held our arms around her to shield her not
+only from harmful things, but from even trifling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+unpleasantness. Maybe if she had had to face the
+smaller disappointments that most children have
+to bear, the greater ones would not seem so overwhelming.
+She could have met this more bravely."</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel sniffed impatiently. "All foolishness,
+Elizabeth! All foolishness! That may be the
+case with ordinary children, but not with such a
+sweet, unspoiled nature as Lloyd's."</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly dark when Lloyd wakened. She
+heard Kitty's voice down in the hall, asking to see
+her, and Gay's exclamation of surprise and regret
+at something her mother said in a low voice. She
+knew that she was telling them the doctor's decision.
+Then Mom Beck tapped at the door to ask if she
+would see the girls awhile, but she sent her away
+with a mournful shake of the head. She was too
+miserable even to speak.</p>
+
+<p>The low murmur of voices went on for some
+time. It grew loud enough for her to distinguish
+the words when the girls came out into the hall
+again to take their departure. Lloyd raised herself
+on her elbow to listen. Kitty was telling something
+that had happened that afternoon at the candy-pull
+from which they were just returning. A wan smile
+flitted across Lloyd's face, in sympathy with the
+merry laugh that floated up the stairs. But it faded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+the next instant as she whispered, bitterly: "That's
+the way it will always be. They will go on having
+good times without me, and they'll get so they'll
+nevah even miss me. I'll be left out of everything.
+There's nothing left to look forward to any moah.
+Oh, it's all so dah'k and gloomy&mdash;I know now how
+Ederyn felt, for I'm just like he was, walled up in
+a dreadful Dungeon of Disappointment."</p>
+
+<p>The fancy pleased her so that she went on making
+herself miserable with it long after the door closed
+behind Kitty and Gay. Over and over she pictured
+Warwick Hall, which just then seemed the most
+desirable place in all the world. She could see the
+shining river, as she had watched it so many times
+from her window, flowing past the stately terraces
+between its willow-fringed banks. She could hear
+the breezy summons of the hunter's horn, calling
+the girls to rambles over the wooded hills or through
+the quaint old garden. She could see the sun streaming
+into the south windows of the English room,
+with the class gathered around Miss Chilton, eager
+and interested. All the dear, delightful round of
+inspiring work and play would go on day after day
+for the others, but it would go on without her.
+Henceforth she would be left out of everything
+pleasant and worth while.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She would not go down to dinner. She could
+not take such a puffed, tear-swollen face to the
+table to make everybody else unhappy, and she
+couldn't throw off her despondent mood. Maybe
+in a few days, she thought, she might be able to hide
+her feelings sufficiently to appear in public, but it
+would always be with a secret sorrow gnawing at
+her heart. Just now she shrank from sympathy,
+and she didn't want any one to cheer her up. It
+did not seem possible that she could ever smile
+again, and she wasn't sure that she wanted to.</p>
+
+<p>Mom Beck brought up the daintiest of dinners
+on a tray, but carried it back almost untasted. As
+soon as she was gone, Lloyd undressed and crept
+into bed.</p>
+
+<p>Sleep was far from her, however, and she lay
+with her eyes wide open. The room was full of soft
+shadows and the flicker of firelight on the furniture.
+She could think of only one thing, and she brooded
+over that until it seemed to her feverish, disordered
+fancy that her disappointment was the greatest that
+any one had ever been forced to bear.</p>
+
+<p>"Why couldn't it have happened to some girl
+who didn't care?" she thought, bitterly. "Some girl
+like Maud Minor, who doesn't like school, anyhow.
+It doesn't seem fair when I've tried my best to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+do exactly right, to leave a road of the loving hah't
+in everybody's memory, to keep the tryst&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>That thought brought a fresh reason for grief.
+There was the string of pearls. Now she could
+not finish her little white rosary. The fire flared up
+and shone brilliantly for a few moments, lighting
+a group of pictures over her bed. They were the
+photographs she had taken in Arizona. There was
+Ware's Wigwam. The firelight was not bright
+enough to enable her to read the lines Joyce had
+written under it, but she knew the inscription was
+the Ware family's motto, taken from the "Vicar
+of Wakefield": "Let us be inflexible, and fortune
+will at last change in our favour." A shadow of
+a smile actually came to her lips as she remembered
+Mary Ware gravely explaining it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, even Norman knows that if you'll swallow
+your sobs and <i>stiffen</i> when you bump your
+head or anything, it doesn't hurt half as bad as
+if you just let loose and howl."</p>
+
+<p>And there was the photograph of old Camelback
+Mountain, bringing back the story of Shapur, left
+helpless on the sands of the Desert of Waiting,
+while the caravan passed on without him to the City
+of his Desire. She remembered that when she hung
+it over her bed she had thought, "If ever <i>I</i> come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+to such a place, this will help me to bear it patiently."</p>
+
+<p>Then she thought of Joyce, how bravely and uncomplainingly
+she had met her disappointment.
+Not only had she left school and given up her
+ambition to be an artist, but she had had to give
+up the old home she loved, all her friends, and
+everything that made her girlhood bright, to go
+out into the lonely desert and work like a squaw.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of Joyce brought back all the lessons
+she had learned in the School of the Bees.
+But she sighed presently: "Oh, deah, all those
+things sounded so nice and comforting when they
+seemed meant for othah people. They don't seem
+so comforting now that I'm in trouble myself. It's
+like the poultice Aunt Cindy made for Walkah's
+toothache. She was disgusted because he didn't
+stop complaining right away, and said it ought to
+have cured him if it didn't. But it wasn't such a
+powahful remedy when she had the toothache herself.
+She grumbled moah than Walkah. It's all
+well enough to say that I'll seal up my troubles as
+the bees seal up the things that get into the cells
+to spoil their honey, but now the time is heah, I
+simply can't!"</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, what the School of the Bees taught<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+did help. So did the sight of the patient old Camelback
+Mountain, that had inspired the legend of
+Shapur. And more than all the little group in front
+of the Wigwam helped, as she remembered how
+bravely they had met their troubles.</p>
+
+<p>One by one her happy Arizona days came back
+to her. After all, it was something to have lived
+fifteen beautiful years untouched by trouble. She
+was thankful for that much, even if the future held
+nothing more for her. If she couldn't be happy,
+she could at least take Mary's advice and "not let
+loose and howl" about it any more. If she couldn't
+be bright and cheerful, she could "swallow her
+sobs and stiffen." With the resolution to try Mary's
+remedy for her woes in the morning, she lay drowsily
+watching the firelight flicker across the picture
+of the Wigwam.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>IN THE ATTIC</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">If</span> the sun had been shining next morning, it
+would have been easier for Lloyd to keep her resolution,
+and face the family bravely at breakfast.
+But the rain was pouring against the windows;
+a slow, monotonous rain that ran in little rivers
+over the lawn, melting the snow, and turning the
+white landscape into a dreary scene of mud and
+bare branches.</p>
+
+<p>Twice on the way down-stairs she paused, thinking
+that she could not possibly sit through the meal
+without crying, and that it would be better to go
+back and breakfast alone in her room than to be
+a damper on the spirits of the family. Even so
+slight a thing as the tone of sympathy in her grandfather's
+"good morning" made the tears spring
+to her eyes, but she winked them back, and answered
+almost cheerfully his question as to how she felt.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, just like the weathah, grandfathah. All
+gray and drippy; but I'll clean up aftah awhile."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She could not smile as she said it, but the effort
+she made to be cheerful made the next attempt easier,
+and presently she acknowledged to herself that
+Mary was right. It did help, to swallow one's sobs.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast she stood at the window, watching
+her father drive away to the station in the rain.
+As the carriage disappeared and there was nothing
+more to watch, she wondered dully how she could
+spend the long morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Some one wants you at the telephone, Lloyd,"
+called the Colonel, on his way to his den.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, good! I hope it is Kitty," she exclaimed,
+anticipating a long visit over the wire.</p>
+
+<p>But it was Malcolm MacIntyre who had rung
+her up, to bid her good-bye. He and Keith were
+about to start home. They had intended to go up
+to Locust, he told her, for a short call before train
+time, but it was raining too hard. Would she please
+make their adieus to her mother and the rest of the
+family. He had heard that she was not going back
+to school. Was it true? She was in luck. No?
+She was disappointed? Well, that was too bad.
+He was awfully sorry. But she mustn't worry over
+missing a few months of school. It wouldn't
+amount to much in the long run. For his part,
+if he were a girl and didn't have to fit himself for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+a profession, he would be glad to have such a postscript
+added to his Christmas vacation. He'd noticed
+that usually the postscript to a girl's letter
+had more in it than the letter itself. Possibly it
+would be that way with her vacation. He hoped so.</p>
+
+<p>Although it was in the most cordial tone that
+he expressed his regret at her disappointment, and
+bade Princess Winsome good-bye until the "good
+old summer-time," it was with a vague feeling of
+disappointment that Lloyd hung up the receiver
+and turned away from the telephone.</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't undahstand at all!" she thought.
+"He hasn't the faintest idea how much it means
+to me to give up school. He thinks that, because
+I'm a girl, I haven't any ambition, and that it doesn't
+hurt me as it would him. Maybe it wouldn't have
+sounded quite the same if I could have seen him
+say it, but ovah the telephone, somehow&mdash;although
+he was mighty nice and polite&mdash;it sounded sawt
+of patronizing."</p>
+
+<p>She went into the library to deliver Malcolm's
+farewell messages to her mother. "He seems so
+much moah grown up this time than he evah has
+befoah," she added. "I don't like him half as much
+that way as the way he used to be."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sherman was busy about the house all morning,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+so Lloyd found entertainment following her
+from room to room, as she inspected the linen closet,
+superintended the weekly cleaning of the pantry,
+and rearranged some of the library shelves to make
+room for the Christmas books. But in the afternoon
+she had a number of letters to write, acknowledging
+the gifts which had been sent her by distant
+friends, and Lloyd was left to her own amusement.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 264px;">
+<img src="images/i005.jpg" width="264" height="500" alt="&quot;ONE OF THE BOYS HAD DARED HIM TO CARRY IT.&quot;" title="&quot;ONE OF THE BOYS HAD DARED HIM TO CARRY IT.&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;ONE OF THE BOYS HAD DARED HIM TO CARRY IT.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The doctor did not want her to read long at a
+time. The rain was pouring too hard for her to
+venture out-of-doors, and about the middle of the
+afternoon the silence and loneliness of the big house
+seemed more than she could endure.</p>
+
+<p>"I could scream, I'm so nervous and ti'ahed of
+being by myself," she exclaimed. "If just a piece
+of a day is so hah'd to drag through as this has
+been, how can I stand all the rest of the wintah?"</p>
+
+<p>She was counting up the weeks ahead of her on
+the big library calendar, when, through the window,
+she caught sight of Rob coming toward the house.
+The rain was running in streams from the bottom
+of his mackintosh, and from a huge umbrella that
+spread over him like a tent. It was an enormous
+advertising umbrella, taken from one of the delivery
+wagons at the store. One of the boys had
+dared him to carry it. "<i>Groceries, Dry Goods,</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+<i>Boots and</i>" appeared in black letters on the yellow
+side turned toward Lloyd. "<i>Shoes. Jayne's Emporium</i>,"
+she called, supplying the rest of the familiar
+advertisement from memory.</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth are you doing with that wagon-top
+ovah you?" she asked from the front door,
+where she stood watching his approach. He was
+striding along whistling as cheerily as if it were
+a midsummer day. He looked up and smiled in
+response to her call, and twirled the umbrella till
+the rain-drops flew in every direction in a fine spray.
+Lloyd felt as if the sun had suddenly come out from
+behind the clouds.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come to finish my Christmas hunt," he said,
+as he stepped up on the porch and shook himself
+like a great water-spaniel.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," cried Lloyd, "I intended to ask Betty
+befoah she went away where she had hidden yoah
+present, and she left next mawning so early that
+I was still asleep. Maybe mothah knows."</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Sherman, busy with her letters, shook
+her head. "I haven't the faintest idea," she answered.
+"But I remember she said something
+about Rob's being the hardest one of all to find,
+so you'll probably be kept busy the rest of the day.
+Don't you children bother either Mom Beck or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+Cindy to help you hunt," she called after them.
+"They have all they can attend to to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's see that verse again, Rob," said Lloyd, as
+they went out of the library into the drawing-room.
+He fumbled in several pockets and finally produced
+the card.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"I know a bank where the wild thyme grows.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Unseen it lies, unsung by bard.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Something keeps watch there, no man knows,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And over your gift it's standing guard."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>As on Christmas Day, the only bank the verse
+suggested was in the conservatory, a long, narrow
+ledge of ferns and maidenhair, green with overhanging
+vines and graceful fronds. For nearly
+half an hour they poked around in it, lifting the
+ferns from the warm, moist earth to see if anything
+lay hidden at their roots. It was like April
+in the conservatory, steamy and warm, and the
+fragrance of hyacinths and white violets made it
+a delightful place in which to linger.</p>
+
+<p>"Bank&mdash;bank&mdash;" repeated Lloyd, puzzling over
+the verse again, when they had given up the search
+in the conservatory and gone back to the drawing-room.
+"It might mean a savings-bank, but there
+hasn't been one in the house since that little red
+tin one of mine that you dropped into the well with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+my three precious dimes in it. I've felt all these
+yeahs that you owed me thirty cents."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Lloyd Sherman, there's no use in bringing
+up that old quarrel again," he laughed. "You
+know we were playing that robbers were coming,
+and we had to lower our gold and jewels into the
+well, and you tied the fishing-line around the bank
+your own self. So I am not to blame if the knot
+came untied at the very first jerk. We've wasted
+enough breath arguing that point to start a small
+cyclone."</p>
+
+<p>They laughed again over the recollection of their
+old quarrel, then Rob read the verse once more.
+Presently he stopped drumming on the table with
+his thumbs, and said, slowly, as if trying to recall
+something long forgotten: "Don't you remember,&mdash;it
+seems ages before we dropped your red bank
+in the well,&mdash;that I had a remarkable penny savings-bank?
+It was some sort of a slot machine in
+the shape of a little iron dog. Daddy brought it to
+me from New York. There was some kind of an
+indicator on the side of it that looked like the face
+of a watch. That was my introduction to puns,
+for Daddy said it was a <i>watch</i> dog, made to guard
+my pennies. Surely you haven't forgotten old
+Watch, for after the indicator was broken I brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+the safe over here, and we kept it on the door-mat
+in front of your playhouse, to guard the premises."</p>
+
+<p>"I should say I do remembah!" answered Lloyd.
+"Probably it's up in the attic now. But what has
+that to do with the rhyme?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you see? That must be the 'bank'
+where the wild thyme grows. I don't know whether
+Betty refers to the wild time we used to have playing
+in the attic, or the wild time that the watch
+kept. But I'm certain that that is the bank she
+means."</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, then," cried Lloyd. "Let's go up
+to the attic and hunt for it. I haven't been up there
+for ovah a yeah."</p>
+
+<p>Rob led the way to the upper hall, and then up
+the attic stairs, taking the steep steps two at a time
+in long leaps.</p>
+
+<p>"That isn't the way you used to climb these
+stairs," laughed Lloyd. "Don't you know you
+had to weah little long-sleeved aprons when you
+came ovah to play with me, to keep yoahself clean?
+You always stepped on the front of them and stumbled
+going up these steps."</p>
+
+<p>A headless and tailless hobby-horse of Rob's, on
+which they had ridden many imaginary miles, stood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+in one corner, and he crossed over to examine it,
+with an amused smile.</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly didn't take much to amuse us in
+those days," he said, touching the rockers with his
+foot, and starting the disabled beast to bobbing
+back and forth. "How long has it been since we
+used to ride this thing? Is my hair white? I declare
+I never had anything make me feel so ancient
+as the sight of this old hobby-horse. I feel older
+than grandfather."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd had opened a dilapidated hair-covered
+trunk, and was bending over a family of dolls
+stowed away inside. "Heah is old Belinda!" she
+exclaimed. "And Carrie Belle May, and Rosalie,
+the Prairie Flowah! 'And, oh, Rob! Look at poah
+Nelly Bly, all wah-paint and feathahs, just as you
+fixed her up for a squaw that day we had an Indian
+massacre in the grape arbour. I had forgotten that
+we left her in such a fix!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never forget that day," answered Rob.
+"Don't you remember how sore I made my arm,
+trying to tattoo an anchor on it with a darning-needle
+and clothes bluing? What else have you
+buried in that old trunk?"</p>
+
+<p>Despite his six feet and seventeen years, Rob
+dropped down on a roll of carpet beside the trunk,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+and watched with interest as Lloyd lifted out one
+article after another over which they had quarrelled,
+or in whose pleasure they had shared in what now
+seemed a dim and far-away playtime. Don't you
+remember this? Don't you remember that? they
+asked each other, finding so many things to laugh
+over and recall that they quite forgot the object
+of their search.</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd was sitting with her back against the
+warm chimney, which ran up through the middle
+of the attic, but presently she began to feel chilly,
+and sent Rob over to a chest, away back under the
+eaves, for something to put around her. It was
+packed full of old finery they had used on various
+occasions for tableaux and plays. The first thing
+he pulled out was a gorgeous red velvet cloak covered
+with spangles.</p>
+
+<p>"That will do," she said, as he held it up inquiringly.
+"It's good and warm."</p>
+
+<p>He pushed the chest back into place. Then,
+straightening up, his glance fell on the discarded
+playhouse, standing back in a dim corner. With
+a whoop he pounced upon it.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's old Watch!" he exclaimed, holding up
+the little iron dog. "And he is the bank where the
+wild time grows, for here is the gift he is standing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
+guard over." Throwing the spangled cloak over
+Lloyd's shoulders, he seated himself again on the
+roll of carpet, and began to untie the little package
+fastened to the dog's neck with a bit of ribbon. Inside
+many layers of tissue-paper, he came at last
+to a memorandum-book, small enough to fit in his
+vest-pocket. It was bound in soft gray kid, and
+on the back Betty had burned in old English letters,
+with her pyrography-needle, the motto of
+Warwick Hall: "I keep the tryst." Over it was
+the crest, a heart, out of which rose a mailed arm,
+grasping a spear.</p>
+
+<p>"Betty did that," said Lloyd. "She traced the
+letters on first with tracing-papah, and then burnt
+them. I remembah now, she made it a few days
+befoah we came home. She thought we would
+have our usual tree, and she intended to hang this
+on it for you. Then when we had the hunt instead
+of a tree, she took this way of giving it to
+you. That is an appropriate motto for a memorandum-book,
+isn't it? You'll appreciate it moah
+when she tells you the story about it. Miss Chilton
+read it to the English class one day, and had us
+write it from memory for the next lesson."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what's the matter with your telling it
+to me?" asked Rob, eying the mailed hand and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+the spear with interest. "I'll be gone before Betty
+gets back. Go on and tell it. This is an ideal time
+and place for story-telling."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned comfortably back against the warm
+chimney and half-closed his eyes. The patter of
+the rain on the roof made him drowsy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," assented Lloyd, "I can't tell it with
+as many frills and flourishes as Betty could, but
+I remembah it bettah than most stories, because I
+had to write it from memory." Drawing the
+glittering cloak closer around her, she began as
+if she were reading it, in the very words of the
+green and gold volume:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"'Now there was a troubadour in the kingdom
+of Arthur, who, strolling through the land with only
+his minstrelsy to win him a way, found in every
+baron's hall and cotter's hut a ready welcome.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>Here and there she stumbled over some part of
+it, or told it hesitatingly in her own words, but
+at last she ended it as well as Betty herself could
+have done:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"So Ederyn won his sovereign's favour, and,
+by his sovereign's grace permitted, went back to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+woo the maiden and win her for his bride. Then
+henceforth blazoned on his shield and helmet he
+bore the crest, a heart with hand that grasped a
+spear, and, underneath, the words, 'I keep the
+tryst.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>"That's a corking good motto," said Rob as she
+paused. "I like that story, Lloyd, and I'll remember
+it when I keep the engagements that I put down
+in this little book."</p>
+
+<p>He sat a moment, flipping the leaves and whistling
+a bar from "The Old Oaken Bucket."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop!" commanded Lloyd, suddenly, clapping
+her hands over her ears, and making a wry face.
+"You're off the key. Haven't I told you a thousand
+times that it doesn't go that way? This
+is it."</p>
+
+<p>Puckering up her lips, she whistled the tune
+correctly, and he joined in. At the end of the
+chorus he looked at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"It's been like old times this afternoon," he
+said. "I'll tell you what, Lloyd, let's come up
+here once a year after this, just to keep tryst with
+our old playtimes. I'll put that down as the first
+engagement in my memorandum-book. A year
+from to-day we'll take another look at these things."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"All right," assented Lloyd, cheerfully. Then
+a wistful expression crept into her eyes as she
+peered through the tiny attic window. Twilight
+was falling early on account of the rain. A deep
+gloom began to settle over her spirits also.</p>
+
+<p>"Rob," she said, slowly, "I haven't told you
+yet. I didn't want to spoil our aftahnoon by thinking
+about it any moah than I could help, and you
+made me almost forget it for a little while. I
+couldn't talk about it when you first came without
+crying,&mdash;this yeah is going to be <i>such</i> a long, hah'd
+one. They aren't going to let me go back to school
+aftah the holidays. The doctah says I am not
+strong enough, and it is such an awful Dungeon
+of Disappointment that it just breaks my hah't to
+think about it."</p>
+
+<p>To Rob's consternation she laid her head down
+on old Belinda, who still lay limply across her lap,
+and began to sob. He sat in embarrassed silence
+for a moment, scarcely knowing her for the same
+little companion whom he had taught to meet hurts
+like a boy. He remembered the many times she
+had winked back the tears over the bruises and
+bumps and cuts she had encountered in following
+his lead. He was bewildered by the unfamiliar
+mood, and it hurt him to see her so grieved.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There! there! Don't cry, Lloyd!" he begged,
+hurt by the sight of the fair head bowed so dismally
+over the old doll. "I know how it would
+knock me out to have to stop now, just when I've
+got into the swing of things, so I know just how
+you feel. I'm mighty sorry."</p>
+
+<p>Then, as the sobs continued: "I'd go off and
+whip somebody if it would do any good, but it
+won't. You'll have to brace up as Ederyn did, and
+you'll get out of your dungeon all right."</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer. School was so very dear,
+and the disappointment so very bitter. It had all
+surged over her again in a great wave. He tried
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"It's tough, I know, but it will be easier if you
+take it as all the Lloyds have taken their troubles,
+with your teeth set and your head up. Somehow,
+that's the way I've always thought you would take
+things. Don't cry, Lloyd. Don't! It breaks me
+all up to see you this way, when you've always been
+so game."</p>
+
+<p>She straightened up and wiped her eyes, announcing
+suddenly: "And I'm going to be game now.
+If there's one thing I nevah could beah, it was for
+you to think I was a coward, and I can't have you
+thinking it now. It's a sawt of tryst I've kept all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+these yeahs, unconsciously, I suppose. Ever since
+I was a little thing, if I thought 'Bobby expects it
+of me,' I'd do it, no mattah what it was, from jumping
+a fence to climbing on the chimney. I've lived
+up to yoah expectations many a time at the risk
+of killing myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed you have," he answered, in a tone of
+hearty admiration. There was a tender light in
+his gray eyes which she did not see, she was so
+busy wiping her own.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm done crying now," she announced, springing
+to her feet and thrusting Belinda back into the
+trunk. "Come on, let's go down and pop some
+cawn ovah the library fiah. Put this cloak away
+first."</p>
+
+<p>He pushed the chest back to its place under the
+eaves and started after her, pulling out his handkerchief
+as he went, to wipe away a stray cobweb
+into which he had thrust his hand. It reminded him
+of the story.</p>
+
+<p>"You know," he suggested, consolingly, "there's
+bound to be some way out of your dungeon. I'll
+spend all the rest of the vacation helping you twist
+cobwebs for your rope, if you like."</p>
+
+<p>She made no answer then to his offer of assistance.
+She felt that she could not steady her voice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+if she tried to speak her appreciation of his sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>So she called out, as she dashed past him: "As
+Joyce used to say at the house pah'ty, 'the last one
+down is a jibbering Ornithorhynchus!'"</p>
+
+<p>Away they went in a mad race, whose noisy
+clatter made it seem to the old Colonel in his den
+that the rafters were falling in. But on the landing
+she paused an instant.</p>
+
+<p>"It&mdash;it helps a lot, Rob," she said, wistfully,
+"to have you undahstand,&mdash;to know that you
+know how it hurts."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could really help you," he answered,
+earnestly. "You're a game little chum!"</p>
+
+<p>She flashed back a grateful smile from under her
+wet eyelashes, and led the race on down the next
+flight of stairs.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>HUMDRUM DAYS</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">All</span> through the rest of that week, and through
+New Year's Day, Lloyd managed to keep her resolution
+bravely. Even when the time came for the
+girls to go back to school without her, she went
+through the farewells like a little Spartan, driving
+down to the station with tearful Betty, who grieved
+over Lloyd's disappointment as if it had been her
+own.</p>
+
+<p>When the train pulled out, with the four girls
+on the rear platform, she stood waving her handkerchief
+cheerily as long as she could see an answering
+flutter. Then she turned away, catching
+her breath in a deep indrawn sob, that might have
+been followed by others if Rob had not been with
+her. He saw her clench her hands and set her
+teeth together hard, and knew what a fight she was
+making to choke back the tears, but he wisely gave
+no sign that he saw and sympathized. He only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+proposed a walk over to the blacksmith shop to see
+the red fox that Billy Kerr had trapped and caged.
+But a little later, when she had regained her self-control
+and was poking a stick between the slats
+of the coop where the fox was confined, to make
+it stretch itself, he said, suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>"By cricky, you were game, Lloyd! If it had
+been me, I couldn't have gone to the station and
+watched the fellows go off without me, and joke
+about it the way you did."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd went on rattling the stick between the slats
+and made no answer, but Rob's approval brightened
+her spirits wonderfully. It was not until the next
+day, when he, too, went back to school, that she
+fully realized how lonely her winter was going to
+be. She strolled into her mother's room, and threw
+herself listlessly into a chair by the window.</p>
+
+<p>"What can I do, mothah? I mustn't read long,
+I mustn't study, Tarbaby is lame, so I can't ride,
+and I've walked as far as I care to this mawning."</p>
+
+<p>"What would you like to do?" asked Mrs. Sherman,
+who was dressing to go out.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing but things that I can't do," was the
+fretful answer. "It would be lots of fun if I could
+go out in the kitchen and beat eggs, and make custah'd
+pies and biscuits and things. I'd love to cook.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+I haven't had a chance since I was at Ware's Wigwam.
+But Aunt Cindy scolds and grumbles if anybody
+so much as looks into the kitchen. She says
+she won't have me messing around in her way."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," sighed Mrs. Sherman. "Cindy is
+getting more fussy and exacting every year. But
+she has cooked for the family so long that she seems
+to think the kitchen is hers. If she were not such
+a superior cook, I wouldn't put up with her whims,
+but in these days, when everybody is having so
+much trouble with servants, we'll have to humour
+her. She's a faithful old creature. You might cook
+on the chafing-dish in the dining-room. There are
+all sorts of things you could make on that."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "But
+not bread and pies and things you do with a rolling-pin.
+That's the pah't I like."</p>
+
+<p>She sat a moment, swinging her foot in silence,
+and then broke out:</p>
+
+<p>"If I were a girl in a story-book, this disappointment
+would turn me into such a saintly, helpful
+creatuah that I'd be called 'The Angel of the
+Home.' I've read about such girls. They keep
+things in ordah, and mend and dust and put flowahs
+about, and make the house so bright and cheerful
+that people wondah how they evah got along without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+them. Every time they turn around, there are
+lovely, helpful things for them to do. But what
+can <i>I</i> do in a big house like this moah than I've
+always tried to do? I've tried to be considerate of
+everybody's comfo't evah since I stah'ted out to
+build a road of the loving hah't in everybody's
+memory. The servants do everything heah, and
+don't want to be interfered with. I wish we were
+dead poah, and lived in a plain little cottage and
+did our own work. Then I wouldn't have time
+to get lonesome. I'd be lots happiah.</p>
+
+<p>"One day, when Miss Gilmer and I were talking
+about Ederyn in his Dungeon of Disappointment,
+she said that we could always get out of our troubles
+the same way that he did; that the cobwebs he
+twisted into ropes were disagreeable to touch. Nobody
+likes to put their hands into dusty cobwebs,
+and that they represent the disagreeable little tasks
+that lie in wait for everybody. She said that, if
+we'll just grapple the things that we dislike most
+to do, the little homely every-day duties, and busy
+ourselves with them, they'll help us to rise above
+our discontent. I've been trying all mawning to
+think of some such cobwebs for me to take hold
+of, and there isn't a single one."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sherman smiled at the wobegone face<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+turned toward her. "Fancy any one being miserable
+over such a state of affairs as that!" she
+laughed. "Actually complaining because there's
+nothing disagreeable for her to do! Well, we'll
+have to look for some cobwebs to occupy you.
+Maybe if you can't find them at home, you can
+do like the old woman who was tossed up in a
+basket, seventy times as high as the moon. Don't
+you remember how Mom Beck used to sing it to
+you?</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'Old woman! Old woman! Old woman, said I,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O whither, O whither, O whither so high?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky</i>,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">But I'll be back again, by and by.'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>She trilled it gaily as she fastened her belt, and
+took out her hat and gloves.</p>
+
+<p>"Fate must have given her just such a cobwebless
+home as you have, and she had to soar high
+to rise above her troubles. Come on, little girl, get
+your hat and coat, and we'll go in search of something
+disagreeable for you to do; but I hope your
+quest won't take you seventy times as high as the
+moon."</p>
+
+<p>They drove down to the store to attend to the
+day's marketing. While Mrs. Sherman was ordering
+her groceries, Lloyd went to the back of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+store, where one of the clerks was teaching tricks
+to a bright little fox-terrier. She was so interested
+in the performance that she did not know when
+Miss Allison came in, or how long she and her
+mother stood discussing her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Mrs. Sherman, "she has been brave
+about it. She never complained but once, and that
+to me this morning. But we know how unhappy
+she is. Jack and papa worry about her all the time.
+They want me to take her to Florida. They think
+she must be given some pleasure that will compensate
+in a way for this disappointment. But it is not
+at all convenient for me to leave home now, and
+I feel that for her own good she should learn to
+meet such things for herself. It would be far easier,
+I acknowledge, if there was anything at home to
+occupy her, but I cannot allow her to interfere with
+Mom Beck's work, or Cindy's. They resent her
+doing anything." She repeated the conversation
+they had had that morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Loan her to me for the rest of the day," said
+Miss Allison. "I can show her plenty of cobwebs,
+the kind she is pining for."</p>
+
+<p>So it happened that a little later, when Miss
+Allison crossed the road to the post-office, and
+started up the path toward home, Lloyd was with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+her, smiling happily over the prospect of spending
+the day with the patron saint of all the Valley's
+merrymakings. From Lloyd's earliest recollection,
+Miss Allison had been the life of every party and
+picnic in the neighbourhood. She was everybody's
+confidante. Like Shapur, who gathered something
+from the heart of every rose to fill his crystal vase,
+so she had distilled from all these disclosures the
+precious attar of sympathy, whose sweetness won
+for her a way, and gained for her a welcome, wherever
+she went.</p>
+
+<p>As they turned in at the gate, Lloyd looked wistfully
+across at The Beeches, and her eyes filled with
+tears. Miss Allison slipped her arm around her
+and drew her close with a sympathetic clasp, as they
+walked around the circle of the driveway leading
+to the house.</p>
+
+<p>"I know just how you feel, dear. Like the little
+lame boy in that story of the 'Pied Piper of Hamelin.'
+Because he couldn't keep up with the others
+when they followed the piper's tune, he had to sit
+and watch them dance away without him, and disappear
+into the mountainside. He was the only
+child left in the whole town of Hamelin. It <i>is</i>
+lonely for you, I know, with all the boys and girls
+of your own age away at school. But think how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+much lonelier Hamelin would have been without
+that child. You'll find out that old people can play,
+too, though, if you'll take a hand in their games.
+I want to teach you one after awhile, which I used
+to enjoy very much, and still take pleasure in."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Allison led the way up-stairs to her own
+room. As they passed the door leading to the north
+wing, Lloyd exclaimed: "I'll nevah forget that
+time, the night of the Valentine pah'ty, when Gingah
+and I went into the blue room, and the beah
+that Malcolm and Keith had tied to the bed-post
+rose up out of the dah'k and frightened us neahly
+to death."</p>
+
+<p>"We had some lively times that winter with
+Virginia and the boys," answered Miss Allison.
+"I kept a record of some of their sorriest mishaps.
+Wait a minute until I speak to the housemaid, and
+I'll see if I can find it."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Allison had been wondering how she could
+best entertain Lloyd, but the problem was solved
+when she found the journal, in which she had written
+the history of the eventful winter when her sister's
+little daughter Virginia and her brother's two
+boys had been left in her charge. Lloyd had taken
+part in many of the mischievous adventures, and she
+sat smiling over the novelty of hearing herself described<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>
+with all the imperious ways, naughty temper,
+and winning charm that had been hers at the
+age of eight.</p>
+
+<p>"It is like looking at an old photograph of oneself,"
+she said, after awhile. "It seems so strange
+to be one of the characters in a book, and listen to
+stories about oneself."</p>
+
+<p>"That reminds me of the game I spoke of," said
+Miss Allison. "I invented it when I was about
+your age. I had just read 'Cranford,' and the story
+of life in that simple little village seemed so charming
+to me that I wished with all my heart I could
+step into the book and be one of the characters,
+and meet all the people that lived between its covers.
+Then I heard some one say that there were more
+interesting happenings and queer characters in
+Lloydsboro Valley than in Cranford. So I began
+to look around for them. I pretended that I was
+the heroine of a book called 'Lloydsboro Valley,'
+and all that summer I looked upon the people I
+met as characters in the same story.</p>
+
+<p>"It happened that all my young friends were
+away that summer, and it would have been very
+lonely but for my new game. The organist went
+away, and, although I was only fifteen, I took her
+place and played the little cabinet organ we used<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>
+then in church and Sunday school. That threw me
+much with the older people, for I had to go to
+choir-practice to play the organ, and also attend
+the missionary teas. Gradually they drew me into
+a sewing-circle that was in existence then, and a
+reading club. I found it was true that my own
+little village really had far more interesting people
+in it than any I had read about, and I learned to
+love all the dear, cranky, gossipy old characters in
+it, because I studied them so closely that I found
+how good at heart they were despite their peculiarities
+and foibles.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I want you to do this winter,
+Lloyd. Join the little choir, and meet with the
+King's Daughters, and learn to know these interesting
+neighbours of yours. And," she added, smiling,
+"I promise you that you'll find all the cobwebs
+you need to help haul you out of your dungeon."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Miss Allison!" exclaimed Lloyd, looking
+horrified at the thought. "<i>I</i> couldn't sing in the
+choir and join the King's Daughtahs and all that.
+They're all at least twice as old as I am, and some
+of them even moah."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you can," insisted Miss Allison. "We
+need your voice in the choir, and you need the new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+interest these things would bring into your life. So
+don't say no until after you've given my game a
+trial. The King's Daughters' Circle is to meet here
+this afternoon, and I want you to help me. I'm
+going to serve hot chocolate and wafers, and, as
+long as it is such a cold, blowy day, I believe I'll
+add some nut sandwiches to make the refreshments
+a little more substantial."</p>
+
+<p>Privately, Lloyd looked forward to the afternoon
+as something stupid which she must face cheerfully
+for Miss Allison's sake, but she found her interest
+aroused with the first arrival. It was Libbie Simms,
+whom she had known all her life, in a way, for she
+could scarcely recall a Sabbath when she had not
+looked across at the dull, homely face in the opposite
+pew, and pitied her because of her queer nose
+and mouse-coloured hair. In the same way she had
+known Miss McGill, who came with Libbie. She
+had simply been one of the congregation who had
+claimed her attention for a moment each week, as
+she minced down the aisle like an animated rainbow.
+All she knew about Miss McGill was that she usually
+wore so many shades of purple and pink and
+blue that the clashing colours set one's teeth on
+edge.</p>
+
+<p>But in five minutes Lloyd had forgotten their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>
+peculiarities of feature and dress, and was listening
+with interest to their account of a call they had just
+made in Rollington. They had been to see a poor
+washerwoman who had five children to support.
+The youngest, a baby who had fits, was very ill,
+about to die. At the mention of Mrs. Crisp, Lloyd
+recalled the forlorn little woman in a wispy cr&ecirc;pe
+veil, who had enlisted her sympathy to such an
+extent one Thanksgiving Day that she and Betty
+had walked over to Rollington from the Seminary
+to carry the greater part of the turkey and fruit
+that had been sent them in their box of Thanksgiving
+goodies.</p>
+
+<p>There was so little poverty in the Valley that,
+when any real case of suffering was discovered, it
+was taken up with enthusiasm. Lloyd wondered
+how she could have thought Libbie Simms so hopelessly
+ugly, when she saw her face light up with
+unselfish interest in her poor neighbours, and heard
+her suggestions for their relief. And her conscience
+pricked her for making fun of Miss McGill's taste
+when she saw how generous she was, and listened
+to her humourous description of several things that
+had happened in the Valley. She was certainly
+entertaining, and looked at life through spectacles
+as rose-coloured as her necktie.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The library filled rapidly, and soon a score of
+needles were at work on the flannel garments intended
+for the Crisp family. Lloyd, on a stool
+between Katherine Marks and Mrs. Walton, sewed
+industriously, interested in the buzz of conversation
+all around her.</p>
+
+<p>"This is not malicious gossip," explained Mrs.
+Walton, in an amused undertone, smiling with
+Lloyd and Katherine at a remark which unintentionally
+reached their ears. "But in a little community
+like this, where little happens, and our interests
+are bound so closely together, the smallest
+details of our neighbours' affairs necessarily entertain
+us. It <i>is</i> interesting to know that Mr. Rawles
+and his great-aunt are not on speaking terms, and
+it is positively exciting to hear that Mr. Wolf and
+Mrs. Cayne quarrelled over the leaflets used in
+Sunday school, and that she told him to his face
+that he was a hypocrite and no better than an infidel.
+It doesn't make us love these good people any the
+less to know that they are human like ourselves,
+and have their tempers and their spites and feuds.
+We know their good side, too. Wait till calamity
+or sickness touches some one of us, and, see how
+kind and sympathetic and tender they all are; every
+one of them."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 417px;">
+<img src="images/i006.jpg" width="417" height="500" alt="&quot;&#39;I NEARLY FAINTED WHEN I HAPPENED TO LOOK UP&#39;&quot;" title="&quot;&#39;I NEARLY FAINTED WHEN I HAPPENED TO LOOK UP&#39;&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;&#39;I NEARLY FAINTED WHEN I HAPPENED TO LOOK UP&#39;&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"You'll hear more gossip here in one afternoon
+than at all the Cranford tea-tables put together,"
+said Katherine Marks. "But it is a mild sort,
+like the kind going on behind us."</p>
+
+<p>Miss McGill, with her head close to Abby Carter's,
+was saying: "Oh, but, my dear, he gets more
+suspicious and foxy every day of his life. I don't
+see how Emma Belle puts up with such a cranky
+old father."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," responded Abby. "They say he
+drives the cook nearly distracted, going into the
+kitchen every day and lifting the lids off all the
+pots and pans to smell what's cooking for dinner.
+Then he makes a fuss if it's not to his liking."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," responded Miss McGill, "but that isn't
+a circumstance to some of his ways. I ran in there
+last night a few minutes, to show Emma Belle a
+pattern she wanted. He got it into his head we
+were hiding something from him, and he actually
+climbed up on the dining-room table and peeped
+through the transom at us. I nearly fainted when
+I happened to look up and saw that old monkey-like
+face, with its dense, gloomy whiskers, looking
+down at me. I just screamed and sat jibbering and
+pointing at the transom. I couldn't help it. He
+gave me such a turn, I didn't get over it all night.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+Emma Belle was so mortified she didn't know what
+to do. It isn't as if he was crazy. He's just mean.
+That girl has the patience of a saint."</p>
+
+
+<p>Before the afternoon was over, Lloyd decided
+that Miss Allison was right. The Valley held a
+number of interesting characters, whose acquaintance
+was well worth cultivating if she wanted to
+be entertained. Part of the time, while the needles
+were flying, Mrs. MacIntyre read aloud. Miss Allison
+called Lloyd into the dining-room when it was
+time to serve the refreshments.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to ask a favour of you, dear," she
+said. "I want you to sing for us presently. No,
+wait a minute," she added, hurriedly, as Lloyd drew
+back with an exclamation of dismay. "Don't
+refuse till you have heard why I ask it. It is on
+account of Agnes Waring. These meetings are
+the great social events of the winter to her. She
+never gets to go anywhere else except to church.
+She's passionately fond of music, and I always make
+it a point to prepare a regular programme when
+the Circle meets here. But all my musicians failed
+me this time, and I cannot bear to disappoint her.
+I know you are timid about singing before older
+people, but this is one of the cobwebs I promised
+to find for you. It will be disagreeable, but I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+a good reason for thinking that you will find it
+the first strand of the rope that is to lift you out
+of your dungeon. I'll tell you some things about
+Agnes after awhile that will make you glad you
+have had such an opportunity."</p>
+
+<p>When Lloyd went back to the library, bearing
+a pile of snowy napkins, she stole several glances
+at Agnes Waring in her journey around the room
+to distribute them. All that she knew of her was
+that she was the youngest of three sisters who
+sewed for their living. She was almost as slim and
+girlish in figure as Lloyd, although she was nearly
+twice as old. She had kept the timid, shrinking
+manner that she had when a child. That and her
+appealing big blue eyes, and almost babyish complexion,
+made her seem much younger than she
+was. It was a sensitive, refined face that Lloyd
+kept glancing at, one that would have been remarkably
+pretty had it not been so sad.</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd had sung in public several times, but always
+in some play, when the costume which she
+wore seemed to change her to the character she
+personated. That made it easier. It was one of
+the hardest things she had ever done, to stand up
+before these twenty ladies who had been exchanging
+criticisms so freely all afternoon, on every subject<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>
+mentioned, and sing the songs which Miss
+Allison chose for her from the Princess play: The
+Dove Song, with its high, sweet trills of "Flutter
+and fly," and the one beginning:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"My godmother bids me spin,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That my heart may not be sad.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Sing and spin for my brother's sake,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And the spinning makes me glad."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>It was with a very red face that she slipped into
+her seat after it was over, surprised and pleased
+by the applause she received. They were all so
+cordial in their appreciation, that presently she was
+persuaded into doing what Miss Allison had suggested.
+When the circle broke up she had consented
+to join the choir, and to meet with them the
+next Friday night, when they went to the Mallards'
+to practise.</p>
+
+<p>The carriage came for her soon after the last
+guest departed, and Miss Allison stepped in beside
+her to take the finished garments over to Rollington.
+It was the quaintest of little villages, settled
+entirely by Irish families. Only one lone street
+straggled over the hill, but it was a long one with
+little whitewashed cabins and cottages thickly set
+along each side. Mrs. Crisp's was the first one on
+the street, after they left the Lloydsboro pike. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+was clean, but not half so large or comfortable as
+the negro servants' quarters at Locust.</p>
+
+<p>It was so late that Miss Allison did not go in,
+only stopped at the door to leave the bundle and
+inquire about the baby, promising to come again
+next morning. Lloyd had a glimpse of the two
+children next in age to the baby. They were playing
+on the floor with a doll made of a corn-cob
+wrapped in a towel, and a box of empty spools.</p>
+
+<p>"Just think!" she exclaimed as she climbed
+into the carriage again. "A cawn-cob doll! And
+the attic at home is full of toys that I don't care
+for! I'm going to pick out a basketful to-morrow
+and bring them down to these children. And did
+you see that poah little Minnie Crisp? Only eight
+yeahs old, and doing the work of a grown woman.
+She was getting suppah while her mothah tended
+to the sick baby. Oh, I wondah," she cried, her
+face lighting up with the thought. "I wondah if
+Mrs. Crisp would mind if I'd come down to-morrow
+and cook dinnah for them. That's what I've
+been crazy to do,&mdash;to cook. I could bring eggs
+and sugah and all the materials, and make lemon pie
+and oystah soup and potato croquettes. I know
+how to make lots of things. Oh, do you suppose
+she would be offended?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not in the least," responded Miss Allison,
+heartily. "She is a very sensible little woman
+who is nearly worn out in her struggle with poverty
+and sickness. She has been too proud and brave
+to accept help before, when she was able to stagger
+along under her own burden, but now she will
+be very grateful. And the children will look upon
+you as a wonderful mixture of Santa Claus, fairy
+godmother, and Aladdin's lamp."</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned to peer into the happy face
+beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"Here are your cobwebs!" she exclaimed, gaily.
+"A whole skyful, and you can sweep away to your
+heart's content. You need have no more humdrum
+days unless you choose."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd looked back at the cottage where four
+towheads at the window watched the departing
+carriage. Then with a smile she leaned out and
+waved her hand.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF AMANTHIS</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lloyd</span> hurried down the road to the post-office,
+her cheeks almost as red as her coat from her brisk
+walk in the wintry air. It was too cold to saunter,
+or she would have made the errand last as long as
+possible. There would be nothing to do after she
+had called for the mail. The day before she had
+had her visit to Mrs. Crisp to fill the morning. It
+brought a pleasant thrill now to think of the little
+woman's gratitude and the children's pleasure in
+the dinner she had cooked in the clean bare kitchen.
+She wished she could go every day and repeat the
+performance, but her family would not allow it.
+They said it was just as injurious for her to waste
+her strength in charity as it was in study, and she
+must be more temperate in her enthusiasms.</p>
+
+<p>She wished that Miss Mattie would invite her
+into the tiny office behind the rows of pigeonholes
+and letter-boxes, and let her sit by the window<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+awhile. Just watching people pass would be some
+amusement, more than she could find at home.</p>
+
+<p>She was passing the Bisbee place as she made
+the wish. It was a white frame house standing
+near the road, and commanding a view of both
+station and store, as well as the approach to the
+post-office. To her surprise, some one tapped on
+the pane of an up-stairs window. Then the sash
+flew up, and Mrs. Bisbee called in her thin, fluttering
+voice: "Lloyd! Lloyd Sherman! If you're
+going to the post-office, I wish you'd ask if there
+is anything for me. I don't dare set foot out-of-doors
+this cold weather."</p>
+
+<p>Then, fearful of draughts, she banged the window
+down without waiting for a reply. Lloyd
+smiled and nodded, glad of an opportunity to be
+of service. As she hurried on, she remembered
+that Miss Allison had spoken of this gentle little
+old lady, with her fluttering voice and placid smile,
+as one of the most interesting and "Cranfordy"
+characters in the Valley, and that, while she never
+went out in the winter, and seldom in the summer,
+except to church, she kept such a sharp eye on the
+neighbourhood happenings from the watch-tower
+of her window that Mrs. Walton laughingly called
+it the "Window in Thrums."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was with the feeling that she was stepping
+into a story that Lloyd opened the gate five minutes
+later and started up the path. A vigorous tapping
+on the window above, and a beckoning hand
+motioned her to come up-stairs. Hesitating an instant
+on the porch, she opened the front door and
+stepped into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Do come up!" called the old lady, plaintively,
+from the head of the stairs. "I've been wishing
+so hard for company that I believe my wishing
+must have drawn you. Now that daughter is married
+and gone, I get so lonesome, with Mr. Bisbee
+in town all day, that I often find myself talking
+to myself just for the sake of sociability. Not a
+soul has been in for the last two days, and usually
+I have callers from morning till night. This is such
+a good dropping-in place, you know. So central
+that I see and hear everything."</p>
+
+<p>She ushered Lloyd into a room, gay with big-flowered
+chintz curtains, and quaint with old-fashioned
+carved furniture. There was a high four-poster
+bed in one corner, with a chintz valance
+around it, and pink silk quilled into the tester. The
+only modern thing in the room was a tiled grate,
+piled full of blazing coals. It threw out such a
+summer-like heat that Lloyd <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'amost'">almost</ins> gasped. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+was glad to accept Mrs. Bisbee's invitation to take
+off her coat and gloves. She moved her chair back
+as far as possible into the bay-window.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon you feel it's pretty warm in here,"
+said Mrs. Bisbee. "I have to keep it that way
+so that I can sit over here against the window without
+catching cold. I couldn't afford to miss all
+that's going on in the street. It's my only amusement."</p>
+
+<p>She drew her work-basket toward her and picked
+up the quilt pieces she had laid down when she
+went to welcome Lloyd. She was making a silk
+quilt of the tea-chest pattern, and the basket was
+full of bright silk scraps and pieces of ribbon.</p>
+
+<p>"It's like a panorama, I tell Mr. Bisbee. Oh,
+by the way, I've been aching to find out. Where
+did you all go that day just before Christmas when
+you started off, a whole party of you, traipsing
+down the road with a new saucepan and baskets
+and things? I heard you had a picnic in the snow.
+Is that so?"</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd really gasped this time, but not from the
+heat. She was so surprised that Mrs. Bisbee should
+have taken such an interest in her affairs, or in
+any of the unimportant doings of their set, as to
+remember them longer than the passing moment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>
+Mrs. Bisbee was associated in Lloyd's mind with
+solemn churchly things, like the Gothic-backed pulpit
+chairs or the sombre brown pews. Lloyd had
+never seen her before, except when she was singing
+hymns, or sitting with meekly folded hands through
+sermon-time. It was almost as surprising to find
+that she was inquisitive and interested in human
+happenings as it would have been to discover that
+the ivy-covered belfry kept an eye on her.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of her description of the picnic,
+Mrs. Bisbee leaned forward and peered eagerly out
+of the window over her spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to interrupt you," she said; "I
+just wanted to make sure that that was Caleb Coburn
+out again. He has been house-bound with
+rheumatism ever since Thanksgiving."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd looked out in time to see a tall, stoop-shouldered
+man with a bushy beard go slowly
+across the road. He was buttoned up in a heavy
+overcoat, and limped along with the aid of two
+canes.</p>
+
+<p>"He's the queerest old fellow," commented Mrs.
+Bisbee, looking after him, with a gentle shake of
+the head. "Lately he has taken to knitting, to
+pass the time."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"To knitting!" echoed Lloyd, in amazement.
+"That big man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He calls it hooking. He has a needle
+made out of a ham bone. Fancy now! Daughter
+said it was the funniest thing in life to see him
+propped up in bed with a striped skull-cap on, hooking
+his wife a shawl."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd laughed, but she followed the stooped
+figure with a glance of sympathy. She knew from
+experience how hard it was to spend the time in
+enforced idleness. Old Mr. Coburn had always
+been a familiar figure to her. She recognized him
+on the road as she did the trees and the houses
+which she passed daily, but he had never aroused
+her interest any more than they. Now the knowledge
+that he was lonely like herself, so lonely that,
+big, bearded man as he was, he had learned to knit
+in order to occupy the dull days, seemed to put
+them on a common footing.</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd took a long step forward out of her childhood
+that morning when she wakened to the fact
+that some things are as hard to bear at fifty as at
+fifteen. With a dawning interest she watched the
+people of the Valley go by, one by one,&mdash;people
+whom she had passed heretofore as she had passed
+the fence-posts on the road. It could never be so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+again, for henceforth she would see them in a new
+light,&mdash;the light of understanding and sympathy
+shed on them by Mrs. Bisbee's choice bits of gossip
+or scraps of personal history.</p>
+
+<p>She had watched the procession for nearly an
+hour, when Agnes Waring suddenly turned the
+corner, and went into the store with a bundle in
+her arms. Mrs. Bisbee, pausing in the act of
+threading a needle, looked out again over her spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>"There goes a girl I'm certainly sorry for. She
+is a born lady, and comes of as good a family as
+anybody in the Valley, but she has to work harder
+than any darkey in Lloydsboro. She's up at four
+o'clock these winter mornings, milks the cow, chops
+wood, gets breakfast, and maybe walks two or
+three miles with a big bundle like that, taking home
+sewing, or going out to fit a dress for somebody."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Allison had already awakened Lloyd's interest
+in Agnes, and she leaned forward to watch
+her, while Mrs. Bisbee went on.</p>
+
+<p>"She's never had any of the pleasures that most
+girls have. To my certain knowledge she's never
+had a beau or been to a big party or travelled farther
+than Louisville. I suppose you could count
+on the fingers of one hand the times she has been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>
+on a train. She's wild about music, but she's never
+had any advantages. By the way, she was in here
+the day after the King's Daughters met at Allison
+MacIntyre's, to fit a wrapper on me. Knowing
+how few outings she has, I encouraged her to talk
+it all over, as I knew she was glad to do. I declare
+she made as much of it as if it had been the governor's
+ball. She told me how much she enjoyed
+your singing. She said that, if there was any one
+person in the world whom she envied more than
+another, it was Lloyd Sherman. Not for your looks
+or the handsome things you have (for the Valley
+is full of pretty girls, and many of them are
+wealthy), but for the advantages you have had in
+the way of music and travel.</p>
+
+<p>"They have an old piano, about all that was
+saved out of the wreck when their father lost his
+fortune. She'd give her eyes to be able to play
+on it. But she wasn't much more than a baby
+when her father died, so she missed the advantages
+the older girls had. You see she is twenty years
+younger than Marietta, and nearly twenty-five
+years younger than Sarah. Poor Agnes! I suppose
+she will never know anything but work and
+poverty. It's too bad,&mdash;such a sweet, refined girl,
+and as proud as she is poor."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lloyd echoed Mrs. Bisbee's sympathetic sigh,
+as she looked after the hurrying figure in its worn
+jacket and shabby shoes. She was just coming out
+of the store again.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel so sorry for her sistahs, too," she ventured.
+"I nevah knew till the othah day that Miss
+Marietta has been an invalid so long. Miss Allison
+told me she had been in bed for fifteen yeahs!
+It's awful! Why, that is as long as my whole lifetime
+has been."</p>
+
+<p>"She was to have been married," began Mrs.
+Bisbee, pouring out the romance at which Miss
+Allison had only hinted. "She was engaged to
+Murray Cathright, one of the finest young lawyers
+I ever knew, steady as a meeting-house. He had
+the respect and confidence of everybody. Well,
+Marietta had her trousseau all ready, and a beautiful
+one it was. Her father had sent to Paris for the
+wedding-gown, and all her linen was hand-embroidered
+by the nuns in some French convent.</p>
+
+<p>"They certainly had all that heart could wish
+in those days. It is a pity that Agnes was too
+young to enjoy her share of luxuries. Well, just
+a week before the time set for the wedding, Murray
+Cathright mysteriously disappeared. He had gone
+away on a short business trip. His family traced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+him to a hotel in Pittsburg, and then lost all clue,
+except that just before leaving the hotel he had
+asked the clerk for the time-tables of an Eastern
+railroad. There was a terrible wreck on that road
+that same night. The entire train went through
+a bridge into the river, and they thought he must
+have been swept away with the unidentified dead.
+But it was months before Marietta would believe
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"She acted as if her mind were a little touched
+all that summer. Used to dress up every evening
+in the clothes he had liked best, with a flower in
+her hair, and go down to the honeysuckle arbour
+to wait for him. She'd sit there and wait and wait
+all alone, until her father'd go down and lead her
+in. The next day she'd go through the same performance.
+It ended in a spell of brain fever. She
+came out of that with her mind all right, but she
+never was strong again. After all the rest of their
+troubles came, she had a stroke of paralysis. It's
+left her so she can't walk. But she can lie there
+and make buttonholes and pull basting threads.
+She's a perfect marvel, she's so patient and cheerful.
+People like to go there just on that account. You'd
+never know she had a trouble to hear her talk. But
+I know what she's suffered, and I know that she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+still keeps the wedding-gown. It's laid away in
+rose leaves for her to be buried in."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bisbee paused and spread out the finished
+quilt-piece on her knee, patting it approvingly before
+choosing the scraps for another block. Then
+she wiped her spectacles. "Sometimes I don't
+know which I'm the sorriest for, Marietta, who had
+such a good man for a lover as Murray Cathright
+was, and lost him, or Agnes, who's never had anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't people invite her out and give her
+a good time?" asked Lloyd. "Her being a seamstress
+oughtn't to make any difference to old family
+friends, when she's such a lady."</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't," answered Mrs. Bisbee. "People
+used to be nice to those girls, and they were always
+invited everywhere at first. But after awhile there
+was Marietta always in bed, and Agnes a mere
+baby, and poor Miss Sarah with the burden of their
+support. She had only her needle to keep the wolf
+from the door. She couldn't accept invitations
+then. There was no time. Gradually people
+stopped asking her. She dropped out of the social
+life of the Valley so completely that Agnes grew
+up without any knowledge of it. All she has
+known has been hard work. Miss Allison has tried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+to draw her into things, but the older sisters are
+proud, as I said. Agnes cannot dress suitably, and
+they can make no return of hospitalities, so she
+has never ventured into anything more than the
+King's Daughters' Circle."</p>
+
+<p>"There's Alec with the carriage!" exclaimed
+Lloyd. "He's stopping at the stoah. If I hurry,
+I can ride back home. I've stayed so long that
+mothah will wondah what has become of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go!" begged Mrs. Bisbee, as Lloyd began
+drawing on her coat. "I don't know when
+I've enjoyed a morning so much. Since daughter's
+married and gone I miss her young friends so
+much. She used to have the house full of them
+from morning till night. Now I fairly pine for
+the sight of a fresh young face sometimes. You've
+livened me up more than you can know. <i>Do</i> come
+again!"</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd went away highly pleased by her cordial
+reception. She had enjoyed being talked to as if
+she were grown, and these glimpses into the lives
+of her neighbours were more interesting than any
+her books could give her. When she passed the
+lane leading up to the house where the three sisters
+lived, she wished that she could turn over a
+leaf and read more about them. She wondered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+if Miss Marietta ever took out the beautiful wedding-dress
+that was to be her shroud. She mused
+over the newly discovered romance all the way
+home.</p>
+
+<p>If it had not been for that morning's call, and
+the interest it aroused in her neighbours, several
+things might not have happened, which afterward
+followed each other like links in a chain. Probably
+Miss Sarah would have walked up to Locust just
+the same, to take home a wrapper she had finished,
+and not finding Mrs. Sherman at home would have
+stepped inside the door a moment to warm by the
+dining-room fire; and Lloyd, with the courtesy
+that never failed her, would have been as graciously
+polite as her mother could have been. But if it
+had not been for the interest in her that Mrs. Bisbee's
+story gave, several other happenings might
+not have followed.</p>
+
+<p>As Lloyd looked at the gray-haired woman on
+whom toil and poverty and care had left their
+marks, and remembered there had been a time when
+Miss Sarah had been as tenderly cared for as herself,
+a sudden pity surged up into her heart. She
+longed to lighten her load in some way, and to
+give back to her for a moment at least the comforts
+she had lost. With a quick gesture she motioned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+her away from the dining-room door. "No, come
+in heah!" she exclaimed, leading the way into the
+drawing-room, and pushing a big armchair toward
+the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Blue and cold from her long walk against the
+wind, Miss Sarah sank down among the soft cushions
+and leaned back luxuriously.</p>
+
+<p>"It's so ti'ahsome walking against the wind,"
+exclaimed the Little Colonel. "When I came in
+awhile ago, I was puffing and blowing. I'm going
+to make you a cup of hot tea. That's what mothah
+always takes. No! It won't be any <i>trouble</i>," she
+exclaimed, as Miss Sarah protested. "It will be
+the biggest kind of a pleasuah. It will give me a
+chance to use mothah's little tea-ball. I deahly
+love to wiggle it around in the cup and see the
+watah po'ah out of all the little holes. I've been
+wishing somebody would come, or that I had something
+to do. Now you have granted both wishes.
+I can have a regulah little tea-pah'ty. Excuse me
+just a minute, please."</p>
+
+<p>Left to herself, Miss Sarah sat looking around
+at the handsome furnishings: the thick Persian
+rugs, the old portraits, the tall, burnished harp in
+the corner, the bowl of hothouse violets on the
+table at her elbow, until Lloyd returned, bearing a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>
+toasting fork and a plate of thinly sliced bread.
+Miss Sarah turned toward her with wistful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I have always loved this old room," she said.
+"This is the first time I have been in it for twenty
+years. It is an old friend. I have spent many
+happy hours here in your grandmother's day. She
+was always entertaining the young people of the
+Valley. Sometimes that time seems so far away
+that I wonder if it was not all a dream. It was
+a very beautiful dream, at any rate. I often wish
+Agnes could have had a share in it. She has missed
+so much in not having <i>her</i> friendship."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded toward the portrait over the mantel.
+"Amanthis Lloyd was my ideal woman when I was
+a young girl like yourself," she added, softly, with
+her eyes on the beautiful features above her.</p>
+
+<p>"I have missed so much, too," said Lloyd, following
+Miss Sarah's gaze. "And yet it seems to
+me I must have known her. The portrait has always
+seemed alive to me. I used to talk to it
+sometimes when I was a little thing, and I nevah
+could beah to look at it when I had been naughty.
+I wish you would tell me about her."</p>
+
+<p>She knelt on the hearth-rug as she spoke, and
+held the long toasting-fork toward the fire.
+"Mothah and grandfathah often talk about her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+but they don't tell the same things that one outside
+of the family might."</p>
+
+<p>By the time the toast was delicately browned
+and buttered, Mom Beck came in with the tea-tray,
+and placed it on the table beside the bowl of
+violets.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" exclaimed Lloyd, seating herself on
+the other side of the table as the old woman left
+the room. "I didn't think to tell her to bring cold
+turkey and strawberry preserves and fruit cake, but
+she remembered that I didn't eat much lunch, and
+she is always trying to tempt my appetite. She's
+the best old soul that evah was. Oh, Miss Sarah,
+I'm so glad you came. I haven't had a pah'ty like
+this for ages. Heah! I'll let you wiggle the tea-ball
+in yoah own cup, so that you can make it as
+strong as you like, because you're company."</p>
+
+<p>The dimples deepened playfully in her cheeks
+as she passed the tea-ball across the table. Miss
+Sarah smiled, although her eyes felt misty. "You
+dear child!" she exclaimed. "That was Amanthis
+Lloyd all over again. She never reached out and
+gave pleasure to other people as if she were bestowing
+a favour. She always made it seem as if it
+were only her own pleasure which you were enhancing
+by sharing. You don't know what an interest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+I have taken in you for her sake, as I've watched
+you growing up here in the Valley. I used to hear
+remarks about your temper and your imperious
+ways, and day after day, as I've watched you ride
+past the house beside your grandfather, sitting up
+in the same straight, haughty way, I've thought
+she's well named. She's the Colonel over again.</p>
+
+<p>"But to-day, in this old room, you are startlingly
+like her in some way, I can hardly tell what." She
+glanced up again at the portrait. "Your eyes look
+at me in the same understanding sort of way. They
+almost unseal the silence of twenty years. I have
+never said this to any one else. But I used to look
+at her sometimes and think that George Eliot must
+have meant her when she wrote in her 'Choir
+Invisible' of one who could 'be to other souls the
+cup of strength in some great agony.' She was
+that to me. People always used to go to her with
+their troubles."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd bent over her cup, her face flushing.
+"Then I'm so glad you think I'm even a little bit
+like her," she said, softly. "Nobody evah told
+me that befoah. I've always wanted to be."</p>
+
+<p>The thought gave her a glow of pleasure all
+through the meal. Long after Miss Sarah went
+away, warmed and quickened in heart as well as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+body, it lingered with her. Afterward it prompted
+her to pause before the portrait with a questioning
+glance into the clear eyes above her.</p>
+
+<p>"'The cup of strength to other souls in some
+great agony,'" she repeated. "And you were that!
+Oh, I would love to be, too, if I didn't have to
+suffer too much first to learn how to sympathize and
+comfort. Maybe that is what I am to learn from
+this wintah's disappointment,&mdash;a way to help
+othah people beah their disappointments. If I
+could do that," she whispered, looking wistfully
+at the face above her, "if only one person in the
+world could remembah me as Miss Sarah remembahs
+<i>you</i>, you beautiful Grandmothah Amanthis,
+it would be worth all the misahable time I have
+had."</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned suddenly and went into the
+library to look for the poem Miss Sarah had quoted.
+She had never taken the volume from the shelves
+before. She did not care for poetry as Betty did,
+and it took her some time to find the lines she was
+looking for. But when she found them, she took
+the book back to the drawing-room, and read the
+page again and again, with a quick bounding of
+the pulses as she realized that here in words was
+the ambition which she had often felt vaguely stirring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+within her. Even if she could not reach the
+highest ones, and be "the cup of strength," or
+"make undying music in the world," she could at
+least attempt the other aims it held forth. She
+could at least try "to ease the burden of the world."
+She could live "in scorn for miserable aims that
+end with self."</p>
+
+<p>With the book open on her lap, and her hands
+clasped around her knees, she sat looking steadily
+into the fire. She did not know what a long, long
+step she was taking out of childhood that afternoon,
+nor that the sweet seriousness of her new purpose
+shone in her upturned face. But when the old
+Colonel came into the room and found her sitting
+there in the firelight, he paused and then glanced
+up at the portrait. He was almost startled by the
+striking resemblance,&mdash;a likeness of expression
+that he had never noticed before.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>"CINDERELLA"</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lloyd</span> sat on the window-seat of the stair-landing,
+looking out on the bare February landscape.
+She was thinking of the poem she had learned three
+weeks before, on the afternoon of Miss Sarah's
+visit, and it made her dissatisfied. When one was
+all a-tingle, as she had been, with a high purpose
+to help ease the burden of the world and make undying
+music in it, and when one longed to do big,
+heroic deeds and had ambitions high enough to
+reach the stars, it was hard to be content with the
+commonplace opportunities that came her way.</p>
+
+<p>The things she had been doing seemed so paltry.
+To carry a glass of jelly to the Crisps, a pot of
+pink hyacinths to Miss Marietta, to write a letter
+for Aunt Cindy, to sit for an hour with Mrs. Bisbee,&mdash;these
+all were so trivial and pitifully small
+that she felt a sense of disgust with herself and
+her efforts. Yawning and swinging her foot, she
+sat in the window-seat several minutes longer, then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>
+started aimlessly up-stairs to her room. In the
+upper hall the door leading into the attic stairway
+stood open, and for no reason save that she had
+nothing else to do, she began to mount the steps.
+She had not been up in the attic since Christmas
+week, when she and Rob had gone to finish his
+Christmas hunt.</p>
+
+<p>She stood looking around her an instant, then,
+moved by some unaccountable impulse, drew out
+the chest containing the fancy-dress costumes they
+had used in so many plays and tableaux. One by
+one she shook them out and hung them over Rob's
+headless hobby-horse, when she had finished examining
+them. There were the velvet knickerbockers
+and blouse she had worn as Little Boy Blue at
+the Hallowe'en party at the Seminary. There was
+Betty's Dresden Shepherdess dress, and the godmother's
+gown, and the long trailing robe of the
+Princess Winsome. Even the little tulle dress she
+had worn as the Queen of Hearts at Ginger's Valentine
+party, years ago, came out of the chest as
+she dived deeper into its contents, and a star-spangled
+costume of red, white, and blue, in which she
+had fluttered as the Goddess of Liberty one Fourth
+of July.</p>
+
+<p>Slippers and buckles and plumes, fans and gloves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+and artificial flowers, were piled up all around her.
+The hobby-horse was hidden under a drapery of
+velvet and lace and silk. Still the chest held a number
+of old party gowns that had never been cut
+down to fit their childish revels.</p>
+
+<p>As Lloyd shook them out, thinking of the gay
+scenes they had been a part of, the picture of Agnes
+Waring in her worn jacket and shabby shoes
+flashed across her mind, followed by Mrs. Bisbee's
+remark: "She's never had any of the pleasures
+that most girls have. Twenty-five years old, and
+to my certain knowledge she's never had a beau
+or been to a big party, or travelled farther than
+Louisville."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd pressed her lips together and stood staring
+at the old finery around her, thinking hard. A
+sudden vision had come to her of this modern Cinderella,
+and of herself as the fairy godmother. Her
+eyes shone and her cheeks grew pink as she stood
+pondering. If she could only make an occasion,
+it would be easy enough to provide the coach and
+the costume, even the glass slippers. There lay a
+pair of white satin ones, beaded in tiny crystal
+beads that shone like dewdrops. Suppose she
+should play godmother and send Agnes to a ball.
+Suppose the shy, timid girl should look so fine in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>
+her fine feathers that people would stare at her and
+wonder who that beautiful creature was. Suppose
+a prince should be there who never would have
+noticed her but for the magic glass slippers, and
+then suppose&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd did not put the rest of the delightful daydream
+into words, but just stood thinking about
+it a long time, until her expression grew very sweet
+and tender over a little romance which she dreamed
+might grow out of her plan to give Agnes pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"If I only had thought of it in time to have had
+a Valentine pah'ty," she exclaimed aloud, "that
+would have been the very thing. But it is too late
+now. This is the seventeenth." Then she clasped
+her hands delightedly as that date suggested another.
+"It is five days till Washington's Birthday.
+Maybe there will be time to get up a Martha Washington
+affair. I'll ask Miss Allison about it this
+very night at choir practice. She always has so
+many new ideas."</p>
+
+<p>Tumbling the costumes back into the trunk,
+helter-skelter, she danced down the stairs, impatient
+to tell her mother about it. But there were
+guests in the library who had been invited to spend
+the afternoon and stay to dinner, and Lloyd had
+no opportunity to speak of the subject that was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>
+uppermost in her thoughts. Immediately after dinner
+she excused herself, to slip into her red coat
+and furs, while Mom Beck lighted the lantern they
+were to carry.</p>
+
+<p>It was only a short distance to the Mallard place,
+where the choir was to meet that week, so they did
+not need Alec's escort this time. The wind flared
+their lantern as they went along the quiet country
+road. They could see other lights bobbing along
+toward them, and, as they neared the gate, Lloyd
+recognized Mrs. Walton's voice. She and Miss
+Allison were coming up with their brother Harry.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that you, Lloyd?" called Mrs. Walton, as
+they drew nearer. "I hoped you would come early,
+for I have a letter from the girls that I know you
+will want to read. They are full of preparations
+for a grand affair to be given on the twenty-second,&mdash;a
+Martha Washington reception. As usual,
+Kitty wants to depart from the accustomed order
+of things, and have a costume in George's honour,
+instead of Martha's. She says why not, as long
+as it is his birthday. She's painted a picture of
+the dress she has concocted for the occasion. It
+is green tarlatan dotted all over with little silver
+paper hatchets, and trimmed with garlands and
+bunches of artificial cherries."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so glad you brought the pictuah with
+you to-night!" exclaimed Lloyd. "And I'm wild
+to see the lettah. Kitty always writes such funny
+ones. And I'm glad I met you out heah befoah
+the choir practice begins. I want to ask you about
+a celebration I have been planning. It's for Agnes
+Waring," she explained, catching step with them
+as they turned in at the gate. "So of co'se I can't
+talk about it befoah all the othah people.</p>
+
+<p>"I happened to be looking ovah a chest of old
+costumes to-day, thinking of all the fun we'd had
+in them, when I remembahed her and what Mrs.
+Bisbee had told me about her nevah having good
+times like othah girls. She said she'd nevah had
+any attention, and nevah been to a big pah'ty. I
+thought I'd like to give her one on the twenty-second,
+because I could offah her a costume then
+without hurting her feelings. I was suah that you
+and Miss Allison could suggest something moah
+than I had thought of. I don't know exactly how
+to begin. People will think it strange, and Agnes
+might, too, if I gave a pah'ty just for her, when all
+her friends whom I would want to invite are so
+much oldah than I."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Allison and her sister exchanged glances
+in the lantern-light, then Mrs. Walton said, hesitatingly:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>
+"Why&mdash;I don't know&mdash;I'm sorry,
+Lloyd, that we didn't know before. We've already
+made plans which I am afraid will interfere with
+yours. The King's Daughters' Circle has arranged
+to have an oyster supper at my house on the afternoon
+and evening of the twenty-second. Most of
+the people you would want to ask will be busy there,
+for everybody in the Valley lends a hand at these
+entertainments."</p>
+
+<p>They could not see the disappointment that shadowed
+Lloyd's face as she listened to this announcement
+in silence. But Miss Allison knew it was
+there, and, as they walked on up the path together,
+she slipped her arm around Lloyd's waist.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, dear," she said. "You shall not
+have your beautiful plan spoiled by the old oyster
+supper. We'll combine forces. As Agnes is a
+member of the Circle, maybe you can bring about
+what you want more naturally and easily this way
+than in any other. The girls who are to wait on
+the table are to powder their hair and wear white
+kerchiefs and Martha Washington caps. But we
+had intended to ask you to take charge of the fancy-work
+table, as you have more time for getting up
+elaborate costumes. We wanted to ask you to
+dress in as handsome a costume of that period as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+you could find. We remember what lovely brocade
+gowns and quilted petticoats and old-fashioned fol-de-rols
+used to be laid away in your grandmother's
+attic that belonged to <i>her</i> grandmother. If you
+like, you may give your place to Agnes, and let
+her be the belle of the ball."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd returned the pressure of the arm about
+her with an impulsive hug. "Oh, I <i>knew</i> you'd
+think of something perfectly lovely," she cried.
+"That would be much the best way, for she is so
+timid and quiet you couldn't keep her from being
+a wall-flowah at an ordinary pah'ty. But this way
+she will have something to do, and she'll have to
+talk when people come to buy things. I wish it
+were not so long till to-morrow! I want to tell
+her about it this minute."</p>
+
+<p>Usually the choir practice was a bore to Lloyd.
+She was one of the few members who sang by note,
+and Mrs. Walton, the leader, had to take them
+through the simple anthems over and over again,
+until they caught the tune by ear. Lloyd, knowing
+that her strong young voice was needed, sang dutifully
+through the tiresome repetitions, but sometimes
+she wanted to put her fingers in her ears to
+shut out the sound. To-night she did not chafe
+inwardly at the false starts and the monotonous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>
+chant, "Oh, be thankful! Oh, be thankful!" which
+had to be sung over numberless times in order that
+the bass and alto singers might learn to come in
+at the proper places with their responsive refrain.
+She was so absorbed in thinking of the pleasure in
+store for Agnes, and imagining what she would
+say, that she sang the three measures over and over,
+unheeding how long the choir stuck there, or uncaring
+how many times they seesawed up and down
+on the same tiresome notes.</p>
+
+<p>The excitement began for Agnes next day, when
+Lloyd delivered Miss Allison's invitation, and bore
+her away in the carriage to search through the attic
+for a costume. She had never been farther than the
+door at Locust. Her journeys thither had been to
+carry home some finished garment. But many an
+hour of patient sewing had been brightened by her
+sisters' tales of the place. Both Miss Sarah and
+Miss Marietta remembered it affectionately, for the
+sake of the woman who had welcomed them there
+on so many happy occasions in the past.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes thought she knew just how the interior
+of Locust would look, especially the stately old
+drawing-room, with its portraits and candles, its
+harp and the faint odour of rose-leaves; and really
+there was something familiar to her in its appearance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
+as she caught a glimpse of it on her way up-stairs
+to Lloyd's room. But she had never imagined
+such a dainty rose of a room as the pink and
+white bower Lloyd led her into. There might have
+been a throb of resentment that all such beauty and
+luxury had been left out of her life, if there had
+been time for her to look around and compare it
+with her own scantily furnished room at home.</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd hurried over to the bed, eager to display
+a gorgeous brocade gown of rose and silver laid
+out there, which Mrs. Sherman had brought down
+from the attic in her absence, and from which Mom
+Beck had pressed all the wrinkles.</p>
+
+<p>"It's as good as new," said Lloyd. "I'm glad
+that mothah wouldn't let us cut it up last yeah,
+when we wanted to make it fit Katie. There are
+pink slippahs to match, but I hoped you'd rathah
+weah these. They make me think of Cinderella's
+glass ones, and they're twice as pretty."</p>
+
+<p>She tossed the crystal beaded slippers over to
+Agnes for her inspection. "Try them on," she
+urged. "I want to see how you'll look."</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments the shabby shoes and the old
+brown dress lay in a heap on the floor like a discarded
+chrysalis, and Agnes stepped out, a dazzled
+butterfly, in her gorgeous robes of rose and silver.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lloyd clasped her hands ecstatically. "Oh,
+Agnes, it's <i>lovely!</i> And it's almost a perfect fit.
+If Miss Sarah can just take it up a little on the
+shouldahs, and change the collah a tiny bit, it will
+look as if it were made for you. When yoah hair
+is powdahed and you have this little bunch of
+plumes in it, you'll be simply perfect. It doesn't
+mattah if the slippahs do pinch a little. They look
+so pretty you can stand a little thing like that for
+one evening."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd walked around and around her, till she
+had admired her to her heart's content, and then
+led her away to show to Mrs. Sherman. "You
+ought to carry yoah head that way all the time,"
+she said. "It's becoming to you to 'walk proud,'
+as old Mammy Easter used to say."</p>
+
+<p>It was with the air of a duchess that Agnes sailed
+into the drawing-room, and with the feeling that
+at last she had come into her own. On every side
+the dim old mirrors flashed back the reflection of
+the slender figure with its head proudly high. She
+looked at it curiously, scarcely recognizing the delicate,
+high-bred features for her own. There was
+colour in her face for one thing. The dull browns
+and grays, which she wore for economy's sake, were
+apt to make her look sallow. But this wonderful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>
+rose-pink lent a glow to her cheeks, and pleasure
+and expectancy brightened her eyes, and left her
+a-tingle with these new sensations.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be the feature of the occasion," Mrs.
+Sherman assured her. "Come up to lunch with
+us Thursday. We'll powder your hair and help
+you dress, and take you down in the carriage with
+us. Tell your sisters that we'll see that you get
+home safely that night."</p>
+
+<p>So to the other pleasures of the twenty-second
+was added the undreamed-of delight of being
+invited out to lunch, and forgetting for
+awhile that there were such tiresome things in the
+world as sewing-machines and endless ruffling for
+other people. Although she wore her old brown
+dress, darned at the elbows, and, with her usual
+timidity, scarcely ventured a remark at the table
+unless directly questioned, she was all aglow with
+the new experience.</p>
+
+<p>Afterward it was easy to talk and laugh with
+Lloyd, as they went through the conservatory cutting
+the flowers which were to decorate the tables
+at The Beeches. Hyacinths and lilies-of-the-valley
+made a spring-time of their own under the sheltering
+skylight. Agnes bent over them with a cry of delight.
+"They make you forget the calendar, don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
+they?" she said, looking shyly up at Lloyd. She
+wanted to add, "And so do you. You make me
+forget that I am ten years older than you. It seems
+only pussy-willow time by my feelings to-day."
+But their friendship was too new as yet for such
+personal speeches.</p>
+
+<p>As they went back to the drawing-room with
+a basket piled full of hothouse blooms, Mrs. Sherman
+called to Lloyd that she needed her up-stairs
+a few moments. Hastily excusing herself, she left
+Agnes with a new magazine for her entertainment.
+When she came down later, the magazine was lying
+uncut on the table, and Agnes, seated in front of
+the piano, was fingering the keys with light touches
+which made no sound, they pressed the ivory so
+gently. She started guiltily as Lloyd came in.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't help it!" she stammered. "It drew
+me over here like a magnet. It has been the dream
+of my life to know how to play, but it is all such
+a mystery. I've puzzled over the music in the
+hymn-book many a time, the little notes flying up
+and down like birds through a fence, and then
+watched Miss Allison's fingers on the organ keys,
+going up and down the same way."</p>
+
+<p>"It is just as easy as reading the alphabet," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>
+Lloyd. "I'll show you. Wait till I find my old
+music primer. It is somewhere in this cabinet."</p>
+
+<p>Hastily turning over the exercise books and worn
+sheets of music that filled one of the lower shelves,
+she dragged out an old dog-eared instruction book,
+which she propped up on the rack in front of Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Heah," she said, pointing to a note. "When
+one of those little birds, as you call them, perches
+on this place on the fence, then you're to strike
+the A key on the piano. If it lights on the line
+just above it, then you strike the next key, B.
+See?" She ran her fingers lightly up the octavo
+and began again with A. Agnes leaned hungrily
+over the page, reading the printed directions below
+each simple measure, where the fingering was
+plainly marked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I could learn to do it by studying this!"
+she cried, her face all alight. "I am sure I could.
+I don't mean that I could ever learn to play as you
+do, or Miss Allison, but I could learn simple things
+and the accompaniments to old songs that Marietta
+loves. It would be almost as great a joy to her
+and sister Sarah as it would to me, for my learning
+to play has always been one of our favourite
+air-castles. If you could loan me this instruction
+book for awhile&mdash;" She hesitated.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Of co'se!" cried Lloyd, thrilled by the eagerness
+of the eyes which met hers. "I'll give you
+a lesson right now, if you like. I'll teach you
+a set of chords you can use for an accompaniment.
+They are so easy you can learn them befoah you
+go home, and you can surprise Miss Marietta by
+singing and playing for her. They fit evah so many
+of the ballads."</p>
+
+<p>Turning the leaves of the instructor, she found
+the simple chords of "Annie Laurie," and wrote
+beside each note the letters that would enable Agnes
+to find them on the keyboard. "This isn't the
+right way to begin," she said, with a laugh, "but
+we'll take this short cut just to surprise Miss Marietta.
+You can come back aftahward and learn
+about time and all the othah things that ought to
+come first. I'll give you a lesson every week for
+awhile, if you like."</p>
+
+<p>The eyes that met hers now were brimming with
+happy tears.</p>
+
+<p>"If I like," Agnes repeated, with a tremulous
+catch of the voice. "As if I wouldn't jump at the
+chance to have the key to paradise put into my
+hands. It's the happiest thing that ever happened
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>With her heart as well as her whole attention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+given to the effort, it was not long before Agnes
+found her fingers falling naturally into place, and
+she played the chords over and over, humming the
+tune softly, with a pleasure that was pathetic to
+Lloyd.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I could keep on all day and all night!"
+exclaimed Agnes, when Mrs. Sherman called to
+them that it was time to dress. "I've never been
+so happy in all my life! You don't know what it
+means to me!" she cried, turning a radiant face
+to Lloyd's. "You've lifted me clear off the earth.
+I wish I could run home before the reception begins
+and play this for Marietta. I want to see her face
+when I open the old piano."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd followed her up the stairs, wondering at
+the girl's uplifted mood. She did not see how such
+a trifle could bring about such a transformation
+in any one's spirits, not realizing that this bit of
+knowledge which Agnes had picked up was to her
+a veritable key which would open the door she had
+longed for years to enter.</p>
+
+<p>When Agnes swept into the house at The
+Beeches, she was in such high spirits that people
+looked twice to be sure that they knew the radiant
+girl presiding so gaily over the fancy-work table.</p>
+
+<p>"She is actually talking," Miss McGill whispered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>
+to Libbie Simms. "Talking and laughing
+and making jokes like other girls. Somebody has
+surely worked a hoodoo charm on her."</p>
+
+<p>But happiness was the only hoodoo, and, under
+its expanding influence, she fairly bloomed that
+night. Lloyd, hovering near her, jubilant over the
+success of her popular Cinderella, beamed and dimpled
+with pleasure, and stored away the many compliments
+she overheard, to repeat to Agnes next
+day. Once she darted into the butler's pantry,
+where Miss Allison was slicing cake, to announce,
+in an excited whisper: "Agnes has actually had
+three invitations to suppah. She's gone in now
+with Mistah John Bond. I must run back and take
+charge of the sales, but I just had to tell you. Do
+peep in and see her there at the cawnah table, eating
+ice-cream and talking away as if she'd been
+used to such attentions all her life. Isn't it great?
+Now people can't shake their heads and say poah
+girl, she's nevah had any attentions like othah girls.
+Nobody takes any interest in her."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Allison turned to give Lloyd's cheek a playful
+pinch. "You dear little fairy godmother! All
+Cranford will take an interest in her, now that she
+has blossomed out so unexpectedly. Even old Mr.
+Wade, who never says nice things about any one,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>
+asked me who our distinguished-looking guest was,
+and, when I told him Agnes Waring, he fairly
+gasped and dropped his eye-glasses. Then he gave
+his usual contemptuous sniff that always makes
+me want to shake him, and walked away, saying:
+'Who'd have thought it! Well, well, fine feathers
+certainly do make fine birds!'"</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd hurried back to her place behind the fancy-work
+table. Nearly every one was out in the room
+where supper was being served, and except for an
+occasional question from some one who strolled by
+to ask the price of a laundry-bag or a hemstitched
+centrepiece, no one disturbed her. To the music
+of mandolin, guitar, and piano, played softly behind
+the palms in one corner, she went on with her pleasing
+day-dreams for Agnes. She would make other
+opportunities for her next week, take her in town
+to a concert or a matin&eacute;e. She wished she could
+offer her clothes, but she dared not take that step.
+There would be the Waring pride to reckon with
+if she did.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of this reverie, Agnes came up all
+a-flutter, saying, shyly: "Lloyd, would you mind
+if I didn't go back in the carriage with you? Your
+mother wouldn't think it strange, would she? It
+was because I had no other way to get home that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>
+she invited me. But Mr. Bond has asked to take
+me home behind his new team. He wants me to
+see what fine travellers his horses are."</p>
+
+<p>"Of co'se mothah wouldn't think it strange!"
+exclaimed Lloyd. "Especially if it is Mistah Bond
+who wants to take you. She and Papa Jack are
+so fond of him."</p>
+
+<p>"He wants me to join the choir," Agnes went
+on, in a lower tone, as a group of people crowded
+around the table. "Mrs. Walton and Mrs. Mallard
+and Miss Flora Marks have asked me also.
+I've pinched myself black and blue this evening,
+trying to make sure that I am awake. Oh, Lloyd,
+you'll never, never know how I have enjoyed it
+all."</p>
+
+<p>There was no time for further conversation then.
+People were beginning to leave, and were crowding
+around the table to claim the articles they had purchased
+earlier in the evening. But it was not necessary
+for Agnes to repeat that she was radiantly
+happy. It showed in every word and laugh and
+gesture. Lloyd went home that night nearer to
+the Castle of Content than she had been for many
+weeks.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>A HARD-EARNED PEARL</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> reaction came next day, however, when a
+budget of letters from the girls turned her thoughts
+back to all that she was missing. Betty was rooming
+with Juliet Lynn now, and they were writing
+a play together in spare minutes. Allison had had
+honourable mention three times in the Studio Bulletin,
+and a number of her sketches had been chosen
+for display on the studio walls. Kitty had surprised
+them all by the interest she had suddenly
+taken in French, and had translated a poem so
+cleverly that Monsieur Blanc had sent it home for
+publication in a Paris paper. The work was so
+interesting now, Betty wrote, and the time so full,
+Warwick Hall grew daily more inspiring and more
+dear.</p>
+
+<p>The old ache came back to Lloyd as she read.
+She felt that she had fallen hopelessly behind the
+others. She was so utterly left out of all their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>
+successes. The little efforts she had made to fill
+her days with things worth while suddenly shrivelled
+into nothing, and she sat with the letters in
+her lap, staring moodily into vacancy.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the use?" she sobbed. "All that I
+can do heah doesn't amount to a row of pins. I
+am out of it."</p>
+
+<p>Thinking of Warwick Hall and the girls and
+all that she was missing, she sat pitying herself
+until the tears began to come. She let them trickle
+slowly down her face without attempting to wipe
+them away or fight them back. Nobody was there
+to see, and she could be as miserable as she chose.
+In the midst of her gloomy reverie she heard the
+door-bell ring.</p>
+
+<p>Dabbing her handkerchief over her eyes, she
+started across the room to make her escape up-stairs
+before Mom Beck could open the front door.
+But she was too late. As she pushed aside the porti&egrave;res,
+she heard Agnes Waring ask if she were at
+home, and Mom Beck immediately ushered her in.</p>
+
+<p>"I came to bring the costume back," she began,
+hurriedly. "No, I must not sit down, thank you.
+I am on my way to Mrs. Moore's to fit a lining.
+But I just had to stop by and tell you what a lovely
+time I had yesterday and last night. You should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>
+have seen Marietta's face this morning when I
+opened the piano and played and sang for her.
+The tears just rolled down her face, but it was
+because we were so happy.</p>
+
+<p>"She said she had been afraid that I would grow
+morose and bitter because I had so few pleasures,
+and she is so glad about the music lessons and my
+joining the choir. Mr. Bond is going to come by
+for me next Friday night. Sister Sarah said she
+had no idea that colours could make such a difference
+in one till she saw me in that costume. She
+has been looking over the silk quilt pieces your
+mother sent Marietta, and she recognized two pieces
+that are parts of dresses your grandmother used
+to wear. One is a deep rich red,&mdash;a regular garnet
+colour, and the other is sapphire blue. She said
+that if they had belonged to any one else but Amanthis
+Lloyd she couldn't do it,&mdash;but instead of cutting
+them up into quilt pieces she&mdash;she is going
+to make them into shirt-waists for me."</p>
+
+<p>The colour deepened in Agnes's face as she made
+the confession, with an unconscious lifting of the
+head that made Lloyd remember Mrs. Bisbee's remark
+about the Waring pride. She hastened to
+say something to cover the awkward pause that
+followed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Grandmothah Amanthis and Miss Sarah were
+such good friends, even if there was so much difference
+in their ages. I know she would be glad
+for you to use the silk that way. Looking pretty
+in it and having good times in it seems a bettah
+way to use it as a remembrance of her than putting
+it into a quilt, doesn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Then, to change the subject, which disconcerted
+her more than it did Agnes, she held up the package
+of letters.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard from the girls to-day, and they are all
+getting on so beautifully, and making such good
+records, that it neahly breaks my hah't to think
+I can't be with them." She laughed nervously.
+"I suppose you wondahed what made my eyes so
+red, when you came in. I've been regularly howling.
+I couldn't help it. I sat heah thinking about
+deah old Warwick Hall, and all that I had to give
+up, till I was so misahable I <i>had</i> to cry."</p>
+
+<p>Agnes, turning toward the window so that her
+face could not be seen, looked out at the bare
+branches of the locusts.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," she began, slowly, "if it would
+make any difference to you&mdash;if it would make your
+disappointment any easier to bear&mdash;to know how
+much your being in the Valley this winter has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>
+meant to me. Fifty years from now one term more
+or less in your studies won't amount to much. It
+will not count much then that you've solved a few
+more problems in algebra, or learned a little more
+French, or fallen behind the others in a few credit
+marks, but it will make all the difference in the
+world to me that you were here to open a door
+for me.</p>
+
+<p>"If you've done nothing more than give me that
+one music lesson, it has showed me the possibility
+of all that I may accomplish, and started me on the
+road to my heart's desire. If you've done no more
+than prove to me that I can conquer my timidity
+and be like other girls, and accept the little pleasures
+just at hand for the taking, don't you see that
+you have opened up a way for me that I never could
+have found alone? And to do that for any one,
+why, it's like teaching him a song that he will teach
+to some one else, and that one will go on repeating,
+and the next and the next, until you've started something
+that never stops. If I were making up the
+accounts in the Hereafter, I am very sure I'd count
+it more to your credit,&mdash;the unselfish way you are
+helping people than all the lessons you could learn
+in a term at school. I am not saying half what I
+feel. I couldn't. It is too deep down. But, oh,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>
+I do want you to know that your disappointment
+has not all been in vain."</p>
+
+<p>The voice that uttered the last sentence was
+tremulous with feeling. Tears were very near the
+surface now. Before Lloyd could think of any
+reply to her impetuous speech, she had started
+toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Moore will wonder what is keeping me,"
+she said, as she turned the knob. "Good-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>With a lighter heart than Lloyd could have believed
+possible half an hour earlier, she went up to
+her room. Dropping the damp little ball of a handkerchief
+into her laundry-bag, she opened a drawer
+for a fresh one. By mistake she drew out, not
+her handkerchief-box, but one that in some previous
+haste had been pushed into its place,&mdash;the
+sandalwood box containing the pearl beads. She
+took up the uncompleted rosary and began slipping
+the beads back and forth over the string,&mdash;the
+string that would have been two-thirds full by this
+time if she could have gone on with school work.
+Suddenly she looked at it with widening eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I wondah," she said aloud, "I wondah if I
+couldn't slip one moah on for yestahday. She said
+herself that it ought to count for moah than school
+work. In a way she said it was like making 'undying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+music in the world.' And what was it old
+Bishop Chartley said at the carol service?" She
+stood with a little pucker on her forehead, trying
+to recall his words about keeping the White
+Feast.</p>
+
+<p>"So may we offer our pearls, days unstained by
+selfishness." That was it. She could go on with
+her rosary then, and, instead of perfect lessons at
+school, she could fill the string in token of days
+spent unselfishly at home. Days not stained by
+regrets and tears and idle repining for what could
+not be helped.</p>
+
+<p>With a deep sigh of satisfaction, she slipped one
+more pearl bead down the string, and laid it back
+in the box.</p>
+
+<p>"That is for yestahday. I can't count to-day,
+for I sat for an houah thinking about my troubles
+and pitying myself and making myself just as misahable
+as possible."</p>
+
+<p>So the little string began to grow again, and,
+though she was half-ashamed of the childish pleasure
+it gave her, it did help when she could see every
+night a visible token that she had tried to live that
+'day through unselfishly and well,&mdash;that she had
+kept tryst with the duty of cheerfulness which we
+all owe the world.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 337px;">
+<img src="images/i007.jpg" width="337" height="500" alt="&quot;SHE RODE OVER TO ROLLINGTON&quot;" title="&quot;SHE RODE OVER TO ROLLINGTON&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;SHE RODE OVER TO ROLLINGTON&quot;</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But not all her pearls were earned as easily as
+the one that marked her efforts for Agnes. One
+day, when she rode over to Rollington with some
+illustrated magazines for the Crisp children, she
+was met by an announcement from Minnie, the
+oldest one, who had charge of the family in her
+mother's absence.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Perkins said I was to tell you she didn't
+see why folks passed her by when she liked wine
+jelly and good things just as well as some other
+people she knew."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is Mrs. Perkins?" asked Lloyd, astonished
+by such a message.</p>
+
+<p>Minnie nodded her towhead toward a weather-beaten
+house of two rooms across the street. "She
+lives over there. She's sick most of the time. She
+saw you cooking in our kitchen that day that you
+came and got dinner, and ma sent her over a piece
+of the pie you made, and she's been sort of sniffy
+ever since, because nobody does such things for
+her."</p>
+
+<p>Minnie seemed so anxious that Lloyd should
+include Mrs. Perkins in her visit that finally Lloyd
+agreed to be escorted over to see her. Wrapping
+the baby in a shawl, and staggering along under
+its weight, Minnie ordered the other children to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>
+stay where they were, and led the way across the
+street.</p>
+
+<p>The tilt of Lloyd's dainty nose, as she went in,
+said more plainly than words, "Poah white trash!"
+For the house had a stuffy smell of liniment and
+bacon grease. An old woman came forward to
+meet them in her stocking feet and a dirty woollen
+wrapper. Her uncombed gray hair straggled
+around her ears, and her wrinkled face was unwashed
+and grimy. Lloyd was thankful that she
+did not offer to shake hands. She sat down on
+the edge of a chair, breathing the stuffy air as
+sparingly as possible.</p>
+
+<p>She had always been taught that old age must
+be respected, no matter how unlovely, and as Mrs.
+Perkins counted her aches and pains in a weak,
+whining voice, pity got the better of Lloyd's disgust.
+She began to feel sorry for this poor old
+creature, for whom no one else seemed to have any
+sympathy. She complained bitterly of her neighbours
+and the church-members who professed to
+be so charitable, but who left her to suffer.</p>
+
+<p>Then she praised the lemon pie that Lloyd had
+made, until Lloyd gladly promised to make one
+for her. "I'll bring it down the last of the week,"
+she promised, later, when she rose to go, and Mrs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>
+Perkins introduced the subject again. But that
+was not what the old woman wanted.</p>
+
+<p>"Why can't you come down here and make it
+in my kitchen?" she whined, "same as you did
+in Mrs. Crisp's. I get dreadful lonesome setting
+here, and it would be so much company to see you
+whisking around beating eggs and rolling out
+the crust. Then I could smell it baking, and eat
+it hot out of the oven. It's been many a long day
+since I've done a thing like that. It makes my
+mouth water, just thinking of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I could do it heah, if you would
+like it bettah," promised Lloyd, rashly. "Is there
+anything I can do for you befoah I go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, there is," was the ready answer. "I
+didn't eat much dinner, and I'm that weak and
+faint I'd like if you'd make me a cup of tea."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," answered Lloyd again. "If you'll
+just tell me where to find things."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be going on," said Minnie Crisp, beginning
+to wrap the baby up in its shawl again.
+"Those kids will be turning the house upside
+down if I'm not there to watch them."</p>
+
+<p>Nobody paid any attention to her departure, for
+Lloyd, hanging her coat over the back of a dusty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
+chair, had gone into the kitchen before Minnie
+finished making a woollen mummy of the baby.</p>
+
+<p>"The tea is in a paper bag in the corner cupboard,"
+called Mrs. Perkins. "Mrs. Moore sent
+it to me. It's green tea, and I never did care for
+any kind but black. I'd pretty nigh as soon have
+none as green. You might poach me an egg, too,
+if you feel like it, and make a bit of toast."</p>
+
+<p>With a shiver of disgust, Lloyd looked around
+her. Everything was dirty. She wished she dared
+run across the street and prepare the lunch in Mrs.
+Crisp's immaculate kitchen. There everything
+shone from repeated scrubbings with soft soap and
+sand. She enjoyed cooking over there. As she
+opened the cupboard door a roach ran out, and
+she jumped aside with another shiver of disgust.
+She wanted a pan in which to poach the egg, but
+nothing looked clean enough to use. Finally she
+chose a battered saucepan, but dropped it when
+she discovered that a spider had woven a web inside.</p>
+
+<p>Spiders had always been an abomination to
+Lloyd. It made her feel cold and creepy to touch
+a cobweb. But the story of Ederyn flashed through
+her thoughts, and she grasped the pan, determined
+to use it or die in the effort. She had started and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>
+she would not turn back. It was plainly her duty
+to minister to the wants of this complaining old
+invalid whom others neglected, and she would keep
+tryst at any cost. With many an inward shudder
+she went on with her task. As the water in the
+kettle was already steaming, it was not long before
+the lunch was ready, and she carried it in.</p>
+
+<p>"It's simply impossible for me to come and make
+the pie in this dirty kitchen," thought Lloyd, "and
+I can't tell her so. Maybe I could ask Mrs. Crisp
+to invite her ovah and she could see it done
+there."</p>
+
+<p>While she worried over the problem of introducing
+the subject tactfully, Mrs. Perkins herself
+opened the way. She hadn't been well enough to
+do any cleaning for several weeks, she said. If
+she could get a little stronger, she intended to do
+two things: to slick up the place a bit, and to go
+on a visit to Jane O'Grady's up near the black
+bridge. She had been wanting to spend the day
+with Jane all winter, but didn't have any way to
+get there. It was too far to walk. Lloyd saw her
+opportunity and seized it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, mothah will send the carriage for you,
+Mrs. Perkins, any day you set. She'd be glad to.
+Alec can drive you ovah early in the mawning,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>
+when he is out for the marketing, and go for you
+befoah dah'k."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you may send to-morrow," said Mrs.
+Perkins, ungraciously. "I don't want to risk putting
+it off. Folks usually forget such promises
+overnight. So I'd best make sure of it."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd flushed angrily, but the next instant excused
+the old woman's rudeness on the score of
+her ill health. She had a plan that she was anxious
+to carry out, and she hurried home to begin, all
+a-tingle with her charitable impulses. She was surprised
+that her mother should treat it so lightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you can have the carriage," said
+Mrs. Sherman. "But, my good little Samaritan,
+I must warn you. That old woman is a pauper in
+spirit. She hasn't a particle of proper pride. People
+have done too much for her. She'll take all
+she can get, and grumble because it isn't more. So
+you mustn't be disappointed if, instead of thanks,
+you get only criticism."</p>
+
+<p>But Lloyd, full of the zeal of a true reformer,
+danced down to the servants' quarters to find May
+Lily, one of the cook's grandchildren. May Lily,
+a neat-looking coloured girl of seventeen, had been
+one of Lloyd's most loyal followers since they made
+mud pies together on the Colonel's white door-steps,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>
+and the readiness to serve her now was prompted
+not so much by the promised dollar as the desire to
+still follow her lead. So next morning, soon after
+Mrs. Perkins's departure in the Sherman carriage,
+a mighty revolution began in the house she left
+behind her.</p>
+
+<p>May Lily, strong and willing, went to work like
+a small cyclone. Under Lloyd's direction, she
+swept and scrubbed and scoured. The bed was
+aired, the stove was blacked, the windows washed,
+the tins polished till they shone like new. By four
+o'clock not a cobweb or a speck of dust was to
+be seen in either room. Lloyd sat down to wait
+for Mrs. Perkins's return. She felt that it was
+safe to breathe now, and she did not have to sit
+gingerly on the edge of the chair. Every piece of
+furniture had been washed and rubbed. She could
+keep her promise about the pie very comfortably
+now. Everything smelled so clean and wholesome
+to her that she was sure that Mrs. Perkins would
+notice the change at once and be pleased.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Perkins did notice the change the moment
+she entered the door, but it was with a displeased
+face. "Hm! Hm!" she sniffed. "Smells mightily
+of soft soap in here. What have you been doing?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+I never could bear the smell of soft soap or
+lye. Hm! Hm!"</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned accusingly on Lloyd. "Didn't
+you know better than to put stove-blacking on that
+stove? When it gets het up, it will smoke to fare-ye-well,
+and start my asthma to going again full tilt.
+Some folks are mighty thoughtless, never have no
+consideration for other people."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd shrank back, almost overcome by such a
+reception. It was like a dash of cold water in her
+face. She was angry and indignant.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," continued Mrs. Perkins, still sniffing
+around the room, as she put her bonnet and shawl
+away. "Now you're here I'd like it if you would
+put on the teakettle and make me a good strong
+cup of coffee. Jane O'Grady gave me a pound,
+all parched and ground. I haven't had any before
+to-day for weeks. I'm plumb tuckered out with the
+visit."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd hurried to build up the fire, thankful that
+May Lily had spent much time scouring the old
+coffee-pot. Otherwise she could not have brought
+herself to touch it. It shone like new now. As
+she poured the water into it, three tiny streams
+spurted out of the side, hissing and sputtering over
+the stove.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now just see what you done!" scolded Mrs.
+Perkins. "You hadn't ought to have scoured that
+coffee-pot so. You'd ought to have let well enough
+be, for you might have known you'd rub holes in
+it and make it leak."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll get you a new one in place of it at once,"
+said Lloyd, stiffly, her indignation rising till she
+could hardly speak calmly. "I'll go this minute."</p>
+
+<p>There was a small grocery store farther up the
+hill, where a little of everything was kept in stock,
+and Lloyd dashed out bareheaded, glad of an excuse
+to cool her temper. By the time she had made the
+coffee in the new pot, Alec drove up to the door
+for her.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll come again to-morrow to make that
+lemon pie, won't you?" asked Mrs. Perkins, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I can't come till the day aftah."</p>
+
+<p>"What? Thursday?" was the impatient answer.
+"Time drags awful slow for a body that
+can only sit and wait."</p>
+
+<p>"I have an engagement to-morrow," said Lloyd,
+stiffly, remembering it was the day for Agnes Waring's
+music lesson. "But you can depend on me
+Thursday."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sherman only laughed when Lloyd repeated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>
+her day's adventure at home, but the old Colonel
+fairly snorted with indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor white trash!" he exclaimed. "Don't go
+near her again!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I promised," answered Lloyd, dolefully.
+"I must keep my promise."</p>
+
+<p>"Then tell Cindy to make a pie, and let Alec
+take it down," he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"No, she said she wanted to smell it cooking,
+and to eat it hot out of the oven, and I promised
+her she might."</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel glared savagely at the fire. "Beggars
+shouldn't be choosers," he muttered, then
+turned to Mrs. Sherman. "Little daughter, are
+you going to let that poor child of yours be imposed
+on by that creature?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't interfere with her promise, papa," she
+answered. "It may be a disagreeable experience,
+but it will not hurt her any more than it hurt the
+old woman to sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.
+Hers was a thankless job, too, but no doubt she
+was better for the exercise, and she must have
+learned a great deal on such a trip."</p>
+
+<p>It was in the same spirit in which Ederyn cried,
+"Oh, heart and hand of mine, keep tryst! Keep
+tryst or die!" that Lloyd gathered up the necessary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
+materials and started off on Thursday to Mrs. Perkins's
+cottage. This time there was no admiring
+audience of little towheads tiptoeing around the
+table, as there had been at Mrs. Crisp's. But everything
+was clean, and, with her recipe spread out
+before her, Lloyd followed directions to the letter.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Perkins, watching the beating of eggs and
+stirring of the golden filling, the deft mixing of
+pastry, grew cheerful and entertaining. She forgot
+to complain of her neighbours, and was surprised
+into the telling of some of her girlish experiences
+that actually brought an amused twinkle to her
+sharp old eyes. Lloyd was vastly entertained. She
+had, too, a virtuous feeling that in keeping her
+promise she had given pleasure to one who rarely
+met kindness. It gave her a warm inward glow
+of satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>To her mortification, when she finally drew the
+pie from the oven, the meringue, which had been
+like a snowdrift a moment before, and which should
+have come out with just a golden glow on it from
+its short contact with the heat, was all shrivelled
+and brown.</p>
+
+<p>"The nasty little oven was too hot!" cried
+Lloyd, in disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"Just my luck," whined Mrs. Perkins. "I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
+might have known that I'd never get anything I
+set my heart on. But you can scrape off the meringue,
+and I'll try and make out with the plain
+pie."</p>
+
+<p>Although she ate generously, she ate grumblingly,
+disappointed because of the scorched meringue,
+and it wasn't as sweet as she liked.</p>
+
+<p>That night, Lloyd, mortified over her failure,
+stood long with the white rosary in her hand.
+"Maybe I ought to count the poah pie as I would
+an imperfect lesson," she thought, hesitating, with
+a bead in her fingers. Then she said, defiantly:
+"But I did my best, and the day has certainly been
+disagreeable enough to deserve two pearls."</p>
+
+<p>After another moment of conscientious weighing
+of the matter, she slipped the bead slowly down
+the string. "There!" she exclaimed. "I suahly
+went through the black watahs of Kilgore to get
+that one."</p>
+
+<p>Next day when she stopped in Rollington to pay
+for the coffee-pot, and drove by the Crisps' to ask
+about the baby, Minnie Crisp told her several
+things. Mrs. Perkins was sick all night, and had
+told her ma that it was the lemon pie that was the
+cause of the trouble; that it would have made a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>
+dog sick. "Them was her words," said Minnie,
+solemnly.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't wondah!" cried Lloyd. "The greedy
+old thing! There was enough for foah people, and
+it was very rich, and she ate it all."</p>
+
+<p>"And she didn't like it because you had May
+Lily scrub and clean while she was gone," added
+Minnie, with childlike lack of tact. "She talked
+about you dreadful after you went away. Didn't
+she, ma?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shoo, Minnie!" answered Mrs. Crisp, with a
+wave of her apron. "Don't tell all you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't," answered the child. "I didn't say
+a word about the names she called her,&mdash;meddlesome
+Matty, and all that."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd took her leave presently, with a flushed
+face and a sore heart. On the way home she
+stopped at The Beeches, and Mrs. Walton, who saw
+at a glance that something was wrong, soon drew
+out the story of her grievance.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't pay any attention to that old creature,"
+she said, laughing heartily, "and forgive my laughing.
+Everybody in the Valley has had a similar
+experience. The King's Daughters long ago gave
+her up in disgust. She's one of those people who
+doesn't want to be reformed and won't stay helped.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>
+Her house will be just as dirty next week as when
+you first went there."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't suppose there were such people in the
+world," said Lloyd, in disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll find out all sorts of disagreeable things
+as you get older," sighed Mrs. Walton. "It is one
+of the penalties of growing up. But still it is good
+to have such experiences, for the wiser we grow
+the better we know how to 'ease the burden of the
+world,' and that is what we are here for."</p>
+
+<p>Lloyd's eyes widened with surprise. Here was
+another person quoting from the poem she had
+learned. She was glad now that she had committed
+it to memory, since on three occasions it had made
+people's meaning clearer to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she answered, the dimples stealing into
+her smile. "But the next time I'll find out first
+if they really want their burden eased, and if that
+burden is dirt, like Mrs. Perkins's, I'll suahly let
+it alone."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>"SWEET SIXTEEN"</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> red coat Lloyd wore that winter was long
+remembered in the Valley, for wherever it went
+it carried a bright face above it, a cheery greeting,
+and some pleasant word that made the day seem
+better for its passing.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bisbee and the little Crisps were not the
+only ones who learned to watch for it. As all the
+lonely town of Hamelin must have felt toward the
+one child left to it after the Pied Piper had passed
+through its streets, so all the Valley turned with
+tender regard to the young girl left in its midst.
+Mothers, whose daughters were away at school,
+stopped to talk to her with affectionate interest.
+The old ladies whom she regularly visited welcomed
+her as if she were a part of their vanished
+youth. The young ladies took her under their
+wing, glad to have her in the choir and the King's
+Daughters' Circle, for she was bubbling over with
+girlish enthusiasm and a sincere desire to help.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So she found the cobwebs in the neighbourhood
+sky, and disagreeable enough they were at times,
+even more disagreeable than her experience with
+Mrs. Perkins. But she swept away with praiseworthy
+energy, till gradually she found that the
+accumulation of outside interests, like the cobweb
+strands which Ederyn twisted, made a rope strong
+enough to lift her out of herself and her dungeon
+of disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>After the novelty of giving music lessons had
+worn off, it grew to be a bore. Not the lessons
+themselves, for Agnes's delight in them never
+flagged. It was the tied-up feeling it gave her to
+remember that those afternoons were not her own.
+It happened so often that the afternoons devoted
+to Agnes were the ones which of all the week she
+wanted to have free, and she had to give up many
+small pleasures on account of them.</p>
+
+<p>It grew to be a bore, also, calling on some of
+the people who claimed a weekly visit. She never
+tired of Mrs. Bisbee's lively comments on her neighbours
+and her interesting tales about them. But
+there was old Mr. and Mrs. Apwall, who, with
+nothing to do but sit on opposite sides of the fire
+and look at each other, were said to quarrel like
+cat and dog. It mortified Lloyd dreadfully to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
+them quarrel in her presence, and have them pour
+out their grievances for her to decide which was
+in the wrong.</p>
+
+<p>She always rose to go at that juncture, flushed
+and embarrassed, and vowing inwardly she would
+never visit them again. But they always managed
+to extract a promise before she got to the door
+that she would drop in again the next time she
+was passing.</p>
+
+<p>"Somehow you seem to get husband's mind off
+himself," Mrs. Apwall would whisper at parting.
+"He isn't half so touchy when you've cheered him
+up a spell."</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Apwall would follow her out through
+the chilly hall to open the front door, and say,
+huskily: "Come again, daughter. Come again.
+Your visits seem to do the madam a world of good.
+They give her something to talk about beside my
+fancied failings."</p>
+
+<p>So inwardly groaning, Lloyd would go again,
+painfully alert to keep the conversation away from
+subjects that invariably led to disputes. And inwardly
+groaning, she went dutifully to the Coburns'
+at their repeated requests. The first few times the
+garrulous old couple were interesting, but the most
+thrilling tale grows tiresome when one has heard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>
+it a dozen times. She could scarcely keep from
+fidgeting in her chair when the inevitable story of
+their feud with the Cayn family was begun. They
+never left out a single petty detail.</p>
+
+<p>No one will ever know how often the thought
+of the little rosary in the sandalwood box helped
+Lloyd to listen patiently, and to keep tryst with the
+expectations of those about her, so that at nightfall
+there might be another pearl to slip on the
+silken cord, in token of another day unstained by
+selfishness.</p>
+
+<p>There was rarely time for envying the girls at
+school now. The days were too full. Almost before
+it seemed possible, the locusts were in bloom
+and it was mid-May by the calendar. In that time
+perfect health had come back to her. There were
+no more crying spells now, no more hours of nervous
+exhaustion, of fretful impatience over trifles.
+She went singing about the house, with a colour
+in her cheeks that rivalled the pink of the apple
+blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>"Spring has come indoors as well as out," said
+Mrs. Sherman one morning. "I think that we
+may safely count that your Christmas vacation is
+over, and you may go back to your music lessons
+whenever you choose."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The night before her birthday, Lloyd sat with
+her elbows on her dressing-table, peering into the
+mirror with a very serious face.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be sixteen yeahs old in the mawning,
+Lloyd Sherman," she told the girl in the glass.
+"'Sweet sixteen!' You've come to the end of
+lots of things, and to-morrow it will be like going
+through a gate that you've seen ahead of you for
+a long, long time. A big, wide gate that you have
+looked forward to for yeahs, and things are bound
+to be different on the othah side."</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, just in fun, she trailed down to
+breakfast in one of her mother's white dresses, with
+her hair piled on the top of her head. It was very
+becoming so, but it made her look so tall and
+womanly that she was sure her grandfather would
+object to it.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll nevah let me grow up if he can help it,"
+she said, half-pouting, as she gave a final glance
+over her shoulder at the mirror, vastly pleased with
+her young ladylike appearance. "He'll say, 'Tut,
+tut! That's not grandpa's Little Colonel.' But I
+can't stay his Little Colonel always."</p>
+
+<p>She was standing by the window looking down
+the locust avenue when he came in to breakfast, so
+she did not see his start of surprise at sight of her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>
+But his half-whispered exclamation, "<i>Amanthis!</i>"
+told her why he failed to make the speech she expected
+to hear. With her hair done high, showing
+the beautiful curve of her head and throat as
+she stood half-turned toward him, he had caught
+another glimpse of her startling resemblance to the
+portrait. He could not regret losing his Little
+Colonel if that loss were to give him a living reminder
+of a beloved memory.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast, when an armful of birthday gifts
+had been duly admired and the donors thanked,
+and she had spent nearly an hour enjoying them,
+she strolled down the avenue, feeling very much
+grown up with the long dress trailing behind her.
+She wandered down to the entrance gate, hoping
+to meet Alec, who had gone for the mail. She was
+sure there would be a letter from Betty, for Betty
+never forgot people's birthdays. Then she trailed
+back again under the white arch of fragrant locust
+blooms. At the half-way seat she sat down and
+tucked a spray of the blossoms into her hair and
+fastened another at her belt. She had not long
+to wait there, enjoying the freshness of the sweet
+May morning, for in a few minutes Alec came
+up the avenue with a handful of letters and papers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>
+She sorted out her own eagerly, six letters and a
+package.</p>
+
+<p>She opened Betty's first. It was a long one, ending
+with a birthday greeting in rhyme, and enclosing
+a handkerchief which she had made herself,
+sheer and fine and daintily hemstitched, with her
+initials embroidered in one corner in the smallest
+letters possible.</p>
+
+<p>The letters from Allison and Kitty were profusely
+illustrated all around the margins, and by
+the time Lloyd had read them, and Gay's ridiculous
+summary of school news, she felt as if she had been
+on a visit to Warwick Hall, and had seen all the
+girls. The next letter was from Joyce, a good
+thick one. But before she read it, curiosity impelled
+her to open the package, which was a flat
+one, bearing a foreign postmark and several Italian
+stamps. There were two photographs inside. She
+slipped the uppermost one from its envelope.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it is Eugenia Forbes!" she exclaimed
+aloud. "But how she has changed!"</p>
+
+<p>The picture was not at all like the Eugenia whom
+Lloyd remembered, the thin slip of a girl who had
+raced up and down the avenue five years before
+at her house-party. She had blossomed into a beautiful
+young woman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A regulah Spanish beauty!" Lloyd thought,
+as she looked at the picture, long and admiringly,&mdash;the
+picture of a patrician face with great dark
+eyes and a wealth of dusky hair. The old self-conscious,
+dissatisfied expression was gone. It was
+a happy face that smiled back at her. It had been
+nearly a year since Lloyd had had a letter from
+Eugenia. She had written from the school near
+Paris that her father was on his way over from
+America to join her and take her home immediately
+after her graduation. Lloyd had sent a reply addressed
+to her cousin Carl's office, but had heard
+nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking that the other photograph was her
+cousin Carl's, Lloyd unwrapped it, wondering if
+he had changed as much as Eugenia. To her surprise,
+it was not a middle-aged man she saw, with
+gray moustache and kindly tired eyes. It was the
+handsome boyish face of a stranger, yet so startlingly
+familiar that she looked at it with a puzzled
+frown.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should Eugenia be sending me this?" she
+thought. "And where have I seen that man befoah?"
+Then, "Phil Tremont!" she exclaimed
+aloud the next instant. "That's who it reminds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span>
+me of. It is almost exactly like him, only it is oldah-looking,
+and the nose isn't quite like his."</p>
+
+<p>She turned the picture over. There on the back
+was written in Eugenia's hand the word Venice,
+and a date underneath the name, Stuart Tremont.</p>
+
+<p>"Phil's brother!" gasped Lloyd, in astonishment.
+"How strange that she should know him!"</p>
+
+<p>Tearing open the envelope lying on the bench
+beside her, Lloyd unfolded a twenty-page letter
+from Eugenia, written on thin blue foreign correspondence
+paper. Before her glance had travelled
+half-way down the second page, she gave another
+gasp, and sat staring at an underscored sentence
+in open-mouthed amazement. Then, never waiting
+to gather up the other letters which fluttered into
+the grass at her feet, as she sprang up, she rushed
+off toward the house as hard as she could go, waving
+Eugenia's letter in one hand and the photographs
+in the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Mothah!" she called, as she reached the end
+of the avenue. She was tripping over her long
+skirt, and scattering hairpins at every step, as her
+reckless flight sent her hair tumbling down over
+her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Mothah!" she shrieked again, as she stumbled
+up the porch steps.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Here in my room, dear," came the answer from
+an upper window. Falling all over herself in her
+undignified haste, Lloyd tore up the stairs. A final
+tangling of skirts sent her headlong into her mother's
+room, where she half-fell in a breathless, laughing
+heap, and sat at Mrs. Sherman's feet with her
+hair almost hiding her eager face.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess what's happened!" she demanded,
+breathlessly. "<i>Eugenia is engaged!</i> And to Phil
+Tremont's brother Stuart!"</p>
+
+<p>Then she sat enjoying her mother's surprise,
+which was almost as great as her own. "And she
+isn't much moah than eighteen," Lloyd exclaimed,
+rocking back and forth on the floor, with her arms
+clasped around her knees, while her mother examined
+the pictures.</p>
+
+<p>"She looks twenty at least in this picture," answered
+Mrs. Sherman, "even more than that.
+Eugenia was always old for her years. If you
+remember, she was wearing long dresses when we
+left her the summer we were in Europe together."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but it doesn't seem possible that Eugenia
+is old enough to be <i>married</i>," insisted Lloyd. "I
+can hardly believe it is true."</p>
+
+<p>She sat staring dreamily out of the window until
+a slight breeze fluttering the sheets of paper still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>
+clutched in her fingers reminded her that she had
+read only two of the twenty pages.</p>
+
+<p>"Heah is what she says about it," began Lloyd,
+reading slowly, for the closely written sheets were
+hard to decipher.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"'I know you are going to wonder how it all
+came about, so I'll begin at the beginning. Last
+summer papa came on to Paris in time for Commencement.
+He was so pleased because I took
+first honours, when he hadn't expected me to take
+any, that he said he would do as fathers sometimes
+did in fairy-tales,&mdash;grant me three wishes, anything
+in reason; for he had had an unusually successful
+year and could well afford it.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, I thought and thought, but I couldn't
+think of anything I really wanted, as I just had
+an entire new outfit in clothes, so I told him finally
+I'd like to stop in London long enough to have a
+tailor make me a riding-habit, and I'd think of the
+other two wishes sometime during the year. So
+we went to London. Papa is such an old darling,
+and we've grown to be real chums. After the
+tailor had taken my measure, we drove to our banker's
+for the mail, and who should papa meet there
+but Doctor Tremont, an American physician whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>
+he knew years ago when they were young men.
+They belonged to the same college fraternity.</p>
+
+<p>"'They forgot all about poor little me, sitting
+over in the corner of the office, and stood and talked
+about old times, and asked each other about Tom,
+Dick, and Harry, until I was thoroughly tired of
+waiting. But after awhile the handsomest young
+man came into the room, and Doctor Tremont
+introduced him to papa as his oldest son, Stuart.
+Then they remembered my humble existence, and
+papa brought them both over to me. In about two
+minutes we all felt as if we had known each other
+always.</p>
+
+<p>"'Doctor Tremont said he had had a very hard
+winter in Berlin, making some study of microbes
+with a noted scientist,&mdash;I forget his name. He
+said Stuart had been closely confined also (he was
+taking a medical course), and they were off on
+a hard-earned holiday. They were going coaching
+up in the lake regions, first in England, then in
+Scotland, and maybe later would go over to the
+Isle of Skye.</p>
+
+<p>"'Would you believe it, before we left the bank,
+Doctor Tremont had persuaded papa that he needed
+a vacation also, and almost in no time it was arranged
+that we should join them on their coaching<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span>
+trip. We had a perfectly ideal time, and Stuart
+and I got to be the best of friends. We corresponded
+all summer and fall after that. I didn't
+expect to see him again for two years, because he
+intended to stay abroad until he had finished his
+medical course. But along in the winter papa's
+health broke down, and the doctor told him he must
+keep away from business for a year, and ordered
+him to Baden-Baden for the water.</p>
+
+<p>"'He was horribly ill after we got there, and
+I was so frightened and inexperienced that I
+thought he was going to die, and I telegraphed
+for Doctor Tremont. It isn't far from Berlin, you
+know, as we Americans count distances. But the
+doctor had gone to Paris for several weeks, and
+Stuart came at once in his place. Of course he
+wasn't an experienced physician like his father, but
+he was such a comfort, for he cheered papa up so
+much, and assured us that the doctor in charge was
+doing everything that his father could do. And
+he helped nurse papa, and boosted up my spirits
+mightily, and was so dear and thoughtful and considerate
+that, when he went away, I felt as if the
+bottom had dropped out of everything. You can't
+imagine how kind and lovely he was all that week.
+Papa fairly swore by him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'We wrote to each other every week after he
+went back to Berlin. Early this March papa and
+I went down into Italy. We shifted about from
+place to place,&mdash;Naples, Sorrento, Rome, Florence,
+and finally to Venice. I don't know why I
+never wrote to you those days. You were often
+in my thoughts, but you know how it is when one
+is constantly on the wing.</p>
+
+<p>"'I used to wish daily that Stuart could be with
+us. He is the most satisfactory of travelling companions,
+but I didn't know how very much I wished
+it until one day in Venice. Papa was asleep at the
+hotel, and I was so lonely that I started out by
+myself to explore. I left a message with the clerk
+that I had gone to vespers at Saint Mark's Cathedral.
+There was a crowd of tourists in the square
+in front of the cathedral, feeding the pigeons.
+Hearing their English speech after so many months
+of nothing but foreign tongues made me homesick.
+In the whole plaza, no one but myself seemed to be
+alone. They were walking in groups or couples,
+and everybody seemed so gay and happy that I
+was glad to cross over to the cathedral to get out
+of sight.</p>
+
+<p>"'The vesper service had just begun, and I
+stood inside the door listening to the chanting of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>
+the monks' voices, and getting more homesick every
+moment. Just as the tears were ready to brim over,
+I looked up, and there in the dim light beside me
+stood Stuart. I thought I must be dreaming, but
+it was a very happy dream, for I felt that I could
+never be homesick or unhappy again when he
+looked down and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"'I couldn't believe that I was awake and that
+he was really there, until we got outside the cathedral
+and he began to talk. Then he told me that
+he had gone to the hotel, and they had given him
+the message I had left for papa. It never occurred
+to me to wonder why he had come to Venice. It
+just seemed so natural and lovely that he should
+be there that I never even asked him why. He
+called a gondola, and we got in and went drifting
+down the canals under the bridges and past the
+old palaces, with the sunset turning everything
+around us to rose-colour and gold. Oh, I can't
+begin to tell you how perfectly heavenly it all was.
+There was a new moon in the sky when we turned
+back to the hotel, and, though Stuart <i>hadn't</i> proposed
+in the same way that Laurie did to Amy in
+"Little Women," he had told me why he came
+so far to find me, and I liked his way a great deal
+better than Laurie's.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Wasn't it all romantic? Papa was awfully
+surprised to see him, and nearly as glad as I, and
+I told him that now I'd claim the other wishes
+he had promised me at Commencement, and take
+the two in one. I wished that he would say yes
+to the question Stuart had come to ask him. Dear
+old dad, he always keeps his promises, so he said
+yes after awhile. After Stuart had explained that
+he didn't intend to ask him to give me up. When
+he finishes his medical course here next year, he
+has a position waiting for him near New York City.
+We're to have a little home on the Hudson, and
+papa is to live with us. So is Doctor Tremont,
+when he gets through with his microbe business.
+We are done with hotels for ever.</p>
+
+<p>"'I cannot remember ever having had a home,
+Lloyd. I have always lived either in a hotel or at
+boarding-school. And Stuart says the only one he
+can remember distinctly was the one presided over
+by his great-aunt Patricia, and she never did understand
+boys. This summer I shall spend with papa
+in Switzerland. He is about well now. Then in
+the fall, when he goes back to New York, I am
+going to a delightful school near Berlin which I
+have just heard of. It is a school where none but
+the daughters of the German nobility are received,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span>
+as a rule. They make an exception sometimes in
+the case of Americans like myself. There they are
+taught all the housewifely arts that delight a good
+frau's soul. Don't laugh at me, Lloyd. I'm going
+to learn how to broil and brew and conduct a well-regulated
+establishment from attic to cellar.</p>
+
+<p>"'A year from this June, Cousin Jack and
+Cousin Elizabeth are to bring you and Betty on
+to New York to be my bridesmaids. I'd love to
+have Joyce, too, if it were possible for her to leave
+home. She has been so good to Stuart's brother
+Phil. Isn't it strange that we should all be so
+linked together? I'd like to have all of you girls
+that I met at your never-to-be-forgotten house-party.
+That was where I had my first taste of a
+real home, and found out that there is something
+to live for besides the things that money can buy.</p>
+
+<p>"'I have looked so often lately at my little Tusitala
+ring. I have been a better girl because of that
+ring, Lloyd, and I intend it shall be the inspiration
+of all my married life,&mdash;to help me leave a road
+of the loving heart in the memory of every one
+around me.</p>
+
+<p>"'I wish everybody in the world could be as
+happy as I am. I am sending Stuart's picture,
+so that you can see for yourself what a fine, splendid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span>
+fellow you are to have for a cousin some day.
+Give my love to your father and mother and Betty,
+and do write soon and tell me that you are glad.</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 2em;">"'Your loving cousin,</span><br />
+"'<span class="smcap">Eugenia</span>.'"<br />
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Lloyd looked up from the reading of the letter,
+wondering what sort of an expression she would
+find on her mother's face. To her surprise, it was
+one of approval, and there were tears in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor motherless child!" said Mrs. Sherman,
+softly. "I shall write to her to-day. I don't approve
+of early marriages, but Eugenia has always
+been more mature than most girls of her age, and
+she does need a home sadly. The care and pleasure
+of one will develop her character in a way that
+nothing else will. Let me see. She will be nearly
+twenty next June. Yes, I have no doubt but that,
+with this next year's training in housekeeping
+which she intends to take, she will be far better
+fitted for home-making than many an older
+woman."</p>
+
+<p>"And may Betty and I be bridesmaids?" interrupted
+Lloyd, eagerly, a starlike expectancy shining
+in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sherman considered a moment, then answered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>
+slowly: "There is no reason why you
+should not be, so long as you are willing to go as
+little maids, and not young ladies. I am very jealous
+for your girlhood, Lloyd dear. I must guard
+against anything that would shorten it in the least.
+Mother's baby must not grow up too fast."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to grow up fast, honestly!" cried
+Lloyd, scrambling to her feet and tripping over the
+long skirts again as she threw her arms around her
+mother's neck. "I'm not dignified enough yet to
+fit yoah dresses, and my hair simply won't stay up.
+Sweet sixteen doesn't seem half as old when you
+really get there as you think that it is going to.
+I'll do my hair down and weah short skirts as long
+as you want me to, but, oh, I'm so glad that I'm
+going to be a bridesmaid! It will be <i>such</i> fun.
+I must write to Betty this minute to tell her that
+you are willing."</p>
+
+<p>That night Lloyd sat before her dressing-table
+again, this time with the new photographs propped
+up in front of her. Stuart's picture almost seemed
+to bring Phil before her eyes, and for a moment,
+instead of the familiar walls of her room, she saw
+the moonlighted desert, and smelled the orange-blossoms,
+and heard a strong young voice ringing
+out across the silence of the sandy cactus plains:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Till the sun grows cold,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And the stars are old,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And the leaves of the Judgment</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Book unfold."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't it be strange," she thought, "if he
+were really the one written for me in the stars,
+as Betty said in the beginning, and that we should
+meet at Eugenia's wedding again, and that some
+day, a long time after, I should find that he is the
+prince? But it couldn't be Phil," she said to herself
+after another glance. "He doesn't measuah up to
+Papa Jack's yardstick. Neithah does Malcolm now,
+for that mattah," she mused, with her chin in her
+hand. "Jack Ware might, or Rob, but they seem
+moah like brothahs than anything else, and would
+not fit my ideal of a prince at all."</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 308px;">
+<img src="images/i008.jpg" width="308" height="500" alt="&quot;&#39;NO MATTAH WHAT LIES AHEAD .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I&#39;LL NOT DISAPPOINT THEM&#39;&quot;" title="&quot;&#39;NO MATTAH WHAT LIES AHEAD .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I&#39;LL NOT DISAPPOINT THEM&#39;&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;&#39;NO MATTAH WHAT LIES AHEAD .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I&#39;LL NOT DISAPPOINT THEM&#39;&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"'As the falcon's feathahs fit the falcon,'" she
+quoted, dreamily. "It would have to be some
+strangah that I've nevah yet seen, to do that. Or,
+maybe Mammy Easter's grandmothah was right
+when she read my fortune in the teacups. Maybe
+I'll be an old maid. I wish I knew. I <i>wish</i> I
+knew!"</p>
+
+<p>She peered wistfully into the mirror, as if she
+half-expected to see a shadowy hand stretch out
+of its dim background, and lift the veil of the future<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span>
+to her eager gaze. "The thoughts of youth are
+long, long thoughts." Lloyd's flew back to Eugenia's
+romance for an instant, then drifted far
+beyond the two in the gondola, with the Venetian
+sunset turning all their little world to rose-colour
+and gold.</p>
+
+
+<p>One is a mariner at sixteen, sailing toward an
+undiscovered country, with seaweed and driftwood
+on the crest of every wave beginning to whisper,
+"Land ahead." Toward the dim outline of that
+untried shore, Lloyd drifted now in her reverie.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>wish</i> I could know what the next sixteen
+yeahs hold for me," she whimpered. "I hope it
+will be something bettah than I could choose for
+myself. Mothah and Papa Jack expect so much
+of me."</p>
+
+<p>Then her glance fell on the unfinished rosary,
+and, picking up the string of tiny pearls, she looped
+it around her throat, and faced the girl in the
+mirror with resolute eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"No mattah what lies ahead," she said, bravely,
+"I'll not disappoint them. I'll keep the tryst!"</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE END.</h3>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class='u'>BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE</span></h2>
+
+
+<h2>
+THE LITTLE COLONEL BOOKS</h2>
+<div class='center'><small>(Trade Mark)</small><br />
+
+<br />
+<br /><i>By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON</i><br />
+<br />
+Each 1 vol., large 12mo, cloth decorative, per vol. $1.50<br /></div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>
+<big><b>The Little Colonel Stories.</b></big><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Illustrated.</span><br />
+
+
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Being three "Little Colonel" stories in the Cosy
+Corner Series, "The Little Colonel," "Two Little Knights
+of Kentucky," and "The Giant Scissors," put into a
+single volume.</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'>
+<big><b>The Little Colonel's House Party.</b></big><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Illustrated by Louis Meynell.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>
+<big><b>The Little Colonel's Holidays.</b></big><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Illustrated by L. J. Bridgman.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>
+<big><b>The Little Colonel's Hero.</b></big><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Illustrated by E. B. Barry.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>
+<big><b>The Little Colonel at Boarding School.</b></big><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Illustrated by E. B. Barry.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>
+<big><b>The Little Colonel in Arizona.</b></big><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Illustrated by E. B. Barry.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>
+<big><b>The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation.</b></big><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Illustrated by E. B. Barry.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>
+<big><b>The Little Colonel, Maid of Honour.</b></big><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Illustrated by E. B. Barry.</span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>
+<big><b>The Little Colonel.</b></big><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(Trade Mark)</span><br />
+<br />
+<b><big>Two Little Knights of Kentucky.</big></b><br />
+<br />
+<big><b>The Giant Scissors.</b></big><br />
+<br />
+<big><b>Big Brother.</b></big><br />
+</div>
+
+
+<h3>Special Holiday Editions</h3>
+
+<div class='center'>Each one volume, cloth decorative, small quarto. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $1.25.<br /></div>
+
+<p>New plates, handsomely illustrated, with eight full-page
+drawings in color.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The books are as satisfactory to the small girls, who find
+them adorable, as for the mothers and librarians, who delight
+in their influence."&mdash;<i>Christian Register.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+These four volumes, boxed as a four volume set &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $5.00<br /></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>In the Desert of Waiting:</b></big> <span class="smcap">The Legend
+of Camelback Mountain.</span></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>The Three Weavers:</b></big> <span class="smcap">A Fairy Tale for
+Fathers and Mothers as Well as for Their
+Daughters.</span></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>Keeping Tryst.</b></big></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>The Legend of the Bleeding Heart.</b></big></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="prices">
+<tr><td align='left'>Each one volume, tall 16mo, cloth decorative&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>$0.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Paper boards</td><td align='right'>.35</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>There has been a constant demand for publication
+in separate form of these four stories, which were originally
+included in four of the "Little Colonel" books.</p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>Joel: A Boy of Galilee.</b></big> By <span class="smcap">Annie Fellows
+Johnston</span>. Illustrated by L. J. Bridgman.</div>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price of Joel">
+<tr><td align='left'>New illustrated edition, uniform with the Little Colonel Books, 1 vol., large 12mo, cloth decorative</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>A story of the time of Christ, which is one of the
+author's best-known books.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>Asa Holmes;</b></big> <span class="smcap">or, At the Cross-Roads.</span> A
+sketch of Country Life and Country Humor. By
+<span class="smcap">Annie Fellows Johnston.</span> With a frontispiece by
+Ernest Fosbery.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Large 16mo, cloth, gilt top, &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $1.00<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"'Asa Holmes; or, At the Cross-Roads' is the most delightful,
+most sympathetic and wholesome book that has been
+published in a long while."&mdash;<i>Boston Times.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>The Rival Campers;</b></big> <span class="smcap">or, The Adventures
+of Henry Burns.</span> By <span class="smcap">Ruel Perley Smith.</span></div>
+<div class='center'>Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    $1.50</div>
+
+<p>Here is a book which will grip and enthuse every boy reader.
+It is the story of a party of typical American lads, courageous,
+alert, and athletic, who spend a summer camping on an
+island off the Maine coast.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The best boys' book since 'Tom Sawyer.'"&mdash;<i>San Francisco
+Examiner.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>The Rival Campers Afloat;</b></big> <span class="smcap">or, The
+Prize Yacht Viking.</span> By <span class="smcap">Ruel Perley Smith.</span></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>This book is a continuation of the adventures of "The
+Rival Campers" on their prize yacht <i>Viking</i>. An accidental
+collision results in a series of exciting adventures, culminating
+in a mysterious chase, the loss of their prize yacht, and
+its recapture by means of their old yacht, <i>Surprise</i>.</p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>The Rival Campers Ashore.</b></big> By <span class="smcap">Ruel
+Perley Smith,</span> author of "The Rival Campers,"
+"The Rival Campers Afloat," etc.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>"The Rival Campers Ashore" deals with the adventures
+of the campers and their friends in and around the town of
+Benton. Mr. Smith introduces a new character,&mdash;a girl,&mdash;who
+shows them the way to an old mill, around which the
+mystery of the story revolves. The girl is an admirable acquisition,
+proving as daring and resourceful as the campers
+themselves.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>The Young Section-Hand;</b></big> <span class="smcap">or, the adventures
+of Allan West.</span> By <span class="smcap">Burton E. Stevenson,</span>
+author of "The Marathon Mystery," etc.</div>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by L. J.Bridgman,</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p>Mr. Stevenson's hero is a manly lad of sixteen, who is given
+a chance as a section-hand on a big Western railroad, and
+whose experiences are as real as they are thrilling.</p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>The Young Train Dispatcher.</b></big> By <span class="smcap">Burton
+E. Stevenson,</span> author of "The Young Section-hand,"
+etc.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>The young hero has many chances to prove his manliness
+and courage in the exciting adventures which befall him in the
+discharge of his duty.</p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>Captain Jack Lorimer.</b></big> By <span class="smcap">Winn Standish.</span></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by A. B. Shute,</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>Jack is a fine example of the all-around American high-school
+boy. He has the sturdy qualities boys admire, and
+his fondness for clean, honest sport of all kinds will strike a
+chord of sympathy among athletic youths.</p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>Jack Lorimer's Champions;</b></big> or, sports
+on Land and Lake. By <span class="smcap">Winn Standish,</span> author of
+"Captain Jack Lorimer," etc.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>All boys and girls who take an interest in school athletics
+will wish to read of the exploits of the Millvale High School
+students, under the leadership of Captain Jack Lorimer.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack's Champions play quite as good ball as do
+some of the teams on the large leagues, and they put all
+opponents to good hard work in other summer sports.</p>
+
+<p>Jack Lorimer and his friends stand out as the finest examples
+of all-round American high school boys and girls.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>Beautiful Joe's Paradise;</b></big> <span class="smcap">or, The Island
+of Brotherly Love.</span> A sequel to "Beautiful Joe."
+By <span class="smcap">Marshall Saunders,</span> author of "Beautiful Joe."</div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>One vol., library 12mo, cloth, illustrated,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"This book revives the spirit of 'Beautiful Joe' capitally.
+It is fairly riotous with fun, and as a whole is about as unusual
+as anything in the animal book line that has seen the light. It
+is a book for juveniles&mdash;old and young."&mdash;<i>Philadelphia Item.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>'Tilda Jane.</b></big> By <span class="smcap">Marshall Saunders.</span></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>One vol., 12mo, fully illustrated, cloth decorative,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is one of those exquisitely simple and truthful books
+that win and charm the reader, and I did not put it down
+until I had finished it&mdash;honest! And I am sure that every
+one, young or old, who reads will be proud and happy to
+make the acquaintance of the delicious waif.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot think of any better book for children than this.
+I commend it unreservedly."&mdash;<i>Cyrus Townsend Brady.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'><big><b>The Story of the Graveleys.</b></big> By <span class="smcap">Marshall
+Saunders,</span> author of "Beautiful Joe's Paradise,"
+"'Tilda Jane," etc.</div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by E. B. Barry,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>Here we have the haps and mishaps, the trials and triumphs,
+of a delightful New England family, of whose devotion and
+sturdiness it will do the reader good to hear.</p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'><big><b>Born to the Blue.</b></big> By <span class="smcap">Florence Kimball
+Russel.</span></div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.25</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>The atmosphere of army life on the plains breathes on
+every page of this delightful tale. The boy is the son of a
+captain of U. S. cavalry stationed at a frontier post in the
+days when our regulars earned the gratitude of a nation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'><big><b>In West Point Gray.</b></big> By <span class="smcap">Florence Kimball
+Russel.</span></div>
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.25</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>West Point forms the background for the second volume
+in this series, and gives us the adventures of Jack as a cadet.
+Here the training of his childhood days in the frontier army
+post stands him in good stead; and he quickly becomes the
+central figure of the West Point life.</p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'><big><b>The Sandman: His Farm Stories.</b></big>
+By <span class="smcap">William J. Hopkins.</span> With fifty illustrations by
+Ada Clendenin Williamson.</div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Large 12mo, decorative cover,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"An amusing, original book, written for the benefit of very
+small children. It should be one of the most popular of the
+year's books for reading to small children."&mdash;<i>Buffalo Express.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'><big><b>The Sandman: More Farm Stories.</b></big>
+By <span class="smcap">William J. Hopkins.</span></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Large 12mo, decorative cover, fully illustrated,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'><big><b>The Sandman: His Ship Stories.</b></big>
+By <span class="smcap">William J. Hopkins,</span> author of "The Sandman:
+His Farm Stories," etc.</div>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Large 12mo, decorative cover, fully illustrated,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"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."&mdash;<i>Cleveland Leader.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Children call for these stories over and over again."&mdash;<i>Chicago
+Evening Post.</i></p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'><big><b>Pussy-Cat Town.</b></big> By <span class="smcap">Marion Ames Taggart.</span></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in colors,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.00</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'><big><b>The Roses of Saint Elizabeth.</b></big> By <span class="smcap">Jane
+Scott Woodruff,</span> author of "The Little Christmas
+Shoe."</div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in colors by Adelaide Everhart,</td><td align='left'>$1.00</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'><big><b>Gabriel and the Hour Book.</b></big> By <span class="smcap">Evaleen
+Stein.</span></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in colors by Adelaide Everhart,</td><td align='left'>$1.00</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'><big><b>The Enchanted Automobile.</b></big> Translated
+from the French by <span class="smcap">Mary J. Safford.</span></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in colors by Edna M. Sawyer,</td><td align='left'>$1.00</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'><big><b>The Red Feathers.</b></big> By <span class="smcap">Theodore Roberts</span>,
+author of "Brothers of Peril," etc.</div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Cloth decorative, illustrated,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<big><b>The Wreck of the Ocean Queen.</b></big> By
+James Otis, author of "Larry Hudson's Ambition,"
+etc.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Cloth decorative, illustrated,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,&mdash;to
+realize that it's only a story, but a stirring and realistic
+one.</p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'><big><b>Little White Indians.</b></big> By <span class="smcap">Fannie E.
+Ostrander</span>.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Price">
+<tr><td align='left'>Cloth decorative, illustrated,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$1.25</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PHYLLIS' FIELD FRIENDS SERIES</h2>
+
+<h3><i>By LENORE E. MULETS</i></h3>
+
+<p>Six vols., cloth decorative, illustrated by Sophie
+Schneider. Sold separately, or as a set.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Prices">
+<tr><td align='left'>Per volume,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>$1.00</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Per set,</td><td align='right'>6.00</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Phyllis' Field Friends Series">
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Insect Stories.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Stories of Little Animals.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Flower Stories.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Bird Stories.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Tree Stories.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Stories of Little Fishes.</b></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>In this series of six little Nature books, it is the author's intention
+so to present to the child reader the facts about each
+particular flower, insect, bird, or animal, in story form, as to
+make delightful reading. Classical legends, myths, poems,
+and songs are so introduced as to correlate fully with these
+lessons, to which the excellent illustrations are no little help.</p>
+
+
+<h2>THE WOODRANGER TALES</h2>
+
+<h3><i>By G. WALDO BROWNE</i></h3>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="The Woodranger Tales">
+<tr><td align='left'><b>The Woodranger.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>The Young Gunbearer.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>The Hero of the Hills.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>With Rogers' Rangers.</b></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Prices">
+<tr><td align='left'>Each 1 vol., large 12mo, cloth, decorative cover, illustrated, per volume,</td><td align='left'>$1.25</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Four vols., boxed, per set,</td><td align='left'>5.00</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>"The Woodranger Tales," like the "Pathfinder Tales" of
+J. Fenimore Cooper, combine historical information relating
+to early pioneer days in America with interesting adventures
+in the backwoods. Although the same characters are continued
+throughout the series, each book is complete in itself,
+and, while based strictly on historical facts, is an interesting
+and exciting tale of adventure.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE LITTLE COUSIN SERIES</h2>
+
+
+<p>The most delightful and interesting accounts possible
+of child life in other lands, filled with quaint sayings,
+doings, and adventures.</p>
+
+<p>Each one vol., 12mo, decorative cover, cloth, with six or more
+full-page illustrations in color.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Prices">
+<tr><td align='left'>Price per volume,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>$0.60</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<div class='center'><i>By MARY HAZELTON WADE (unless otherwise
+indicated)</i></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="The Little Cousin Series">
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little African Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Alaskan Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Mary F. Nixon-Roulet</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Arabian Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Blanche McManus</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Armenian Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Brown Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Canadian Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Elizabeth R. Macdonald</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Chinese Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Isaac Taylor Headland</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Cuban Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Dutch Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Blanche McManus</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little English Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Blanche McManus</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Eskimo Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little French Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Blanche McManus</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little German Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Hawaiian Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Hindu Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Blanche McManus</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Indian Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Irish Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Italian Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Japanese Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Jewish Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Korean Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By H. Lee M. Pike</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Mexican Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Edward C. Butler</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Norwegian Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Panama Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By H. Lee M. Pike</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Philippine Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Porto Rican Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Russian Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Scotch Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Blanche McManus</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Siamese Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Spanish Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Mary F. Nixon-Roulet</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Swedish Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Claire M. Coburn</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Swiss Cousin</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Our Little Turkish Cousin</b></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/bcover-emblem.jpg" width="200" height="200" alt="THE LITTLE COLONEL TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFFICE" title="THE LITTLE COLONEL TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFFICE" />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3>
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors repaired.</p>
+
+<p>The remaining corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'apprear'">appear</ins>.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation, by 
+Annie Fellows Johnston
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION ***
+
+***** This file should be named 26215-h.htm or 26215-h.zip *****
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@@ -0,0 +1,8532 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation, by
+Annie Fellows Johnston
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation
+
+Author: Annie Fellows Johnston
+
+Illustrator: Etheldred B. Barry
+
+Release Date: August 8, 2008 [EBook #26215]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_The_ LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION
+
+ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION
+
+
+
+
+Works of ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON The Little Colonel Series
+
+                        (_Trade Mark, Reg. U.S. Pat. Of._)
+                 Each one vol., large 12mo, cloth, illustrated
+
+  The Little Colonel Stories                               $1.50
+        (Containing in one volume the three stories, "The
+             Little Colonel," "The Giant Scissors," and
+                "Two Little Knights of Kentucky.")
+
+  The Little Colonel's House Party                          1.50
+  The Little Colonel's Holidays                             1.50
+  The Little Colonel's Hero                                 1.50
+  The Little Colonel at Boarding-School                     1.50
+  The Little Colonel in Arizona                             1.50
+  The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation                   1.50
+  The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor                         1.50
+  The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding                  1.50
+    The above 9 vols., _boxed_                             13.50
+  _In Preparation_--A New Little Colonel Book               1.50
+
+  The Little Colonel Good Times Book                        1.50
+
+
+Illustrated Holiday Editions
+
+  Each one vol., small quarto, cloth, illustrated, and printed
+                            in colour
+
+  The Little Colonel                                       $1.25
+  The Giant Scissors                                        1.25
+  Two Little Knights of Kentucky                            1.25
+  Big Brother                                               1.25
+
+
+Cosy Corner Series
+
+              Each one vol., thin 12mo, cloth, illustrated
+  The Little Colonel                                        $.50
+  The Giant Scissors                                         .50
+  Two Little Knights of Kentucky                             .50
+  Big Brother                                                .50
+  Ole Mammy's Torment                                        .50
+  The Story of Dago                                          .50
+  Cicely                                                     .50
+  Aunt 'Liza's Hero                                          .50
+  The Quilt that Jack Built                                  .50
+  Flip's "Islands of Providence"                             .50
+  Mildred's Inheritance                                      .50
+
+
+Other Books
+
+  Joel: A Boy of Galilee                                   $1.50
+  In the Desert of Waiting                                   .50
+  The Three Weavers                                          .50
+  Keeping Tryst                                              .50
+  The Legend of the Bleeding Heart                           .50
+  Asa Holmes                                                1.00
+  Songs Ysame (Poems, with Albion Fellows Bacon)            1.00
+
+          L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
+          200 Summer Street         Boston, Mass.
+
+[Illustration: "'GEE WHIZ!' EXCLAIMED ROB, IN A TEASING TONE, 'SAY THAT
+AGAIN, WON'T YOU PLEASE?'" (_See page 163_)]
+
+
+
+
+
+The Little Colonel's
+
+Christmas Vacation
+
+By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
+
+          Author of "The Little Colonel Series," "Big Brother,"
+          "Ole Mammy's Torment," "Joel: A Boy of Galilee,"
+          "Asa Holmes," etc.
+
+Illustrated by ETHELDRED B. BARRY
+
+          BOSTON * L. C. PAGE
+          & COMPANY * PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+          _Copyright, 1905_
+
+          By L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
+
+          (Incorporated)
+
+          _All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+          Published October, 1905
+
+
+
+          Ninth Impression, June, 1908
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                          PAGE
+     I. WARWICK HALL                                  1
+    II. "THE OLD GIRLS' WELCOME TO THE NEW"          22
+   III. AN EXCURSION                                 46
+    IV. "KEEP TRYST"                                 70
+     V. A MEMORY-BOOK AND A SOUVENIR SPOON           95
+    VI. CHRISTMAS CAROLS                            121
+   VII. HOMEWARD BOUND                              138
+  VIII. A PICNIC IN THE SNOW                        156
+    IX. A PROGRESSIVE CHRISTMAS PARTY               176
+     X. THE DUNGEON OF DISAPPOINTMENT               198
+    XI. IN THE ATTIC                                218
+   XII. HUMDRUM DAYS                                235
+  XIII. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF AMANTHIS                254
+   XIV. "CINDERELLA"                                273
+    XV. A HARD-EARNED PEARL                         292
+   XVI. "SWEET SIXTEEN"                             315
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                   PAGE
+
+  "'GEE WHIZ!' EXCLAIMED ROB, IN A TEASING TONE.
+    'SAY THAT AGAIN, WON'T YOU PLEASE?'"
+    (_See page 163_)                      _Frontispiece_
+
+  "MADAM'S CONVERSATION LED FAR AWAY FROM THE
+    CREST AND ITS LESSON"                            25
+
+  "STUDYING THE FACE OF THE HANDSOME YOUNG FELLOW
+    WITH INTEREST"                                  105
+
+  "'I TELL YOU SOMEBODY WAS TRYING TO SANDBAG ME'"  152
+
+  "ONE OF THE BOYS HAD DARED HIM TO CARRY IT"       221
+
+  "'I NEARLY FAINTED WHEN I HAPPENED TO LOOK UP'"   248
+
+  "SHE RODE OVER TO ROLLINGTON"                     299
+
+  "'NO MATTAH WHAT LIES AHEAD . . . I'LL NOT
+    DISAPPOINT THEM'"                               333
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+WARWICK HALL
+
+
+WARWICK HALL looked more like an old English castle than a modern
+boarding-school for girls. Gazing at its high towers and massive portal,
+one almost expected to see some velvet-clad page or lady-in-waiting come
+down the many flights of marble steps leading between stately terraces
+to the river. Even a knight with a gerfalcon on his wrist would not have
+seemed out of place, and if a slow-going barge had trailed by between
+the willow-fringed banks of the Potomac, it would have seemed more in
+keeping with the scene than the steamboats puffing past to Mount Vernon,
+with crowds of excursionists on deck.
+
+The gorgeous peacocks strutting along the terraces in the sun were
+partly responsible for this impression of mediaeval grandeur. It was for
+that very purpose that Madam Chartley, the head of the school, kept the
+peacocks. That was one reason, also, that she proudly retained the coat
+of arms in the great stained glass window over the stairs, when
+circumstances obliged her to turn her ancestral home into a
+boarding-school. She thought a sense of mediaeval grandeur was good for
+girls, especially young American girls, who are apt to be brought up
+without proper respect for age, either of individuals or institutions.
+
+In the dining-room, two long lines of portraits looked down from
+opposite walls. One was headed by a grim old earl, and the other by an
+equally grim old Pilgrim father of _Mayflower_ fame. The two lines
+joined over the fireplace in the portraits of Madam Chartley's
+great-grandparents. It was for this great-grandmother, a daughter of the
+Pilgrims and a beautiful Washington belle, that Warwick Hall had been
+built; for she refused to give up her native land entirely, even for the
+son of an earl.
+
+At his death, when the title and the English estates were inherited by a
+distant cousin, the only male heir, this place on the Potomac was all
+that was left to her and her daughter. It had been closed for two
+generations. Now it had come down at last to Madam Chartley. Although
+it found her too poor to keep up such an establishment, it also found
+her too proud to let her heritage go to strangers, and practical enough
+to find some way by which she might retain it comfortably. That way was
+to turn it into a first-class boarding-school. She was a graduate of one
+of the best American colleges. The patrician standards inherited from
+her old world ancestors, combined with the energy and common sense of
+the new, made her an ideal woman to undertake the education of young
+girls, and Warwick Hall was an ideal place in which to carry out her
+wise theories.
+
+The Potomac was red with the glow of the sunset one September evening,
+when four girls, on their way back to Washington after a day's
+sightseeing, hurried to the upper deck of the steamboat. Some one had
+called out that Warwick Hall was in sight. In their haste to reach the
+railing, they scarcely noticed a tall girl in blue, already standing
+there, who obligingly moved along to make room for them.
+
+She scrutinized them closely, however, for she had seen them in the
+cabin a little while before, and their conversation had been so amusing
+that she longed to make their acquaintance. Her face brightened
+expectantly at their approach, and, as they leaned over the railing, she
+studied them with growing interest. The oldest one was near her own age,
+she decided after a careful survey, about seventeen; and they were all
+particular about the little things that count so much with fastidious
+schoolgirls. She approved of each one of them from their broad silk
+shoe-laces to the pink tips of their carefully manicured finger-nails.
+
+As the boat swung around a bend in the river, bringing the castle-like
+building into full view, a chorus of delighted exclamations broke out
+all along the deck. The four girls hung over the railing with eager
+faces.
+
+"Look, Lloyd, look!" cried one of them, excitedly. "Peacocks on the
+terraces! It's the finishing touch to the picture. We'll feel like Lady
+Clare walking down those marble steps. There surely must be a milk-white
+doe somewhere in the background."
+
+"Oh, Betty, Betty!" was the laughing answer. "You'll do nothing now but
+quote Tennyson and write poetry from mawning till night."
+
+"They're from Kentucky," thought the girl in blue. "I'm sure of it from
+the way they talk."
+
+As the boat glided slowly along, Lloyd threw her arm around the girl
+beside her, with an impulsive squeeze.
+
+"Kitty Walton," she exclaimed, "aren't you _glad_ that the old
+Lloydsboro Seminary burned down? If it hadn't, we wouldn't be on ouah
+way now to that heavenly-looking boahding-school!"
+
+The sudden hug loosened Kitty's hat, held insecurely by one pin, and in
+another instant the strong breeze would have carried it over into the
+river had not the girl in blue caught it as it swept past her. She
+handed it back with a friendly smile, glad of an opportunity to speak.
+
+"You are new pupils for Warwick Hall, aren't you?" she asked, when Kitty
+had laughingly thanked her. "I hope so, for I'm one of the old girls.
+This will be my third year."
+
+"How perfectly lovely!" exclaimed Kitty. "We've been fairly crazy to
+meet some one from there. Do tell us if it is as fine as it looks, and
+as the catalogue says."
+
+"It is the very nicest place in the world," was the enthusiastic reply.
+"There are hardly any rules, and none of them are the kind that rub you
+up the wrong way. We don't have to wear uniforms, and we're not marched
+out to walk in wholesale lots like prisoners in a chain-gang."
+
+"That's what I used to despise at the Seminary," interrupted Lloyd. "I
+always felt like pah't of a circus parade, or an inmate of some asylum,
+out for an airing. Keeping in step and keeping in line with a lot of
+othahs made a punishment out of the walk, when it would have been such a
+pleasuah if we could have skipped along as we pleased. I felt resentful
+from the moment the gong rang for us to stah't. It had such a bossy,
+tyrannical sawt of sound."
+
+"You'll not find it that way at Warwick Hall," was the emphatic answer.
+"There are bells for rising and chapel and meals, but the signal for
+exercise is a hunter's horn, blown on the upper terrace. There's
+something so breezy and out-of-doors in the sound that it is almost as
+irresistible a call as the Pied Piper of Hamelin's. You ought to see the
+doors fly open along the corridors, and the girls pour out when that
+horn blows. We can go in twos or threes or squads, any way we please,
+and in any direction, so long as we keep inside the grounds. There's an
+orchard to stroll through, and a wooded hillside, and a big meadow. On
+bad days there is over half a mile of gravel road that runs through the
+grounds to the trolley station, or we can take our exercise going round
+and round the garden walks. The garden is over there at the left of the
+Hall," she explained, waving her hand toward it. "Do you see that
+pergola stretching along the highest terrace? That is where the garden
+begins, and the ivy running over it was started from a slip that Madam
+Chartley brought from Sir Walter Scott's home at Abbotsford.
+
+"It is the stateliest old garden you ever saw, and the pride of the
+school. There's a sun-dial in it, and hollyhocks from Ann Hathaway's
+cottage, and rhododendrons from Killarney. There's all the flowers
+mentioned in the old songs. Madam has brought slips and roots and seeds
+from all sorts of places, so that nearly every plant is connected with
+some noted place or person. I simply love it. In warm weather I get up
+early in the morning, and study my Latin out in the honeysuckle arbour.
+Latin is my hardest study, but it doesn't seem half so hard out there
+among the bees and hummingbirds, where it's all so sweet and still."
+
+"Oh, will they let you do things like that?" came the same amazed
+question from all four at once.
+
+"You wait and see," was the encouraging reply. "That isn't the
+beginning."
+
+The four exchanged ecstatic glances.
+
+"Oh, we haven't introduced ourselves," exclaimed Kitty, bethinking
+herself of formalities. "I am Katherine Walton, and this is my big
+sister, Allison. That is Lloyd Sherman and Elizabeth Lewis. They're
+almost as good as sisters, for they live together, and Lloyd's mother is
+Betty's godmother. And we're all from the same place, Lloydsboro Valley,
+Kentucky."
+
+"And I am Juliet Lynn from Wisconsin. That is, I lived there till papa
+had to come to Washington. He's a Congressman now. I was sure that you
+were from Kentucky, and I've been hoping that you were new girls for the
+Hall ever since I heard you talking about some house-party where you all
+did such funny things."
+
+"Oh, yes, that was one we had this summer at The Beeches," began Kitty,
+glibly, "when we all took turns--"
+
+But, with a big-sister frown of warning, Allison said, in a low aside:
+"For pity's sake, don't stop to tell all that long rigmarole over _now_.
+We want to hear some more about the school."
+
+"What is Madam Chartley herself like?" she asked, turning to Juliet.
+"She must be something of an old dragon if she can keep forty girls
+straight with so few rules. We've pictured her as a big British
+matron, dignified and imposing,--a sort of lioness rampant, you know,
+with a stern air, as if she was about to say in a deep voice,
+'England--expects--every--man--to--do--his--duty,--sir!'"
+
+"But she isn't that way at all!" cried Juliet, almost indignantly.
+"She's just as American as you are, for she was born and educated in
+this country. She has the gentlest voice and sweetest manner. Her hair
+is snow-white, and there's something awfully aristocratic about her, for
+she is--sort of--well, I hardly know how to express it, but just what
+you'd expect the 'daughter of a hundred earls' to be, you know. But you
+won't feel one bit in awe of her. The girls simply adore her."
+
+"But isn't she something to be afraid of when you break the rules?"
+queried Kitty, anxiously. "When you have midnight feasts and pillow-case
+prowls and all that?"
+
+Juliet shook her head. "We don't do those things. I tell you it isn't
+like any other boarding-school you ever heard of."
+
+"Then I know I sha'n't like it," declared Kitty. "All my life I've
+looked forward to going off to school just for the jolly good times I'd
+have. You see we were only day-pupils at Lloydsboro Seminary, and there
+wasn't a chance for that kind of fun, except the one term when Lloyd and
+Betty boarded in the school while their family was away from home. We
+managed to stir up a little excitement then, and I'd hoped for all sorts
+of thrilling adventures here. I'm horribly disappointed that it's so
+tame and goody-goody."
+
+Juliet's face coloured resentfully. "It isn't tame at all!" she
+declared. "It's only that we are always so busy doing pleasant things
+and going to interesting places that nobody cares for stolen spreads.
+Some girls don't like the place just at first, because it's so different
+from what they've been used to. But by the end of the term they're so in
+love with Warwick Hall and everything about it that nothing could induce
+them to change schools. There's only one girl I ever heard of who didn't
+like it."
+
+"And why didn't she?" asked Lloyd and Allison, in the same breath.
+
+"Well, she came from some ranch away out West, Wyoming or Nevada or some
+of those places, where she'd been as free and easy as a squaw, and she
+couldn't stand so much civilization. You see, from the minute you enter
+Warwick Hall you feel somehow that you're a guest of Madam Chartley's
+instead of a pupil. She uses the old family silver and the china has her
+great-grandfather's crest on it, and she brought over a London butler
+who grew up in the family service. She keeps him for the same reason
+that she keeps the peacocks, I suppose. They give such a grand air to
+the place.
+
+"Lida Wilsy--that's the girl from the ranch--couldn't live up to so much
+stateliness, especially of the stony-eyed butler. Hawkins was too much
+for her. She told her roommate that she thought it was foolish to have
+so many forks and spoons at each place. One was enough for anybody to
+get through a dinner with. Life was too short for so much fuss and
+feathers. She never could learn which to use first, and she would get
+her silverware so hopelessly mixed up that by the time dessert was
+brought on maybe she would have nothing to eat it with but an oyster
+fork. I've seen her ready to go under the table from embarrassment. Not
+that she cared so much what the girls thought. She joked about it to
+them. Her father owned the biggest part of a silver mine, and they could
+have had Tiffany's whole stock of forks if they'd wanted them. It was
+Hawkins she was afraid of. Of course he was too well trained to show
+what he thought of her mistakes, but you couldn't help feeling his high
+and mighty inward scorn of such ignorance. It fairly oozed from his
+finger-tips."
+
+Kitty's black eyes sparkled, anticipating times ahead when she would
+certainly make it lively for Hawkins.
+
+"There's grandfathah!" cried Lloyd, catching sight of a white-haired old
+gentleman who had just come up on deck. "I want to tell him about the
+garden before we lose sight of it."
+
+Juliet's glance followed her with interest as she darted away, for it
+was a distinguished-looking old gentleman who lifted his hat with
+elaborate courtesy at her approach. He was dressed in white duck, and
+the right coat-sleeve hung empty.
+
+"It's Colonel Lloyd," explained Allison, noting Juliet's glance of
+curiosity. "He's bringing us all to school, for it wasn't convenient for
+mother or Mrs. Sherman to come."
+
+"They don't look alike," remarked Juliet, surveying them with a puzzled
+expression. "But what is it about them--there is such a startling
+resemblance?"
+
+"Everybody notices it," said Kitty. "When Lloyd was smaller, they used
+to call her the Little Colonel all the time, but especially when she was
+in a temper. They call her Princess now."
+
+"Princess," echoed Juliet. "That name suits her exactly."
+
+She cast another admiring glance at the slender, fair-haired girl,
+standing with her hand in her grandfather's arm, pointing out the
+beauties of the place they were slowly passing.
+
+"And she will suit Warwick Hall," she added, with a sudden burst
+of schoolgirl enthusiasm, "just as the peacocks suit it, and the
+coat of arms, and Madam Chartley herself. She's got that same
+'daughter-of-a-hundred-earls' air about her that Madam has."
+
+"Oh, it all sounds so delightful and fascinating," sighed Betty, pushing
+back the brown hair that blew in little curls about her face, and
+smiling at the slowly disappearing Hall with a happy light in her brown
+eyes. "I can hardly wait for to-morrow."
+
+The boat had glided on until only the high, square tower was left in
+view, with the red sunset glow upon it.
+
+          "'The splendour falls on castle walls
+              And snowy summits old in story'"--
+
+Betty sang half under her breath, with a farewell flutter of her
+handkerchief, as the boat rounded a bend in the river which hid the
+tower from sight. Already she was in love with the place, and already,
+as Lloyd had predicted, she was fitting some line of Tennyson to it at
+every turn.
+
+Acquaintance progressed rapidly in the next half-hour. Long before they
+reached Washington, Juliet knew, not only that she had guessed Allison's
+age correctly at seventeen, that Betty was sixteen, and Lloyd and Kitty
+a year younger, but that each girl in her own way would make a desirable
+friend. Incidentally she learned that Allison and Kitty had lived in the
+Philippines, and were daughters of the brave General Walton who had lost
+his life there in his country's service. When they parted at the
+boat-landing, it was with delightful anticipations of the next day, and
+with each one eager to renew an acquaintance so pleasantly begun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If Warwick Hall suggested ancient stateliness on the outside, it was
+informal and frivolous enough within, when forty girls were taking
+possession of their rooms on the opening day of the school year. In and
+out like a flock of twittering sparrows, the old pupils darted from one
+room to another, exchanging calls and greetings, laughing over old jokes
+and reminiscences, and settling down into familiar corners with an ease
+that the new girls envied.
+
+Juliet Lynn, quickly establishing herself in her last year's quarters,
+started down the corridor to announce at every door that she was the
+first one unpacked and settled. All the other rooms were in hopeless
+confusion, beds, chairs, and floors being piled with the contents of
+open trunks.
+
+At the first door where she paused, a shower of shoes and slippers was
+the only answer to her triumphant announcement. At the next a laughing
+cry of "Help! help!" greeted her. At the third she was informed that
+there was standing-room only.
+
+"Don't you believe it, Juliet!" called a gay voice from the chiffonier,
+where an earlier visitor was perched. "There's always room at the top.
+I've discovered where Min keeps her butter-scotch. Come in and have
+some."
+
+"No, I'm going the rounds to see what everybody is about," she answered.
+"You're all in such a mess now, I'd rather look in later. I'm one of the
+early settlers, and have been in order for ages."
+
+"What's the odds so long as you're happy?" called the girl on the
+chiffonier. "Besides, it's no better next door. They'll invite you to
+make yourself at home under the bed, as they did me. Come on back and
+tell us your summer's experiences. Min has had one dizzy whirl of
+adventures after another."
+
+But Juliet kept on down the hall. She wanted to find what rooms had been
+assigned to the girls whom she had met the day before on the boat, and
+to hear their first impressions of Warwick Hall. Presently, through a
+half-open door, she caught sight of Betty, sitting at an open window
+overlooking the river. With chin in hand and elbows resting on the sill,
+she was gazing dreamily out at the willow-fringed banks, so absorbed in
+her thoughts that she did not hear Juliet's first knock. But at the
+second she started up and called cordially: "Oh, I'm so glad to see you!
+Come in!"
+
+"Why, you're all unpacked and put away, too!" exclaimed Juliet, in
+surprise, looking around the orderly room. "I thought that I was the
+only one, but I see you've even hung your pictures."
+
+"Yes, we don't know any of the other girls yet, so we didn't lose any
+time running back and forth to their rooms, as everybody else is doing.
+We've been through ever so long. Lloyd is out exploring the grounds
+with Allison, but I was too tired after all the sightseeing we have
+done. I'd be glad not to stir out of my room for a week."
+
+She pushed a rocking-chair hospitably toward her guest, and leaned back
+in the opposite one.
+
+"I don't want to sit down," said Juliet. "I'm just exploring. I think
+it's so much fun to poke around the first day and see how everybody is
+fixed. You don't mind, do you, if I walk around and look at your
+pictures?"
+
+"No, indeed!" answered Betty, cordially. "Help yourself."
+
+Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she sat up straight in her
+chair, and adjusted the side-combs which were slipping out of her curly
+hair. It was a pleasing reflection that the mirror showed her, of a slim
+girl in a linen shirt-waist and a dark brown skirt just reaching to her
+ankles. But it held her gaze only long enough for her to see that her
+belt was properly pulled down and her stock all that could be desired.
+The friendly brown eyes and the trusting little mouth never needed
+readjustment. They always met the world with a smile, and thus far the
+world had always smiled back at them.
+
+"Last year," said Juliet, as she wandered around, "the girl who had this
+room simply plastered the walls with posters. It was so sporty-looking.
+She had hunting scenes between these windows, and there was a frieze of
+hounds and a yard of puppies where you have that panel of photographs.
+Oh, what perfectly beautiful places!" she cried, moving nearer. "Do tell
+me about them. Is that where you live?"
+
+"Yes, this is our Lloydsboro Valley corner--the Happy Valley we call
+it," answered Betty, crossing the room to point out the various places:
+"Locust," her home and Lloyd's, a stately white-pillared mansion at the
+end of a long locust avenue; "The Beeches," where the Waltons lived; the
+vine-covered stone church; the old mill; the post-office, and a row of
+snap shots showing Lloyd and her mounted on their ponies, Tarbaby and
+Lad.
+
+"What good times you must have there!" sighed Juliet, presently.
+
+Betty opened a drawer in the writing-desk and took out six little books,
+bound in white kid, her initials stamped in gold on each cover.
+
+"Just see how many!" she exclaimed. "I started to keep a record of all
+my good times when I went to Lloyd's first house-party. When godmother
+gave me this volume, number one, I thought it would take a lifetime to
+fill it, but so many lovely things happened that summer that it was
+full in a little while. Then I went abroad in the fall, and that trip
+filled a volume. Now I am beginning the seventh."
+
+Juliet stared at the pile of white books in amazement. "What a lot of
+work!" she cried. "Doesn't it take every bit of pleasure out of your
+good times, thinking that you'll have to write all about it afterward? I
+tried to keep a diary once, but it looked more like the report of a
+weather bureau than anything else, and my small brother got hold of it
+and mortified me nearly to death one night when we had company, by
+quoting something from it. It sounded dreadfully sentimental, although
+it hadn't seemed so when I wrote it. That's the trouble in keeping a
+journal, don't you think so? You'll often put down something that seems
+important at the time, but that sounds silly afterward."
+
+"No," said Betty, hesitatingly. "I always enjoy going back to read the
+first volumes. It's interesting to see how one changes from year to year
+in opinions as well as handwriting. See how little and cramped the
+letters are in this first volume. It's good exercise, and, as I expect
+to write a book some day, every bit of practice helps."
+
+Betty made the announcement as simply as if she had said she intended
+to darn a stocking some day, and Juliet looked at her in open-mouthed
+wonder. She had never encountered a girl of that species before, and
+more than ever she felt that her friendship would be worth cultivating.
+When she finally took her departure, there was no time for any further
+tour of inspection, but she ran into several rooms on the way back to
+her own to say, hastily: "Girls, do all you can to get that Kentucky
+quartette into our sorority! I'll tell you about them later. We must
+give them a grand rush to-morrow night at the old girls' welcome to the
+new. I hope I'll get to take Elizabeth Lewis. My _dears_, she's a
+perfect genius! She's written poems and plays that have been published,
+and she's at work on a _book_!"
+
+As Juliet closed the door behind her, Betty took up the new volume in
+the series of little white records, and began turning the blank pages.
+Like the new school year, it lay spread out before her, white and fair,
+hers to write therein as she chose.
+
+"And I'll try my hardest to make it the best and happiest record of them
+all," she said to herself. As she dipped her pen into the ink, there was
+a knock at the door, and a white-capped maid looked in.
+
+"Madam Chartley would be pleased to see you at once in the pink room,
+miss," she announced, and Betty, much surprised, rose to answer the
+unexpected summons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+"THE OLD GIRLS' WELCOME TO THE NEW"
+
+
+AS Betty opened the door, she ran into Kitty Walton, who at sight of her
+struck an attitude on the threshold, crossing her hands on her breast,
+and rolling her eyes upward until only the whites were visible.
+
+"What new pose is this, you goose?" laughed Betty, shaking her gently by
+one shoulder.
+
+"Don't laugh," was the solemn answer. "This is pious resignation to
+fate." Then her hands dropped and she turned to Betty tragically.
+
+"I've just come from an interview with Madam Chartley," she explained.
+"And what do you think? That blessed old soul expects me to live up to
+the motto on her teacups! But how can I give Hawkins his just due _if_ I
+do? I had the loveliest things planned for his tormenting, but I'd be
+ashamed to look her in the face if she ever found me out after this
+interview.
+
+"Oh, Betty, I don't want to renounce the world and the flesh and all the
+other bad things this early in the term, but I'm afraid that I've
+already done it. She's laid a spell on all of us."
+
+"Has she sent for Lloyd and Allison, too?"
+
+"Yes, Allison was the first victim. She came back in a regular
+dare-to-be-a-Daniel mood, and announced that she intended to start in,
+heart and soul, for the studio honours this year. Then Lloyd had her
+turn, and she came back looking like Joan of Arc when she'd been
+listening to the voices. I vowed she shouldn't have that effect on me,
+but here I am, perfectly docile as you see, fangs drawn and claws cut. I
+tremble for the effect on you, sweet innocent. Your wings will sprout
+before you get back."
+
+Betty laughed and hurried past her down the stairs. Evidently it was
+Madam's custom to make the acquaintance of her new girls in this way,
+one at a time. Only fifteen freshmen were admitted each year, so it was
+possible for her to take a personal interest in every pupil.
+
+Betty's heart fluttered expectantly as she paused an instant in the door
+of the pink room. Madam Chartley had looked very imposing and dignified
+as she presided at the lunch-table that noon, with the stately Hawkins
+behind her chair and the stately portraits looking down from the walls.
+
+She looked now as if she might be the original of one of these old
+portraits herself, as she sat there in the high-backed chair, with the
+griffins carved on its teakwood frame. Her gray gown trailed around her
+in graceful folds. There was a soft fall of lace at wrists and throat,
+and her white hair had a sheen like silver against the pink brocade with
+which the chair was upholstered.
+
+With a smile which seemed to take Betty straight into her confidence,
+she held out her hand and drew her to a seat beside her. An
+old-fashioned silver tea-service stood on a table at her elbow, and when
+the maid had brought hot water, she busied herself in filling a cup for
+Betty.
+
+"There!" she said, as she passed it to her. "There's nothing like a cozy
+chat over a cup of tea for warming acquaintances into friends."
+
+Betty wondered, as she took a proffered slice of lemon, if Madam began
+all her interviews in this way, and if she was to hear the same little
+sermon about the crest on the ancestral teacups that Kitty had heard. It
+certainly was an interesting crest. She lifted the fragile bit of china
+for a closer survey. A mailed arm, rising out of a heart, clasped a
+spear in its hand, and under it ran the motto, "I keep tryst."
+
+[Illustration: "MADAM'S CONVERSATION LED FAR AWAY FROM THE CREST AND ITS
+LESSON"]
+
+But Madam's conversation led far away from the crest and its lesson. At
+first it was about a quaint old English inn, where is served delicious
+toasted scones with five o'clock tea. When she mentioned that, it was as
+if they had discovered a mutual friend, for Betty cried out joyfully
+that she had been there, and had spent a long rainy afternoon in one of
+its rooms, where Scott had written many chapters of "Kenilworth." Betty
+remembered afterward that not a word was said about school and its
+obligations. It was of the Old Curiosity Shop they spoke, and the House
+of Seven Gables. Madam promised to show her the autographs of Dickens
+and Hawthorne, which she had in her collection, and a pen which had once
+belonged to George Eliot.
+
+Then Betty found that Madam had known Miss Alcott, and, before she
+realized what she was doing, she had thrown herself down impulsively on
+the stool at her feet, and, with both hands clasping the griffin's head
+on the arm of the high-backed chair, was asking a dozen eager questions
+about "Little Women" and the author who had been her first inspiration
+to write.
+
+Nearly an hour later, when she went back to her room, it was with
+something singing in her heart that made her very solemn and very happy.
+It was the immortal music of the Choir Invisible. She had been in the
+unseen company of earth's best and noblest, and felt in her soul that
+some day she, too, would have a right to be counted in that chorus,
+having done something really great and worth while.
+
+That evening after dinner Kitty bounced into the room where Allison sat
+talking with Lloyd and Betty during recreation hour.
+
+"To-morrow night there's to be the Old Girls' Welcome to the New!" she
+cried. "Come on in, Juliet, and tell them about it."
+
+Juliet thrust her head through the half-open door.
+
+"Haven't time to stop," she answered, "but I'll tell this much. It's the
+first of the great social functions. Everybody wears her party clothes
+and a sweet smile. It's the first lesson of the year in How to attain
+Ease under New and Exacting Conditions. No matter how the seniors snub
+you later on, in order to teach you your proper place, you'll all be
+birds of a feather that one time, and flock together as peaceably as pet
+hens.
+
+"Each new girl has an escort appointed by the entertaining committee,
+who sends her flowers and calls for her and sees that her programme is
+filled. So there are never any wallflowers the first night. No, Allison,
+it isn't a dance. The programmes are for progressive conversation.
+Somewhere in the background there's a piano playing waltzes and
+two-steps, and so forth, but you talk out the numbers instead of dancing
+them. Changing partners so often keeps you from getting bored, and
+strangers can tell who is talking to them, for there are the names on
+their programmes. You can refer to that when anybody comes up to claim
+you. I'm to take Lloyd, and Sybil Green is to take Kitty. I haven't
+found out the other assignments yet. I'll let you know as soon as I do.
+Continued in our next."
+
+With an airy wave of the hand she withdrew, leaving them to an animated
+discussion of what to wear.
+
+"You must remember that this isn't the only time you're to appear in
+public, Katherine Walton," said Allison, severely, when Kitty proposed
+her best array. "There's to be a reception at the White House next week,
+and Friday night we're to go in to Washington to see Jefferson in 'Rip
+Van Winkle,' and there's to be a studio tea soon, and a recital, and
+all sorts of things. I saw the bulletin of the term's entertainments in
+the hall this evening."
+
+"_We_'ll never be seen at those things," insisted Kitty.
+
+"We'll scarcely be a drop in the bucket. But to-morrow night, isn't the
+whole affair for us? We'll be the whole show. We'll be _it_, Allison,
+and 'it's my night to howl.' I intend to wear my rose-pink mull and a
+rosebud in my raving tresses, and carry the gorgeous spangled fan that
+the dear old admiral gave me in Manila. So there!"
+
+"Then don't come near me," said Allison, with a warning shake of her
+head, "for I am going to wear my cerise crepe de chine. It's lovely by
+itself, but by the side of anything the shade of your pink mull it's the
+most hideous, sickly colour you ever saw. I _wish_ you'd wear that pale
+green dress, Kitty. You look sweet in that, and it goes so well with
+mine."
+
+"But, my dear sister," laughed Kitty, "I don't expect to spend any time
+getting acquainted with _you_. I'll probably not be near you the whole
+evening. It's not expected that, just because we are from Kentucky, we
+have to pose as those two devoted creatures on the State seal,--stand
+around with our hands clasped, exclaiming 'United we stand, divided we
+fall!' to every one that comes up."
+
+"Nevah mind, Allison," said Lloyd, laughing at Kitty's dramatic gestures
+and her sister's worried expression. "I'll play 'State seal' with you. I
+have a pale green almost the shade of Kitty's, and I'll wear the coral
+clasps and chains that were Papa Jack's mothah's. He gave them to me
+just before I left home. I'll show them to you."
+
+She began to rummage through her trunk. Betty sat looking at the
+ceiling, trying to decide the momentous question of dress for herself.
+Finally she announced: "I'll just wear white, then I'll harmonize with
+everybody, and can run up to the first one of you I happen to see when I
+need a spark of courage. I know I'll be terribly embarrassed. It makes
+me cold right now to think of meeting so many strangers."
+
+But Betty's courage needed no reinforcing next evening, when Maria
+Overlin, one of the seniors, took her in charge. The reception took
+place in what had been the ballroom, in the days when Warwick Hall was
+noted for its brilliant entertainments. Even its first hostess could not
+have received her distinguished guests with courtlier grace than Madam
+Chartley received her pupils, when, to the music of a stately minuet,
+they filed past her down the long line of teachers.
+
+For once, each of the new girls, no matter how timid or inexperienced in
+social ways, tasted the sweets of popularity, and the four whom Juliet
+Lynn had dubbed the Kentucky quartette were overwhelmed with attentions.
+
+Juliet, who had hoped to escort Betty, was glad that Lloyd had fallen to
+her lot when she saw what an admiring little court flocked around her
+wherever she turned. In the pale green dress, with its clasps of pink
+coral carved in the shape of tiny butterflies, she looked more
+princess-like than ever. She wore a bracelet of the coral butterflies
+also, and a slender circlet of them about her throat. They gave a soft
+pink flush to her cheeks.
+
+No sooner had she passed the receiving line than she was surrounded by a
+group of white-gowned girls clamouring for an introduction and a place
+on her programme.
+
+"Whose initials are these?" she whispered to Juliet presently when the
+card was all filled and there were still several girls asking to be
+allowed to write their names on it.
+
+"Couldn't I give Miss Bartlett this line where there's nothing but G. M.
+scrawled on it?"
+
+"Mercy, no!" exclaimed Juliet. "That's for Gabrielle Melville. It would
+never do for you two to miss each other to-night. I put them down for
+her, as she's to play later in the evening on the violin, you know, and
+I knew she'd never get here in time to do it herself. She always has
+such frantic times dressing. Just struggles into her things, never can
+find half her clothes, and what she does manage to fall into catches and
+rips in the struggle. Her hat is always over one ear, and her belts
+never make connection in the back, but she's so adorable that nobody
+minds her wild toilets. They laugh and say, 'Oh, it's just Gay.' That's
+her nickname, you know. Here's Emily Chapman coming to claim you. Emily,
+you can tell Lloyd some things about Gay, can't you?"
+
+"I rather think so," laughed Emily. "We roomed together last year, and I
+got her again this term. It took a fight, though, for she's the most
+popular girl in school."
+
+"Is she pretty?" asked Lloyd.
+
+"We think so, don't we, Juliet? If she had any enemies, they might say
+that she has red hair and a pug nose. But that would be exaggerating.
+Her hair is that beautiful bronzy auburn that crinkles around her face
+and blows in her eyes till she always seems to be bringing a breeze with
+her."
+
+"And her nose isn't pug exactly," chimed in Juliet. "There's just a
+darling, saucy little tip to it, that seems to suit her. She wouldn't be
+half as pretty with the approved Gibson girl kind, no matter how perfect
+it was."
+
+"And her complexion is so lovely," Emily resumed, enthusiastically. "And
+her eyes are a jolly, laughing kind of brown, with an amber sparkle in
+them, except when she gets into one of her intense, serious moods. Then
+they are almost black, they're so deep and velvety. She's never twice in
+the same mood. Oh! There she comes now."
+
+A side door opened, and a slim little thing all in white, with a violin
+under her arm and a distracted pucker on her face, hurried up to the
+piano. Nervously feeling her belt to make sure that she was presentable
+before turning her back on the audience, she whispered to the girl who
+was to play her accompaniments, and began tuning the violin. Then,
+tucking it under her chin as if she loved it, she listened an instant to
+the piano prelude, and drew her bow softly across the strings.
+
+"Good!" whispered Emily. "It's that Mexican swallow song. She always
+has such a rapt expression on her face when she plays that. She makes me
+think of St. Cecilia. She's so earnest in all she does. If it's no more
+than making fudge, she throws her whole soul into it, just that way.
+She's as intense as if the fate of a nation depended on whatever she
+happens to be doing."
+
+As Lloyd joined loudly in the applause which followed the performance,
+another girl came up to claim her attention. It was Myra Carr, the
+senior who had taken Allison under her wing.
+
+"Doesn't Gay play splendidly?" she exclaimed, not knowing that she had
+been the previous topic of conversation. "We think she's a genius. She
+improvises little things sometimes in the twilight that are so sweet and
+sad they make you cry. Then she's unconventional enough to be a genius.
+She's always shocking people without meaning to, and so careless, she'd
+lose her head if nature hadn't attended to the fastenings.
+
+"We all love her dearly, but we vowed the last time we went sightseeing
+that she should never go with us again unless she let us tie her up in a
+bag, so that nothing could drop out by the way. First she lost her hat.
+It blew off the trolley-car, one of those 'seeing Washington' affairs,
+you know. She had to go bareheaded all the rest of the way. Then she
+lost her pocketbook, and such a time as we had hunting that. The time
+before, she lost a locket that had been a family heirloom, and we missed
+our train and got caught in a shower looking for it."
+
+"Where does she live?" asked Lloyd, watching the bright face that was
+making its way toward them across the crowded room.
+
+"At Fort Sam Houston, down in San Antonio. Her father is an army officer
+at that post."
+
+There was no time for further discussion, for Gabrielle was coming
+toward her with outstretched hand.
+
+"This is Juliet's Princess, isn't it?" she asked, with a smile that
+captivated Lloyd at once, flashing over the whitest of little teeth.
+"You're getting all sorts of titles to-night. I heard a girl speak of
+you as a mermaid in that pale sea-green gown and corals, but I've come
+over here on purpose to call you the 'Little Colonel.' You don't know
+how much good it does me to hear a military title once more. Out at the
+fort it's all majors and captains and such things."
+
+Then, dropping her grown-up society manner, she suddenly giggled,
+turning to include Emily in the conversation.
+
+"Oh, girls, I had the worst time getting dressed this evening that I
+ever had in my life. When I unpacked my trunk yesterday, everything was
+so wrinkled that there was only one dress I could wear without having it
+pressed; this white one. So I laid it out, but, when I went to put it on
+to-night, I found that mamma had made a mistake in packing, and put in
+Lucy's skirt instead. Lucy is my older sister," she explained to Lloyd.
+"We each had a dotted Swiss this summer, made exactly alike, but Lucy is
+so much taller than I that her skirts trail on me. Just look how
+imposing!"
+
+She swept across the floor and back to show the effect of her trail.
+
+"Of course there was nothing to do at that late hour but pin it up in
+front and go ahead. I'm afraid every minute that I'll trip and fall all
+over myself, but I do feel so dignified when I feel my train sweeping
+along behind me. The pins keep falling out all around the belt, and I
+can't help stepping on the hem in front. I love trains," she added,
+switching hers forward with a grand air that was so childlike in its
+enjoyment that Lloyd felt impelled to hug her. "It gives you such a
+dressed-up, peacocky feeling."
+
+Then she looked up in her most soulful, intense way, as if she were
+asking for important information. "Do you know whether it's true or not?
+_Does_ a peacock stop strutting if it happens to see its feet? My old
+nurse told me that, and said that it shows that pride always goes before
+a fall. I never was where they kept peacocks before I came to Warwick
+Hall, and I've spent hours watching Madam's to see if it is true. But
+they are always so busy strutting, I've never been able to catch them
+looking at their feet."
+
+She glanced at her own feet as she spoke, then gasped and, covering her
+face with her hands, sank limply into a chair in the corner behind her.
+
+"What's the matter?" cried Juliet, alarmed by the sudden change.
+
+"Look! Oh, just _look_!" was the hysterical answer, as she thrust out
+both feet, and sat pointing at them tragically, with fingers and thumbs
+of both hands outspread.
+
+"No wonder they felt queer. I was so intent on getting my dress pinned
+up, and in rushing out in time to play, that I couldn't take time to
+analyze my feelings and discover the cause of the queerness. Madeline
+blew in at a critical point to borrow a pin, and that threw me off, I
+suppose."
+
+From under the white skirt protruded two feet as unlike as could well be
+imagined. One was cased in dainty white kid, the other in an old red
+felt bedroom slipper, edged with black fur.
+
+"And it would have been all the same," sighed Gay, "if I had been going
+to an inaugural ball to hobnob with crowned heads. And I had hoped to
+make _such_ a fine impression on the Little Colonel," she added, in a
+plaintive tone, with a childlike lifting of the face that Lloyd thought
+most charming.
+
+If the mistake had been made by any other girl in the school, it would
+not have seemed half so ridiculous, but whatever Gay did was
+irresistibly funny. A laughing crowd gathered around her, as she sat
+with the red slipper and the white one stretched stiffly out in front of
+her, bewailing her fate.
+
+"Anyhow," she remarked, "I'll always have the satisfaction of knowing
+that I put my best foot foremost, and if they had been alike I couldn't
+have done that. Now could I?" And the girls laughed again, because it
+was Gay who said it in her own inimitable way, and because the old felt
+slipper looked so ridiculous thrust out from under the dainty white
+gown. As others came crowding up to see what was causing so much
+merriment in that particular corner, Gay attempted to slip out and go to
+her room to correct her mistake. But Sybil Green, pushing through the
+outer ring, came up with Allison and Kitty.
+
+"Gay," she began, "here are the girls that you especially wanted to
+meet: General Walton's daughters."
+
+Gay's face flushed with pleasure, and, forgetting her errand, she
+impulsively stretched out a hand to each, and held them while she
+talked.
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad to meet you!" she cried. "I wish that I had known that
+you girls were here yesterday before papa left. He is Major Melville,
+and he was such a friend of your father's. He was on that long Indian
+campaign with him in Arizona, and I've heard him talk of him by the
+hour. And last week"--here she lowered her voice so that only Allison
+and Kitty heard, and were thrilled by the sweet seriousness of it. "Last
+week he took me out to Arlington to carry a great wreath of laurel. When
+he'd laid it on the grave, he stood there with bared head, looking all
+around, and I heard him say, in a whisper, 'No one in all Arlington has
+won his laurels more bravely than you, my captain.' You see it was as a
+captain that papa knew him best. He would have been so pleased to have
+seen you girls."
+
+Kitty squeezed the hand that still held hers and answered, warmly: "Oh,
+you dear, I hope we'll be as good friends as our fathers were!" And
+Allison answered, winking back the tears that had sprung to her eyes:
+"Thank you for telling us about the laurel. Mother will appreciate it so
+much."
+
+While this conversation was going on at Lloyd's elbow, Betty came up to
+her on the other side. "Please see if my dress is all right in the
+back," she whispered. "It feels as if it were unfastened." Then, as
+Lloyd assured her it was properly buttoned, she added, in an undertone:
+"Have you met Maud Minor? She's one of the new girls."
+
+Lloyd shook her head.
+
+"Then I'm going to introduce you as soon as I can. She knows Malcolm
+MacIntyre."
+
+"Knows Malcolm!" exclaimed Lloyd, in amazement. "Where on earth did she
+ever meet him?"
+
+"At the seashore last summer. She can't talk about anything else. She
+thinks he is so handsome and has such beautiful manners and is so
+adorably romantic. Those are her very words. She has his picture.
+Evidently he has talked to her about you, for she's so curious to know
+you. She asked a string of questions that I thought were almost
+impertinent."
+
+"Where is she?" asked Lloyd.
+
+"There, that girl in white crossing the room with the fat one in
+lavender."
+
+Lloyd gave a long, critical look, and then said, slowly: "She's the
+prettiest girl in the room, and she makes me think of something I've
+read, but I can't recall it."
+
+"I know," said Betty, "but you'll laugh at me if I say Tennyson again.
+It's from 'Maud'--
+
+          "'I kissed her slender hand.
+            She took the kiss sedately.
+            Maud is not seventeen,
+            But she is tall and stately.'
+
+"But she is not as sedate as she looks," added Betty, truthfully. "I'd
+like her better if she didn't gush. That's the only word that will
+express it. And it seemed queer for her to take me into her confidence
+the minute she was introduced. Right away she gave me to understand that
+she'd had a sort of an affair with Malcolm. She didn't say so in so many
+words, but she gave me the impression that he had been deeply
+interested in her, in a romantic way, you know."
+
+Lloyd looked at Maud again, more critically this time, and with keener
+interest. Then her thoughts flew back to the churchyard stile where they
+had paused in their gathering of Christmas greens one winter day. For an
+instant she seemed to see the handsome boy looking down at her, begging
+a token of the Princess Winsome, and saying, in a low tone, "I'll be
+whatever you want me to be, Lloyd."
+
+Juliet's voice broke in on her reverie. "Miss Sherman, allow me to
+present Miss Minor."
+
+Maud was slightly taller than Lloyd, but it was not her extra inches
+alone which seemed to give her the air of looking down on every one. It
+was her patronizing manner. Lloyd resented it. Instinctively she drew
+herself up and responded somewhat haughtily.
+
+"My dear, I've been simply _dying_ to meet you," began Maud, effusively.
+"Ever since I found out that you were the girl Malcolm MacIntyre used to
+be so fond of."
+
+Lloyd responded coldly, certain that Malcolm had not discussed their
+friendship in a way to warrant this outburst from a stranger.
+
+"Do you know his brothah Keith, too?" she asked. "We're devoted to both
+the boys. You might say we grew up togethah, for they visited in the
+Valley so much. We've been playmates since we were babies. You must meet
+the Walton girls. They are Malcolm's cousins, you know."
+
+Before Maud realized how it came about, Lloyd had graciously turned her
+over to Allison and Kitty, and made her escape with burning cheeks and a
+resentful feeling. Maud's words kept repeating themselves: "So adorably
+romantic. The girl Malcolm _used to be_ so fond of!" They made her
+vaguely uncomfortable. She wondered why.
+
+For another hour she went on making acquaintances and adding to her
+store of information about Warwick Hall. They couldn't have
+chafing-dishes in their rooms, one frivolous sophomore told her. The
+insurance companies objected after one girl spilled a bottle of alcohol
+and set fire to the curtains. But once a week those who pined for candy
+could make it over the gas-stove in the Domestic Science kitchen. Those
+who were too lazy to make it could buy it Monday afternoons from Mammy
+Easter, an old coloured woman who lived in a cabin on the place. She was
+famous for her pralines, the sophomore declared. "We have jolly charades
+and impromptu tableaux up in the gymnasium sometimes. Oh, school at the
+Hall is one grand lark!"
+
+"Don't you believe it," said the spectacled junior who monopolized Lloyd
+next. "It's a hard dig to keep up to the mark they set here. But I must
+say it is an agreeable kind of a dig," she added.
+
+"It's good just to wake up in the morning and know there's going to be
+another whole day of it. The classes are so interesting, and the
+teachers so interested in us, that they bring out the very best in
+everybody. Even a grasshopper would have its ambition aroused if it
+stayed in this atmosphere long."
+
+She peered at Lloyd through her glasses as if to satisfy herself that
+she would be understood, and then added, confidentially: "I can fairly
+feel myself grow here. I feel the way I imagine the morning-glories do
+when they find themselves climbing up the trellis. They just stretch out
+their hands and everything helps them up,--the sun and the soil, the
+wind and the dew. And here at Warwick Hall there's so much to help. Even
+the little glimpses we get over the garden wall into the outside world
+of Washington, with its politics and great men. But those two people
+over there help me most of all." She nodded toward Madam Chartley and
+Miss Chilton, the teacher of English, who were now seated together on a
+sofa near the door.
+
+"When I look at them I feel that the morning-glory vine must climb just
+as high as it possibly can, and shake out a wealth of bells in return
+for all that has been given toward its growth. Don't you?"
+
+"Yes," answered Lloyd, slightly embarrassed by the soulful gaze turned
+on her through the spectacles. "Betty would enjoy knowing you," she
+exclaimed. "She is always saying and writing such things."
+
+"Oh, I thought that you were the one that writes," answered the junior.
+"Aren't you the one the freshmen are going to elect class editor for
+their page of the college paper?"
+
+"No, indeed!" protested Lloyd, laughing at the idea. "Come across the
+room with me and I'll find Betty for you."
+
+"There won't be time to-night," responded the junior, "for there goes
+the music that means good night. They always play 'America' as a signal
+that it's time to go."
+
+"What makes you so quiet?" asked Betty, a little later, as they slowly
+undressed. She had chattered along, commenting on the events of the
+evening, ever since they came to their room, but Lloyd had seemed
+remarkably unresponsive.
+
+"Oh, nothing," yawned Lloyd. "I was just thinking of that fairy-tale of
+the three weavers. I'll turn out the light."
+
+As she reached up to press the electric button, she thought again, for
+the twentieth time, "I wonder what it was that Malcolm told Maud Minor."
+Then she nestled down among the pillows, saying, sleepily, to herself:
+"Anyway, I'm mighty glad that I nevah gave him that curl he begged
+for."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+AN EXCURSION
+
+
+IT was a Sabbath afternoon in October, sunny and still, with a purple
+haze resting on the distant woodlands across the river. A warm odour of
+ripe apples floated across the old peach orchard, for a few rare
+pippin-trees stood in its midst, flaunting the last of their fruitage
+from gnarled limbs, or hiding it in the sear grass underneath.
+
+Here and there groups of bareheaded girls wandered in the sun-flecked
+shade, exchanging confidences and stooping now and then to pounce
+joyfully upon some apple that had hitherto evaded discovery. Betty, who
+had been reading aloud for nearly an hour to a little group under one of
+the largest trees, closed her book with a yawn. Lloyd and Kitty leaned
+lazily back against the mossy trunk, and Allison, with her arms around
+her knees, gazed dreamily across the river. The only one who did not
+seem to have fallen under the drowsy spell of the Indian summer
+afternoon was Gay. Up in the tree above them, she lay stretched out
+along a limb, peering down through the leaves like a saucy squirrel.
+
+"What a Sleepy Hollow tale that was!" she exclaimed. "It just suits the
+day, but it has hypnotized all of you. Do wake up and be sociable."
+
+She began breaking off bits of twigs and dropping them down on the heads
+below. One struck Lloyd's ear, and she brushed it off impatiently,
+thinking it was a bug. Gay laughed and began teasingly:
+
+          "There was a young maiden named Lloyd,
+           Whom reptiles always annoyed.
+           An innocent worm would cause her to squirm,
+           And cloyed--toyed--employed--
+
+I'm stuck, Betty. Come to the rescue with a rhyme."
+
+"So with germicide she's overjoyed," supplied Betty, promptly.
+
+"That's all right," said Kitty, waking up. "Let's each make a Limerick.
+Five minutes is the limit, and the one that hasn't his little verse
+ready when the time is up will have to answer truthfully any question
+the others agree to ask."
+
+"No," objected Lloyd. "I'd be suah to be it. I can make the rhymes, but
+the lines limp too dreadfully for any use."
+
+"We won't count that," promised Kitty, looking at her chatelaine watch.
+"Now, one, two, three! Fire away!"
+
+There was silence for a little space, broken only by the soft cooing of
+a far-away dove. Then Betty looked up with a satisfied smile. The
+anxious pucker smoothed out of Lloyd's forehead, and Allison nodded her
+readiness.
+
+"Lloyd first," called Kitty, looking at her watch again.
+
+A mischievous smile brought the dimples to the Little Colonel's face as
+she began:
+
+          "There's a girl in our school called Kitty,
+           Evidently not from the city.
+           With screeches and squawkin's
+           She upset the nerves of poah old Hawkins.
+           Oh, her behaviour was not at all pretty."
+
+A burst of laughter greeted Lloyd's attempt at verse-making, for the
+subject which she had chosen recalled one of Kitty's outbreaks the first
+week of school, when the temptation to upset Hawkins's dignity was more
+than she could resist. No one of them who had seen Hawkins's wild exit
+from the linen closet the night she hid on the top shelf, and raised
+his hair with her blood-curdling moans and spectral warnings (having
+blown out his candle from above), could think of the occurrence without
+laughing till the tears came to their eyes.
+
+"Now, Allison," said Kitty, when the final giggle had died away. "It's
+your turn." Allison referred to the lines she had scribbled on the back
+of a magazine:
+
+          "There is a young maiden, they say,
+           Who grows more beloved every day.
+           When we talk or we ramble, there's always a scramble
+           To be next to the maid who is _Gay_."
+
+"Whew! Thanks awfully!" came the embarrassed exclamation from the boughs
+above, and Betty cried, in surprise: "Why, I wrote about her, too. I
+said:
+
+          "Like the bow on the strings when she plays,
+           So she crosses with music our days.
+           Our hearts doth she tune to the gladness of June,
+           And the smile that brings sunshine is Gay's."
+
+"My dear, that's no Limerick, that's poetry!" exclaimed Kitty, and Gay
+called down: "It's awfully nice of you, girls, but please change the
+subject. I'm so covered with confusion that I'm about to fall off this
+limb."
+
+"Well, here's something mean enough to brace you up," answered Kitty.
+"It's about Maud Minor. It's hateful of me to write it, but I happened
+to see her going down the terrace steps and it just popped into my head:
+
+          "There is a young lady named Maud,
+           Whose manners are overmuch thawed.
+           She'll beat an oil-well. When they'd gushed for a spell
+           _It_ would take a back seat and applaud."
+
+"What's the matter, Kitty?" asked Betty, "I thought you admired her
+immensely."
+
+"I did that first week, but it's just as I say. She gushes over me so,
+simply because I am Malcolm's cousin. I know very well that I am not the
+dearest, cutest, brightest, most beautiful and angelic being in the
+universe, and she isn't sincere when she insists that I am. She overdoes
+it, and is so dreadfully effusive that I want to run whenever she comes
+near me. I wish she wasn't going on the excursion to-morrow."
+
+"She doesn't worry me," said Gay. "I meet her on her own ground and fire
+back her own adjectives at her, doubled and twisted. She has let me
+alone for some time."
+
+The discussion of Maud led their thoughts away from Gay's Limerick, and
+Kitty forgot to ask for it. They sat in silence again, and the
+plaintive calling of the dove sounded several times before any one
+spoke.
+
+"It's so sweet and peaceful here," said Betty, softly. "It makes me
+think of Lloydsboro Valley. I could shut my eyes and almost believe I
+was back in the old Seminary orchard."
+
+"I'm glad we're not," said Allison. "For then we'd miss to-morrow's
+excursion. And I like having our holiday on Monday instead of Saturday,
+as we did there."
+
+"What excursion are you talking about?" asked Gay, lazily swinging her
+foot over the limb.
+
+Betty explained. "We're going to see some rare old books and illuminated
+manuscripts. Miss Chilton has a friend in Washington who has one of the
+finest private collections in the country, and she offered to take any
+of the freshman class who cared to go. Ten of us have accepted the
+invitation. We're going to the Congressional Library in the morning,
+take lunch at some restaurant, and then call on this lady early in the
+afternoon. It will be the only chance to see them, as she is going
+abroad very soon, and the house will be closed for the winter."
+
+"There are other things in the collection besides books," said Allison
+"Some queer old musical instruments,--a harpsichord and a lute, and an
+old violin worth its weight in gold. Some of the most noted violinists
+in the world have played on it."
+
+"Oh, I know!" cried Gay, raising herself to a sitting position and
+throwing away the core of the apple she had been eating. "That's the
+excursion I missed last year when I sprained my ankle. I never was so
+disappointed in my life. I'm going right now to ask Miss Chilton to take
+me, too. I'm wild to get my fingers on that violin."
+
+Swinging lightly down from the limb to the ground, she twisted around
+like a contortionist in a vain attempt to see her back.
+
+"There!" she exclaimed, feeling her belt with a sigh of relief. "For a
+wonder there's nothing torn or busted this trip. I must be reforming
+Girls, what do you think! I haven't lost a single thing for a whole
+week."
+
+"Don't brag," warned Lloyd. "Mom Beck would say you'd bettah scratch on
+wood if you don't want yoah luck to change."
+
+Gay shrugged her shoulders at the superstition, but she reached over and
+lightly scratched the pencil thrust through Betty's curly hair.
+
+"There goes the first bell for vespers," said Kitty, as they strolled
+slowly back toward the Hall, five abreast and arm in arm. With one
+accord they began to hum the hymn with which the service always
+opened,--"Day is dying in the west."
+
+"It's going to be a fair day to-morrow," prophesied Gay, pausing an
+instant on the chapel steps. "There's Miss Chilton. I'll run over and
+ask her now."
+
+"It's all right," she whispered several minutes later, when she slipped
+into the seat next Lloyd. "I can go. It'll be the greatest kind of a
+lark."
+
+As Sybil Green passed through the hall next morning, where the
+excursionists were assembling, Gay stopped her and began slowly
+revolving on her heels. "Now view me with a critic's eye," she
+commanded. "Gaze on me from chapeau to shoe sole, and bear witness that
+I am properly girded up for the occasion. See how severely neat and
+plain I am. See how beautifully my belts make connection in the back.
+Three big, stout safety-pins will surely keep my skirt and shirt-waist
+together till nightfall, and there's not a thing about me that I can
+possibly lose."
+
+She was still turning around and around. "Not a watch, ring, pin, or
+bangle! Not even a pocketbook. Miss Chilton is carrying my car-fare,
+and my handkerchief is up my sleeve."
+
+"You might lose your balance or your presence of mind," laughed Sybil.
+"You'll have to watch her, girls. How spick and span you all look," she
+added, as they trooped past, behind Miss Chilton, most of them in
+freshly laundered shirt-waist suits, for the Indian summer day was as
+warm and sunny as June.
+
+"It would be just about Gay's luck to run into a watering-cart or lean
+up against a freshly painted door, in that pretty pongee suit," she
+thought, watching them out of sight.
+
+But for once Gay's lucky star was in the ascendant. The trip to the
+library left her without spot or wrinkle, and as she followed Miss
+Chilton into the restaurant she could not help smiling at her reflection
+in the mirror. It looked so trim and neat.
+
+The restaurant was crowded. The waiters rushed back and forth, balancing
+their great trays on their finger-tips in a reckless way that made Gay
+dodge every time they passed.
+
+"Oh, you needn't laugh," she exclaimed, when some one jokingly called
+attention to her. "I'm born to trouble; and I have a feeling that
+something is going to happen before the day is over."
+
+Something did happen almost immediately, but not to Gay. Two of the
+pompous coloured men collided just as they were passing Miss Chilton's
+table. One tray dropped to the floor with a tremendous crash of breaking
+dishes. The other was caught dexterously in mid-air, but not before its
+contents had turned a somersault and wrought ruin all around it. A bowl
+of tomato soup splashed over Lloyd's immaculate shirt-waist and ran in
+two long red streaks across the shoulders of her duck jacket, which she
+had hung on her chair-post. Her little gasp of dismay was followed by
+one from Maud Minor, whose dainty gray silk waist was spattered
+plentifully with coffee.
+
+There was a profusion of apologies from the waiters and a momentary
+confusion as the wreck was cleared away. In the midst of it, Miss
+Chilton was pleased and gratified to hear a low-pitched voice at the
+table behind her say: "Those are Warwick Hall girls. I recognize their
+chaperon, but I would have known them anywhere from the ladylike way
+they treated the affair. So quiet and self-controlled, not a bit of fuss
+or excitement, and it probably means that the day's outing will be
+spoiled for two of them."
+
+The girls proceeded with their dessert, but Miss Chilton sat
+considering.
+
+"If you girls were only familiar with the city," she said at last,
+looking at her watch, "I could let you go to some shop and get new
+shirt-waists, and you could meet me at my friend's afterward. But even
+if you could find your way to the shop, I would be afraid to risk your
+finding her house. You would have to change cars and walk a block after
+leaving the last one. I must keep my engagement with her promptly, for
+she is an extremely busy woman, and has granted this view of her library
+as a personal favour to me."
+
+"Do let me take them, Miss Chilton," urged Gay, eagerly. "I'm the only
+old girl in the crowd. I learned my way all about town during last
+Christmas vacation. We could meet you in time to see part of the things.
+All I care for is that violin. _Please_ say yes. I'll be the strictest,
+most dignified chaperon you ever heard of."
+
+Miss Chilton laughed at the expression of ferocity which Gay's face
+suddenly assumed to convince her that she could play the part she begged
+for.
+
+"Really that seems to be the only way out of the difficulty," she
+answered. "I'll give you a note to the department store which Madam
+Chartley always patronizes, so that you can have your purchases
+charged."
+
+"What if we can't find anything to fit," suggested Maud, "and it should
+take such a long time to alter them that we'd be too late to meet you?"
+
+Miss Chilton considered again. "It's almost preposterous to imagine
+that, but it is always well to provide for every emergency. If anything
+unforeseen should happen to delay you, or you can't find the proper
+things to make yourselves presentable, just go to the station and take
+the first car back to the school. I'll inquire of the ticket agent, and
+if you've left a card saying 'gone on,' I'll know that you are safe. If
+you've left no word, I'll put these girls on the car for home, and come
+back and institute a search for you."
+
+While the others busied themselves with finger-bowls, she wrote a hasty
+note on a leaf torn from her memorandum book, which she gave to Maud.
+Then she handed a card to Gay.
+
+"You are the pilot, so here is my friend's address on this card. I've
+marked the line of cars you're to take, and the avenue where you
+change."
+
+"Better let Lloyd take it," suggested Kitty. But, with a saucy grimace,
+Gay folded it and slipped it under her belt.
+
+"There!" she said, fastening it with a big black pin she borrowed from
+Allison. "I've woven that pin in and out, first in the ribbon and then
+through the card, till it's as tight as if it had grown there."
+
+"Can't you take us down an alley?" asked Lloyd. "It mawtifies me
+dreadfully to have to go down the street looking like this."
+
+"The car-line that passes this door goes directly to the department
+store," answered Gay. "It's only a few blocks away, but we'll take it.
+That tomato soup on you certainly does look gory."
+
+Maud had taken the veil from her hat and thrown it over her shoulders in
+a way to hide the coffee stains. "Never mind," she said, carelessly, as
+they left the restaurant. "Just hold your head up and sail along with
+your most princess-like air, and people will be so busy admiring you
+that they won't have time to look at your soupy waist."
+
+"Ugh! It smells so greasy and horrid," sniffed the Little Colonel,
+ignoring Maud's remark. "It's just like dishwatah and bacon rinds. I
+want to get away from it as soon as possible."
+
+"Misses' white shirt-waists?" repeated the saleswoman in the big
+department store, when they reached it a few minutes later. "Certainly.
+Here is something pretty. The newest fall goods."
+
+She led them to a counter piled high with boxes, and they made a hasty
+selection. Some alteration was needed in the collar of the one Lloyd
+chose, and in the sleeves of Maud's. While they waited in the
+fitting-room, turning over some back numbers of fashion-plates and
+magazines, Gay amused herself by wandering around the millinery
+department, trying on hats. Presently she found one so becoming that she
+ran back to them, delighted.
+
+"It isn't once in a thousand years that I find a picture hat that looks
+well with my pug nose!" she cried. "But gaze on this!"
+
+She revolved slowly before them, so radiantly pleased over her discovery
+that she looked unusually pretty. Both girls exclaimed over its
+becomingness. Then Lloyd's gaze wandered from the airy structure of
+chiffon and flowers down Gay's back to her waist-line.
+
+"Mercy, child!" she exclaimed. "You've lost your belt. Every one of
+those three safety-pins is showing, and they each look a foot long!"
+
+Gay's hand flew wildly to the back of her dress, but she felt in vain
+for a belt under which to hide the pins. She turned toward them with a
+hopeless drooping of the shoulders.
+
+"_How_ did I lose it?" she demanded, helplessly. "It had the safest,
+strongest kind of a clasp. When do you suppose I did it, and where? I
+must have been a sight parading the street this way like an animated
+pincushion."
+
+She passed her hand over the obtrusive pins again. "I certainly had it
+on when we left the restaurant. Yes, and after we got on the car to come
+here, for I remember just after you paid the fare I ran my fingers down
+inside of it to make sure that Miss Chilton's card was still safely
+pinned to it."
+
+Then she rolled up her eyes and fell limply back against the wall.
+
+"Girls!" she exclaimed, in a despairing voice, "the card is lost with
+it, too. I've no more idea than the man in the moon where Miss Chilton's
+friend lives, or what her name is, or what car-line to take to get
+there. Do either of you remember hearing her say anything that would
+throw any light on the subject?"
+
+Neither Lloyd nor Maud could remember, and the three stood staring at
+each other with startled faces.
+
+"Maybe you dropped your belt coming up in the elevator," suggested Maud.
+"You might inquire. As soon as we get our clothes on, we'll help you
+hunt."
+
+Gay flew to lay aside the picture hat for her own, and, with her hands
+clutching her dress to hide the unsightly safety-pins, started on her
+search through the store.
+
+"We came straight past the ribbon counter and the embroideries to the
+silks, and then we turned here and took the elevator," she said to
+herself, retracing her steps. But inquiries of the elevator boy and
+every clerk along the line failed to elicit any information about the
+lost belt.
+
+"No, it was only an ordinary belt that no one would look at the second
+time," she explained to those who asked for a description. "Just dark
+blue ribbon with a plain oxidized silver clasp. But there was an address
+pinned to it that is very important for me to find."
+
+The floor-walker obligingly joined in the search, going to the door and
+scanning the pavement and the street-crossing at which they had left the
+car, but to no purpose.
+
+"I can buy a new belt and have it charged," she said to Lloyd, when she
+came back to report, "but there is no way to get the lost address. If I
+could only remember the name, I could look for it in the directory, but
+I never heard it. Miss Chilton always spoke of the lady as 'my friend.'"
+
+"I heard her speak it once," said Lloyd, "but I can't remembah it now."
+
+"Go over the alphabet," suggested Maud. "Say all the names you can think
+of beginning with A and then B, and so on. Maybe you will stumble across
+one that you recognize as the right one."
+
+Lloyd shook her head. "No, it was an unusual name, a long
+foreign-sounding one. I wondahed at the time how she could trip it off
+her tongue so easily."
+
+"Then we're lost! Hopelessly, helplessly undone!" moaned Gay. "All our
+lovely outing spoiled! You won't get to see the books, nor I the violin.
+I know you are hating me horribly. There's nothing to do but go back to
+Warwick Hall, and leave a note with the ticket agent for Miss Chilton."
+
+The tears stood in her eyes, and she looked so broken-hearted that Lloyd
+put her arms around her, insisting that it didn't make a mite of
+difference to her. That she didn't care much for the old books, anyhow,
+and for her not to grieve about it another minute.
+
+Maud's face darkened as she listened. Presently she said: "I don't care
+particularly about the books, either, but I don't see any use of our
+losing the entire holiday. You know your way about the city, Gay; I have
+some car-fare in my purse, and so has Lloyd. We can go larking by
+ourselves."
+
+The dressmaker came back with Maud's waist. She put it on, and Gay went
+for her belt. While Lloyd was still waiting for her waist, Maud
+sauntered out of the fitting-room, and asked permission to use the
+telephone. She was still using it when Gay joined them.
+
+"Wait a minute," Maud called to her invisible auditor, and, still
+holding the receiver, turned toward the girls.
+
+"Such grand luck!" she exclaimed, in a low tone. "I just happened to
+think of a young fellow I know here in town--Charlie Downs. He is always
+ready for anything going, and, when I telephoned him the predicament we
+are in, he said right away he would meet us down here and take us all to
+the matinee."
+
+"Charlie Downs," echoed Gay. "I never heard of him."
+
+"That doesn't make any difference," Maud answered, hurriedly. Then, in a
+still lower tone, with her back to the telephone: "He's all right. He's
+a sort of a distant relative of mine,--that is, his cousin married into
+our family. I can vouch for Charlie. He's a young medical student, and
+he's in old Doctor Spencer's office. Everybody knows Doctor Spencer, one
+of the finest specialists in the country."
+
+She turned toward the telephone again, but Gay stopped her. "It's out of
+the question, Maud, for us to accept such an invitation. It's kind of
+him to ask us, but you're in my charge, and I'll have to take the
+responsibility of refusing."
+
+"Well, I never heard the like of that!" said Maud, angrily, looking down
+on Gay in such a scornful, disgusted way that Lloyd would have laughed
+had the situation not been so tragic. Gay, trying to be commanding,
+reminded her of an anxious little hen, ruffling its feathers because the
+obstinate duckling in its brood refused to come out of the water.
+
+"Madam Chartley wouldn't like it," urged Gay.
+
+"Then she should have made rules to that effect. You know there's not a
+single one that would stand in the way of our doing this."
+
+"Yes, there is. It's an unwritten one, but it's the one law of the Hall
+that Madam expects every one to live up to."
+
+"May I ask what?" Maud's tone was freezingly polite.
+
+"The motto under the crest. It's on everything you know, the old earl's
+teacups, the stationery, and everything--'Keep tryst.'"
+
+"Fiddlesticks for the old earl's teacups!" said Maud, shrugging her
+shoulders. "It's unreasonable to expect us to keep tryst with Miss
+Chilton now."
+
+"Not that," said Gay, ready to cry. "We're to keep tryst with what she
+expects of us. She expects us to do the right thing under all
+circumstances, and you know the right thing now is to go home. We were
+recognized at the restaurant as Warwick Hall girls, and we might be
+again at the matinee. What would people think of the school if they saw
+three of the girls there with a strange young man without a chaperon?"
+
+"You're the chaperon. If you'd do to take us shopping, you'd do for
+that."
+
+"Oh, Maud, don't be unreasonable," urged Gay. "It's entirely different.
+Don't be offended, please, but we can't go. It's simply out of the
+question."
+
+"Indeed it isn't," answered Maud, turning again to the telephone. "Go
+home if you want to, but Lloyd and I will do as we please. I'll accept
+for us."
+
+This time Lloyd stopped her. "Wait! Let's telephone out to the Hall and
+ask Madam."
+
+Maud shrugged her shoulders. "You know very well she'd say no if you
+asked her beforehand." Then the two heard one side of her conversation
+over the telephone.
+
+"Hello, Charlie! Sorry to keep you waiting so long."
+
+"The girls are afraid to go."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I don't suppose so."
+
+"I'm perfectly willing. I'll ask them."
+
+Then turning again, with the receiver in her hand: "He says that the
+matinee will probably be over before the second train out to the Hall,
+and, if it isn't, we can leave a little earlier and be at the station
+before Miss Chilton gets there, and she need never know but what we've
+just been streetcar riding, as we first planned."
+
+"Then that settles it!" exclaimed Lloyd. "If he said that, I wouldn't go
+with him for anything in the world."
+
+"Why?" demanded Maud. Her eyes flashed angrily.
+
+"Because--because," stammered Lloyd. "Well, it'll make you mad, but I
+can't help it. Papa Jack said one time that an honourable man would
+never ask me to do anything clandestine. And it would be sneaking to do
+as he proposes."
+
+Maud was white with rage, and the hand that held the receiver trembled.
+"Have the goodness to keep your insulting remarks to yourself in the
+future, Miss Sherman."
+
+"Please don't go," begged Gay. "I feel so responsible for getting you
+home safely, and it _would_ be sneaking, you know, to pretend we'd been
+simply trolley-riding when we'd been off with him."
+
+"You're nasty little cats to say such things!" stormed Maud. "I don't
+want to have anything more to do with either of you. Go on home and
+leave me alone. Hello! Hello, Charlie!"
+
+They heard her make an engagement to meet him at the drug-store on the
+next corner. Then she sailed out of the store past them, without a
+glance in their direction. Gay began fumbling up her sleeve for her
+handkerchief. The tears were gathering too fast to be winked back.
+
+"It's all my fault," she sobbed. "Oh, if I hadn't lost that unlucky
+belt. To think that I begged to be a chaperon, and then wasn't fit to be
+trusted."
+
+Lloyd tried vainly to comfort her. A little later two
+disconsolate-looking girls took the first afternoon train out to Warwick
+Hall, and stole up to Lloyd's room. As Betty was with Miss Chilton, no
+one knew of their arrival, and they spent several uncomfortable hours
+agonizing over the question of what they should say when they were
+called to account. They decided at last that they would give no more
+information about Maud than that a distant relative had called for her.
+
+At five o'clock, Miss Chilton reached the ticket-office with her little
+brood, and found Lloyd's card with the words "gone on" scribbled in one
+corner. Lloyd and Gay, watching at the window for their arrival, saw
+with sinking hearts that Maud was not with them. They hoped that she
+would come on the same train, and would be forced to make her own
+explanations. But they were not called upon to explain her
+disappearance. Miss Chilton, almost distracted with an attack of
+neuralgic headache, went to her room immediately, and sent down word
+that she would not appear at dinner.
+
+"She'll surely come on the next train," Gay whispered to Lloyd, but the
+whistle sounded at the station, and they watched the clock in vain.
+Ample time passed for one to have walked the distance twice from the
+station to the Hall, but no one came.
+
+It was half-past six when they filed down to dinner. The halls were
+lighted, and all the chandeliers in the great dining-room glowed.
+
+As they passed the window on the stair-landing, Lloyd pressed her face
+against the pane and peered out into the darkness. Gay, just behind her,
+paused and peered also.
+
+"What do you suppose has happened?" she whispered. "It's as dark as a
+pocket, and Maud hasn't come yet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+"KEEP TRYST"
+
+
+LLOYD and Betty were starting to undress when there was a light tap at
+the door, and Gay's head appeared. In response to their eager call, she
+came in, and, shutting the door behind her, stood with her back against
+it.
+
+"No, I can't sit down," she answered. "It's too late to stop. I only ran
+in to tell you that Maud got home about five minutes ago. 'Charlie' came
+with her as far as the door and Madam has just sent for her to demand an
+explanation. She told her roommate that she knew she was in for a
+scolding, and that, as one might as well be killed for a sheep as a
+lamb, she made her good time last as long as she could. After the
+matinee they had a little supper at some roof-garden or cafe or
+something of the kind, where there was a band concert. Then he brought
+her out on the car, and they strolled along the river road home. The
+moon was just beginning to come up. She's had a beautiful time, and
+thinks she has done something awfully cute, but she'll think differently
+by the time Madam is through with her."
+
+"Will she be very terrible?" asked Lloyd, pausing with brush in hand.
+
+"I don't know," answered Gay. "Nothing like this has happened since I
+have been at the Hall, but I've heard her say that this is not a reform
+school, and girls who have to be punished and scolded are not wanted
+here. If they can't measure up to the standard of good behaviour, they
+can't stay. As long as this is the first offence, she'll probably be
+given another trial, but I'd not care to be in her shoes when Madam
+calls her to judgment."
+
+No one ever knew what passed between the two in the up-stairs office,
+but Maud sailed down to breakfast next morning as if nothing had
+happened. The only difference in her manner was when Lloyd and Gay took
+their places opposite her at the table. They glanced across with the
+usual good morning, but she looked past them as if she neither saw nor
+heard.
+
+"Cut dead!" whispered Lloyd. Gay giggled, as she unfolded her napkin.
+"I'm very sure she has no cause to be angry with us. We are the ones
+who ought to act offended."
+
+Soon after breakfast they were called into Miss Chilton's room, but to
+their great relief found that she already knew what had happened, and
+that they were to be questioned only about their own part in the affair.
+So presently Gay passed out to her Latin recitation, and Lloyd wandered
+around the room, waiting for the literature class to assemble.
+
+Miss Chilton's room was the most attractive one in the Hall. It looked
+more like a cheerful library than a schoolroom. Low book-shelves lined
+the walls, with here and there a fine bust in bronze or Carrara marble.
+Pictures from many lands added interest, and the wicker chairs, instead
+of being arranged in stiff rows, stood invitingly about, as if in a
+private parlour. There were always violets on Miss Chilton's desk, and
+ferns and palms in the sunny south windows. The recitations were carried
+on in such a delightfully informal way that the girls looked forward to
+this hour as one of the pleasantest of the day.
+
+This morning, to their surprise, instead of questioning them about the
+topic they had studied, Romance of the Middle Ages, she announced that
+she had a story which Madam Chartley had requested her to read to them,
+and she wished such close attention paid to it that afterward each one
+could write it from memory for the next day's lesson.
+
+"I have a reason for wishing to impress this little tale indelibly on
+your minds," she said, "so I shall offer this inducement for
+concentrating your attention upon it: five credits to each one who can
+hand in a full synopsis of the story, and ten to the one who can
+reproduce it most literally and fully."
+
+There was a slight flutter of expectancy as the class settled itself to
+listen, and, opening the little green and gold volume where a white
+ribbon kept the place, she began to read:
+
+
+"Now there was a troubadour in the kingdom of Arthur, who, strolling
+through the land with only his minstrelsy to win him a way, found in
+every baron's hall and cotter's hut a ready welcome. And while the
+boar's head sputtered on the spit, or the ale sparkled in the shining
+tankards, he told such tales of joust and journey, and feats of brave
+knight errantry, that even the scullions left their kitchen tasks, and,
+creeping near, stood round the door with mouths agape to listen.
+
+"Then with his harp-strings tuned to echoes of the wind on winter moors,
+he sang of death and valour on the field, of love and fealty in the
+hall, till those who listened forgot all save his singing and the noble
+knights whereof he sang.
+
+"One winter night, as thus he carolled in a great earl's hall, a little
+page crept nearer to his bench beside the fire, and, with his blue eyes
+fixed in wonderment upon the graybeard's face, stood spellbound. Now
+Ederyn was the page's name, an orphan lad whose lineage no man knew, but
+that he came of gentle blood all eyes could see, although as vassal
+'twas his lot to wait upon the great earl's squire.
+
+"It was the Yule-tide, and the wassail-bowl passed round till boisterous
+mirth drowned oftentimes the minstrel's song, but Ederyn missed no word.
+Scarce knowing what he did, he crept so close he found himself with
+upturned face against the old man's knee.
+
+"'How now, thou flaxen-haired,' the minstrel said, with kindly smile.
+'Dost like my song?'
+
+"'Oh, sire,' the youth made answer, 'methinks on such a wing the soul
+could well take flight to Paradise. But tell me, prithee, is it possible
+for such as _I_ to gain the title of a knight? How doth one win such
+honours and acclaim and reach the high estate that thou dost laud?'
+
+"The minstrel gazed a little space into the Yule log's flame, and
+stroked his long hoar beard. Then made he answer:
+
+"'Some win their spurs and earn the royal accolade because the blood of
+dragons stains their hands. From mighty combat with these terrors they
+come victorious to their king's reward. And some there be sore scarred
+with conquest of the giants that ever prey upon the borders of our fair
+domain. Some, who have gone on far crusades to alien lands, and there
+with heart of gold and iron hand have proved their fealty to the Crown.'
+
+"Then Ederyn sighed, for well he knew his stripling form could never
+wage fierce combat with a dragon. His hands could never meet the brawny
+grip of giants. 'Is there no other way?' he faltered.
+
+'I wot not,' was the answer. 'But take an old man's counsel. Forget thy
+dreams of glory, and be content to serve thy squire. For what hast such
+as thou to do with great ambitions? They'd prove but flames to burn away
+thy daily peace.'
+
+"With that he turned to quaff the proffered bowl and add his voice to
+those whose mirth already shook the rafters. Nor had he any further
+speech with Ederyn. But afterward the pretty lad was often in his
+thoughts, and in his wanderings about the land he mused upon the
+question he had asked.
+
+"Another twelvemonth sped its way, and once again the Yule log burned
+within the hall, and once again the troubadour knocked at the gate, all
+in the night and falling snow. And as before, with merry jests they led
+him in and made him welcome. And as before, was every mouth agape from
+squire's to scullion's, as he sang.
+
+"Once more he sang of knights and ladyes fair, of love and death and
+valour; and Ederyn, the page, crept nearer to him till the harp-strings
+ceased to thrill. With head upon his hands, he sat and sighed. Not even
+when the wassail-bowl was passed with mirth and laughter did he look up.
+And when the graybeard minstrel saw his grief, he thought upon his
+question of the Yule-tide gone.
+
+"'Ah, now, thou flaxen-haired,' he whispered in his ear. 'I bear thee
+tidings which should make thee sing for joy. There is a way for even
+such as thou to win the honours thou dost covet. I heard it in the royal
+court when last I sang there at the king's behest.'
+
+"Then all aquiver with his eagerness did Ederyn kneel, with face
+alight, beside the minstrel's knee to hear.
+
+"'Know this,' began the graybeard. ''Tis the king's desire to 'stablish
+round him at his court a chosen circle whose fidelity hath stood the
+utmost test. Not deeds of prowess are required of these true followers,
+with no great conquests doth he tax them, but they must prove themselves
+trustworthy, until on hand and heart it may be graven large, "_In all
+things faithful._"
+
+"'To Merlin, the enchanter, he hath left the choice, who by some strange
+spell I wot not of will send an eerie call through all the kingdom. And
+only those will hear who wake at dawn to listen in high places. And only
+those will heed who keep the compass needles of their souls true to the
+north star of a great ambition. The time of testing will be long, the
+summons many. To duty and to sorrow, to disappointment and defeat, thou
+may'st be called. No matter what the tryst, there is but one reply if
+thou wouldst win thy knighthood. Give heed and I will teach thee now
+that answer.'
+
+"Then smiting on his harp, the minstrel sang, so softly under cover of
+the noise, that only Ederyn heard. Through all the song ran ever this
+refrain. It seemed a brooklet winding in and out through some fair
+meadow:
+
+          "''Tis the king's call. O list!
+            Thou heart and hand of mine, keep tryst--
+               Keep tryst or die!'
+
+"Then Ederyn, with his hand upon his heart, made solemn oath. 'Awake at
+dawn and listening in high places will I await that call. With the
+compass needle of my soul true to the north star of a great ambition
+will I follow where it leads, and though through fire and flood it take
+me, I'll make but this reply:
+
+          "''Tis the king's call. O list!
+            Thou heart and hand of mine, keep tryst--
+               Keep tryst or die!'
+
+"Pressing the old man's hand in gratitude (he could say no word for the
+strange fulness in his throat that well-nigh choked him), he rose from
+his knees and left the hall to muse on what had passed.
+
+"That night he climbed into the tower, and, with his face turned to the
+east, kept vigil all alone. Below, the rioters waxed louder in their
+mirth. The knife was in the meat, the drink was in the horn. But he
+would not join their revels, lest morning find him sunk in sodden
+sleep, heavy with feasting and witless from wine.
+
+"As gray dawn trailed across the hills, he started to his feet, for far
+away sounded the call for which he had been waiting. It was like the
+faint blowing of an elfin horn, but the words came clearly.
+
+"'Ederyn! Ederyn! One awaits thee at nightfall in the shade of the
+yew-tree by the abbey tower! Keep tryst!'
+
+"Now the abbey tower was the space of forty furlongs from the domain of
+the earl, and full well Ederyn knew that only by especial favour of his
+squire could he gain leave of absence for this jaunt. So, from sunrise
+until dusk, he worked with will, to gain the wished-for leave. Never
+before did buckles shine as did the buckles of the squire entrusted to
+his polishing. Never did menial tasks cease sooner to be drudgery,
+because of the good-will with which he worked. And when the day was
+done, so well had every duty been performed, right willingly the squire
+did grant him grace, and forthwith Ederyn sped upon his mission.
+
+"The way was long, and, when he reached the abbey tree, he fell
+a-trembling, for there a tall wraith stood within the shadows of the
+yew. No face had it that he could see, its hands no substance, but he
+met it bravely, saying: 'I am Ederyn, come to keep the king's tryst.'
+
+"And then the spectre's voice replied: 'Well hast thou kept it, for 'tis
+known to me the many menial tasks thou didst perform ere thou couldst
+come upon thy quest. In token that we two have met, here is my pledge
+that thou may'st keep to show the king.'
+
+"He felt a light touch on the bosom of his inner vestment, and suddenly
+he stood alone beside the gruesome abbey. Clammy with fear, he knew not
+why, he drew his mantle round him and sped home as one speeds in a
+fearsome dream. And that it was a dream he half-believed, when later, in
+the hall, he served at meat those gathered round the old earl's board.
+But when he sought his bed, and threw aside his outer garment, there on
+his coarse, rough shirt of hodden gray a pearl gleamed white above his
+heart, where the wraith's cold hand had touched him. It was the token to
+the king that he had answered faithfully his call.
+
+"Again before the dawn he climbed into the tower, and, listening when
+the voices of the world were still, heard clear and sweet, like
+far-blown elfin horn, another summons.
+
+"'Ederyn! Ederyn! One awaits thee at the midnight hour beside black
+Kilgore's water. Keep tryst!'
+
+"Again to gain his squire's permission he toiled with double care. This
+time his task was counting all the spears and halberds, the battle-axes
+and the coats of mail that filled the earl's great armament. And o'er
+and o'er he counted, keeping careful tally with a bit of keel upon the
+iron-banded door, till the red lines that he marked there made his eyes
+ache and his head swim. At last the task was finished, and so well the
+squire praised him, and for his faithfulness again was fain to speed him
+on his way.
+
+"It was a woful journey to the waters of Kilgore. Sleep weighed on
+Ederyn's eyelids, and haltingly he went the weary miles, footsore and
+worn. But midnight found him on the spot where one awaited him, another
+wraith-like envoy of the king, and it, too, left a touch upon his heart
+in token he had kept the tryst. And when he looked, another pearl
+gleamed there beside the first.
+
+"So many a day went by, and Ederyn failed not in his homely tasks, but
+carried to his common round of duties all his might, as if they were
+great feats of prowess. Thus gained he liberty to keep the tryst with
+every messenger the king did send.
+
+"Once he fared forth along a dangerous road that led he knew not where,
+and, when he found it crossed a loathly swamp all filled with slime and
+creeping things, fain would he have fled. But, pushing on for sake of
+his brave oath, although with fainting heart, he reached the goal at
+last. This time his token made him wonder much. For when he wakened from
+his swoon, a shining star lay on his heart above the pearls.
+
+"Now it fell out the squire to whom this Ederyn was page was killed in
+conflict with a robber band, and Ederyn, for his faithfulness, was taken
+by the earl to fill that squire's place. Soon after that, they left the
+hall, and journeyed on a visit to a distant lord. 'Twas to the Castle of
+Content they came, where was a joyous garden. And now no menial tasks
+employed the new squire's time. Here was he free to wander all the day
+through vistas of the joyous garden, or loiter by the fountain in the
+courtyard and watch the maidens at their tasks, having fair speech with
+them among the flowers. And one there was among them, so lily-like in
+face, so gentle-voiced and fair, that Ederyn well-nigh forgot his oath,
+and felt full glad when for a space the king's call ceased to sound. And
+gladder was he still, when, later on, the earl's long visit done, he
+left young Ederyn behind to serve the great lord of the castle, for so
+the two friends had agreed, since Ederyn had pleased the old lord's
+fancy.
+
+"Yet was he faithful to his vow, and failed not every dawn to mount to
+some high place, when all the voices of the world were still, and listen
+for the sound of Merlin's horn. One morn it came:
+
+"'Ederyn! Ederyn! One waits thee far away. By the black cave of Atropos,
+when the moon fulls, keep thy tryst!'
+
+"Now 'twas a seven days' journey to that cave, and Ederyn, thinking of
+the lily maid, was loath to leave the garden. He lingered by the
+fountain until nightfall, saying to himself: 'Why should I go on longer
+in these foolish quests, keeping tryst with shadows that vanish at the
+touch? No nearer am I to a knight's estate than, when a stripling page,
+I listened to the minstrel's tales.'
+
+"The fountain softly splashed within the garden. From out the
+banquet-hall there stole the sound of tinkling lutes, and then the lily
+maiden sang. Her siren voice filled all his heart, and he forgot his
+oath to duty. But presently a star reflected in the fountain made him
+look up into the jewelled sky, where shone the polar constellation. And
+there he read the oath he had forgotten: 'With the compass needle of my
+soul true to the north star of my great ambition, I will follow where it
+leads.'
+
+"Thrusting his fingers in his ears to silence the beloved voice of her
+who sang, he madly rushed from out the garden into the blackness of the
+night. The Castle of Content clanged its great gate behind him. He
+shivered as he felt the jar through all his frame, but, never taking out
+his fingers, on he ran, till scores of furlongs lay between him and the
+tempting of that siren voice.
+
+"It was a strange and fearsome wood that lay between him and the cave.
+All things seemed moaning and afraid. He saw no forms, but everywhere
+the shadows shuddered, and moans and groans pursued him till nameless
+fears clutched at his heart with icy chill. Then suddenly the earth
+slipped way beneath his feet, and cold waves closed above his head. He
+knew now he had fallen in the pool that lies upon the far edge of the
+fearsome wood,--a pool so deep and of such whirling motion that only by
+the fiercest struggle may one escape. Gladly he would have allowed the
+waters to close over him, such cold pains smote his heart, had he not
+seemed to hear the old minstrel's song. It aroused him to a final
+effort, and he gasped between his teeth:
+
+          "''Tis the king's call! O list!
+            Thou heart and hand of mine, keep tryst--
+                Keep tryst or die!'
+
+"With that, in one mighty struggle he dragged himself to land. A
+bow-shot farther on he saw the cave, and by sheer force of will crept
+toward it. What happened then he knew not till the moon rose full and
+high above him. A form swathed all in black bowed over him.
+
+"'Ederyn,' she sighed. 'Here is thy token that the king may know that
+thou hast met me face to face.'
+
+"He thought it was a diamond at first, that sparkled there beside the
+star, but when he looked again, lo, nothing but a tear.
+
+"Then went he back unto the joyous garden by slow degrees, for he was
+now sore spent. And after that the summons came full often. Whenever all
+the world seemed loveliest and life most sweet, then was the call most
+sure to come. But never once he faltered. Never was he faithless to the
+king's behest. Up weary mountain steps he toiled to find the sombre face
+of Disappointment there in waiting, and Suffering and Pain were often at
+his journey's end, and once a sore Defeat. But bravely as the months
+went by he learned to smile into their eyes, no matter which one handed
+out to him the pledge of Duty well performed.
+
+"One day, when he no longer was a beardless youth, but grown to pleasing
+stature and of great brawn, he heard the hoped-for call of which he long
+had dreamed: 'Ederyn! Ederyn! The king himself awaits thee. Midsummer
+morn at lark-song, keep tryst beside the palace gate.'
+
+"As travellers on the desert, spent and worn, see far across the sand
+the palm-tree's green that marks life-giving wells, so Ederyn hailed
+this summons to the king. The soul-consuming thirst that long had urged
+him on grew fiercer as the well of consummation came in sight. Hope shod
+his feet with wings, as thus with every nerve a-strain he pushed toward
+the final tryst. So fearful was he some mishap might snatch the cup away
+ere it had touched his thirsty lips, that three full days before the
+time he reached the Vale of Avalon, and sat him down outside the
+entrance to the palace.
+
+"Now there came prowling through the wood that edged the fair domain the
+gnarled dwarfs that do the will of Shudderwain. And Shudderwain, of all
+the giants thereabouts, most cruel was and to be feared. Knowing full
+well what pleasure it would give the bloody monster, these dwarfs laid
+evil hands on Ederyn. Sleeping they found him, and bound him with hard
+leathern thongs, and then with gibes and impish laughter dragged him
+into a dungeon past the help of man.
+
+"Two days and nights he lay there, raging at fate and at his
+helplessness, till he was well-nigh mad, bethinking him of all his
+baffled hopes. And like a madman gnawed he on the leathern thongs till
+he was free, and beat his hands against the stubborn rock that would not
+yield, and threw himself against the walls that held him in.
+
+"The dwarfs from time to time peered through the slatted window overhead
+and mocked him, pointing with their crooked thumbs.
+
+"'Ha! ha! Thou'lt keep no tryst,' they chattered. 'But if thou'lt swear
+upon thy oath to go back to the joyous garden, and hark no more for
+Merlin's call, we'll let thee loose from out this Dungeon of thy
+Disappointment.'
+
+"Then was Ederyn tempted, for the dungeon was foul indeed, and his heart
+cried out to go back to the lily maiden. But once more in his ears he
+thrust his fingers and cried:
+
+          "'To the king's call alone I'll list!
+            Oh, heart and hand of mine, keep tryst--
+               Keep tryst or die!'
+
+"On the third night, with the quiet of despair he threw him prone upon
+the dungeon floor and held his peace, no longer gnawing on his thongs or
+beating on the rock. A single moonbeam straggled through the slatted
+window, and by its light he saw a spider spinning out a web. Then,
+looking dully around, he saw the dungeon was hung thick with other webs,
+foul with the dust of years. Great festoons of the cobweb film shrouded
+his prison walls. As up and down the hairy creature swung itself upon
+its thread, the hopeless eyes of Ederyn followed it.
+
+"All in a twinkling he saw how he might profit by the spider's teaching,
+and clapped his hand across his mouth to keep from shouting out his joy,
+so that the dwarfs could hear. Now once more like a madman rushing at
+the walls, he tore down all the dusty webs, and twisted them together in
+long strands. These strands he braided in thick ropes and tied them,
+knotting them and twisting and doubling once again. All the while he
+kept bewailing the stupid way in which he wasted time. 'Three days ago I
+might have quit this den,' he sighed, 'had I but used the means that lay
+at hand. Full well I knew that heaven always finds a way to help the man
+who helps himself. No creature lives too mean to be of service, and
+even dungeon walls must harbour help for him who boldly grasps the first
+thing that he sees and makes it serve him.'
+
+"So fast and furiously he worked that, long before the moonbeam faded,
+his cobweb rope was strong enough to bear his weight, and long enough to
+reach twice over to the slatted window overhead. By many trials he at
+last succeeded in throwing it around a spike that barred the window,
+and, climbing up, he forced the slats apart and clambered through. Then
+tying the rope's end to the window, he slid down all the dizzy cliffside
+in which the dwarfs had dug the dungeon, and dropped into the stream
+that ran below.
+
+"Lo, when he looked around him it was dawn. Midsummer morn it was, and,
+plunging through the wood, he heard the lark's song rise, and reached
+the palace gate just as it opened to the blare of trumpets for the
+king's train to ride forth. When Ederyn saw the royal cavalcade, he
+shrunk back into the wayside bushes, so ill-befitting did it seem that
+he should come before the king in tattered garments, with blood upon his
+hands where the sharp rocks had cut, and with foul dungeon stains.
+
+"But that the king might know he'd ever proven faithful, he sank upon
+his knees and bared his breast at his approach. There all the pledges
+glistened in the sunlight, in rainbow hues. There Pain had dropped her
+heart's blood in a glittering ruby, and Honour set her seal upon him in
+a golden star. A diamond gleamed where Sorrow's tear had fallen, and
+amethysts glowed now with purple splendour to mark his patient meeting
+with Defeat. But mostly were the pledges little pearls for little duties
+faithfully performed; and there they shone, and, as the people gazed,
+they saw the jewels take the shape of letters, so that the king read out
+before them all, '_Semper fidelis_.'
+
+"Then drew the king his royal sword and lightly smote on Ederyn's
+shoulder, and cried: 'Arise, Sir Knight, Sir Ederyn the Trusty. Since I
+may trust thee to the utmost in little things as well as great, since
+thou of all men art most worthy, henceforth by thy king's heart thou
+shalt ride, ever to be his faithful guard and comrade.'
+
+"So there before them all he did him honour, and ordered that a prancing
+steed be brought and a good sword buckled on his side.
+
+"Thus Ederyn won his sovereign's favour. Soon, by his sovereign's grace
+permitted, he went back to the joyous garden to woo the lily maiden.
+When he had won his bride and borne her to the palace, then was his
+great reward complete for all his years of fealty to his vow. Then out
+into the world he went to guard his king. Henceforth blazoned on his
+shield and helmet he bore the crest--a heart with hand that grasped a
+spear, and, underneath these words:
+
+"_'I keep the tryst!'_"
+
+Slipping the white ribbon back between the pages to mark the place, Miss
+Chilton laid the little green and gold volume on the table, and smiled
+at the circle of attentive faces.
+
+"I am sure you understand why I have read this story," she said. "It is
+the motto of the school. Tradition has it that Sir Ederyn was an ancient
+member of Madam Chartley's family. At any rate, it has borne his crest
+for many, many generations, and there could be no better motto for a
+school. The world expects us to do certain things. We must keep tryst
+with these expectations. You all know what happened yesterday. Madam
+looks for a certain course of conduct from her girls. She does not make
+rules. She only expects what the inborn instinct of a true lady would
+prompt you to do or to be. I am sure that after this explanation none
+of you will fail to keep tryst with her expectations."
+
+That was the only public reference to Maud's escapade. She left the room
+with a very red face when the class was dismissed. The little story put
+her so plainly in the wrong before the other girls that it made her
+cross and uncomfortable.
+
+Every member of the class had five marks to her credit, and Betty was
+the lucky one whose almost literal reproduction of the story gave her
+ten. She copied it all down in her white record afterward, adding a
+verse that she had once seen in an autograph album:
+
+              "Life is a rosary
+          Strung with the beads of little deeds,
+          Done humbly, Lord, as unto thee."
+
+She repeated the verse aloud to Lloyd. "I'd like to make that kind of a
+rosary. I'd like to act out that story. It just strikes my fancy. It
+would be such a satisfaction to lay aside a token each night, as Ederyn
+did, that I had kept tryst with duty,--had perfect lessons, or lived
+through a day just as nearly right as I possibly could."
+
+She went on writing after she had made the remark, but Lloyd, pleased by
+the thought, sat staring at the lamp. It was nearly bedtime, and
+presently, putting aside her book, she rose and crossed over to the
+bureau. In a sandalwood box in the top drawer was a broken fan-chain of
+white beads--tiny Roman pearls that she had bought in a shop in the Via
+Crucia. She had intended to string them sometime, mixing with them here
+and there some curious blue beads she had seen made at a glass-blower's
+in Venice--large blue ones with tiny roses on the sides.
+
+Betty, busy with her diary, did not notice how long Lloyd stood with her
+back toward her, pouring the little Roman pearls from one hand to the
+other.
+
+"It seems almost babyish," Lloyd was saying to herself. "But othah girls
+keep memory-books and such things, and this is such a pretty idea. No
+one need know. Yes, I'll begin the rosary this very night, for every
+lesson was perfect to-day, and I truly tried my best in everything."
+
+Hesitating an instant longer, she rummaged through the drawer for a
+piece of fine white silk cord which she remembered having placed there.
+When she found it, she knotted one end securely, and then slowly slipped
+one little pearl bead down against the knot.
+
+"There!" she thought, with a hasty glance over her shoulder at Betty, as
+she dropped the string back into its box. "There's one token that I've
+kept tryst, even if I nevah earn any moah. I'm going to have that string
+half-full by vacation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A MEMORY-BOOK AND A SOUVENIR SPOON
+
+
+THE string of white beads grew steadily, but work went hand in hand with
+play at Warwick Hall, as Kitty's memory-book testified. She brought it
+out to liven the recreation hour one rainy afternoon, late in the term,
+when they were house-bound by the weather. Its covers, labelled "Gala
+Days and Bonfire Nights," were bulging with souvenirs of many memorable
+occasions. She sat on the floor with it spread open on her lap. Betty
+was on one side and Lloyd on the other, while Gay leaned against her
+back and looked over her shoulder.
+
+Kitty opened her treasure-house of mementos with a giggle, for on the
+first page was a water-colour sketch of Gay as she had appeared on the
+welcoming night. She had painted her with two enormous feet protruding
+from her flowing skirts, one cased in a party slipper with an
+exaggerated French heel, the other in a down-trodden bedroom slipper
+painted a brilliant crimson.
+
+"You mean thing!" cried Gay, laughing over the ridiculous caricature of
+herself.
+
+"That isn't a circumstance to some of them," remarked Allison, who was
+virtuously spending her recreation hour in sewing buttons on her gloves
+and mending a rip in the lining of her coat-sleeve. "Wait till you come
+to the programme of the recital given by the students of voice, violin,
+and piano. The pictures she made all around the margin of it are some of
+the best she has done. The sketch of Susie Tyndall, tearing her hair and
+shrieking out the 'Polish Boy,' is simply killing."
+
+"Kitty Walton," exclaimed Gay, as she bent over the grotesquely
+decorated programme, "where do you keep this book o' nights? I'll surely
+have to steal it. Think what it will be worth to us when we are old
+ladies. There's one thing certain, you could never pose as a saintly old
+grandmother with such a record for mischief as this to bear witness
+against you."
+
+Kitty looked up with a startled expression. "You know, it never occurred
+to me before that I'd ever look at this book through spectacles. I
+wonder if I'll find it as amusing then, when I'm dignified and
+rheumatic, as I do now."
+
+"I'm sure _that_ will be pleasant to recall," said Betty, pointing to a
+withered rose pinned to the next page. "That will properly impress your
+grandchildren."
+
+Underneath the rose was written the date of a private reception granted
+the Warwick Hall girls at the White House.
+
+"I had such a lovely time that afternoon," sighed Betty. "It was so much
+nicer to go as we did, for a friendly little visit under Madam's wing,
+than to have pushed by in a big public mob. Wasn't Cora Basket funny?
+She was so overawed by the honour that she fairly turned purple. Her
+roommate vows that, when she wrote home, she began, 'Preserve this
+letter! The hand that is now writing it has been shaken by the President
+of the United States of America!'"
+
+"Cordie Brown was funnier than Cora," said Allison. "She wanted to
+impress people with the idea that the affair was nothing to her. That it
+rather bored her, in fact. She went around with her nose in the air,
+trying to appear so superior and indifferent, as if crowned heads and
+their ilk made her tired."
+
+"What's this?" demanded Lloyd, as they turned the next leaf, through
+which a single long black hair had been drawn. Underneath was the
+gruesome legend, "Dead men tell no tales."
+
+"Oh, that's only a 'hair from the tail of the dog of the child of the
+wife of the wild man of Borneo,'" laughed Kitty, attempting to turn the
+page; but Lloyd, laying both palms across it, held it fast.
+
+"You know it's not, you naughty thing. You've been up to some prank."
+
+"It a p. j. A private joke," explained Kitty, bending over the book and
+laughing till her forehead touched her knees. "I'm dying to tell you,
+for it's the funniest thing in the collection. It happened at the
+Hallowe'en party, and I promised not to tell."
+
+"Promised whom?" demanded Betty.
+
+"Can't tell that, either," was all that Kitty would say. She flipped
+over the next leaf. A gilded wishbone was fastened to the page by the
+bit of red ribbon run through it.
+
+"That's 'In Memoriam' of the grand spread at the Thanksgiving Day feast.
+And this button pasted on just below it, popped off the glove of
+Mademoiselle La Tosto the afternoon she came to the Studio Tea and Art
+reception. You know how the girls buzzed around her like a swarm of
+bees, begging for her autograph. I'd rather have this button than a
+dozen autographs, for it dropped off her glove as she clapped her hands
+in that vivacious Frenchy way of hers, when she saw my caricature of
+Paderewski that the girls stuck up on the wall. Understand, young
+ladies, she was _applauding_ it. I walked on air all afternoon."
+
+"Why undah the sun have you saved this tea leaf?" asked Lloyd, pointing
+to one pasted carefully in the corner of the next page.
+
+"Don't you remember the day that we went down to Mammy Easter's cabin,
+and her old black grandmother was there, and told our fortunes? She was
+a regular old hag, Gay. I wish you could have seen her,--teeth all gone;
+skin puckered as a dried apple; she looked more monkey than human. But
+she's a fine fortune-teller. I made a few hieroglyphics to recall what
+she said. This mark is supposed to be a coach and four. She said that
+Allison was to wed wid de quality and ride in a car'age, but sorrow
+would be her po'shun if she walked proud. She said that I'm bawn to
+trouble as de spah'ks fly upwa'd, case I won't hah'k to counsel, and
+that I mustn't marry the first man that axes me, and I mustn't marry the
+second man that axes me, but the third man that axes me, him I can
+safely marry. This tea leaf stands for the third man. I'm to have three
+sons and one daughter, and my luck will come to me through running water
+when the weather-vane points west."
+
+Kitty pointed to several pencil scratches beside the tea leaf, intended
+to signify a brook and a weather-vane on a steeple.
+
+"What did she say about Betty?" asked Gay.
+
+Kitty studied the next line of hieroglyphics a moment. "Oh, I see now. I
+intended this for a ship. She said there was a veil done hanging ovah
+her future, so she couldn't rightly tell, but she could see ships coming
+and going and crowds of people, and she could see that her fortune was
+mixed up with a great many other persons. She said that the teacup held
+gold for her, and the signs all 'pinted friendly.'"
+
+"And Lloyd?" queried Gay, trying to decipher the next line of pencil
+marks. "Surely that's not a cat I see."
+
+"A cat, a teapot, and a ball of knitting," laughed Kitty. "I supposed
+that Lloyd's fortune would be something thrilling, but according to the
+old darky, it's to be the tamest of all. She said, 'I see a rising sun,
+and a row of lovahs, but I don't see you a-taking any of 'em, honey. Yo'
+ways am ways of pleasantness and all yo' paths am peace, but I'se
+powahful skeered dat you'se gwine to be an ole maid. I sholy is.'"
+
+"Is that so, Lloyd?" asked Gay, leaning over Kitty's shoulder to laugh
+at the Little Colonel's teased expression. Kitty answered for her.
+
+"Not if we can help it. We want her for a cousin, and we think that she
+ought to marry Malcolm just for the sake of being able to claim us as
+her dear relations. Look how she's blushing, girls."
+
+"I'm not!" was the indignant answer. "You're just trying to make me get
+red, because you know I do it so easily."
+
+She turned the page hastily and began to talk about its contents to
+change the subject. There were scraps of ribbon, as they went farther
+on, a burnt match, a peacock feather, a tiny block of wood with a hole
+shot through it, a strand of embroidery silk, a faded pansy,--a hundred
+bits of worthless rubbish which an unknowing hand would have swept into
+the waste-basket; but to Kitty each one was a key to unlock some happy
+memory of her swiftly passing school-days. As the four heads, brown and
+golden, black and auburn, bent over the book, the rain beat against the
+windows in torrents.
+
+With needle in air, Allison sat a moment watching the water stream down
+the pane. "This makes me think of that afternoon in old Lloydsboro
+Seminary," she said, musingly, "when Ida Shane read the 'Fortunes of
+Daisy Dale' aloud to us. I wonder what has become of Ida. She was living
+in a little country town up in the mountains the last time I heard of
+her, taking in sewing and doing her own work."
+
+"She's the girl who caused so much excitement at the Seminary," Betty
+explained to Gay. "The one who got our Shadow Club into disgrace. She
+tried to elope one night, but the teachers found it out and sent her
+home. It didn't do any good, for she ran away with Ned Bannon the next
+summer, and they were married by a justice of the peace. I don't see how
+Ida could do it when she'd always been so romantic, and planned to have
+her wedding just like Daisy Dale's, in cherry blossom time, and in the
+little stone church at Lloydsboro, with the vines over the belfry. It's
+so quaint and English looking, just like the one that Daisy was married
+in. Instead of being all in white, she was married in the dress she
+happened to have on when she ran away,--just an old black walking skirt
+and plaid shirt-waist. No veil, no trail, and no orange-blossoms, and
+she had counted on having all three. It was so prosy and commonplace
+after the grand things she had planned."
+
+"She's had it prosy enough ever since, too," remarked Allison. "Ned
+drinks so hard that he can't keep a position. She didn't reform him one
+single bit, and I reckon she understands now why her aunt objected so
+strongly to her marrying him. Poor Ida, to think of her having to take
+in sewing to keep her from actual starvation! It's awful!"
+
+"Poah Ida!" echoed Lloyd. "I don't see how she does it. When she was in
+the Seminary, she couldn't do anything with her needle but embroidah. I
+used to have Mom Beck do her mending and darning when she did mine."
+
+"Thank fortune _my_ mending is done!" exclaimed Allison, dropping her
+thimble into her work-bag, and throwing her coat across a chair. "It's
+almost time for the bell. I must take Juliet Lynn the papers I promised
+her."
+
+Lloyd and Betty, looking at the clock, scrambled to their feet, and a
+moment after only Gay and Kitty were left on the rug with the
+memory-book open between them.
+
+"Do you think that Lloyd really cares for your cousin?" asked Gay.
+
+"No," was the emphatic answer. "You can make her blush that way about
+anybody, and I love to tease her. When she first came back from Arizona,
+I used to think she liked Phil Tremont, a boy she met out there, and
+then I thought maybe it was Joyce's brother Jack. She talked so much
+about the duck hunts they had together, and what a splendid fellow he
+was, and how much her father admired him. But the Princess is so
+particular that I believe the old darky told her fortune truly. If she's
+so particular at fifteen, 'I'se powahful skeered she's gwine to be an
+old maid. I sholy is.' For what will she be at twice fifteen?"
+
+Gay laughed at the imitation of the old coloured woman, then asked: "But
+doesn't your cousin come up to her standard? According to Maud Minor he
+is as handsome as a Greek god, as accomplished as all the Muses put
+together, and as entertaining as a four-ring circus."
+
+"Oh, Malcolm's all right," answered Kitty. "We're awfully fond of him,
+but we're not so crazy about him as to think all that. I have a picture
+of him somewhere in my box of photographs, if you'd like to see it."
+
+Climbing on a chair to reach the box on the top of the wardrobe, she
+took it down and began rummaging through it. In a moment she tossed a
+photograph to Gay, who still sat on the floor, Turk fashion.
+
+[Illustration: "STUDYING THE FACE OF THE HANDSOME YOUNG FELLOW WITH
+INTEREST"]
+
+"Here is one he had taken years ago when he and Keith used to play they
+were two little Knights of Kentucky, and went around trying to set the
+wrongs of the world to rights."
+
+While Gay was still exclaiming over it, she threw down another. "Here's
+the one I was looking for. It was taken this summer at Narragansett Pier
+on his polo pony."
+
+Gay seized it, studying the face of the handsome young fellow with
+interest. "Why, he's almost grown!" she cried.
+
+"Yes, he's nearly eighteen, and he is even better looking than that
+picture. And here's Keith, the one I'm so fond of. We always have so
+much fun when they come out to grandmother's for the holidays."
+
+The box slipped and the entire contents showered over the floor. Gay
+helped her to put them back into the box, glancing at each one as she
+did so. One in a cadet uniform attracted her attention.
+
+"Who's this? Now _he's_ the one I'd like to know. I suppose it's because
+I've lived at an army post always that I adore anything military. _He_
+looks interesting."
+
+Kitty leaned over to look. "Oh, that's my brother Ranald. He's away at
+military school. Won't he be teased when I tell him what you said? He's
+dreadfully bashful with girls, though you'd think he oughtn't to be. He
+was under fire ever so many times with papa in the Philippines when he
+was a little chap. You know he was the youngest captain in the army, at
+one time, and was on General Grant's staff when he was still in short
+trousers."
+
+"Why, of course, I know," cried Gay, enthusiastically. "I heard some
+officers talking about it one night at dinner just after it happened.
+Papa toasted 'The Little Captain' in such a pretty speech that the
+officers who had fought with your father cheered. But I never dreamed
+then that I'd ever know his sister, or be sitting here holding his
+picture, talking about him. I'm going to take possession of this," she
+added, when all the other photographs were back in the box.
+
+"You don't care, do you? I'd like it to add to my collection of heroes.
+I'll put it in a frame made of brass buttons and crossed guns and all
+sorts of ornaments that the officers have given me off of their
+uniforms."
+
+"No, I don't care," answered Kitty. "Allison has one like it, and I can
+get another any time by writing home for it. I wish you would take it,
+for that would give me such a fine thing to tease him about. I could
+worry him nearly distracted."
+
+"I don't care how much you tease him so long as I may keep the picture,"
+laughed Gay. "I'm a thousand times obliged to you."
+
+As she sat looking at it, she exclaimed, suddenly: "Kitty Walton, you're
+an awfully lucky girl to have such nice boys in your family. I wish I
+knew them. I haven't a brother or even a forty-second cousin."
+
+"Well, you can know them if you'll come home with me to spend the
+Christmas vacation. Ranald always brings a boy home with him for the
+holidays, and mother said Allison and I might bring a friend. I'm sure
+she'd rather have you than anybody else, she knows your father and
+mother so well."
+
+The amber lights in Gay's brown eyes deepened. "Oh, I'd _love_ to!" she
+cried. "I'd dearly love to! It's too far to go away back to San Antonio
+for such a short time, and I hated to think of the holidays, knowing
+I'd have to stay here at the Hall, with all you girls gone. Are you sure
+your mother won't object?"
+
+"You wait and see," advised Kitty. "You don't know mammy! You'll not
+have any doubt of your welcome when her letter comes."
+
+"Oh, it would be too lovely for anything!" exclaimed Gay, listening with
+a far-away look in her eyes, as Kitty began outlining plans for the
+coming holidays. Presently, in sheer joy at the prospect, they pulled
+each other up from the floor, and, springing on to the bed, danced a
+Highland fling in the middle of it, till a slat fell out with a
+terrifying crash.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the coming of December the holiday gaieties began. A spirit of
+festivity lurked in the very air. A mock Christmas tree was one of the
+yearly features of the school, when each pupil's pet fad or peculiarity
+was suggested by appropriate gifts. Preparations for the tree began
+early in the month, and whispered consultations were carried on in every
+corner, with much giggling and profound assurances of secrecy.
+
+The practising of Christmas carols went on in the music-rooms, and
+snatches of them floated down the halls and through the building, till
+the blithe young hearts were filled to overflowing with the cheer and
+good-will of the sweet old melodies. Now the usual Monday sightseeing
+gave way to shopping, and every moment that could be snatched from
+school work was given to crochet-needles and embroidery-hoops, to the
+finishing of an endless variety of gifts, and the wrapping of same in
+mysterious packages.
+
+One Monday Betty did not join the others in their weekly shopping
+expedition. Her few purchases had been made, and she wanted the day to
+work on unfinished gifts. She was making most of them with her needle.
+She was glad afterward that she had decided to stay when a slow winter
+rain began to fall. It melted the light snow-fall which whitened the
+ground into a disagreeable compound of slush and mud.
+
+It was almost dark when Kitty and Allison burst into the room, their
+arms full of bundles, and began displaying their purchases. Lloyd
+followed more slowly, and, dropping her packages on the floor by the
+radiator, stood trying to warm her fingers through her wet gloves.
+Presently, in the midst of the exhibition, with her hat still on, she
+flung herself across her bed, piled up as it was with strings and
+crumpled wrapping-paper. "Excuse me if I mash your bargains, Kitty," she
+said, weakly, closing her eyes. "But I'm as limp as a rag! So ti'ahed--I
+feel as if I were falling to pieces. We tramped around in the wet so
+long, and then inside the stores there were such crowds that we were
+pushed and jammed and stepped on everywhere we turned. It seemed to me
+we waited hours for our change. Then the car we came out on was so
+ovah-heated that we almost stifled. I'm suah I caught cold when the icy
+wind struck us aftah we left the station."
+
+She shivered as she spoke. Betty sprang up and began tugging at her wet
+wraps.
+
+"Don't lie there that way," she begged. "Let me help you get into some
+dry clothes, and ask the housekeeper for a glass of hot milk."
+
+At first Lloyd protested that she was too tired to move. Betty could be
+as persistent as a mosquito at times. She insisted until Lloyd finally
+allowed her to have her way, and got up wearily to put on the dry skirts
+and stockings which she brought to her. A hot dinner made her feel
+somewhat better, but her face was flushed when they went up-stairs for
+the study hour. Betty saw her wipe her eyes as she took out her Latin
+grammar, and instantly forgave the petulant way in which Lloyd had
+answered her several times during the evening.
+
+"Don't try to study, Lloyd," she urged. "I know you don't feel well."
+
+"No," acknowledged the Little Colonel, "every bone in my body aches, and
+my head is simply splitting."
+
+"Let me run down to the sanitarium and ask Miss Gilmer to come up and
+see if she can't do something for you," began Betty, but Lloyd
+interrupted her, stamping her foot with a touch of her old childish
+imperiousness.
+
+"You sha'n't go! I'm not sick! I've just caught a plain cold."
+
+"But people don't catch just plain colds nowadays," persisted Betty.
+"They always catch microbes at the same time, that are apt to turn into
+la grippe and pneumonia and all sorts of dreadful things. 'A stitch in
+time saves nine,' you know," she added, wisely, quoting from the motto
+embroidered on her darning-bag, which happened to be hanging on a
+chair-post in the corner. "'An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of
+cure' every time."
+
+"Oh, for mercy's sake, Betty," cried Lloyd, impatiently, "let me alone
+and don't be so preachy. I'm not going to repoa't a little thing like a
+headache and a soah throat to the nurse. She'd put me to bed and keep me
+there for a week. I'd get behind with my lessons, and lose all the
+holiday fun. Like as not mothah and Papa Jack would come straight aftah
+me, and take me home befoah we'd had the mock Christmas tree or any of
+the things I've been looking forward to so long."
+
+Betty picked up her algebra again without an audible reply, but inwardly
+she was saying: "I know she is sick, or she wouldn't be so cross."
+
+The next day found Lloyd with such high fever that she was installed at
+once in the sanitarium. "It is la grippe that she has," the nurse told
+Betty. "It is the real thing, and not what people always claim to have
+with an ordinary cold. The worst will probably be over in a few days,
+but it will leave her so exhausted and so susceptible to other things
+that I shall keep her with me for a week at least."
+
+Lloyd rebelled at first, but she had to submit as her fever mounted
+higher, and the world grew, to her blurred fancy, one great, throbbing
+ache. She was glad to give herself up to Miss Gilmer's soothing touches.
+Mrs. Sherman did not come, for a letter from the school physician
+assured her that Lloyd was receiving every care and attention that she
+could have had at home, and the case was quite a simple one.
+
+Miss Gilmer, the nurse, was a big motherly woman, who seemed to radiate
+comfort and cheer, as a stove does heat. After the first few days, Lloyd
+would have enjoyed the time spent with her in the cheerful room assigned
+her had she not been haunted by the thought that she was falling behind
+her classes.
+
+"It's a pretty good sawt of a world, aftah all," she said one day, as
+she sat propped up among the pillows, enjoying a dainty mid-afternoon
+lunch Madam Chartley had personally prepared and sent in hot from the
+chafing-dish. Bouillon in the thinnest of fragile china, and a toasted
+scone which recalled delightfully the little English inn she had visited
+near Kenilworth ruins. By some oversight, no spoon had been sent in on
+the tray, and Miss Gilmer supplied the deficiency by bringing one of her
+own from a little cabinet in the next room.
+
+"It has a history," Miss Gilmer said, and Lloyd looked at it with
+interest before dipping it into the cup.
+
+"Why, the handle is a May-pole!" she exclaimed, with pleasure. "And the
+date down among the garlands is the queen's birthday, isn't it? I
+remembah we were up in the Burns country that day, when we saw the
+school-children celebrating it."
+
+"To think of an American girl remembering that date!" cried Miss Gilmer,
+in a pleased tone. "It is a great day on my calendar, for it was then
+that I met Madam Chartley, for the first time, on the queen's birthday.
+She has been my good angel ever since. It was she who sent me that
+May-pole spoon, as a souvenir of that meeting."
+
+"Oh, would you tell me about it?" asked Lloyd. "It sounds so
+interesting."
+
+Taking up some needlework from a basket on the table, Miss Gilmer leaned
+back as if to begin a long story.
+
+"There isn't so much to tell, after all," she said, pausing to thread
+her needle. "It was long ago, when Madam Chartley was Alicia Raeburn,
+and I was a bashful little English schoolgirl at St. Agnes Hall. Alicia
+had come from America to visit her uncle, who was proctor of the
+cathedral. His grounds joined the school premises on the south, and I
+often used to peep through the hedge and watch her strolling around the
+garden. She was older than I, and the difference in our ages seemed
+greater then than now, for I was still wearing short frocks, and she
+had just put on long ones. I had heard that she was to be presented at
+court next season. That, and the fact that she was an American, and very
+beautiful, and that she looked lonely strolling around the old proctor's
+garden by herself, threw a glamour of romance about her.
+
+"I would have given a fortune to have made her acquaintance, and I spent
+hours down by the brook dreaming innocent little day-dreams in which I
+pictured such meetings. Suddenly heliotrope became my favourite flower
+instead of roses, because she so often wore a bunch of it tucked in the
+belt of her gray dress. Indeed, because she so often wore it, I grew to
+regard it as sacred to her alone, and felt that no one else had a right
+to wear it. Fortunately, at that season of the year it grew only in the
+proctor's conservatory, so that the schoolgirls could not obtain it. I
+would have inwardly resented it, if any one of them had taken such a
+liberty as to wear her flower. She seemed to me the most beautiful and
+perfect creature I had ever seen, and I worshipped her from afar, and
+imitated her in every way possible. I don't suppose you can understand
+such an infatuation."
+
+"Indeed I do undahstand," interrupted Lloyd, eagerly. She was thinking
+of Ida Shane, and the way she had fallen under the spell of her
+charming personality. Even yet the odour of violets brought back the
+same little thrill it had awakened when violets seemed made for Ida's
+exclusive wearing. Miss Gilmer's feeling for the beautiful Alicia
+Raeburn was no deeper than hers had been for Ida. She could readily
+understand about the heliotrope.
+
+"Well, then," Miss Gilmer went on, "you can imagine my state of mind
+when at last I actually met her. It was on the queen's birthday. At our
+school, instead of having the May-pole dance on May-day, we waited until
+the queen's birthday, and on that occasion Alicia was one of the invited
+guests. It was quite by accident she spoke to me. She dropped her
+handkerchief, and I sprang to pick it up. But she must have seen the
+adoration in my poor little embarrassed face, for I went quite red I am
+sure. I could fairly feel the hot blood surge over me. She said
+something pleasant to cover my confusion, and then swept her skirts
+aside for me to share her seat. She wanted to ask some questions about
+the customs of the school, she said.
+
+"That was the beginning of our acquaintance. Next day she waved her
+handkerchief over the hedge to me, and the next called me over for a
+little chat. She was lonely in the great garden. After awhile I plucked
+up courage to tell her how I had watched her through the hedge, and
+dreamed about meeting her. I could not put it into words, but she could
+readily see that the good Victoria and the queen of the May were not the
+sovereigns who claimed my dearest allegiance. It was the 'Queen Rose of
+the rosebud garden of girls,' the beautiful Alicia Raeburn.
+
+"She went away that summer, but we had grown to be such friends that she
+promised to write to me once a year, in order that I might not lose her
+entirely out of my life. She knew what a lonely little orphan I was, and
+she never denied me the joy of that yearly letter. They were full of her
+travels and the interesting experiences of her life, for she married a
+young English officer and went to India.
+
+"They came back to England once. I saw her then. It was at a great ball
+given for the Prince of Wales when he honoured the little cathedral town
+with a visit. She could hardly believe that I was the little schoolgirl
+who had eyed her so adoringly through the hedge. I had grown so large.
+But she found from others what a lonely life I had, and, knowing how
+much her friendship meant, she still gave me the pleasure of that yearly
+letter, written on the queen's birthday. That she should remember
+through all her busy years shows one of the finest traits of her
+character.
+
+"Once she was too ill to write, but the message came just the same. She
+sent this spoon with the May-pole handle, and on her card was scrawled
+the one line, 'I keep the tryst.' She had told me the story of their
+family crest. You don't know how many times in the next few years the
+sight of that card and the souvenir spoon helped me. Her fidelity to a
+promise made me rely on her and her friendship when all others failed
+me. My guardian died and left my property in such shape that I found I
+would have to support myself, and I began to take training for a
+professional nurse. When she heard of it, she wrote and told me that
+she, too, had been obliged by her husband's death to earn her own
+living, and that she had established this school in her
+great-grandmother's old mansion. She offered me the position of
+professional nurse here. I came on the next steamer, and have been here
+ever since.
+
+"You don't know how many times I've thought how different my life would
+have been if she had failed in that one little matter of sending a
+yearly letter. No doubt it was a bore to her oftentimes, but it was the
+line that kept us in touch and finally drew me to this happy anchorage.
+Alicia Chartley is a great woman, my dear. She has left her imprint on
+every girl who has passed through this school, and there'll be a long
+line of them to rise up and call her blessed. Not so much for the fine
+ladies she has made of them with her high-bred ways and ideals, but for
+the example she has set them always in that one thing. No matter in how
+small a duty, she has never once failed to keep the tryst."
+
+Lloyd would have liked to ask some questions about Madam's girlhood, but
+some one called Miss Gilmer into the office just then, so, taking the
+tray with its empty cup and plate, she passed out. Lloyd thumped her
+pillows and lay looking out of the window at the sparrows on the balcony
+railing. All the ache was gone, and, with a delightful sense of
+drowsiness and of well-being, she began slipping into a little doze.
+Even illness had its bright side, she thought, languidly. She liked Miss
+Gilmer's reminiscences. They opened into a world so delightfully
+English. When she came back she would ask for more stories. Down from
+the distant music-room stole the faint echo of one of the carols. She
+opened her eyes to listen.
+
+          "God rest you, merry Christians,
+             Let nothing you dismay,
+           For Christ our Lord and Saviour
+             Was born on Christmas Day."
+
+Lloyd liked that carol. "'Let nothing you dismay,'" she repeated,
+softly. "No, it doesn't really make any difference what happens," she
+thought, closing her eyes again and curling up like a sleepy kitten. "It
+will all come right in the end, as it did with Miss Gilmer. I'll not
+worry about missing so many lessons and so many pearls on my rosary.
+I'll just be thankful for Christmas and all it brings."
+
+Again through her drowsy senses echoed the refrain, and she dropped to
+sleep, repeating, slowly, "'Let--nothing--you--dismay!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+CHRISTMAS CAROLS
+
+
+"THIS is the worst time of all the yeah to be sick," fretted the Little
+Colonel, pausing in her restless journey around the room. She had been
+pacing from window to fireplace in the nurse's office, and from
+fireplace to window again, watching the clock and the slowly westering
+sun, as if watching would hasten the day to its close.
+
+Miss Gilmer, who was placidly knitting, changed needles without looking
+up. "That is what people always say. I've never yet found one whose
+calendar had a time when illness would be convenient."
+
+"But now, just befoah the holidays, a thousand things are waiting to be
+done. I'm behind a whole week with my studies, and my Christmas presents
+that I'm going to make are scarcely begun. You haven't even let me look
+at the material. I feel like a caged lion, and I'd like to roah and claw
+and ramp around till I'd smashed my bah's."
+
+"You'll have your liberty soon," laughed Miss Gilmer. "I think it will
+be safe to let you go down to the dining-room this evening, and I'll
+give you your honourable discharge in the morning. But, if I were in
+your place, I would make no attempt to catch up with the classes this
+term. I would lock the unfinished presents away in a drawer, and not
+give any this Christmas. You ought to spend the holidays as quietly as
+possible, doing nothing but rest."
+
+Lloyd turned toward her with an exclamation of dismay.
+
+"Oh, Miss Gilmer! That's impossible! We've planned for a gayer Christmas
+vacation than we've evah had befoah. Every day will be full to the brim.
+And I _must_ make up the recitations I have missed. I've had such good
+repoah'ts all term that I can't beah to spoil everything right at the
+end. When I was in bed, feeling so bad, I made up my mind I wouldn't
+worry about them, but now I feel as good as new, only a little weak, and
+one always feels weak aftah fevah. It's to be expected. You know I
+wasn't dangerously ill."
+
+"No," admitted Miss Gilmer, "but your little illness has left you with
+less strength than you think you have. You are like an ice-pond that is
+just beginning to freeze over. A very light weight will break it
+through at that stage, but if there is no strain until it has frozen
+properly, it can bear the weight of the most heavily loaded wagons."
+
+Lloyd slipped into a chair and stared dismally at the fire.
+
+"But I am strongah than you think, Miss Gilmer. Except one time when I
+had the measles, I'd never been sick in my life till last week. I don't
+believe it's good for people to coddle themselves and worry all the time
+for feah they are going to be ill."
+
+"Oh," answered the nurse, "I fully agree with you in that, still I
+should not be doing my duty if I did not put up a warning signal when I
+see danger ahead. I do see it now. You are getting on very nicely, but
+the ice is very thin,--far too thin for any such extra weights as double
+study hours and holiday dissipations. If you don't walk lightly,
+there'll be a nervous breakdown."
+
+Some one called Miss Gilmer away before she could finish her warning,
+and Lloyd sat facing the fire and this unpleasant bit of counsel for
+nearly half an hour. A verse from her favourite carol came echoing
+through the halls from the distant music-room, for it was practice hour
+again, but this time it did not fit her mood, and it brought no cheer.
+It was all well enough for those girls up-stairs, happy and well and
+able to do as they pleased, to be singing "Let _nothing_ you dismay,"
+but she couldn't help being dismayed at Miss Gilmer's opinion of her
+condition. She was ready to cry, thinking how all her holidays would be
+spoiled should she follow the nurse's advice.
+
+With her chin in her hand and her elbow on the arm of the chair, she sat
+picturing her doleful Christmas if she could have no part in the giving,
+and must be left out of all the merrymaking they had planned. Tears
+welled up into her eyes, and her miserable reverie might have ended in a
+downpour had it not been interrupted by the entrance of Gay and Betty.
+Having taken a hasty run across the terraces, they had obtained
+permission to spend the rest of the recreation hour with Lloyd.
+
+"We can't waste a minute now," exclaimed Gay, as she pulled out her
+knitting-work and began clicking her ivory needles through a rainbow
+shawl she was making. "I believe Betty sleeps with her embroidery hoops
+under her pillow, and I know that Allison paints in her sleep."
+
+"What would you do if you were in my place?" mourned Lloyd. She repeated
+the nurse's dismal warning.
+
+"Boo! She magnifies her office," said Gay, glancing over her shoulder to
+make sure that they were alone. "I suppose it is perfectly natural that
+she should. When you're with Miss White, she makes you feel that there's
+nothing in life to live for but Latin. When you're with Miss Hooker,
+mathematics is the chief end of man. With Professor Stroebel the violin
+is the one and only. So of course a professional nurse is in duty bound
+to make hygiene the first consideration. Don't listen to them, listen to
+me. I change my mind a dozen times a day, and have a new fad every
+fortnight, so it stands to reason that my advice is more broad-minded
+than the advice of a person who rides only one hobby, and rides that in
+a rut."
+
+Lloyd laughed at Gay's foolishness, but groaned when Betty told her how
+far the classes had advanced during her absence from recitations.
+
+"I'll have to work like a beavah this next week to catch up. I stah'ted
+out to have perfect repoah'ts, and I feel that I must stick to it, as
+Ederyn did when he heard the king's call. It is an obligation that I
+_must_ meet. I must keep tryst or die."
+
+Gay looked at her admiringly. "I knew you were like that," she
+exclaimed. "If there is anything I envy it is strength of character."
+
+The admiring glance and Gay's remark carried greater weight than all the
+nurse's warning. There was another reason now for persevering in her
+determination. Gay expected it of her, and she could not fall below
+Gay's expectation of what a strong character should accomplish.
+
+Gay, having finished a white stripe across the shawl, opened the
+sweet-grass Indian basket hanging on her chair-post, and took out
+several skeins of zephyr of a delicate sea-shell pink.
+
+"Let me hold it while you wind," begged Lloyd. "It's such an exquisite
+shade, like the heart of a la France rose. It makes me think of the
+stories mothah used to tell me. Everything in them had to be pink, from
+the little girl's dress to the bow on her kitten's neck. Her slippahs,
+parasol, flowahs in the garden, papah on the wall, icing on the cake,
+everything had to be pink."
+
+"What a funny little creature you must have been," laughed Gay, secretly
+making note of Lloyd's favourite colour, and resolving to change the
+names on two packages laid away in her trunk. The blue sachet-bag with
+the forget-me-nots should go to Betty instead of Lloyd, as she had
+originally intended. Lloyd should have the one with the garlands of pink
+rosebuds.
+
+"My room at home is furnished in pink," Lloyd went on. "Oh, Gay, I'm
+wild for you to see Locust. I'm going to have you and the Walton girls
+and Katie Mallard, one of our neighbahs, spend two days and nights with
+us. While I've been cooped up heah getting well, I've planned some of
+the loveliest things to do that you evah dreamed of. It's going to be
+the gayest vacation that evah was."
+
+When Miss Gilmer returned at the end of the hour, Lloyd looked so much
+brighter and better that she gave her an unexpected furlough.
+
+"There, run along to your room with the other girls. I'll expect you
+back at bedtime, for I want to keep you under my wing one more night,
+but you're at liberty till then on one condition,--you're not to look
+into a book."
+
+"I'll promise! Oh, I'll promise!" cried Lloyd, impetuously throwing her
+arms around the nurse. "You're _such_ a deah! Not that I'm anxious to
+get away from you," she added, fearing that her delight might be
+misunderstood. "But I just want to get _out_!"
+
+True to her promise, Lloyd opened no books, but, flying to her room, she
+took out one of the uncompleted Christmas gifts, a pair of bedroom
+slippers, and worked with feverish haste until dinner was ready. It was
+good to be at the table again with the other girls after her week of
+solitary meals in the nursery. Afterward it was a temptation to linger
+in the library talking with them, but the thought of the many tasks
+undone sent her hurrying back to her room.
+
+Betty followed presently with the Walton girls, and they all worked
+steadily on their various gifts until the bell rang for the evening
+study hour. Then Allison and Kitty reluctantly departed, and Betty took
+out her algebra. Lloyd crocheted in silence for half an hour longer, her
+fingers flying faster and faster in her eagerness to complete the task.
+Finally she laid it down with a sigh of relief.
+
+"There!" she exclaimed aloud. "That's done. They're all ready for the
+bows. Now, thank fortune, I can check them off my list."
+
+Betty looked up with an absent-minded smile, nodded approvingly at the
+finished slippers standing on the table, and then went on with her
+problems. Lloyd opened her bureau-drawer to search for the ribbon which
+she had bought for the bows. As she rummaged through it, her hand
+touched the little sandalwood box that held the unfinished rosary. She
+glanced over her shoulder. Betty was deep in her algebra. So, taking out
+the string of beads, she passed it slowly through her fingers. Then she
+held it up, and, looping it around her throat, looked in the mirror.
+
+"I suppose it's mighty childish of me," she said to herself, "but I
+can't enjoy my vacation if I go home with a single one of this term's
+pearls missing. I've _got_ to make up those lessons, no mattah what the
+nurse says. I can rest aftahward."
+
+A few minutes later she presented herself at Miss Gilmer's door with the
+announcement that she would go to bed an hour earlier than usual, in
+order to get a good start for the next day.
+
+All that week she worked with a restless energy that kept her keyed to
+the highest pitch of effort. She scarcely ate, and her sleep was broken,
+but her eyes were so bright and her manner so animated, that Betty wrote
+home that Lloyd's little spell of illness seemed to have done her good.
+
+By studying before breakfast, and snatching every minute she could spare
+from other duties, she managed to have perfect recitations in each
+study, and at the same time to make up the lessons she had missed. Five
+o'clock Saturday afternoon found her with the last task done. She
+slipped ten more little Roman pearls over the silken cord; five for the
+week's advance work, and five for the days she had missed. Then with a
+sigh of relief she put the sandalwood box into her trunk, already partly
+packed for home-going, and flung herself wearily across the bed.
+
+The mock Christmas tree had been lighted the evening before, and the
+gifts distributed. She had not enjoyed it as she had expected to,
+although some of the jokes were excruciatingly funny, and the girls had
+laughed until they were limp. She was too tired to laugh much. She was
+glad that Sunday was coming before the day of leave-taking. She made up
+her mind that she would skip dinner, and ask Betty just to slip her
+something from the table.
+
+Then she remembered that this was the night the carols were to be sung
+in the chapel. She could not miss that. It was the prettiest service of
+all the year, the old girls said. Some one had told her it was a custom
+for everybody to wear white to the carol-singing, but it was hard to
+remember things, maybe she had only dreamed it. She wished that she did
+not have to remember things, but could lie there without moving, until
+morning. What was it her mother used to sing to her? "Asleep in the arms
+of the slow-swinging seas." Oh! The white seal's lullaby. That was what
+she wanted. How good it would feel to be rocked by the restful motion
+of the waves, to be caught in that long sleepy sweep of the
+slow-swinging seas.
+
+When she opened her eyes again it was to find the room lighted, and
+Betty dressing for the carol service. She had slept an hour.
+
+"It'll never do to miss the carols," Betty assured her, when she
+suggested skipping dinner. "Come on, I'll help you dress. Just tell me
+what you want to wear, and I'll lay out your things while you're shaking
+your wits together. You'll feel better after you've had a hot dinner."
+So struggling with the weariness which nearly overpowered her, Lloyd
+forced herself to follow Betty's example, and go down to the dining-room
+when the bell rang. An hour later she fell into line with the other
+girls, as, all in white, they filed into the chapel.
+
+"How Christmasey it looks and smells," she whispered to Allison, as the
+doors swung open and a breath from the pine woods greeted them. The
+chancel was wreathed and festooned with masses of evergreen. To-night
+tall white candles furnished the only light. Far down the dim aisles
+they twinkled like stars against the dark background of cedar and
+hemlock.
+
+Betty was glad that they had entered early. The deep silence of those
+moments of waiting, the dim light of the Christmas tapers, and the
+fragrance of the pine seemed as much a part of the service as anything
+which followed. In the expectant hush that filled the little chapel, she
+pictured the three kings riding through the night, until she could
+almost see the shadowy desert and hear the tread of the camels who bore
+the wise men on their starlit quest. She saw the hillside of Judea,
+where the shepherds kept their night-watch by their flocks, and all the
+mystery and wonder of the first great Christmastide seemed to vibrate
+through her heart, as the deep organ prelude suddenly filled the air
+with the jubilant chords of "Joy to the world, the Lord has come."
+
+Presently the music changed, and the girls looked around expectantly.
+From far down distant halls and corridors came a chorus of girlish
+voices: "Oh, little town of Bethlehem." So sweet and far away it was,
+the audience in the chapel involuntarily leaned forward to listen.
+Across the campus it sounded, gradually drawing nearer and clearer,
+until, with a triumphant burst of melody, the doors swung open and the
+white-robed choir swept in.
+
+Only the best voices in the school had been chosen for this choir, and
+weeks of training preceded the service. One after another they sang the
+sweet old tunes of the Christmas waits until they reached Lloyd's
+favourite, "Let nothing you dismay." She listened to it with pleasure
+now, since her greatest cause for dismay had been removed. She had kept
+tryst with the term's obligations, as the last pearl on the rosary could
+testify.
+
+In the hush that followed that carol, an old man, with silvery hair and
+benign face, rose under the tall candles of the chancel.
+
+"It's the bishop," whispered Gay to Lloyd. "Old Bishop Chartley. He is
+Madam's uncle, and he always comes down for this service."
+
+Then even her irrepressible tongue grew still, for, in a deep voice that
+filled the chapel, he began to read the story of the three wise men who
+followed the star with their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh,
+until it led them to Bethlehem's manger. An old, old story, but it
+bloomed anew once more, as it has bloomed every year since first the
+wondering wise men started on their quest.
+
+The bishop closed the Book. "How shall we keep the King's birthday?" he
+asked. "What gifts shall we bring? To-day in a quaint old tale, beloved
+in boyhood, I found the answer. It is the story of a strange country
+called Cathay, and this is the way it runs:
+
+"'The ruler thereof is one Kublan Khan, a mighty warrior. His government
+is both wise and just, and is administered to rich and poor alike,
+without fear or favour. On the king's birthday the people observe what
+is called the White Feast. Then are the king and his court assembled in
+a great room of the palace, which is all white, the floor of marble and
+the walls hung with curtains of white silk. All are in white apparel,
+and they offer unto the king white gifts, to show that their love and
+loyalty are without a stain. The rich bring to their lord pearls,
+carvings of ivory, white chargers, and costly broidered garments. The
+poor present white pigeons and handfuls of rice. Nor doth the great king
+regard one gift above another, so long as all be white. And so do they
+keep the king's birthday.'"
+
+Lloyd, leaning forward, listened with such breathless interest that it
+attracted Gay's attention. "That's just like your pink story," she
+whispered. Lloyd gave her fingers a responsive squeeze, but never took
+her eyes from the benign old face. The bishop was applying the story to
+the audience before him.
+
+"As these pagans of Cathay kept the feast of Kublan Kahn, so we may make
+of Christmas a White Feast, whose offerings are without stain. We need
+make no weary pilgrimages across the trackless sands, as did those
+Eastern sages. 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my
+brethren' (these are the King's own words), 'ye have done it unto me.'
+At our very doors we may give to Him, through His poor and needy.
+
+"But there is another way. You are all familiar with the motto of this
+house, and the legend which gave rise to it. Clad in the white garments
+of Righteousness, we may keep the tryst as Ederyn kept it, and bring to
+the King the white pearls of a well-spent life. Days unstained by
+selfishness, days filled up with duties faithfully performed. It matters
+not how small and commonplace our efforts seem, the rice and the pigeons
+of the poor showed Kublan Kahn his subjects' loyalty as fully as the
+ivory carvings and the costly broidered garment. Nor doth the great King
+regard one gift of ours above another, so long as all be white. If only
+on our breasts the tokens Duty gives us spell out the words, '_semper
+fidelis_,' then ours will be the royal accolade: 'Well done, thou good
+and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.' To give
+_ourselves_, unstained and gladly, thus may we keep the White Feast on
+the birthday of the King."
+
+Then the choir stood again, but Lloyd scarcely noticed what it sang. She
+was thinking of the bishop's story, and her secret hidden away in the
+sandalwood box. She was so glad now that she had strung the pearls. She
+had begun it because it pleased her fancy to act out the story of
+Ederyn, but now the sacred meaning the old bishop gave the story
+thrilled her through and through. The King's call suddenly seemed very
+sweet and personal. Henceforth she would string the pearls in answer to
+that call.
+
+When they all knelt in the closing prayer, she fervently echoed the
+bishop's petition: "Grant that we make of this Christmastide a White
+Feast, and that all our days may be worthy of thy acceptance, unstained
+by selfishness and full of deeds to show our love and loyalty."
+
+The white-robed choir filed slowly out, their music sounding fainter and
+fainter until it died away across the campus, and the white-robed
+audience was left kneeling in silence. There were tears in Gay's eyes
+when she arose. Such music always stirred her to the depths. Kitty went
+back to her room humming one of the carols, and Betty stole away to
+write the bishop's sermon in her little white record, while the memory
+of it was still warm in her heart.
+
+At Miss Gilmer's request, Lloyd waited a moment in the vestibule. At
+first she wished that Miss Gilmer had not detained her. She wanted to go
+on with Allison, who had her by the arm. Afterward, however, she was
+glad of the waiting. It gave her an opportunity to meet the venerable
+bishop.
+
+"So you are going home to-morrow for the holidays," he said, genially,
+as he held out his hand. "Godspeed, daughter. May you keep the White
+Feast with joy."
+
+It seemed to Lloyd that that "Godspeed" followed her like a
+benediction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+HOMEWARD BOUND
+
+
+          "O Warwick Hall, dear Warwick Hall,
+           Thy happy hours we'll oft recall!
+           No time or change can break thy tie,
+           Though for awhile we say good-bye--
+               Good-bye! Good-bye!"
+
+AMID a flutter of handkerchiefs and a babel of parting cries, each
+'bus-load of girls departed from the Hall to the station singing the
+farewell song of the school.
+
+A dozen times on the way home Allison, humming it unconsciously, found
+the rest of the party joining in. It was an uneventful journey, but a
+merry one to the five girls, travelling for the first time without a
+chaperon. For the first few hours they had the observation car to
+themselves. Even the porter mysteriously disappeared.
+
+"He's curled up asleep somewhere, rest his soul," said Gay, when she had
+rung for him several times.
+
+"All the better," answered Kitty. "We don't really need the table, and
+it's nice to have him out of the way. This is as good as travelling in
+a private car. We can 'stand on our head in our little trundle-bed, and
+nobody nigh to hinder.' Oh, girls, I'm so crazy glad that we're on our
+way home that I'm positively obliged to do something to let off steam.
+I've exhausted my vocabulary trying to express my delight, so there's
+nothing left but to howl."
+
+"Or to wriggle," suggested Gay. "Why not try facial expression? How is
+this for transcendent joy?"
+
+The grotesque smile which she turned upon them was so ridiculous that
+they screamed with laughter.
+
+"Oh, Gay, do stop!" begged Betty. "You're as bad as a comic valentine."
+
+"I'd like to see you do any better," retorted Gay.
+
+"Let's all try," suggested Kitty. "Line up in front of this mirror,
+girls. Now all look pleasant, please. Now let your smiles express
+rapture. Now, frenzied delight!"
+
+Fascinated by their own ugliness, the five girls stood in a row
+distorting their pretty faces with hideous grins and grimaces until they
+were weak from laughing. The banging of the car door sent them scuttling
+into their seats. A portly old gentleman passed through the car to the
+rear platform, and, slamming the door behind him, stood looking down
+the rapidly vanishing track. Evidently it was too breezy a view-point
+for the old gentleman, even with his coat-collar turned up and hat
+pulled down to meet his ears, for in a moment he came in and passed back
+to his seat in a forward car. The girls sat demurely looking out of the
+windows until he was gone, then they faced each other, giggling.
+
+"Suppose he had caught us making those idiotic faces," exclaimed
+Allison. "He would have taken us for a lot of escaped lunatics."
+
+"No, he wouldn't," insisted Gay. "He was a real benevolent-looking old
+fellow, the kind that understands young people, and he'd know that it
+was just that Christmas has gone to our heads, and made us a little
+flighty. I'm sure that his name is James, and that he has six old maid
+daughters. He lives out West, and he's taking home a trunk full of
+presents for them."
+
+"Let's guess what he has for them," said Kitty. "I'll say that the
+oldest one is named Emmaline, and he is taking her a squirrel fur muff."
+
+"And the next one is Agnes Dorothea," said Betty, taking her turn, as if
+it were a game. "She's the delicate one of the family, and a sort of
+invalid. So he bought her a lavender shoulder shawl that caught his
+fatherly eye in a show window, because it was so soft and fluffy. But it
+will shrink and fade the first time it is washed till Agnes Dorothea
+will look like a homeless cat if she wears it. Still she will persist in
+putting it on because dear father brought it to her from Washington."
+
+"He'd certainly think you all were crazy if he could heah yoah
+remah'ks," laughed Lloyd.
+
+"Speaking of shawls," cried Gay, "that reminds me of that rainbow shawl
+in my bag. I haven't taken a stitch in it since we started, and I
+intended to knit all the way home. I simply have to, if I'm to get it
+done in time."
+
+Taking out the square of linen in which the fleecy zephyr was wrapped,
+she settled herself by the rear window in a big arm-chair, with her feet
+drawn up under her, and fell to work with all her might.
+
+"It's so nice and cosy to have the car all to ourselves," sighed
+Allison, stretching out luxuriously on the sofa. Betty, bending over her
+embroidery, smiled tenderly at a picture that her memory showed her just
+then. She was comparing this journey with the first one she had ever
+taken. And she saw in her thoughts a little brown-eyed girl of eleven,
+setting forth on her first venture into the wide world, with a
+sunbonnet tied over her curls, and an old-fashioned covered basket on
+her arm. What a dread undertaking that journey had been from the
+Cuckoo's Nest to the House Beautiful. She remembered how frightened she
+was, and how she had studied the picture of Red Ridinghood, printed in
+colours on the border of her handkerchief, until she was afraid to speak
+even to the conductor. She saw a possible wolf in every stranger.
+
+Somehow her thoughts kept going back to that time, even in the midst of
+Gay's most amusing nonsense, and Kitty's brightest repartee. Even when
+Allison began to sing "O Warwick Hall," and she chimed in with the
+others, "Dear Warwick Hall," she was not thinking of school, but of the
+Cuckoo's Nest, and Davy, and the old weather-beaten meeting-house, in
+whose window she had passed so many summer afternoons, reading the musty
+dog-eared books she found in the little red bookcase.
+
+"What are you smiling about, Betty, all to yoahself?" asked Lloyd. "You
+look as if you are a thousand miles away."
+
+Betty glanced up with a little start. "Oh, I was just thinking about the
+Cuckoo's Nest, and wishing that I could see Davy's face when they open
+the Christmas box I sent. There are only trifles in it, but the box will
+mean a lot to them, for Cousin Hetty never has time to make anything of
+Christmas."
+
+Lloyd sat up with a sudden exclamation. "Oh, Betty, I _beg_ yoah
+pah'don. There's a lettah for you in my bag from some of them that I
+forgot to give you. Hawkins came up with it just as we drove off, and
+there was so much excitement and confusion I nevah thought of it again
+till this minute. I'm mighty sorry I forgot."
+
+"It doesn't make any difference," Betty assured her. "Good news can
+afford to wait, and, if it's bad news, it would have spoiled all the
+first part of this trip."
+
+She tore open the envelope and glanced down the page. Lloyd, looking up,
+saw a distressed expression cross her face and the brown eyes fill with
+tears.
+
+"Oh, it's poor little Davy that's in trouble," said Betty, answering
+Lloyd's anxious question. "He had his leg badly hurt last week, broken
+in two places. He was riding one of those heavy old farm horses,
+hurrying home to get out of a storm. Going down a steep, slippery hill,
+it stumbled and fell on him. He'll have to lie in bed for weeks, with
+his knee in plaster, and he's so tired of it already, and _so_ lonesome.
+Nobody has any time to sit with him. I know how it is. I was sick myself
+once at the Cuckoo's Nest. Oh, I'd give anything if I could spend my
+vacation there with him."
+
+"And give up all your good times at home?" cried Kitty. "He surely
+couldn't expect such a sacrifice as that."
+
+"But it wouldn't be any sacrifice. Not a mite! I haven't seen him for
+such a long time, and I'd love to go. He used to be the dearest little
+fellow, never out of my sight a moment during the day. They used to call
+him 'Betty's shadow.'"
+
+"Why don't you go if you wish it so much?" was on the tip of Gay's
+tongue, but she stopped the question just before it slipped off,
+remembering Betty's dependence on her godmother. Kitty had told her all
+about it one time. Naturally she wouldn't want to ask for the money,
+even for such a short journey, when so much was being spent to keep her
+at school with Lloyd; and naturally she would not want to ask to leave
+Locust at Christmas, when that was the time of all the year when she
+could be of service, and in many ways add greatly to the pleasure of the
+entire household.
+
+The nonsense stopped for a few minutes. No one knew what to say to
+comfort Betty, although they were genuinely sorry, and glanced from time
+to time at the brown head turned away from them toward the window. She
+was looking at the flying landscape through a blur of tears, recalling
+the way little Davy's dimpled fingers had clung to hers, his chubby feet
+followed her. Of course he was much larger and older, she told herself,
+not at all like the little fellow she had left so long ago. He was big
+enough to stand pain now, and probably the worst of his suffering was
+over. Still, she saw only a solemn baby face when she pictured him, and
+heard only the lisping voice, saying as he used to say when stumped toe
+or bruised finger brought the tears: "It hurth your Davy boy. Tie a wag
+on it, Betty." How he had loved her stories! What a pleasure they would
+be to him now in the long days he would be forced to spend in bed.
+
+Suddenly conscious of the silence around her, Betty turned, realizing
+that her depression had cast a shadow on the spirits of all the rest.
+
+"Don't think about my bad news any more," she said, brightly. "It
+probably isn't half as bad as I have been picturing it. My imagination
+always runs away with me. It isn't Davy the baby that's had such an
+awful accident. It was that thought that hurt me so at first. I keep
+forgetting that it's five years since I left there. I'm going to drop
+him a postal card at the next station. I can write to him every day, and
+make a sort of game of the letters with riddles and suggestions of
+things for him to do, and that will help the time pass."
+
+"First call to dinnah in the dinah," called a coloured waiter, passing
+through the car in white jacket and apron.
+
+"Now we'll have to stop all our foolishness," said Allison, sedately, as
+she rose to lead the way to the dining-car. They followed as decorously
+as grandmothers, each realizing the responsibility that devolved on her,
+since they were travelling without a chaperon.
+
+To be sure, Gay choked on an olive when Kitty made some wicked remark
+about the fussy old woman across the aisle, who wouldn't be pleased with
+anything the waiter brought her; and it was too much for their gravity
+when an excessively dignified man at the next table, who had been
+staring at the wall like a wooden Indian, suddenly sneezed so violently
+that his eye-glasses dropped into his soup with a splash.
+
+Otherwise they were models of propriety, and more than one head turned
+to look at the bright girlish faces, and smile at the keen, unspoiled
+enjoyment which they evidently found in life and in each other.
+
+They did not stay long in the observation-car when they went back to it
+after dinner. Other people had come in, and it was not so attractive as
+when they occupied it alone. The lamps had been lighted so early that
+short December day that it seemed much later than it really was, and
+they were all tired. At nine o'clock, when they went to their berths in
+the forward end of the car, they found several sections already made up
+for the night, and the porter was moving on down toward theirs.
+
+The fussy old woman, who had been so hard to please at the table, came
+squeezing her way through the valises that blocked the aisle, and took
+possession of the section opposite Betty and Lloyd.
+
+"Oh, my country!" whispered Lloyd. "I wondah if she's going to keep up
+that grumbling and scolding all night. I'm glad that I am not that poah
+henpecked maid of hers. She certainly makes life misahable for her."
+
+It was nearly two hours before Jenkins, the long-suffering maid,
+succeeded in settling her mistress to her satisfaction behind the
+curtains of her berth. The girls made no attempt to get into the
+dressing-room until the little comedy was over. They laughed until they
+were hysterical over each scene as it occurred. A comedy in three acts,
+Betty called it--the losing of the cold-cream bottle and the finding of
+same in madam's overshoe. The unavailing search for a certain black silk
+handkerchief in which madam was wont to tie her head up in of nights,
+and the substitution of a towel instead, which the porter obligingly
+brought.
+
+Next there was a supposed case of poisoning, Jenkins in her trepidation
+having administered three pink pellets from a bottle instead of two
+white ones from a box. Five minutes' reign of terror after that mistake
+brought the poor maid to a witless state that left her almost helpless.
+Various trips were made to the dressing-room, at which times the old
+lady's face was massaged, her grizzly hair rolled on crimping-pins, and
+her shoulders rubbed with an evil-smelling liniment which permeated the
+whole car. She seemed as oblivious to the presence of the other
+passengers as if she were on a desert island, and, being somewhat deaf,
+made Jenkins repeat her timid replies louder and louder until they were
+almost screaming at each other.
+
+Every one on the car was smiling broadly when at last she subsided
+behind the curtains. The smiles grew to audible mirth when she confided
+in a loud voice to Jenkins, stowed away in the berth above her, that she
+hoped to goodness nobody on board would snore and keep her awake.
+
+Jenkins's answer, floating tremulously down, convulsed the sleepy girls:
+"Hi 'ope not, ma'am. Hit's a bad 'abit, ma'am, halmost, you might say,
+han haffliction."
+
+"What?" came in a thunderous voice from the lower berth, and Jenkins,
+craning her head turtle-wise over the edge of her bed, called back in a
+tremulous squeak: "Hi honly said as 'ow hit were a bad 'abit, ma'am!"
+
+"Hump!" was the answer. "See that you don't do it yourself. I've got my
+umbrella here ready to punch you if you do."
+
+A titter ran from seat to seat. The girls, unable to stifle their
+amusement any longer, seized their bags and hurried down the aisle to
+the dressing-room, where, under cover of the rattle of the train, they
+could laugh as freely as they pleased.
+
+When Lloyd and Betty stole back to their berths a few minutes later,
+they looked at each other with an amused smile. From the opposite
+section came an unmistakable sound, long-drawn and penetrating as a
+cross-cut saw. Madam was evidently asleep. Betty giggled, as from
+Jenkins's perch came a gentle echo.
+
+"'Hi honly said as 'ow hit were a bad 'abit, ma'am,'" whispered Lloyd.
+"Wouldn't you love to jab the old lady herself with an umbrella?"
+
+Gay, in the dressing-room, was carefully counting over her toilet
+articles, as she put them back into her bag. "Soap-box, comb, nail-file,
+tooth-powder--I haven't lost a thing this trip, Allison. I'm beginning
+to feel proud of myself. Here's my watch and here's my tickets, buttoned
+up in this pocket. Mamma had it made on purpose, so in case of a wreck
+at night I'd have them on me. She patted the pocket sewed securely in
+the dark blue silk robe she wore, made in loose kimono fashion.
+
+"Now I'm all ready," she added, dropping her shoes into her bag and
+closing it. In her soft Indian moccasins, beaded like a squaw's, she
+executed a little heel and toe dance in the narrow passage outside,
+while she waited for Allison to gather up her clothes and follow. She
+thought every one else was in bed, and when suddenly the outside door
+opened and she heard some one coming in from the next car, she flew
+down the aisle like a frightened rabbit.
+
+It was only a brakeman who stood just inside the door a moment with his
+lantern, and then went out again. All the lights had been turned down in
+the car, and Gay stumbled several times over shoes and valises
+protruding in the aisle. But finally, with a bound, she made her escape,
+as she supposed, from whoever it was that had caught her dancing in her
+moccasins in the passage.
+
+She gave a headlong dive into her berth. Just then the car lurched
+forward, sending her bag banging against the window, but she did not
+loosen her hold of it, and she was still clinging to it five minutes
+later.
+
+For, with a scream of terror, she rolled out of the berth far faster
+than she had rolled in. It was madam's fat body that writhed under her,
+and her stern voice that yelled "Murder! murder!" in a voice calculated
+to wake the dead.
+
+"'Elp! 'elp!" screamed Jenkins from the upper berth, afraid to look out
+between the curtains, but bravely pushing the button of the porter's
+bell till some one, wakened by the cries and persistent ringing, wildly
+called "Fire!"
+
+"It's train robbahs!" gasped Lloyd, sitting up. Little cold shivers ran
+up and down her back, but she was conscious of a pleasant thrill of
+excitement. Heads were thrust out all up and down the aisle. The bell
+and the cries of murder and 'elp never stopped until the porter and
+Pullman conductor came running to the rescue.
+
+But there was nothing for them to see. At the first yell, Gay had
+tumbled hastily out, still clinging to her bag. Before the old lady had
+sufficiently recovered from her surprise enough to wonder what sort of a
+wild beast had pounced in upon her, Gay was safe in her own berth, drawn
+up in a knot, and trembling behind her closely buttoned curtains. Her
+heart beat so loud that she thought it would certainly betray her.
+
+"You must have had the nightmare," said the conductor, politely, trying
+not to smile as the angry face, under its towel turban, glared out at
+him.
+
+"Nightmare!" blazed the irate old lady. "I'm no fool. Don't you suppose
+that I know when I'm hit? I tell you somebody was trying to sandbag me.
+I thought a Saratoga trunk had fallen in on me. It's your business to
+take care of passengers on this train, and I intend to hold the company
+responsible. I shall certainly sue the railroad for this shock to my
+nervous system as soon as I get home. I have a weak heart and I can't
+stand such performances as this."
+
+[Illustration: "'I TELL YOU SOMEBODY WAS TRYING TO SANDBAG ME'"]
+
+It took a long time to pacify her. Gay lay in her berth, shaking first
+with fright and then with laughter. She could not go to sleep without
+sharing her secret with the other girls, but she was afraid to trust
+herself to speak. She had grown almost hysterical over the affair.
+Finally she crept in beside Lloyd to whisper, brokenly: "_I_ am the
+nightmare that sandbagged the old lady. _I_ am the Saratoga trunk that
+fell on her. Oh, Lloyd, I'll never brag again. I had just told Allison I
+hadn't lost a single thing this trip, and then I turned around and lost
+myself. I got into the wrong berth. Oh! oh! It was so funny to see her,
+all done up in that towel. It'll kill me if I can't stop laughing."
+
+She crept back to her own side of the aisle again, and Lloyd got up to
+repeat it to Betty and Allison, who passed it on to Kitty. It was nearly
+half an hour before they stopped giggling over it, and then Kitty
+started them all afresh by leaning out to say, in a stage whisper, as a
+certain duet was renewed by Jenkins and her mistress, "'Hi honly said as
+'ow hit were a bad 'abit.'"
+
+It was snowing next morning, just a few flakes against the window-pane,
+as they sat in the dining-car at breakfast, but the landscape grew
+whiter as they whirled on toward home.
+
+"Just as it ought to be for Christmas," declared Allison. "Oh, The
+Beeches will look so lovely in the snow, and the big log fire will seem
+so good, I can hardly wait to get there!"
+
+"I know just how it's all going to be," exclaimed Kitty, wriggling
+impatiently in her seat. "It will be this way, Gay. They'll all be down
+at the station to meet us, mother and little Elise and Uncle Harry and
+his dog. Aunt Allison will probably be there, too, and grandmother, if
+she feels well enough. And old black fat Butler will be standing by the
+baggage-room door with his wheelbarrow, waiting to take our trunks. And
+we'll all talk at once. Everybody along the road will be calling
+'Howdy!' to us, and at the post-office Miss Mattie will come out to
+shake hands with us, and tell us how glad she is to see us back. Then
+it'll be just a step, past the church and the manse and the Bakewell
+cottage, and we'll turn in at The Beeches, _and the fun will begin_."
+
+Betty turned to Gay. "That doesn't sound very exciting or especially
+interesting to a stranger, but, oh, Gay, the Valley is so _dear_ when
+you once get to know it. And when you go back, you feel almost as if
+everybody were related to you, they're all so friendly and cordial and
+glad to welcome you home."
+
+Even to impatient schoolgirls homeward bound, the journey's end comes at
+last, so by nightfall it all happened just as Kitty had predicted. Such
+a royal welcome awaited Gay that she felt drawn into the midst of things
+from the moment she stepped from the car.
+
+"You're right, Betty," she whispered as she left her. "It _is_ a dear
+Valley, and I feel already as if I belong here."
+
+The two groups separated when the checks had been sorted out and the
+baggage disposed of. Then, still laughing and talking, Kitty led one on
+its merry way toward The Beeches, and the other whirled rapidly away in
+the carriage toward the lights of Locust.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A PICNIC IN THE SNOW
+
+
+"WHAT a good gray day this is!" exclaimed Betty next morning, turning
+from the window to look around the cheerful breakfast-room, all aglow
+with an open wood-fire. "It's so bleak outside that there is no
+temptation to go gadding, and so cosy indoors that we'll be glad of the
+chance to stay at home and finish tying up our Christmas packages."
+
+"Yes," assented Lloyd, who, having finished her breakfast, was standing
+on the hearth-rug, her back to the fire and her hands clasped behind
+her. "And for once I intend to have mine all ready the day befoah, so I
+need not be rushed up to the last minute. For that reason I am glad that
+mothah had to take the early train to town this mawning, to finish her
+shopping. If she'd been at home, I should have talked all the time,
+without accomplishing a thing."
+
+"I think your tissue-paper and ribbon was put into my trunk," said
+Betty, drumming idly on the window-pane. "I'll go and unpack it in a
+minute, and have it off my mind, as soon as I see who this is coming up
+the avenue."
+
+A tall young fellow had turned in at the gate, and was striding along
+toward the house as if in a great hurry.
+
+"It's Rob Moore!" she exclaimed, in surprise. "I thought he wasn't
+coming home until Christmas eve."
+
+"So did I," answered Lloyd, crossing the room to look over Betty's
+shoulder. "I'll beat you to the front doah, Betty."
+
+There was a wild dash through the hall. Both slim figures bounced
+against the door at the same instant. There was a laughing scuffle over
+the latch, and then the two girls stood arm in arm between the white
+pillars of the porch, gaily calling a greeting.
+
+Rob waved a pair of skates in reply, and quickened his stride until he
+came within speaking distance. One would have thought from his greeting
+that they had seen each other only the day before. Rob never wasted time
+on formalities.
+
+"Hurry up, girls! Get your skates. The ice is fine on the creek, and
+there's a crowd waiting for us down at the depot."
+
+"Who?" demanded Lloyd.
+
+"Oh, the MacIntyre boys and the Walton girls and that little red-headed
+thing that they brought home from school with them. Kitty's going to
+have a picnic on the creek bank for her."
+
+"A picnic in Decembah!" ejaculated Lloyd.
+
+"That's what she said," Rob answered, clicking his skates together as he
+followed the girls into the house. "They telephoned over to me to hustle
+up here and get you girls. They're on their way to the station now.
+We're to meet them in the waiting-room."
+
+"They should have let us know soonah," began Lloyd, "so that we could
+have had a lunch ready. There'll be nothing cooked to take this time of
+day."
+
+"They didn't know it themselves," he interrupted. "Kitty proposed it at
+the breakfast-table, and they just grabbed up whatever they could get
+their hands on and started off."
+
+"We have so much to do to-day," said Betty. "I don't see how we can ever
+get through if we stop for this."
+
+"Let everything slide!" begged Rob. "Do your work to-morrow. This will
+be lots of fun. The ice may not last more than a day or so, and the
+MacIntyre boys are not going to be out here all vacation."
+
+"I suppose we could tie up those packages to-night," said Lloyd, with an
+inquiring look at Betty.
+
+"Of course," Rob answered for her. "And I'll help you with anything you
+have to do. Come on."
+
+"Well, then, you run out to the kitchen and ask Aunt Cindy to give you
+something for a lunch,--anything in sight, and we'll get ready while Mom
+Beck finds our skates."
+
+Rob rubbed his ears apprehensively. "I'd as soon beard the lion in his
+den as Aunt Cindy in her kitchen. She's never forgiven my early thefts."
+
+"Go on, goosey," laughed Lloyd. "Don't you know that since you're
+'growed up,' as Aunt Cindy says, she swears by you? I heard her tell Mom
+Beck last night she reckoned she'd have to make a batch of little sugah
+hah't cakes right away, for Mistah Rob would be coming prowling round
+her cooky jah."
+
+"Am I growed up?" asked Rob gravely, throwing back his shoulders and
+looking into the mirror at the tall reflection it showed him.
+
+"You are in inches and ells," laughed Lloyd, "but you're not always six
+feet tall in yoah actions."
+
+"It's only when I am in your society that I appear so juvenile,"
+retorted Rob. "When I'm away at school with the other fellows, I feel
+and act as old as Daddy, but when I'm back home, where you all seem to
+expect me to be a kid, I naturally adjust myself to that role just to be
+companionable and obliging. You would be afraid of me if I were to turn
+out my whiskers and stand back on my dignity. You know you would."
+
+"Don't try it, Bobby," advised Lloyd. "It wouldn't be becoming. Trot out
+to Aunt Cindy and get the lunch. That's a good little man. We'll be
+ready in just a few minutes."
+
+Even in her baby days, Lloyd had been patronizing at times to her
+good-natured playmate, ordering him about with a princess-like right
+that always seemed part of the game. So now he laughingly shrugged his
+shoulders and started to the kitchen, while Lloyd followed Betty
+up-stairs to change her slippers for heavy-soled walking-boots.
+
+A few minutes later the three were hurrying down the avenue to the gate,
+under the bare windswept branches of the locusts.
+
+"Aunt Cindy had disappeared temporarily," said Rob. "There wasn't a soul
+in the kitchen, so I rummaged around till I found this old basket, and
+filled it with a little of everything in sight. It is a long way to the
+creek. We'll be ready to eat nails by the time we tramp over there in
+this snappy weather."
+
+"It is snappy," agreed Lloyd. "Betty, yoah cheeks are as red as fiah."
+
+The rosy face under the brown tam-o'-shanter smiled back at her. "So are
+yours. Aren't they, Rob? They are as red as her coat."
+
+"Hello!" exclaimed Rob, noticing for the first time the long red coat
+that Lloyd wore. "That's something new, isn't it? I thought you looked
+different, but I couldn't tell exactly what it was. That's a stunner,
+sure enough, Princess. It sort of livens up the landscape."
+
+"I'm glad you like it," laughed Lloyd, "but I don't believe you would
+have seen it at all if Betty hadn't called yoah attention to it. You'll
+nevah get on in society, Bobby, if you don't learn to notice things.
+You'll miss all the chances most boys take advantage of to pay
+compliments and make pretty little speeches."
+
+Rob scowled. "You know I don't go in for that sort of stuff."
+
+"But you ought to," persisted Lloyd, who was in a perverse mood. "I
+considah it my duty to take you in hand and teach you. You may practise
+on Betty and me. Now we've been talking to Gay all term about our
+friends in Lloydsboro Valley, and naturally we want everybody to put
+their best foot foremost and show off their prettiest. Malcolm and Keith
+will leave a charming impression of themselves, because they will make
+her feel in such an easy graceful way that she has made that sawt of an
+impression on them. If she wears an especially pretty dress, or says an
+especially bright thing, or plays unusually well, they will notice it in
+some way so that she will know that they noticed it, and that they were
+pleased. Naturally that will please her, and she will like them bettah
+for it."
+
+Rob faced her with a whimsical expression. "Look here, Lloyd Sherman,
+I've played every kind of a game that you've asked me to ever since I
+learned to walk. I've been your man Friday when you wanted to be
+Robinson Crusoe, and played B'r Fox to your B'r Rabbit. You've scalped
+me and buried me and dug me up. You've made me be Pharaoh with the ten
+plagues of Egypt, or a Christian martyr thrown to the wild beasts, just
+as it pleased your fancy. I've even played dolls with you week at a
+time, but I swear I draw the line at this. I'll do anything in reason to
+help entertain your chum,--ride or dance or skate or get up private
+theatricals,--but I'll _not_ make a ninny of myself trying to be flowery
+and get off complimentary speeches. It comes natural to some people, but
+I'm not built that way. I'd be as awkward at it as a fish out of water."
+
+Lloyd turned her head with a despairing gesture. "Oh, Rob, you're
+hopeless! You don't undahstand at all! Nobody wants you to be flowery,
+and nobody likes flat-footed, out-and-out compliments. They're not nice
+at all. I just meant--well--I scarcely know what I _did_ mean, but you
+know how Malcolm does. It isn't that he says a thing in so many words,
+but he has a way of somehow making you feel that he has noticed nice
+things about you, and that he is _thinking_ compliments."
+
+"Gee whiz!" exclaimed Rob, in a teasing tone. "Say that again, won't you
+please, and say it slowly, so that I can take it all in. Do I get the
+thought? To be agreeable one must not say things, but must cultivate an
+air of having noticed that you are agreeable, and stand off and think
+compliments so hard that you can actually feel them flying through the
+air. Is that your idea?"
+
+"Oh, Rob! Stop your teasing."
+
+"Well, that is what you said, or words to that effect. Didn't she,
+Betty?"
+
+The brown eyes flashed an amused smile at him. They walked along in
+silence for a few minutes, then he said, humbly, but with a twinkle in
+his eye which boded mischief: "Well, I'll do the best I can to please
+you, Lloyd. I'll watch Malcolm till I get the hang of it, then I'll
+stand off and think compliments about your friend till her ears burn and
+she is duly impressed. Grandfather is always saying, 'Who does the best
+his circumstance allows, does nobly. Angels could do no more.'"
+
+"I wish I had never mentioned the subject," pouted Lloyd, as they walked
+on down the frozen pike. "I simply meant to give you a little advice for
+yoah own good, and you've gone and made a joke of it. I am suah you'll
+say or do something befoah the mawning is ovah that will make Gay think
+you are perfectly dreadful."
+
+Rob only laughed in answer, leaving her to infer that she had good
+reason for her fears. As they passed the only store which the Valley
+boasted, Kitty came rushing out, a bright new tin saucepan dangling at
+her side like a drum. It was tied by a piece of twine, and she was
+beating a tattoo upon it with a long-handled iron spoon. Keith
+followed, his overcoat pockets bulging with parcels.
+
+"Are you playing Santa Claus this early?" cried Betty, as he hurried
+across to shake hands with them.
+
+"No; Kitty decided that no social function in the woods was properly a
+picnic without a fire and some kind of a mess to cook. So we stopped at
+the store, and she's loaded me down with stuff for fudge. Malcolm and
+the girls are on ahead in the waiting-room."
+
+"Where's Ranald?" asked Lloyd, as they crossed the railroad track and
+walked along the platform toward the door of the station.
+
+"He's gone hunting with John Baylor, the boy he brought home from school
+with him," answered Kitty. "We can't get him within a stone's throw of
+Gay. I teased him so unmercifully in my letters about the girl who had
+asked for his picture to put in her group of heroes that he won't even
+look in her direction."
+
+As Lloyd greeted Malcolm, whom she had not seen since the close of the
+summer vacation, and then stood talking with him while Allison
+introduced Rob to her guest, she was conscious that Rob was watching
+every motion, and making note of it, to tease her afterward. A few
+moments later, when they were all discussing a choice of places for the
+picnic-grounds, he edged over to her.
+
+"Now I understand what you mean," he said, in a low voice. "Malcolm
+didn't say anything about that red coat. He just gave a sort of quick,
+pleased glance at it, as if it had hit him hard, and made some gallant
+speech about a Kentucky cardinal. I tried my best to follow suit. So
+when I was introduced, I gave the same kind of a glad start when I saw
+her hair, and was about to make a similar reference to a Texas redbird,
+when my courage failed me. So I just stood off and fired the name at her
+in thought till I'm sure she understood."
+
+"You mean thing!" exclaimed Lloyd, under her breath. "Her hair isn't
+red. It's just a deep, rich, bronzy auburn, and perfectly lovely. I do
+wish I'd nevah said anything. Now you'll not act natural, and you won't
+like each othah as I had hoped you would."
+
+A gayer picnic party never started down the pike than the one that went
+laughing along the road that winter morning, under barbed-wire fences,
+through pasture gates, across bare woodlands, and over frozen
+corn-fields. It was a still gray morning, with the chill of snow in the
+air, and presently the snow began to fall in big feathery flakes.
+
+Gay was delighted. She held up her face to let the cold, star-shaped
+crystals settle on it. She caught them on her sleeve to marvel over
+their airy beauty. "It's like frozen thistle-down!" she cried. "I hope
+it will snow all day and all night until everything is covered. I never
+saw a white Christmas."
+
+"This will stop the skating," said Allison, "unless we had a broom to
+sweep the ice as it falls."
+
+Rob offered to go back for one, but they were so far on their way they
+all protested it would not be worth while.
+
+"How much farthah is it?" asked Lloyd, presently. For the last half-mile
+she had had nothing to say, and had fallen behind the others.
+
+"I'm so tiahed I can hardly take another step."
+
+Rob looked at her curiously. It seemed strange for Lloyd to admit that
+she was tired. He had known her to tramp nearly all day after nuts, and
+then be ready for a horseback ride afterward.
+
+"We'll stop just over this hill," he replied. "There's a good place to
+camp. Here! Catch hold of my skate-strap, and I'll help pull you up."
+
+"It helps some," she said, clinging to the strap swung over his
+shoulder, "but I don't believe I'll evah get ovah this hill."
+
+"It looks like a grove of Christmas trees!" cried Gay, as they started
+down the other side toward the creek. Little cedars from two to five
+feet high dotted the hillside, and the snow had drifted across them till
+the branches drooped with the soft white burden. It began blowing
+faster, and coming down like a thick white sheet between them and the
+creek.
+
+Rob, who had often picnicked here on his hunting trips, led the way
+farther down the hill to a cavelike opening under an overhanging ledge
+of rocks.
+
+"This will keep the wind off your backs," he said. "Huddle down here a
+few minutes until we build a fire. Then you'll be all right."
+
+Some charred sticks and ashes between two flat rocks, with an old piece
+of sheet iron laid on top, marked the spot where many meals had been
+cooked. The boys began at once foraging for firewood. There was plenty
+of it all around,--dead limbs and broken twigs,--and soon they had a big
+heap ready to light.
+
+"Now if somebody can donate a piece of paper to start a blaze, we'll
+have you warm in a jiffy," said Rob.
+
+Keith slapped his pockets. "I haven't a scrap," he declared. "Malcolm,
+you might be able to spare that bunch of letters you carry around in
+your pocket. You've read them enough to know them by heart, I should
+think."
+
+"Oh, keep still, can't you?" muttered Malcolm, in an aside. "Don't get
+funny now."
+
+"See him get red!" whispered Keith to Betty. "They're from a girl he met
+at the first college hop last fall. She's older than he is, but he
+thinks she's the one and only."
+
+Then he turned to Malcolm again. "You might at least spare the envelopes
+when it's to keep us from freezing. It would be a big sacrifice, but to
+save your own blood and kin, you know--"
+
+Malcolm stole a quick glance at Lloyd, but she was leaning wearily
+against the ledge of rocks, paying no attention to Keith's remarks.
+Kitty solved the difficulty by diving into Keith's pockets after the
+packages, and emptying the brown sugar and chocolate into the saucepan.
+She handed the wrapping-paper and bag to Rob, saying if that was not
+enough she would scratch the label off the can of evaporated cream.
+
+Carefully holding his hat over the pile of twigs to shield it from the
+wind, Rob applied a match to the paper. It blazed up and caught the
+wood at once, and in a few moments a comfortable fire was crackling in
+front of them. Back in the cavelike hollow, under the rocks, the boys
+found a big, dry log, which other campers had put there for a seat. They
+rolled it forward toward the fire. Some flat stones were soon heated for
+the girls to put their feet on, and, warmed and rested, they began to
+investigate the contents of the baskets.
+
+"Oh, Rob!" groaned Lloyd. "What a lunch you did pick up for a wintah
+day! These slabs of cold pumpkin pie would freeze the teeth of a polah
+beah, and there's nothing else but pickles and cheese and apples and raw
+eggs."
+
+"That's fine!" exclaimed Allison. "We can roast the eggs in the ashes,
+and I've brought bacon to broil over the fire on switches. And here's
+crackers and gingersnaps and salmon--"
+
+"And peanuts," added Kitty, "don't forget them. Or the fudge. We will
+have that ready in a little while."
+
+"Now what could be jollier than this?" cried Gay, as she took the long,
+pointed switch that Rob cut for her, and held a piece of bacon over the
+fire to broil. "It's a thousand times nicer than a picnic in the summer,
+when you get so hot, and the mosquitoes and redbugs and spiders swarm
+all over you."
+
+Lloyd, with a sigh of relief, saw that Rob was "acting natural" at last,
+and he and Gay were showing off to mutual advantage. She was enjoying
+the novel experience so fully that she was in her brightest spirits, and
+he was talking to her with the familiar ease with which he talked to
+Lloyd and Betty, even scolding her with brotherly frankness when she
+dripped bacon grease around too promiscuously.
+
+The eggs were saltless, the bacon smoked and black, because, held in the
+flame as often as against the embers, nearly every piece caught fire and
+had to be blown out. Smoke blew in their eyes, and the snow fell thicker
+and thicker. But, with their feet on the hot stones, their backs to the
+sheltering ledge of rocks, and the fire crackling in front of them, they
+sang and laughed and ate with a zest which no summer picnic could have
+inspired.
+
+No one had remembered to bring a pail for water, and rather than tramp
+over another hill to a distant spring, they quenched their thirst with
+handfuls of snow. The fudge boiled over, and more than half of it was
+lost in the ashes.
+
+"It's a good thing that it did," Allison declared, tossing the empty
+salmon box and a bag of peanut shells into the fire. "Ugh! The mixture
+we've already eaten is enough to kill us! I think we ought to start back
+home now. I'm sure that I heard the one o'clock train whistle."
+
+But Kitty protested. They hadn't been out half long enough, she said. If
+the ice on the creek had been free from snow, they would have skated for
+hours, and she thought as long as that sport had been spoiled, they
+ought to do something to make up for it. Gay had never gathered any
+mistletoe. She thought it would be fun for them all to go around by
+Stone Hollow, and get some off the big trees that grew in the
+surrounding pastures.
+
+Lloyd listened to the ready assent of the others with a sinking heart.
+She had been leaning back against the rocks for some time, taking no
+part in the conversation. She had grown so tired that she dreaded the
+long tramp home, and had been vainly wishing that Tarbaby could suddenly
+appear on the scene, or some one with a conveyance. Even a wheelbarrow
+or a go-cart would have been welcome. She could not remember that she
+had ever felt so exhausted before in all her life.
+
+"But I won't be the one to hang back and spoil every one's fun," she
+said to herself, "They wouldn't let me go home the shorter way by
+myself. It would only break up the pah'ty if I proposed it. But I do not
+see how I can evah drag myself all the way around by Stone Hollow."
+
+At another time they might have noticed that she lagged behind, that she
+had little to say, and that she looked white and tired. But Gay, her
+spirits rising in the wintry air, was in her most rollicking mood. Even
+Kitty had never known her to say so many funny things or to tell so many
+amusing experiences. She followed on behind with Lloyd, watching
+admiringly as Gay's bright face was turned first toward Malcolm, then
+toward Rob, jubilant to see that her guest was captivating them as she
+did every one else who fell under the charm of her vivacious manner.
+
+Betty and Allison were on ahead with Keith, keeping a sharp lookout for
+mistletoe. Lloyd scarcely heard what any one said. She plodded along
+like one in a dream. It was an effort just to lift her feet. Only one
+thing in life seemed desirable just then, that was her warm soft bed at
+home. If she could only creep into that and shut her tired eyes and lie
+there, she wouldn't care if she didn't waken for a month. She felt that
+it would be bliss to sleep through Christmas and the entire vacation.
+
+The long walk came to an end at last. The roundabout route through Stone
+Hollow led them near Locust, and, with their arms full of mistletoe, the
+merry picnickers parted from Lloyd and Betty at the gate. Gay exclaimed
+enthusiastically over the beautiful old avenue, leading under the
+snow-covered locusts to the house, but to Lloyd's relief her invitation
+to come in was refused. There were a dozen reasons why they could not
+stop, but they promised to be over early next morning.
+
+"It has been the very loveliest picnic I ever went to in my whole life,"
+declared Gay, as they turned away. "I'd like to turn around and do it
+all over again."
+
+"So would I," echoed Betty, warmly. "I'm not at all tired."
+
+Lloyd looked at her in vague wonder as they plodded up the avenue. "I
+don't know what's the mattah with me," she said, "that I couldn't keep
+up with you all, unless it's true what Miss Gilmer said. The ice is too
+thin for holiday dissipations, and this picnic was too great a weight
+for it."
+
+Betty glanced at her white face anxiously. "Go and lie down the rest of
+the afternoon," she said. "I'll tie up your packages."
+
+"Oh, if you only would!" exclaimed Lloyd, gratefully. "But it seems too
+much to ask of any one. Don't tell mothah that I got so woh'n out. I'll
+be all right by evening."
+
+"She hasn't come home yet," said Betty, looking ahead of them at the
+smooth expanse of newly fallen snow. "There isn't a track either of foot
+or wheel."
+
+"Then maybe I'll have time for a nap, and be all rested when she comes,"
+said Lloyd. "I don't want her to get any of Miss Gilmer's notions about
+me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A PROGRESSIVE CHRISTMAS PARTY
+
+
+LLOYD stood at the window in the falling twilight and looked out across
+the snow. It had been an ideal Christmas Day. She could feel the chill
+of the white winter world outside as she leaned against the frosty pane,
+but in her scarlet dress, with the holly berries at her belt and in her
+hair, she looked the embodiment of Christmas warmth and cheer, and as if
+no cold could touch her.
+
+The candles had not yet been lighted, but the room was filled with the
+ruddy glow of the big wood fire. It shone warmly on the frames of the
+portraits and the tall gilded harp with its shining strings, and gave a
+burnishing touch to Betty's brown hair, as she stood by the piano,
+fingering for the hundredth time the presents she had received that day.
+Her dress of soft white wool suggested, like Lloyd's, the Yule-tide
+season, for in the belt and shoulder-knots of dull green velvet were
+caught clusters of mistletoe, the tiny waxen berries gleaming like
+pearls.
+
+"Everything is _so_ lovely!" she sighed, happily, picking up her camera
+to admire it once more. It was her godmother's gift, and the thing she
+had most longed to own.
+
+She focussed it on Lloyd, who, in her scarlet dress, stood vividly
+outlined by the firelight against the curtains. "I took three pictures
+this morning while Rob was here, all snow scenes. The house, the locust
+avenue, and a group of little darkies running after your grandfather,
+calling out, 'Chris'mus gif', Colonel!' I think I'd better carry my
+things all up to my room," she added, presently. "There'll be so many
+people here soon, and so much moving around when the hunt begins, that
+they'll be in the way."
+
+"You'll need a wheelbarrow to take them in," answered Lloyd, turning
+from the window to watch her gather them up. "You'd bettah call Walkah
+to help you."
+
+"Santa Claus certainly was good to me," answered Betty, picking up Mr.
+Sherman's gift, a beautiful mother-of-pearl opera-glass. It was like the
+one he had given Lloyd, except for the difference in monograms. She
+rubbed it lovingly with her handkerchief, and laid it beside the camera
+to be carried up-stairs. There were books from the old Colonel, an
+ivory photograph-frame exquisitely carved from Lloyd. Dozens of little
+articles from the girls at school, and remembrances from nearly every
+friend in the Valley. There was more than her arms could hold, and,
+bringing a large tray from the dining-room, she made two trips up and
+down stairs with it before her treasures were all lodged safely in her
+room.
+
+Left alone for the first time that busy day, Lloyd stood a moment longer
+peering out into the snowy twilight, and then crossed the room to the
+table where her gifts were spread out. There had never been so many for
+her since her days of dolls and dishes and woolly lambs. The
+opera-glasses like Betty's were what she had wished for all year. The
+purse her grandfather had slipped into the toe of her stocking was the
+prettiest little affair of gray suede and silver she had ever seen. She
+had thought of a dozen delightful ways to spend the gold eagle which it
+held.
+
+The book-rack which Betty had burnt for her, with her initials on each
+end, was already nearly filled with the books that different friends had
+sent her. Rob's gift had been a book. So had Miss Allison's and Mrs.
+MacIntyre's and the old family doctor's. Malcolm had sent a great bunch
+of American Beauties. She drew the vase toward her and buried her face
+a moment in the delicious fragrance. Then she nibbled a caramel from
+Keith's box of candy. The rosebud sachet-bag which Gay made lay in the
+box of handkerchiefs that good old Mom Beck had given her.
+
+She patted the thick letter from Joyce that told so much of interest
+about Ware's Wigwam. She intended to have the water-colour sketch of
+Squaw's Peak framed to take back to school with her. Mary's fat little
+fingers had braided the Indian basket which came with Joyce's picture,
+and Jack himself had killed the wildcat, whose skin he sent to make a
+rug for her room. Lloyd was proud of that skin. As she stood smoothing
+the tawny fur, the diamond on her finger flashed like fire, and she
+stood turning her hand this way and that, that the glow of the flames
+might fall on her new ring.
+
+It was a beautifully cut stone in an old-fashioned setting, with the
+word "_Amanthis_" engraved inside; but not for a fortune would Lloyd
+have had the little circlet changed to a modern setting. For just so had
+it been slipped on her grandmother's finger at her fifteenth Christmas.
+She had worn it until her daughter's fifteenth Christmas, and now she,
+in turn, had given it to Lloyd. All day it had been a constant joy to
+her. Aside from the pleasure of possessing such a beautiful ring, she
+had a feeling that in its flashing heart was crystallized a triple
+happiness,--the joy of three Christmas days: hers, her mother's, and the
+beautiful young girl with the June rose in her hair, who smiled down at
+her from the portrait over the mantel.
+
+She smiled up at it now in the same confiding way she had done as a
+child, saying, in a low tone: "And when you played on the harp, it
+flashed on yoah hand just as it does on mine." Pleased by the fancy, she
+crossed the room and struck a few chords on the harp, watching the
+firelight flash on the ring as she did so.
+
+          "'Sing me the songs that to me were so deah,
+               Long, long ago, long ago!'"
+
+There was a step in the hall, and the portieres were pushed aside as the
+old Colonel came in. She did not stop, for she knew he loved the old
+song, and that she was helping to bring back his happy past, when he
+threw himself into a chair before the fire, and sat looking up at
+Amanthis.
+
+When she had finished the song, she perched herself on the arm of his
+chair, and began ruffling up his white hair with the little hand which
+wore the diamond.
+
+"Well, has it been a happy day for grandpa's little Colonel?" he asked,
+fondly, passing his arm around her.
+
+"Oh, yes, grandfathah! Brim full and running ovah with all sawts of
+lovely surprises. I'm mighty glad I'm living. And the best of it is,
+although the day is neahly ovah, the fun isn't. There's still so much to
+come."
+
+"What kind of a performance is this one on the programme for to-night?"
+he asked. "Betty said I had to go the whole round, but I haven't been
+able to gather a very good idea of what's expected of me."
+
+"It's just a progressive Christmas pah'ty, grandfathah," she explained,
+tweaking his ear as she talked. "We couldn't agree about the celebration
+this yeah. Judge Moore wanted us all to go to Oaklea. Mrs. Walton
+thought they had the best right on account of their guests, so we
+arranged it for everybody to take a turn at entahtaining. At five
+o'clock they're all to come heah for a Christmas hunt. They ought to be
+coming now, for it's neahly that time. At half-past six we'll have
+dinnah at Oaklea. At half-past eight we'll go to The Beeches and finish
+the evening with a general jollification. Then we'll come home by
+moonlight."
+
+"What is a Christmas hunt?" asked the Colonel. "You'll have to enlighten
+my ignorance."
+
+"It's a game that mothah and Betty thought of. Betty has worked like a
+dawg to get the rhymes ready. She scarcely took time to eat yestahday,
+and she gave up going to the charade pah'ty that Miss Allison gave for
+Gay in the aftahnoon. It's this way. We've hidden little gifts all ovah
+the house, from attic to cellah. When the guests come, each one will be
+given a card with a rhyme on it, like this."
+
+Slipping from the arm of the chair, she went out into the hall a moment,
+and came back with a Christmas stocking, trimmed with holly and hung
+with tiny sleigh-bells. "Little Elise Walton is to distribute the cards
+from this. Heah is a sample. Miss Allison happens to be on top."
+
+Adjusting his eye-glasses the Colonel turned so that the firelight shone
+on the card, and read aloud:
+
+          "Seek where bygone summers
+           Have dropped their roses fair.
+           A little Christmas package
+           Is waiting for you there."
+
+"Now where would you look if that cah'd were for you?" she demanded.
+
+"In the conservatory?" he replied, inquiringly.
+
+"That is what Miss Allison will do, probably," answered Lloyd, her
+cheeks dimpling at the thought. "But aftah awhile she will remembah the
+old dragon that mothah always keeps full of rose-leaves just as
+Grandmothah Amanthis did. See?"
+
+She lifted the lid of a rare old cloisonne rose-jar that had stood on
+the end of the mantel for a longer time than Lloyd's memory could reach,
+and took out a small box. Taking off the cover, she disclosed what
+appeared to be a ripe cherry with a bee clinging to its side.
+
+"Take the bee in yoah thumb and fingah and pull," she ordered. "See?
+It's a cunning little tape-measuah for her work-basket."
+
+A sound of sleigh-bells jingling rapidly toward the house made her clap
+the lid on the box and drop it hastily back into the rose-jar.
+
+"There they come!" she cried, "and the candles haven't been lighted.
+Hurry, grandfathah! We can't wait to call Walkah! Throw open the front
+doah!"
+
+Flying to the hall closet for the long taper kept for the purpose, she
+held it an instant toward the blazing logs, and then darting around the
+room, passed from one candelabrum to another, till every waxen candle
+was tipped with its star of light. In her scarlet dress and the holly
+berries, her cheeks glowing and the taper held above her head as she
+tiptoed to reach the highest one, she looked like some radiant acolyte
+of Joy.
+
+Betty, rushing breathlessly down-stairs at the sound of the
+sleigh-bells, paused an instant between the portieres at sight of her.
+"Oh, Lloyd!" she cried, clasping her hands. "You've given me the
+loveliest idea! I've only got it by the tail feathers now, but I'll find
+words for it all some day." Then, without waiting to explain, she ran
+out to the porch, where, between the tall pillars, the old Colonel
+waited with elaborate courtesy to receive the coming guests.
+
+As the sleighs glided nearer, Betty looked back through the door swung
+hospitably open to its widest, and saw Lloyd hastily thrusting the taper
+back into the closet.
+
+"She lighted it at the Christmas fire," thought Betty, struggling with
+the tail feathers of her lovely idea, in an effort to grasp all that
+Lloyd's act suggested. "And red is the emblem of joy. It might go this
+way: 'She touched the Christmas tapers with the Yule log's heart of
+flame.' No, it ought to start,--
+
+          "Lighting the candles of Christmas joy,
+           With a spark from the Yule log's fire."
+
+But there was no time for making poetry, with so many voices calling
+"Merry Christmas," and so many outstretched hands grasping hers. In
+another instant the house seemed filled to overflowing, and the dim old
+mirrors were flashing back from every side one of the gayest scenes the
+hospitable old mansion had ever known.
+
+The hunt began almost immediately. As soon as Elise had emptied the
+stocking of its contents, up-stairs and down-stairs and in my lady's
+chamber went old and young at the bidding of the rhymes.
+
+"I feel like a 'goosey gander,' sure enough," said Allison presently.
+"For I've been all over the house, and there's no place left to wander.
+Where would you go if you had this card?"
+
+She thrust hers out toward Gay, who read:
+
+          "Standing with reluctant feet
+           Where Brooks and Little Rivers meet."
+
+Gay puzzled over it a moment, and then suggested that she try the
+library. "I have," answered Allison. "Keith found his package in there,
+behind the picture of a Holland windmill and canal, but there is
+nothing else in the room that suggests water that I have been able to
+find."
+
+"Who wrote 'Little Rivers'?"
+
+Allison stood thinking a moment, and then cried out: "Well, of course!
+Why didn't I think to look among the books?" Flying down-stairs, she
+began glancing along the library shelves until she found the book she
+sought and Brooks's sermons standing side by side. Between them was
+wedged a thin package which proved to contain a picture which she had
+long wanted, a photograph of Murillo's painting of the Madonna.
+
+To Betty's surprise the Christmas stocking held a card for her. She had
+supposed her part of the game would be only making the rhymes and
+helping to hide the gifts. There was no rhyme on her card, simply the
+statement, "Some little men are keeping it for you."
+
+Remembering Allison's experience, she ran up-stairs to Lloyd's room,
+where in a low bookcase were all the juvenile stories that her childhood
+had held dear. A set of Miss Alcott's books stood first, and, taking out
+the well-thumbed copy of "Little Men," she shook it gently, fluttering
+the leaves, and turning it upside down. But the volume held nothing
+except a four-leaf clover, which Lloyd had left there to mark the place
+one summer day. Betty turned away, as puzzled as any of the others whom
+she had helped to mystify.
+
+Then she remembered two little wooden gnomes carved on the Swiss
+match-box and ash-tray in the Colonel's den. She dashed in there, but
+the gnomes kept guard over nothing but a few burnt matches. Nearly half
+an hour went by of bewildered wandering from place to place, until she
+happened to stray into Mr. Sherman's room. She stood by the desk,
+letting her eyes glance slowly over its handsome furnishings. Then, with
+a start of surprise that she had not thought of it before, she bent over
+a paper-weight. It was a crystal ball supported by two miniature bronze
+figures. The tiny Grecian athletes were evidently the little men who
+were keeping something for her, for the toy suit-case standing between
+them bore a tag on which was printed her initials.
+
+The suit-case was not more than two inches long. She supposed it
+contained bonbons. One of the girls had used a dozen like them for place
+cards at a farewell luncheon just before they went away to school. It
+did not open at the first pull, and when, at the second, it came
+forcibly apart, there was no shower of pink and white candies, as she
+had expected. Only a bit of folded paper fell out. Smoothing it on the
+desk, Betty read:
+
+          "Dear little girl, you have helped all the rest
+             To a happy time with your patient hands.
+           Now fly for a week to the Cuckoo's Nest,
+             With godmother's love, for she understands."
+
+Then Betty was glad that she was all alone in the room when she found
+the suit-case, for the tears began to brim up into her eyes and spill
+over on to the paper that had a crisp new greenback pinned to it. The
+tears were all happy ones, but she hardly knew what they were for.
+Whether she was happier because her heart's desire was granted, and she
+could spend her vacation with Davy, or whether it was because of that
+last line, "With godmother's love, _for she understands_."
+
+"Lloyd must have told her what I said that day on the train," she
+thought. It was the crowning happiness of the day for Betty. She was
+singing under her breath when she danced out into the hall to join the
+others.
+
+Some of the articles were so cleverly hidden that she had to give an
+occasional hint to the bewildered seekers. In the seats of chairs, over
+the deer's antlers in the hall, high up in the candelabra, strapped
+inside of umbrellas, poked into glove fingers, all of them were in
+unexpected places. Yet the directions of the verses seemed so plain when
+once understood that the hunters laughed at their own stupidity.
+
+Even Judge Moore and the old Colonel were swept into the game, and Mrs.
+MacIntyre's silvery hair bent just as eagerly as Elise's dark curls over
+each suspected spot and out-of-the-way corner until she found the volume
+of essays that had been hidden for her.
+
+By quarter-past six every one's search had been successful except Rob's.
+"It would take a Christopher Columbus to find this place," he said,
+scowling at his verse. "And I'd be willing to bet anything that it isn't
+the bank that Shakespeare had in mind. Give me a hint, Lloyd." He held
+out the card:
+
+          "I know a bank where the wild thyme grows.
+             Unseen it lies, unsung by bard.
+           Something keeps watch there, no man knows,
+             And over your gift it's standing guard."
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea what it is," she said. "Betty wrote so many
+of them yestahday aftahnoon while I was at the pah'ty, and she wouldn't
+tell me this one. She said she thought you'd suahly guess it, but she
+didn't want you to have a hint from any one. Come ovah to-morrow, and
+we'll find it if we have to turn the house upside down."
+
+The sleighs had made one trip to Oaklea and returned for another load,
+when Rob finally gave up the search. Lloyd and Gay climbed into the same
+seat, and, as they cuddled down among the warm robes, Gay caught Lloyd's
+hand in an impetuous squeeze.
+
+"Oh, I'm having such a good time!" she exclaimed. "I've been in a dizzy
+whirl ever since five o'clock this morning. I never had a sleigh-ride
+before to-day. I don't wonder that Betty calls this the House Beautiful.
+Look back at it now. It's fairy-land!" A light was streaming from every
+window, and the snow sparkled like diamonds in the moonlight.
+
+The drive to Oaklea was so short that the Judge and Mrs. Moore were
+welcoming them at the door before Gay had fairly begun her account of
+the day's happening. Dinner was announced almost immediately, and she
+was ushered into one of the largest dining-rooms she had ever seen, and
+seated at the long table. Such a large Christmas tree formed the
+centrepiece that she could catch only an occasional glimpse through its
+branches of Lloyd, seated on the other side between Malcolm and John
+Baylor.
+
+Gay was between Ranald and Rob. While she kept up a lively chatter,
+first with one and then the other, a sentence floating across the table
+now and then made her long to hear what was being said on the other side
+of the Christmas tree. She heard Malcolm say, in a surprised tone: "Maud
+Minor! No, indeed, I didn't! Why, I scarcely mentioned you. Don't you
+believe--"
+
+A general laugh at one of the old Colonel's stories drowned the rest of
+the sentence, and left Gay wondering which one of Maud's many tales was
+not to be believed.
+
+"I'll ask her after dinner," thought Gay. But it was a long time till
+all the courses that followed the turkey gave way in slow succession to
+plum pudding and the trifles on the Christmas tree. Then Gay had no
+opportunity to ask her question, for Malcolm still stayed by Lloyd's
+side when the company broke up into little groups in the hall and the
+adjoining parlours.
+
+"The children are growing up, Jack," said the old Judge, laying his hand
+on Mr. Sherman's shoulder, as several couples passed on their way to the
+music-room. "There's Rob, now, the young rascal, taller than his
+father; and it seems only yesterday that he was riding pickaback on my
+shoulders, and tooting his first Christmas trumpet in my ears. And young
+MacIntyre there is nearly a full-fledged man. He'll soon be eighteen, he
+tells me. Why, at his age--"
+
+The Judge rambled off into a series of reminiscences which would have
+been very entertaining to the younger man had his eyes not been
+following Lloyd. He did not like to think that she was growing up. He
+wanted to keep her a child. In his fond eyes she was always beautiful,
+but he had never seen her look as well as she did to-night. The scarlet
+dress and the holly berries gave her unusual colour. He fancied that
+there was a deeper flush on her face when Malcolm leaned over her chair
+to say something to her. Then he told himself that it was only fancy.
+Looking up, Lloyd caught sight of her father in the doorway, and flashed
+him a smile so open and reassuring that he turned away, thinking, "My
+honest little Hildegarde! She asked for her yardstick, and I can surely
+trust her to use it as she promised."
+
+Presently Malcolm, hunting through his pockets for a programme he was
+talking about, took out a bunch of letters. As he hastily turned them
+over, several unmounted photographs fluttered out and fell at Lloyd's
+feet. An amused smile dimpled her mouth as her hasty glance showed her
+that they were all of the same girl,--evidently kodak shots he had taken
+himself. Probably that was the girl and these were the letters that
+Keith had teased him about at the picnic.
+
+Neither spoke, and he reddened uncomfortably at her amused smile, as he
+put them back into his pocket. At that moment, Rob turned toward them,
+holding his new watch in his hand.
+
+"I have just been showing Ranald the present Daddy gave me," he said to
+Lloyd. "It reminded me that I hadn't told you,--I've put that same old
+four-leaf clover into the back of this watch that I had in my silver
+one. I wouldn't lose my luck by losing your hoodoo charm for anything in
+the world."
+
+At the sight of the clover Lloyd blushed violently. But it was not the
+little dried leaf that deepened the quick colour in her cheeks. It was
+the thought of the last time he had shown it to her, and the scene it
+recalled at the churchyard stile, when Malcolm had begged for the tip of
+a curl to carry with him always as a talisman; as a token that he was
+really her knight, as he had been in the princess play, and that he
+would come to her on some glad morrow.
+
+"He'll have a pocket full of such talismans by the time he's through
+college," she thought, recalling the kodak pictures she had just seen.
+"I'm _mighty_ glad that I didn't give him one."
+
+Over at The Beeches, Elise and her little friends had arranged to give a
+Christmas play, so promptly at the hour agreed upon the party
+"progressed" in Mrs. Walton's wake. There they found the third royal
+welcome, and the gayest of entertainments. It had been an exciting day
+for all of them, and, as Kitty expressed it, they were all wound up like
+alarm-clocks. They would go off pretty soon with a br-r-r and a bang,
+and then run down.
+
+The play passed off without a hitch in the performance, and ended in a
+blaze of spangles and red light, when the fairy queen, trailing off the
+stage, went through the audience showering on her guests Christmas
+roses, supposed to have been called to life by her magic wand, and
+distributed as souvenirs of her skill.
+
+Then somebody came up to Gay with her violin. With Allison to play her
+accompaniments, she chose her sweetest pieces, and threw her whole soul
+into the rendering of them. She was so grateful to these dear people
+who had taken her in like one of themselves, and given her such a happy,
+happy holiday-time that she did her best, and Gay's best on the violin
+was a treat even to the musical critics in the company. Kitty was so
+proud of her she could not help expressing her pleasure aloud, much to
+Gay's embarrassment. To hide her confusion, she started a merry jig
+tune, so rollicking and irresistible that hands and feet all through the
+rooms began to pat the time. Keith seized his Aunt Allison around the
+waist and waltzed her out into the floor.
+
+"Come on, everybody!" he cried.
+
+Lloyd was standing in the doorway, talking to Doctor Shelby, the
+white-haired physician of the village, one of her oldest and dearest
+friends.
+
+"Go on, Miss Holly-berry," he said. "If I wasn't such a stiff old
+graybeard, I'd be at it myself. There's Ranald wanting to ask you."
+
+Lloyd waltzed off with Ranald, as light on her feet as a bit of
+thistle-down, and the old doctor's eyes followed her fondly.
+
+"She's like Amanthis," he said to himself. "And she will grow more like
+her as the years go by, so spirited and high-strung. But they'll have to
+watch her, or she'll wear herself out."
+
+Presently he missed the flash of the scarlet dress, in and out among
+the others, and he did not see it again until the music had stopped and
+the revel was ending with the chimes, rung softly on the Bells of Luzon.
+As he stepped back to allow several guests to pass him on the way up to
+the dressing-room, he caught sight of Lloyd in an alcove in the back
+hall. She was attempting to draw a glass of ice-water from the cooler.
+Her hands shook, and her face was so pale that it startled him. "What's
+the matter, child?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Nothing," she answered, trying to force a little laugh. "It's just that
+I felt for a minute as if I might faint. I nevah did, you know. I reckon
+it's as Kitty said. We've been wound up all day, and we've run so hah'd
+we've about run down, and we have to stop whethah we want to or not."
+
+He looked at her keenly and began counting her pulse. "You are not to
+get wound up this way any more this winter, young lady," he said,
+sternly. "Go straight home and go to bed, and stay there until day after
+to-morrow. The rest cure is what you need."
+
+"And miss Katie Mallard's pah'ty?" she cried. "Why, I couldn't do it
+even for you, you bad old ogah."
+
+She made a saucy mouth at him, and then, with her most winning smile,
+held out her hand to say good night, for the guests were beginning to
+take their departure. "_Please_, Mistah _My_-Doctah,"--it was the pet
+name she had given him years ago when she used to ride on his
+shoulder,--"please don't go to putting any notions into Papa Jack's head
+or mothah's. I'm just ti'ahed. That's all. I'll be all right in the
+mawning."
+
+"Come, Lloyd," called Mrs. Sherman. "We're ready to start now." She saw
+with a sigh of relief that her mother was bringing her coat toward her,
+so she would not have to climb the stairs for it. She was tired,
+dreadfully tired, she admitted to herself. But it had been such a happy
+day it was worth the fatigue.
+
+As she drove homeward in the sleigh, she slipped her hand out of her
+muff, and turned it in the moonlight to watch the sparkle of the new
+ring. She wondered if the two girls who had worn it in turn before her
+had had half as happy a fifteenth Christmas as she.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE DUNGEON OF DISAPPOINTMENT
+
+
+IT was nearly noon when Lloyd wakened next morning. Her head ached, and
+she wondered dully how anybody could feel lively enough to sing as Aunt
+Cindy was doing, somewhere back in the servants' quarters. The sound of
+a squeaking wheelbarrow had wakened her. Alec was trundling it around
+the house, with the parrot perched on it. The parrot loved to ride, and
+its silly laugh at every jolt of the squeaking barrow usually amused
+Lloyd, but to-day its harsh chatter annoyed her.
+
+"Oh, deah!" she groaned, sitting up in bed and yawning. "I feel as if I
+could sleep for a week. I wouldn't get up at all if it wasn't for Katie
+Mallard's pah'ty. I hate this day-aftah-Christmas feeling, as if the
+bottom had dropped out of everything."
+
+She dressed slowly and went down-stairs. "Where's mothah, Mom Beck?" she
+asked, pausing in the dining-room door. The old coloured woman was
+arranging flowers for the lunch-table.
+
+"She's done gone ovah to Rollington, honey, with the old Cun'l. Walkah's
+mothah is sick, and sent for 'em. I'm lookin' for 'em to come home any
+minute now. Come right along in, honey. I've kep' yoah breakfus' good
+and hot."
+
+"I don't want anything to eat. I'm not hungry now. I'd rathah wait till
+lunch. Where's Betty, Mom Beck?"
+
+"Now listen to that!" ejaculated the old woman, sharply. "Don't you
+remembah? She went off on the early train this mawning to that place you
+all calls the Cuckoo's Nest. I packed her satchel befoah daylight."
+
+"I had forgotten she was going," exclaimed Lloyd, turning to the window
+with a discontented expression, which only the snowbirds on the lawn
+could see. She had come down-stairs expecting to talk over all the
+happenings of the previous day with Betty, and to find her gone gave her
+a vague sense of injury. She knew the feeling was unreasonable, but she
+could not shake it off.
+
+The flash of the new ring gave her a momentary pleasure, but she was in
+a mood that nothing could please her long. When she strolled into the
+drawing-room, everything was in spotless order, and so quiet that the
+stillness was oppressive. Even the fire burned with a steady, noiseless
+glow, without the usual crackle, and the ashes fell on the hearth with
+velvety softness.
+
+Some of her new books lay on a side table. She picked them up and
+glanced through them, catching at a paragraph here and there. But one
+after another she laid them down. She was not in a mood for reading.
+Then she took a candied date from the bonbon dish, but it seemed to lack
+its usual flavour. After nibbling each end, she threw it into the fire.
+Slipping her new opera-glass from its case, she went to the window and
+turned the lens on the distant entrance gate. The road in each direction
+seemed deserted. So she put the glass back in its case, and, after
+strolling restlessly around the room, walked over to the harp and struck
+a few chords.
+
+"It's all out of tune!" she exclaimed, fretfully, thrumming the faulty
+string with impatient fingers. "Everything seems out of tune this
+mawning!"
+
+As she spoke, the string broke with a sudden harsh twang that made her
+jump. She was so startled that the tears came to her eyes, and so
+nervous that she flung herself face downward on the pillows of the
+long-Persian divan, and began sobbing hysterically. The strain of the
+last few weeks had been too much for her. Miss Gilmer's prophecy had
+come true. The ice had given away under the extra weight put upon it.
+
+She was sobbing so hard that she did not hear the sound of carriage
+wheels rolling softly up the avenue through the snow, and when the front
+door banged shut she started again, and began trembling as she had done
+when the harp-string broke. She was crying convulsively now, so hard
+that she could not stop, although she clenched her fists and bit her
+lips in a strong effort to regain self-control.
+
+Mrs. Sherman, her face all aglow from the cold drive, and looking almost
+girlishly fair in her big hat with the plumes, and her dark furs,
+hurried in to the fire. The Colonel, throwing back his scarlet lined
+cape, pushed aside the portiere for her to enter. He was the first to
+catch sight of the shaking form on the divan.
+
+"Why, Lloyd, child, what's the matter?" he demanded, anxiously. "What's
+the matter with grandpa's little girl?"
+
+Mrs. Sherman, with a frightened expression, hurried to her, and, bending
+over her, tried to get a glimpse of the tear-swollen face buried so
+persistently in the cushions.
+
+"Nothing's happened! No, I'm not sick," came in smothered tones from the
+depths of the pillows. "It's j-just crying itself, and I--I--I c-can't
+stop-p-p!"
+
+A long shiver passed over her, and Mrs. Sherman, stroking her forehead
+with a soothing hand, waited for her to grow quiet before plying her
+with questions. But the old Colonel paced impatiently back and forth.
+
+"The child _must_ be sick," he declared. "She'll be coming down with a
+fever or something if we don't take vigorous measures to prevent it. I
+shall telephone for Dick Shelby this minute."
+
+He started toward the hall, but a wild wail from Lloyd stopped him.
+
+"I won't have the doctah! I'm not sick, and you sha'n't send for him! I
+j-just cried because the harp-string b-broke so suddenly that it
+s-scared me!"
+
+The Colonel paused and looked at her in amazement. Not since the time
+when she, a five-year-old child, had flung a handful of mud over his
+white clothes had she spoken to him in such a defiant tone. He answered
+soothingly, as if she were still that little child, to be coaxed into
+good behaviour. "Oh, yes, you won't mind the doctor's coming if grandpa
+wants him to. He'll keep you from getting down sick, and spoiling all
+the rest of your vacation. I'll just ask him to step up and look at
+you."
+
+"No, don't!" demanded Lloyd, as he started again toward the hall. "No,
+you sha'n't!" she insisted, springing up and stamping her foot. "I won't
+have the old doctah, and I won't take any of his nasty old medicine!
+He'll make me stay home from Katie's pah'ty this aftahnoon and from the
+matinee to-morrow--and there's nothing the mattah, only I'm cross and
+nervous, and the moah you bothah me the hah'dah it is to stop crying!"
+
+Then ashamed of her petulant outburst, she threw her arms around his
+neck, and sobbed on his shoulder. In the end she had her own way, for
+the glass of hot milk which her mother sent for, as soon as she found
+Lloyd had eaten no breakfast, soothed her overstrung nerves. A brisk
+walk to the post-office in the bracing December air gave her an appetite
+for luncheon. Then she slept again until time to dress for Katie's
+party, so that when the old Colonel watched her start off, she looked so
+bright and was in such buoyant spirits that he wondered vaguely if her
+crying spell could have been the remnant of some childish tantrum
+instead of the forerunner of an illness.
+
+He banished the thought instantly from his loyal old heart, ashamed of
+having applied such a word as tantrum to anything Lloyd might choose to
+do. Of course she had felt ill, he told himself. So wretched that she
+hadn't known what she was saying when she stormed at him so angrily. He
+resolved to watch her closely, and take matters in his own hands if she
+showed any more alarming symptoms.
+
+There was a matinee next day in Louisville, to which Mrs. Sherman took
+all the girls in the neighbourhood. That was the end of the Christmas
+gaieties for Lloyd. Doctor Shelby was at Locust on her return. He came
+out of the old Colonel's den, where he had been sitting for several
+hours, deep in a game of chess, and found her shivering in front of the
+fire with a nervous chill, sobbing hysterically.
+
+She stormed at him almost as she had done at her grandfather, protesting
+that she was only tired and nervous, and that she would be all right as
+soon as she had had her cry out. But she submitted meekly when he
+ordered her mother to put her to bed. The old doctor had always indulged
+her, but there was a sternness in his manner now that made her obey
+him.
+
+He called to see her the next day, and the next. But his visits did not
+seem like professional ones. There was nothing said about medicine or
+symptoms. He only asked her about school and the good times she had been
+having, and the extra studying she had been doing. Then he sat and joked
+and talked with her and her mother, as had been his habit ever since
+Lloyd could remember. The third afternoon she was down in the
+drawing-room when he came.
+
+"We'll soon be having Miss Holly-berry back again," he said, playfully
+pinching her pale cheek.
+
+"And without taking any nasty old medicine," she answered. "I don't mind
+doctahs when they can cure people without giving them pills and
+powdahs."
+
+The Colonel looked up sharply. "What's that?" he asked. "Haven't you
+been giving her anything, Dick? It seems to me the child would get along
+faster if she had a good tonic."
+
+"I am going to prescribe one this morning," the doctor answered. "That's
+what I came up for." He laughed at the look of disgust on Lloyd's face.
+
+"It isn't bad," he assured her, with an indulgent smile. "Why, I know
+dozens of girls who would say that the tonic I am going to prescribe is
+the most agreeable that could be given. I've even had them beg for it.
+This is it, simply to lengthen your Christmas vacation. Didn't I hear a
+certain young lady wishing the other night that she could stretch hers
+out indefinitely?"
+
+Lloyd's dimples deepened. "How much longah will you make it? A week? If
+I stay out much longah than that, it will be such hah'd work to catch up
+with my classes that the game won't be worth the candle."
+
+"But I would make it so long that there would be no necessity of having
+to catch up, as you call it. You could simply make a fresh start in a
+new class."
+
+Lloyd looked up in alarm. "When?" she demanded.
+
+"Um--well, next fall, let us say," he answered, deliberately. "Yes,
+surely by that time you'll be well and sound as a new dollar."
+
+"Next fall!" she gasped, her face growing white and her eyes strangely
+big and dark. "You don't mean--you _couldn't_ mean that I must leave
+school."
+
+"Yes, that's exactly what I mean. You are overtaxing yourself and must
+stop--"
+
+"Oh, I can't!" interrupted Lloyd, speaking very fast. "I _won't_! It's
+cruel to ask it when I've worked so hard to keep from falling behind
+Betty and the girls. Oh, you don't _know_ what it means to me!"
+
+The old doctor looked up in amazement at this unexpected outburst.
+
+"No," he answered, slowly, after a moment's silence. "I don't suppose I
+do. I had no idea it would be a disappointment to you. I would gladly
+save you from it if I could. But listen to me, my little girl, and try
+to be reasonable. You are on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Nothing
+can mean as much to you as your health. What will keeping up with the
+other girls amount to if the strain and the overtaxing makes an invalid
+of you for life, perhaps?
+
+"Mind you, I am not saying that the work itself is too great a tax.
+Madam Chartley's is one of the best regulated schools I have ever
+inquired into. Ordinarily a girl ought to be able to take the course
+with perfect ease. But you see that little spell of la grippe left you
+weak and unfit for any extra strain, and, instead of easing up a bit,
+you went on piling on all that extra load of lessons and Christmas
+preparations and vacation dissipations. It was like trying to walk on a
+broken foot. The more you tried, the worse it got. The mischief is done
+now, and there is no remedy but to stop short off."
+
+Lloyd sat very still for a moment, staring out of the window in a dazed,
+unseeing way, as if not fully understanding all he said. Then she turned
+with a piteous appeal in her face to Mrs. Sherman.
+
+"Mothah, it isn't so, is it? I won't have to give up school now! You
+wouldn't make me, would you, when you know how I love it? Oh, it will
+neahly _kill_ me if you do! Please say no, mothah! _Please_!"
+
+Mrs. Sherman's eyes were full of tears. "My poor little girl," she
+exclaimed as Lloyd threw herself into her arms. "I'm afraid we must do
+as the doctor says. He would not ask such a sacrifice if it were not
+necessary. You know how dearly he has always loved you."
+
+Without waiting to hear any more, Lloyd sprang up and ran out of the
+room. Rushing up-stairs, she bolted her door behind her, and threw
+herself across the bed.
+
+"It is the first great disappointment she has ever had in her life,"
+said her mother, looking after her with a troubled face. "Couldn't you
+make the sentence a little easier, doctor? Couldn't she go back and take
+one study, just to be with the girls?"
+
+He shook his head. "No, Elizabeth. She is too ambitious and high-strung
+for that. One study wouldn't satisfy her. She'd chafe at not being able
+to keep up in everything. She has nothing serious the matter with her
+now, but it would not take long to make a wreck of her health at the
+gait she has been going. There must be no more parties, no more regular
+school work, and even no more music lessons this winter. She must have
+the simplest kind of a life. Keep her out-of-doors all you can. A little
+prevention now will be worth pounds of cure after awhile."
+
+"I suppose you are right, Dick," said the old Colonel, huskily, "but I
+swear I'd give the only arm the Yankees left me to save her from this
+disappointment."
+
+Lying across the bed up-stairs, Lloyd cried and sobbed until she was
+exhausted. The handkerchief clutched in her hand in a damp little ball
+had wiped away the bitterest tears she had ever shed. In her inmost
+heart she knew that the doctor was right. It had been weeks since she
+had felt strong and well. She remembered the way she had lagged behind
+at the picnic, and what an effort it had been to talk and make herself
+agreeable lately. Recalling the last few weeks, it seemed to her that
+she had been in tears half the time. She admitted to herself that she
+would rather be dead than to be an invalid for life like her great-aunt
+Jane. To sit always in a darkened room that smelled of camphor, and to
+talk in a weak, complaining voice that made everybody tired. Of course
+if there was danger of her growing to be like _her_, she would rather
+leave school than run such a risk. But why, oh, _why_ was she forced to
+make such a choice? The other girls didn't have to. She had done no more
+than they to bring about such a state of affairs.
+
+They could go back to dear old Warwick Hall, but she would have to stay
+behind. And she would always be behind, for, even if she went back with
+them another year, it couldn't be the same. They would have done so much
+in the meantime,--gone on so far ahead, made new friends and found new
+interests, and she would have to drop back in the class below, and
+never, never stand on the same footing with them again. It was so hard,
+so cruel, that she should have to face a blighted life at only fifteen.
+
+She unlocked the door presently at her mother's knock, but she didn't
+want to be comforted. Nothing anybody could say could change things, she
+sobbed, or make the disappointment any easier to bear. So Mrs. Sherman
+wisely withdrew, and left her to fight it out alone.
+
+The next time she peeped into the room, Lloyd was asleep, worn out with
+the violence of her grief, so she tiptoed down-stairs, leaving the door
+ajar behind her. The Colonel was pacing up and down the library.
+
+"I declare I can't think of anything but that child's disappointment!"
+he exclaimed, as she came in. "I can't read! I can't settle down to
+anything. I have been trying to think of some pleasure we could give her
+to make up for it in a way. A winter in Florida, maybe. Poor baby! if I
+could only bear it for her, how glad I would be to do it!"
+
+Mrs. Sherman picked up a bit of needlework from the table where she had
+left it, and, sitting down by the window, began to hemstitch.
+
+"I don't know, papa," she said, slowly, "but I'm beginning to fear that
+we have done too much of that for Lloyd; smoothed the difficulties out
+of her way too much; made things too easy. We've fairly held our arms
+around her to shield her not only from harmful things, but from even
+trifling unpleasantness. Maybe if she had had to face the smaller
+disappointments that most children have to bear, the greater ones would
+not seem so overwhelming. She could have met this more bravely."
+
+The Colonel sniffed impatiently. "All foolishness, Elizabeth! All
+foolishness! That may be the case with ordinary children, but not with
+such a sweet, unspoiled nature as Lloyd's."
+
+It was nearly dark when Lloyd wakened. She heard Kitty's voice down in
+the hall, asking to see her, and Gay's exclamation of surprise and
+regret at something her mother said in a low voice. She knew that she
+was telling them the doctor's decision. Then Mom Beck tapped at the door
+to ask if she would see the girls awhile, but she sent her away with a
+mournful shake of the head. She was too miserable even to speak.
+
+The low murmur of voices went on for some time. It grew loud enough for
+her to distinguish the words when the girls came out into the hall again
+to take their departure. Lloyd raised herself on her elbow to listen.
+Kitty was telling something that had happened that afternoon at the
+candy-pull from which they were just returning. A wan smile flitted
+across Lloyd's face, in sympathy with the merry laugh that floated up
+the stairs. But it faded the next instant as she whispered, bitterly:
+"That's the way it will always be. They will go on having good times
+without me, and they'll get so they'll nevah even miss me. I'll be left
+out of everything. There's nothing left to look forward to any moah. Oh,
+it's all so dah'k and gloomy--I know now how Ederyn felt, for I'm just
+like he was, walled up in a dreadful Dungeon of Disappointment."
+
+The fancy pleased her so that she went on making herself miserable with
+it long after the door closed behind Kitty and Gay. Over and over she
+pictured Warwick Hall, which just then seemed the most desirable place
+in all the world. She could see the shining river, as she had watched it
+so many times from her window, flowing past the stately terraces between
+its willow-fringed banks. She could hear the breezy summons of the
+hunter's horn, calling the girls to rambles over the wooded hills or
+through the quaint old garden. She could see the sun streaming into the
+south windows of the English room, with the class gathered around Miss
+Chilton, eager and interested. All the dear, delightful round of
+inspiring work and play would go on day after day for the others, but it
+would go on without her. Henceforth she would be left out of everything
+pleasant and worth while.
+
+She would not go down to dinner. She could not take such a puffed,
+tear-swollen face to the table to make everybody else unhappy, and she
+couldn't throw off her despondent mood. Maybe in a few days, she
+thought, she might be able to hide her feelings sufficiently to appear
+in public, but it would always be with a secret sorrow gnawing at her
+heart. Just now she shrank from sympathy, and she didn't want any one to
+cheer her up. It did not seem possible that she could ever smile again,
+and she wasn't sure that she wanted to.
+
+Mom Beck brought up the daintiest of dinners on a tray, but carried it
+back almost untasted. As soon as she was gone, Lloyd undressed and crept
+into bed.
+
+Sleep was far from her, however, and she lay with her eyes wide open.
+The room was full of soft shadows and the flicker of firelight on the
+furniture. She could think of only one thing, and she brooded over that
+until it seemed to her feverish, disordered fancy that her
+disappointment was the greatest that any one had ever been forced to
+bear.
+
+"Why couldn't it have happened to some girl who didn't care?" she
+thought, bitterly. "Some girl like Maud Minor, who doesn't like school,
+anyhow. It doesn't seem fair when I've tried my best to do exactly
+right, to leave a road of the loving hah't in everybody's memory, to
+keep the tryst--"
+
+That thought brought a fresh reason for grief. There was the string of
+pearls. Now she could not finish her little white rosary. The fire
+flared up and shone brilliantly for a few moments, lighting a group of
+pictures over her bed. They were the photographs she had taken in
+Arizona. There was Ware's Wigwam. The firelight was not bright enough to
+enable her to read the lines Joyce had written under it, but she knew
+the inscription was the Ware family's motto, taken from the "Vicar of
+Wakefield": "Let us be inflexible, and fortune will at last change in
+our favour." A shadow of a smile actually came to her lips as she
+remembered Mary Ware gravely explaining it.
+
+"Why, even Norman knows that if you'll swallow your sobs and _stiffen_
+when you bump your head or anything, it doesn't hurt half as bad as if
+you just let loose and howl."
+
+And there was the photograph of old Camelback Mountain, bringing back
+the story of Shapur, left helpless on the sands of the Desert of
+Waiting, while the caravan passed on without him to the City of his
+Desire. She remembered that when she hung it over her bed she had
+thought, "If ever _I_ come to such a place, this will help me to bear
+it patiently."
+
+Then she thought of Joyce, how bravely and uncomplainingly she had met
+her disappointment. Not only had she left school and given up her
+ambition to be an artist, but she had had to give up the old home she
+loved, all her friends, and everything that made her girlhood bright, to
+go out into the lonely desert and work like a squaw.
+
+The thought of Joyce brought back all the lessons she had learned in the
+School of the Bees. But she sighed presently: "Oh, deah, all those
+things sounded so nice and comforting when they seemed meant for othah
+people. They don't seem so comforting now that I'm in trouble myself.
+It's like the poultice Aunt Cindy made for Walkah's toothache. She was
+disgusted because he didn't stop complaining right away, and said it
+ought to have cured him if it didn't. But it wasn't such a powahful
+remedy when she had the toothache herself. She grumbled moah than
+Walkah. It's all well enough to say that I'll seal up my troubles as the
+bees seal up the things that get into the cells to spoil their honey,
+but now the time is heah, I simply can't!"
+
+Nevertheless, what the School of the Bees taught did help. So did the
+sight of the patient old Camelback Mountain, that had inspired the
+legend of Shapur. And more than all the little group in front of the
+Wigwam helped, as she remembered how bravely they had met their
+troubles.
+
+One by one her happy Arizona days came back to her. After all, it was
+something to have lived fifteen beautiful years untouched by trouble.
+She was thankful for that much, even if the future held nothing more for
+her. If she couldn't be happy, she could at least take Mary's advice and
+"not let loose and howl" about it any more. If she couldn't be bright
+and cheerful, she could "swallow her sobs and stiffen." With the
+resolution to try Mary's remedy for her woes in the morning, she lay
+drowsily watching the firelight flicker across the picture of the
+Wigwam.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+IN THE ATTIC
+
+
+IF the sun had been shining next morning, it would have been easier for
+Lloyd to keep her resolution, and face the family bravely at breakfast.
+But the rain was pouring against the windows; a slow, monotonous rain
+that ran in little rivers over the lawn, melting the snow, and turning
+the white landscape into a dreary scene of mud and bare branches.
+
+Twice on the way down-stairs she paused, thinking that she could not
+possibly sit through the meal without crying, and that it would be
+better to go back and breakfast alone in her room than to be a damper on
+the spirits of the family. Even so slight a thing as the tone of
+sympathy in her grandfather's "good morning" made the tears spring to
+her eyes, but she winked them back, and answered almost cheerfully his
+question as to how she felt.
+
+"Oh, just like the weathah, grandfathah. All gray and drippy; but I'll
+clean up aftah awhile."
+
+She could not smile as she said it, but the effort she made to be
+cheerful made the next attempt easier, and presently she acknowledged to
+herself that Mary was right. It did help, to swallow one's sobs.
+
+After breakfast she stood at the window, watching her father drive away
+to the station in the rain. As the carriage disappeared and there was
+nothing more to watch, she wondered dully how she could spend the long
+morning.
+
+"Some one wants you at the telephone, Lloyd," called the Colonel, on his
+way to his den.
+
+"Oh, good! I hope it is Kitty," she exclaimed, anticipating a long visit
+over the wire.
+
+But it was Malcolm MacIntyre who had rung her up, to bid her good-bye.
+He and Keith were about to start home. They had intended to go up to
+Locust, he told her, for a short call before train time, but it was
+raining too hard. Would she please make their adieus to her mother and
+the rest of the family. He had heard that she was not going back to
+school. Was it true? She was in luck. No? She was disappointed? Well,
+that was too bad. He was awfully sorry. But she mustn't worry over
+missing a few months of school. It wouldn't amount to much in the long
+run. For his part, if he were a girl and didn't have to fit himself for
+a profession, he would be glad to have such a postscript added to his
+Christmas vacation. He'd noticed that usually the postscript to a girl's
+letter had more in it than the letter itself. Possibly it would be that
+way with her vacation. He hoped so.
+
+Although it was in the most cordial tone that he expressed his regret at
+her disappointment, and bade Princess Winsome good-bye until the "good
+old summer-time," it was with a vague feeling of disappointment that
+Lloyd hung up the receiver and turned away from the telephone.
+
+"He doesn't undahstand at all!" she thought. "He hasn't the faintest
+idea how much it means to me to give up school. He thinks that, because
+I'm a girl, I haven't any ambition, and that it doesn't hurt me as it
+would him. Maybe it wouldn't have sounded quite the same if I could have
+seen him say it, but ovah the telephone, somehow--although he was mighty
+nice and polite--it sounded sawt of patronizing."
+
+She went into the library to deliver Malcolm's farewell messages to her
+mother. "He seems so much moah grown up this time than he evah has
+befoah," she added. "I don't like him half as much that way as the way
+he used to be."
+
+Mrs. Sherman was busy about the house all morning, so Lloyd found
+entertainment following her from room to room, as she inspected the
+linen closet, superintended the weekly cleaning of the pantry, and
+rearranged some of the library shelves to make room for the Christmas
+books. But in the afternoon she had a number of letters to write,
+acknowledging the gifts which had been sent her by distant friends, and
+Lloyd was left to her own amusement.
+
+[Illustration: "ONE OF THE BOYS HAD DARED HIM TO CARRY IT."]
+
+The doctor did not want her to read long at a time. The rain was pouring
+too hard for her to venture out-of-doors, and about the middle of the
+afternoon the silence and loneliness of the big house seemed more than
+she could endure.
+
+"I could scream, I'm so nervous and ti'ahed of being by myself," she
+exclaimed. "If just a piece of a day is so hah'd to drag through as this
+has been, how can I stand all the rest of the wintah?"
+
+She was counting up the weeks ahead of her on the big library calendar,
+when, through the window, she caught sight of Rob coming toward the
+house. The rain was running in streams from the bottom of his
+mackintosh, and from a huge umbrella that spread over him like a tent.
+It was an enormous advertising umbrella, taken from one of the delivery
+wagons at the store. One of the boys had dared him to carry it.
+"_Groceries, Dry Goods, Boots and_" appeared in black letters on the
+yellow side turned toward Lloyd. "_Shoes. Jayne's Emporium_," she
+called, supplying the rest of the familiar advertisement from memory.
+
+"What on earth are you doing with that wagon-top ovah you?" she asked
+from the front door, where she stood watching his approach. He was
+striding along whistling as cheerily as if it were a midsummer day. He
+looked up and smiled in response to her call, and twirled the umbrella
+till the rain-drops flew in every direction in a fine spray. Lloyd felt
+as if the sun had suddenly come out from behind the clouds.
+
+"I've come to finish my Christmas hunt," he said, as he stepped up on
+the porch and shook himself like a great water-spaniel.
+
+"Oh," cried Lloyd, "I intended to ask Betty befoah she went away where
+she had hidden yoah present, and she left next mawning so early that I
+was still asleep. Maybe mothah knows."
+
+But Mrs. Sherman, busy with her letters, shook her head. "I haven't the
+faintest idea," she answered. "But I remember she said something about
+Rob's being the hardest one of all to find, so you'll probably be kept
+busy the rest of the day. Don't you children bother either Mom Beck or
+Cindy to help you hunt," she called after them. "They have all they can
+attend to to-day."
+
+"Let's see that verse again, Rob," said Lloyd, as they went out of the
+library into the drawing-room. He fumbled in several pockets and finally
+produced the card.
+
+          "I know a bank where the wild thyme grows.
+             Unseen it lies, unsung by bard.
+           Something keeps watch there, no man knows,
+             And over your gift it's standing guard."
+
+As on Christmas Day, the only bank the verse suggested was in the
+conservatory, a long, narrow ledge of ferns and maidenhair, green with
+overhanging vines and graceful fronds. For nearly half an hour they
+poked around in it, lifting the ferns from the warm, moist earth to see
+if anything lay hidden at their roots. It was like April in the
+conservatory, steamy and warm, and the fragrance of hyacinths and white
+violets made it a delightful place in which to linger.
+
+"Bank--bank--" repeated Lloyd, puzzling over the verse again, when they
+had given up the search in the conservatory and gone back to the
+drawing-room. "It might mean a savings-bank, but there hasn't been one
+in the house since that little red tin one of mine that you dropped into
+the well with my three precious dimes in it. I've felt all these yeahs
+that you owed me thirty cents."
+
+"Now, Lloyd Sherman, there's no use in bringing up that old quarrel
+again," he laughed. "You know we were playing that robbers were coming,
+and we had to lower our gold and jewels into the well, and you tied the
+fishing-line around the bank your own self. So I am not to blame if the
+knot came untied at the very first jerk. We've wasted enough breath
+arguing that point to start a small cyclone."
+
+They laughed again over the recollection of their old quarrel, then Rob
+read the verse once more. Presently he stopped drumming on the table
+with his thumbs, and said, slowly, as if trying to recall something long
+forgotten: "Don't you remember,--it seems ages before we dropped your
+red bank in the well,--that I had a remarkable penny savings-bank? It
+was some sort of a slot machine in the shape of a little iron dog. Daddy
+brought it to me from New York. There was some kind of an indicator on
+the side of it that looked like the face of a watch. That was my
+introduction to puns, for Daddy said it was a _watch_ dog, made to guard
+my pennies. Surely you haven't forgotten old Watch, for after the
+indicator was broken I brought the safe over here, and we kept it on
+the door-mat in front of your playhouse, to guard the premises."
+
+"I should say I do remembah!" answered Lloyd. "Probably it's up in the
+attic now. But what has that to do with the rhyme?"
+
+"Don't you see? That must be the 'bank' where the wild thyme grows. I
+don't know whether Betty refers to the wild time we used to have playing
+in the attic, or the wild time that the watch kept. But I'm certain that
+that is the bank she means."
+
+"Come on, then," cried Lloyd. "Let's go up to the attic and hunt for it.
+I haven't been up there for ovah a yeah."
+
+Rob led the way to the upper hall, and then up the attic stairs, taking
+the steep steps two at a time in long leaps.
+
+"That isn't the way you used to climb these stairs," laughed Lloyd.
+"Don't you know you had to weah little long-sleeved aprons when you came
+ovah to play with me, to keep yoahself clean? You always stepped on the
+front of them and stumbled going up these steps."
+
+A headless and tailless hobby-horse of Rob's, on which they had ridden
+many imaginary miles, stood in one corner, and he crossed over to
+examine it, with an amused smile.
+
+"It certainly didn't take much to amuse us in those days," he said,
+touching the rockers with his foot, and starting the disabled beast to
+bobbing back and forth. "How long has it been since we used to ride this
+thing? Is my hair white? I declare I never had anything make me feel so
+ancient as the sight of this old hobby-horse. I feel older than
+grandfather."
+
+Lloyd had opened a dilapidated hair-covered trunk, and was bending over
+a family of dolls stowed away inside. "Heah is old Belinda!" she
+exclaimed. "And Carrie Belle May, and Rosalie, the Prairie Flowah! 'And,
+oh, Rob! Look at poah Nelly Bly, all wah-paint and feathahs, just as you
+fixed her up for a squaw that day we had an Indian massacre in the grape
+arbour. I had forgotten that we left her in such a fix!"
+
+"I'll never forget that day," answered Rob. "Don't you remember how sore
+I made my arm, trying to tattoo an anchor on it with a darning-needle
+and clothes bluing? What else have you buried in that old trunk?"
+
+Despite his six feet and seventeen years, Rob dropped down on a roll of
+carpet beside the trunk, and watched with interest as Lloyd lifted out
+one article after another over which they had quarrelled, or in whose
+pleasure they had shared in what now seemed a dim and far-away playtime.
+Don't you remember this? Don't you remember that? they asked each other,
+finding so many things to laugh over and recall that they quite forgot
+the object of their search.
+
+Lloyd was sitting with her back against the warm chimney, which ran up
+through the middle of the attic, but presently she began to feel chilly,
+and sent Rob over to a chest, away back under the eaves, for something
+to put around her. It was packed full of old finery they had used on
+various occasions for tableaux and plays. The first thing he pulled out
+was a gorgeous red velvet cloak covered with spangles.
+
+"That will do," she said, as he held it up inquiringly. "It's good and
+warm."
+
+He pushed the chest back into place. Then, straightening up, his glance
+fell on the discarded playhouse, standing back in a dim corner. With a
+whoop he pounced upon it.
+
+"Here's old Watch!" he exclaimed, holding up the little iron dog. "And
+he is the bank where the wild time grows, for here is the gift he is
+standing guard over." Throwing the spangled cloak over Lloyd's
+shoulders, he seated himself again on the roll of carpet, and began to
+untie the little package fastened to the dog's neck with a bit of
+ribbon. Inside many layers of tissue-paper, he came at last to a
+memorandum-book, small enough to fit in his vest-pocket. It was bound in
+soft gray kid, and on the back Betty had burned in old English letters,
+with her pyrography-needle, the motto of Warwick Hall: "I keep the
+tryst." Over it was the crest, a heart, out of which rose a mailed arm,
+grasping a spear.
+
+"Betty did that," said Lloyd. "She traced the letters on first with
+tracing-papah, and then burnt them. I remembah now, she made it a few
+days befoah we came home. She thought we would have our usual tree, and
+she intended to hang this on it for you. Then when we had the hunt
+instead of a tree, she took this way of giving it to you. That is an
+appropriate motto for a memorandum-book, isn't it? You'll appreciate it
+moah when she tells you the story about it. Miss Chilton read it to the
+English class one day, and had us write it from memory for the next
+lesson."
+
+"Then what's the matter with your telling it to me?" asked Rob, eying
+the mailed hand and the spear with interest. "I'll be gone before Betty
+gets back. Go on and tell it. This is an ideal time and place for
+story-telling."
+
+He leaned comfortably back against the warm chimney and half-closed his
+eyes. The patter of the rain on the roof made him drowsy.
+
+"Well," assented Lloyd, "I can't tell it with as many frills and
+flourishes as Betty could, but I remembah it bettah than most stories,
+because I had to write it from memory." Drawing the glittering cloak
+closer around her, she began as if she were reading it, in the very
+words of the green and gold volume:
+
+          "'Now there was a troubadour in the kingdom of
+          Arthur, who, strolling through the land with only
+          his minstrelsy to win him a way, found in every
+          baron's hall and cotter's hut a ready welcome.'"
+
+Here and there she stumbled over some part of it, or told it
+hesitatingly in her own words, but at last she ended it as well as Betty
+herself could have done:
+
+          "So Ederyn won his sovereign's favour, and, by his
+          sovereign's grace permitted, went back to woo the
+          maiden and win her for his bride. Then henceforth
+          blazoned on his shield and helmet he bore the
+          crest, a heart with hand that grasped a spear,
+          and, underneath, the words, 'I keep the tryst.'"
+
+"That's a corking good motto," said Rob as she paused. "I like that
+story, Lloyd, and I'll remember it when I keep the engagements that I
+put down in this little book."
+
+He sat a moment, flipping the leaves and whistling a bar from "The Old
+Oaken Bucket."
+
+"Stop!" commanded Lloyd, suddenly, clapping her hands over her ears, and
+making a wry face. "You're off the key. Haven't I told you a thousand
+times that it doesn't go that way? This is it."
+
+Puckering up her lips, she whistled the tune correctly, and he joined
+in. At the end of the chorus he looked at his watch.
+
+"It's been like old times this afternoon," he said. "I'll tell you what,
+Lloyd, let's come up here once a year after this, just to keep tryst
+with our old playtimes. I'll put that down as the first engagement in my
+memorandum-book. A year from to-day we'll take another look at these
+things."
+
+"All right," assented Lloyd, cheerfully. Then a wistful expression crept
+into her eyes as she peered through the tiny attic window. Twilight was
+falling early on account of the rain. A deep gloom began to settle over
+her spirits also.
+
+"Rob," she said, slowly, "I haven't told you yet. I didn't want to spoil
+our aftahnoon by thinking about it any moah than I could help, and you
+made me almost forget it for a little while. I couldn't talk about it
+when you first came without crying,--this yeah is going to be _such_ a
+long, hah'd one. They aren't going to let me go back to school aftah the
+holidays. The doctah says I am not strong enough, and it is such an
+awful Dungeon of Disappointment that it just breaks my hah't to think
+about it."
+
+To Rob's consternation she laid her head down on old Belinda, who still
+lay limply across her lap, and began to sob. He sat in embarrassed
+silence for a moment, scarcely knowing her for the same little companion
+whom he had taught to meet hurts like a boy. He remembered the many
+times she had winked back the tears over the bruises and bumps and cuts
+she had encountered in following his lead. He was bewildered by the
+unfamiliar mood, and it hurt him to see her so grieved.
+
+"There! there! Don't cry, Lloyd!" he begged, hurt by the sight of the
+fair head bowed so dismally over the old doll. "I know how it would
+knock me out to have to stop now, just when I've got into the swing of
+things, so I know just how you feel. I'm mighty sorry."
+
+Then, as the sobs continued: "I'd go off and whip somebody if it would
+do any good, but it won't. You'll have to brace up as Ederyn did, and
+you'll get out of your dungeon all right."
+
+There was no answer. School was so very dear, and the disappointment so
+very bitter. It had all surged over her again in a great wave. He tried
+again.
+
+"It's tough, I know, but it will be easier if you take it as all the
+Lloyds have taken their troubles, with your teeth set and your head up.
+Somehow, that's the way I've always thought you would take things. Don't
+cry, Lloyd. Don't! It breaks me all up to see you this way, when you've
+always been so game."
+
+She straightened up and wiped her eyes, announcing suddenly: "And I'm
+going to be game now. If there's one thing I nevah could beah, it was
+for you to think I was a coward, and I can't have you thinking it now.
+It's a sawt of tryst I've kept all these yeahs, unconsciously, I
+suppose. Ever since I was a little thing, if I thought 'Bobby expects it
+of me,' I'd do it, no mattah what it was, from jumping a fence to
+climbing on the chimney. I've lived up to yoah expectations many a time
+at the risk of killing myself."
+
+"Indeed you have," he answered, in a tone of hearty admiration. There
+was a tender light in his gray eyes which she did not see, she was so
+busy wiping her own.
+
+"I'm done crying now," she announced, springing to her feet and
+thrusting Belinda back into the trunk. "Come on, let's go down and pop
+some cawn ovah the library fiah. Put this cloak away first."
+
+He pushed the chest back to its place under the eaves and started after
+her, pulling out his handkerchief as he went, to wipe away a stray
+cobweb into which he had thrust his hand. It reminded him of the story.
+
+"You know," he suggested, consolingly, "there's bound to be some way out
+of your dungeon. I'll spend all the rest of the vacation helping you
+twist cobwebs for your rope, if you like."
+
+She made no answer then to his offer of assistance. She felt that she
+could not steady her voice if she tried to speak her appreciation of
+his sympathy.
+
+So she called out, as she dashed past him: "As Joyce used to say at the
+house pah'ty, 'the last one down is a jibbering Ornithorhynchus!'"
+
+Away they went in a mad race, whose noisy clatter made it seem to the
+old Colonel in his den that the rafters were falling in. But on the
+landing she paused an instant.
+
+"It--it helps a lot, Rob," she said, wistfully, "to have you
+undahstand,--to know that you know how it hurts."
+
+"I wish I could really help you," he answered, earnestly. "You're a game
+little chum!"
+
+She flashed back a grateful smile from under her wet eyelashes, and led
+the race on down the next flight of stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+HUMDRUM DAYS
+
+
+ALL through the rest of that week, and through New Year's Day, Lloyd
+managed to keep her resolution bravely. Even when the time came for the
+girls to go back to school without her, she went through the farewells
+like a little Spartan, driving down to the station with tearful Betty,
+who grieved over Lloyd's disappointment as if it had been her own.
+
+When the train pulled out, with the four girls on the rear platform, she
+stood waving her handkerchief cheerily as long as she could see an
+answering flutter. Then she turned away, catching her breath in a deep
+indrawn sob, that might have been followed by others if Rob had not been
+with her. He saw her clench her hands and set her teeth together hard,
+and knew what a fight she was making to choke back the tears, but he
+wisely gave no sign that he saw and sympathized. He only proposed a
+walk over to the blacksmith shop to see the red fox that Billy Kerr had
+trapped and caged. But a little later, when she had regained her
+self-control and was poking a stick between the slats of the coop where
+the fox was confined, to make it stretch itself, he said, suddenly:
+
+"By cricky, you were game, Lloyd! If it had been me, I couldn't have
+gone to the station and watched the fellows go off without me, and joke
+about it the way you did."
+
+Lloyd went on rattling the stick between the slats and made no answer,
+but Rob's approval brightened her spirits wonderfully. It was not until
+the next day, when he, too, went back to school, that she fully realized
+how lonely her winter was going to be. She strolled into her mother's
+room, and threw herself listlessly into a chair by the window.
+
+"What can I do, mothah? I mustn't read long, I mustn't study, Tarbaby is
+lame, so I can't ride, and I've walked as far as I care to this
+mawning."
+
+"What would you like to do?" asked Mrs. Sherman, who was dressing to go
+out.
+
+"Nothing but things that I can't do," was the fretful answer. "It would
+be lots of fun if I could go out in the kitchen and beat eggs, and make
+custah'd pies and biscuits and things. I'd love to cook. I haven't had
+a chance since I was at Ware's Wigwam. But Aunt Cindy scolds and
+grumbles if anybody so much as looks into the kitchen. She says she
+won't have me messing around in her way."
+
+"I know," sighed Mrs. Sherman. "Cindy is getting more fussy and exacting
+every year. But she has cooked for the family so long that she seems to
+think the kitchen is hers. If she were not such a superior cook, I
+wouldn't put up with her whims, but in these days, when everybody is
+having so much trouble with servants, we'll have to humour her. She's a
+faithful old creature. You might cook on the chafing-dish in the
+dining-room. There are all sorts of things you could make on that."
+
+Lloyd shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "But not bread and pies and
+things you do with a rolling-pin. That's the pah't I like."
+
+She sat a moment, swinging her foot in silence, and then broke out:
+
+"If I were a girl in a story-book, this disappointment would turn me
+into such a saintly, helpful creatuah that I'd be called 'The Angel of
+the Home.' I've read about such girls. They keep things in ordah, and
+mend and dust and put flowahs about, and make the house so bright and
+cheerful that people wondah how they evah got along without them. Every
+time they turn around, there are lovely, helpful things for them to do.
+But what can _I_ do in a big house like this moah than I've always tried
+to do? I've tried to be considerate of everybody's comfo't evah since I
+stah'ted out to build a road of the loving hah't in everybody's memory.
+The servants do everything heah, and don't want to be interfered with. I
+wish we were dead poah, and lived in a plain little cottage and did our
+own work. Then I wouldn't have time to get lonesome. I'd be lots
+happiah.
+
+"One day, when Miss Gilmer and I were talking about Ederyn in his
+Dungeon of Disappointment, she said that we could always get out of our
+troubles the same way that he did; that the cobwebs he twisted into
+ropes were disagreeable to touch. Nobody likes to put their hands into
+dusty cobwebs, and that they represent the disagreeable little tasks
+that lie in wait for everybody. She said that, if we'll just grapple the
+things that we dislike most to do, the little homely every-day duties,
+and busy ourselves with them, they'll help us to rise above our
+discontent. I've been trying all mawning to think of some such cobwebs
+for me to take hold of, and there isn't a single one."
+
+Mrs. Sherman smiled at the wobegone face turned toward her. "Fancy any
+one being miserable over such a state of affairs as that!" she laughed.
+"Actually complaining because there's nothing disagreeable for her to
+do! Well, we'll have to look for some cobwebs to occupy you. Maybe if
+you can't find them at home, you can do like the old woman who was
+tossed up in a basket, seventy times as high as the moon. Don't you
+remember how Mom Beck used to sing it to you?
+
+          "'Old woman! Old woman! Old woman, said I,
+            O whither, O whither, O whither so high?
+           _To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky_,
+            But I'll be back again, by and by.'"
+
+She trilled it gaily as she fastened her belt, and took out her hat and
+gloves.
+
+"Fate must have given her just such a cobwebless home as you have, and
+she had to soar high to rise above her troubles. Come on, little girl,
+get your hat and coat, and we'll go in search of something disagreeable
+for you to do; but I hope your quest won't take you seventy times as
+high as the moon."
+
+They drove down to the store to attend to the day's marketing. While
+Mrs. Sherman was ordering her groceries, Lloyd went to the back of the
+store, where one of the clerks was teaching tricks to a bright little
+fox-terrier. She was so interested in the performance that she did not
+know when Miss Allison came in, or how long she and her mother stood
+discussing her.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Sherman, "she has been brave about it. She never
+complained but once, and that to me this morning. But we know how
+unhappy she is. Jack and papa worry about her all the time. They want me
+to take her to Florida. They think she must be given some pleasure that
+will compensate in a way for this disappointment. But it is not at all
+convenient for me to leave home now, and I feel that for her own good
+she should learn to meet such things for herself. It would be far
+easier, I acknowledge, if there was anything at home to occupy her, but
+I cannot allow her to interfere with Mom Beck's work, or Cindy's. They
+resent her doing anything." She repeated the conversation they had had
+that morning.
+
+"Loan her to me for the rest of the day," said Miss Allison. "I can show
+her plenty of cobwebs, the kind she is pining for."
+
+So it happened that a little later, when Miss Allison crossed the road
+to the post-office, and started up the path toward home, Lloyd was with
+her, smiling happily over the prospect of spending the day with the
+patron saint of all the Valley's merrymakings. From Lloyd's earliest
+recollection, Miss Allison had been the life of every party and picnic
+in the neighbourhood. She was everybody's confidante. Like Shapur, who
+gathered something from the heart of every rose to fill his crystal
+vase, so she had distilled from all these disclosures the precious attar
+of sympathy, whose sweetness won for her a way, and gained for her a
+welcome, wherever she went.
+
+As they turned in at the gate, Lloyd looked wistfully across at The
+Beeches, and her eyes filled with tears. Miss Allison slipped her arm
+around her and drew her close with a sympathetic clasp, as they walked
+around the circle of the driveway leading to the house.
+
+"I know just how you feel, dear. Like the little lame boy in that story
+of the 'Pied Piper of Hamelin.' Because he couldn't keep up with the
+others when they followed the piper's tune, he had to sit and watch them
+dance away without him, and disappear into the mountainside. He was the
+only child left in the whole town of Hamelin. It _is_ lonely for you, I
+know, with all the boys and girls of your own age away at school. But
+think how much lonelier Hamelin would have been without that child.
+You'll find out that old people can play, too, though, if you'll take a
+hand in their games. I want to teach you one after awhile, which I used
+to enjoy very much, and still take pleasure in."
+
+Miss Allison led the way up-stairs to her own room. As they passed the
+door leading to the north wing, Lloyd exclaimed: "I'll nevah forget that
+time, the night of the Valentine pah'ty, when Gingah and I went into the
+blue room, and the beah that Malcolm and Keith had tied to the bed-post
+rose up out of the dah'k and frightened us neahly to death."
+
+"We had some lively times that winter with Virginia and the boys,"
+answered Miss Allison. "I kept a record of some of their sorriest
+mishaps. Wait a minute until I speak to the housemaid, and I'll see if I
+can find it."
+
+Miss Allison had been wondering how she could best entertain Lloyd, but
+the problem was solved when she found the journal, in which she had
+written the history of the eventful winter when her sister's little
+daughter Virginia and her brother's two boys had been left in her
+charge. Lloyd had taken part in many of the mischievous adventures, and
+she sat smiling over the novelty of hearing herself described with all
+the imperious ways, naughty temper, and winning charm that had been hers
+at the age of eight.
+
+"It is like looking at an old photograph of oneself," she said, after
+awhile. "It seems so strange to be one of the characters in a book, and
+listen to stories about oneself."
+
+"That reminds me of the game I spoke of," said Miss Allison. "I invented
+it when I was about your age. I had just read 'Cranford,' and the story
+of life in that simple little village seemed so charming to me that I
+wished with all my heart I could step into the book and be one of the
+characters, and meet all the people that lived between its covers. Then
+I heard some one say that there were more interesting happenings and
+queer characters in Lloydsboro Valley than in Cranford. So I began to
+look around for them. I pretended that I was the heroine of a book
+called 'Lloydsboro Valley,' and all that summer I looked upon the people
+I met as characters in the same story.
+
+"It happened that all my young friends were away that summer, and it
+would have been very lonely but for my new game. The organist went away,
+and, although I was only fifteen, I took her place and played the little
+cabinet organ we used then in church and Sunday school. That threw me
+much with the older people, for I had to go to choir-practice to play
+the organ, and also attend the missionary teas. Gradually they drew me
+into a sewing-circle that was in existence then, and a reading club. I
+found it was true that my own little village really had far more
+interesting people in it than any I had read about, and I learned to
+love all the dear, cranky, gossipy old characters in it, because I
+studied them so closely that I found how good at heart they were despite
+their peculiarities and foibles.
+
+"That's what I want you to do this winter, Lloyd. Join the little choir,
+and meet with the King's Daughters, and learn to know these interesting
+neighbours of yours. And," she added, smiling, "I promise you that
+you'll find all the cobwebs you need to help haul you out of your
+dungeon."
+
+"Oh, Miss Allison!" exclaimed Lloyd, looking horrified at the thought.
+"_I_ couldn't sing in the choir and join the King's Daughtahs and all
+that. They're all at least twice as old as I am, and some of them even
+moah."
+
+"Yes, you can," insisted Miss Allison. "We need your voice in the choir,
+and you need the new interest these things would bring into your life.
+So don't say no until after you've given my game a trial. The King's
+Daughters' Circle is to meet here this afternoon, and I want you to help
+me. I'm going to serve hot chocolate and wafers, and, as long as it is
+such a cold, blowy day, I believe I'll add some nut sandwiches to make
+the refreshments a little more substantial."
+
+Privately, Lloyd looked forward to the afternoon as something stupid
+which she must face cheerfully for Miss Allison's sake, but she found
+her interest aroused with the first arrival. It was Libbie Simms, whom
+she had known all her life, in a way, for she could scarcely recall a
+Sabbath when she had not looked across at the dull, homely face in the
+opposite pew, and pitied her because of her queer nose and
+mouse-coloured hair. In the same way she had known Miss McGill, who came
+with Libbie. She had simply been one of the congregation who had claimed
+her attention for a moment each week, as she minced down the aisle like
+an animated rainbow. All she knew about Miss McGill was that she usually
+wore so many shades of purple and pink and blue that the clashing
+colours set one's teeth on edge.
+
+But in five minutes Lloyd had forgotten their peculiarities of feature
+and dress, and was listening with interest to their account of a call
+they had just made in Rollington. They had been to see a poor
+washerwoman who had five children to support. The youngest, a baby who
+had fits, was very ill, about to die. At the mention of Mrs. Crisp,
+Lloyd recalled the forlorn little woman in a wispy crepe veil, who had
+enlisted her sympathy to such an extent one Thanksgiving Day that she
+and Betty had walked over to Rollington from the Seminary to carry the
+greater part of the turkey and fruit that had been sent them in their
+box of Thanksgiving goodies.
+
+There was so little poverty in the Valley that, when any real case of
+suffering was discovered, it was taken up with enthusiasm. Lloyd
+wondered how she could have thought Libbie Simms so hopelessly ugly,
+when she saw her face light up with unselfish interest in her poor
+neighbours, and heard her suggestions for their relief. And her
+conscience pricked her for making fun of Miss McGill's taste when she
+saw how generous she was, and listened to her humourous description of
+several things that had happened in the Valley. She was certainly
+entertaining, and looked at life through spectacles as rose-coloured as
+her necktie.
+
+The library filled rapidly, and soon a score of needles were at work on
+the flannel garments intended for the Crisp family. Lloyd, on a stool
+between Katherine Marks and Mrs. Walton, sewed industriously, interested
+in the buzz of conversation all around her.
+
+"This is not malicious gossip," explained Mrs. Walton, in an amused
+undertone, smiling with Lloyd and Katherine at a remark which
+unintentionally reached their ears. "But in a little community like
+this, where little happens, and our interests are bound so closely
+together, the smallest details of our neighbours' affairs necessarily
+entertain us. It _is_ interesting to know that Mr. Rawles and his
+great-aunt are not on speaking terms, and it is positively exciting to
+hear that Mr. Wolf and Mrs. Cayne quarrelled over the leaflets used in
+Sunday school, and that she told him to his face that he was a hypocrite
+and no better than an infidel. It doesn't make us love these good people
+any the less to know that they are human like ourselves, and have their
+tempers and their spites and feuds. We know their good side, too. Wait
+till calamity or sickness touches some one of us, and, see how kind and
+sympathetic and tender they all are; every one of them."
+
+"You'll hear more gossip here in one afternoon than at all the Cranford
+tea-tables put together," said Katherine Marks. "But it is a mild sort,
+like the kind going on behind us."
+
+Miss McGill, with her head close to Abby Carter's, was saying: "Oh, but,
+my dear, he gets more suspicious and foxy every day of his life. I don't
+see how Emma Belle puts up with such a cranky old father."
+
+"I know," responded Abby. "They say he drives the cook nearly
+distracted, going into the kitchen every day and lifting the lids off
+all the pots and pans to smell what's cooking for dinner. Then he makes
+a fuss if it's not to his liking."
+
+"Yes," responded Miss McGill, "but that isn't a circumstance to some of
+his ways. I ran in there last night a few minutes, to show Emma Belle a
+pattern she wanted. He got it into his head we were hiding something
+from him, and he actually climbed up on the dining-room table and peeped
+through the transom at us. I nearly fainted when I happened to look up
+and saw that old monkey-like face, with its dense, gloomy whiskers,
+looking down at me. I just screamed and sat jibbering and pointing at
+the transom. I couldn't help it. He gave me such a turn, I didn't get
+over it all night. Emma Belle was so mortified she didn't know what
+to do. It isn't as if he was crazy. He's just mean. That girl has the
+patience of a saint."
+
+[Illustration: "'I NEARLY FAINTED WHEN I HAPPENED TO LOOK UP'"]
+
+Before the afternoon was over, Lloyd decided that Miss Allison was
+right. The Valley held a number of interesting characters, whose
+acquaintance was well worth cultivating if she wanted to be entertained.
+Part of the time, while the needles were flying, Mrs. MacIntyre read
+aloud. Miss Allison called Lloyd into the dining-room when it was time
+to serve the refreshments.
+
+"I'm going to ask a favour of you, dear," she said. "I want you to sing
+for us presently. No, wait a minute," she added, hurriedly, as Lloyd
+drew back with an exclamation of dismay. "Don't refuse till you have
+heard why I ask it. It is on account of Agnes Waring. These meetings are
+the great social events of the winter to her. She never gets to go
+anywhere else except to church. She's passionately fond of music, and I
+always make it a point to prepare a regular programme when the Circle
+meets here. But all my musicians failed me this time, and I cannot bear
+to disappoint her. I know you are timid about singing before older
+people, but this is one of the cobwebs I promised to find for you. It
+will be disagreeable, but I have a good reason for thinking that you
+will find it the first strand of the rope that is to lift you out of
+your dungeon. I'll tell you some things about Agnes after awhile that
+will make you glad you have had such an opportunity."
+
+When Lloyd went back to the library, bearing a pile of snowy napkins,
+she stole several glances at Agnes Waring in her journey around the room
+to distribute them. All that she knew of her was that she was the
+youngest of three sisters who sewed for their living. She was almost as
+slim and girlish in figure as Lloyd, although she was nearly twice as
+old. She had kept the timid, shrinking manner that she had when a child.
+That and her appealing big blue eyes, and almost babyish complexion,
+made her seem much younger than she was. It was a sensitive, refined
+face that Lloyd kept glancing at, one that would have been remarkably
+pretty had it not been so sad.
+
+Lloyd had sung in public several times, but always in some play, when
+the costume which she wore seemed to change her to the character she
+personated. That made it easier. It was one of the hardest things she
+had ever done, to stand up before these twenty ladies who had been
+exchanging criticisms so freely all afternoon, on every subject
+mentioned, and sing the songs which Miss Allison chose for her from the
+Princess play: The Dove Song, with its high, sweet trills of "Flutter
+and fly," and the one beginning:
+
+          "My godmother bids me spin,
+           That my heart may not be sad.
+           Sing and spin for my brother's sake,
+           And the spinning makes me glad."
+
+It was with a very red face that she slipped into her seat after it was
+over, surprised and pleased by the applause she received. They were all
+so cordial in their appreciation, that presently she was persuaded into
+doing what Miss Allison had suggested. When the circle broke up she had
+consented to join the choir, and to meet with them the next Friday
+night, when they went to the Mallards' to practise.
+
+The carriage came for her soon after the last guest departed, and Miss
+Allison stepped in beside her to take the finished garments over to
+Rollington. It was the quaintest of little villages, settled entirely by
+Irish families. Only one lone street straggled over the hill, but it was
+a long one with little whitewashed cabins and cottages thickly set along
+each side. Mrs. Crisp's was the first one on the street, after they left
+the Lloydsboro pike. It was clean, but not half so large or comfortable
+as the negro servants' quarters at Locust.
+
+It was so late that Miss Allison did not go in, only stopped at the door
+to leave the bundle and inquire about the baby, promising to come again
+next morning. Lloyd had a glimpse of the two children next in age to the
+baby. They were playing on the floor with a doll made of a corn-cob
+wrapped in a towel, and a box of empty spools.
+
+"Just think!" she exclaimed as she climbed into the carriage again. "A
+cawn-cob doll! And the attic at home is full of toys that I don't care
+for! I'm going to pick out a basketful to-morrow and bring them down to
+these children. And did you see that poah little Minnie Crisp? Only
+eight yeahs old, and doing the work of a grown woman. She was getting
+suppah while her mothah tended to the sick baby. Oh, I wondah," she
+cried, her face lighting up with the thought. "I wondah if Mrs. Crisp
+would mind if I'd come down to-morrow and cook dinnah for them. That's
+what I've been crazy to do,--to cook. I could bring eggs and sugah and
+all the materials, and make lemon pie and oystah soup and potato
+croquettes. I know how to make lots of things. Oh, do you suppose she
+would be offended?"
+
+"Not in the least," responded Miss Allison, heartily. "She is a very
+sensible little woman who is nearly worn out in her struggle with
+poverty and sickness. She has been too proud and brave to accept help
+before, when she was able to stagger along under her own burden, but now
+she will be very grateful. And the children will look upon you as a
+wonderful mixture of Santa Claus, fairy godmother, and Aladdin's lamp."
+
+Then she turned to peer into the happy face beside her.
+
+"Here are your cobwebs!" she exclaimed, gaily. "A whole skyful, and you
+can sweep away to your heart's content. You need have no more humdrum
+days unless you choose."
+
+Lloyd looked back at the cottage where four towheads at the window
+watched the departing carriage. Then with a smile she leaned out and
+waved her hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF AMANTHIS
+
+
+LLOYD hurried down the road to the post-office, her cheeks almost as red
+as her coat from her brisk walk in the wintry air. It was too cold to
+saunter, or she would have made the errand last as long as possible.
+There would be nothing to do after she had called for the mail. The day
+before she had had her visit to Mrs. Crisp to fill the morning. It
+brought a pleasant thrill now to think of the little woman's gratitude
+and the children's pleasure in the dinner she had cooked in the clean
+bare kitchen. She wished she could go every day and repeat the
+performance, but her family would not allow it. They said it was just as
+injurious for her to waste her strength in charity as it was in study,
+and she must be more temperate in her enthusiasms.
+
+She wished that Miss Mattie would invite her into the tiny office behind
+the rows of pigeonholes and letter-boxes, and let her sit by the window
+awhile. Just watching people pass would be some amusement, more than she
+could find at home.
+
+She was passing the Bisbee place as she made the wish. It was a white
+frame house standing near the road, and commanding a view of both
+station and store, as well as the approach to the post-office. To her
+surprise, some one tapped on the pane of an up-stairs window. Then the
+sash flew up, and Mrs. Bisbee called in her thin, fluttering voice:
+"Lloyd! Lloyd Sherman! If you're going to the post-office, I wish you'd
+ask if there is anything for me. I don't dare set foot out-of-doors this
+cold weather."
+
+Then, fearful of draughts, she banged the window down without waiting
+for a reply. Lloyd smiled and nodded, glad of an opportunity to be of
+service. As she hurried on, she remembered that Miss Allison had spoken
+of this gentle little old lady, with her fluttering voice and placid
+smile, as one of the most interesting and "Cranfordy" characters in the
+Valley, and that, while she never went out in the winter, and seldom in
+the summer, except to church, she kept such a sharp eye on the
+neighbourhood happenings from the watch-tower of her window that Mrs.
+Walton laughingly called it the "Window in Thrums."
+
+It was with the feeling that she was stepping into a story that Lloyd
+opened the gate five minutes later and started up the path. A vigorous
+tapping on the window above, and a beckoning hand motioned her to come
+up-stairs. Hesitating an instant on the porch, she opened the front door
+and stepped into the hall.
+
+"Do come up!" called the old lady, plaintively, from the head of the
+stairs. "I've been wishing so hard for company that I believe my wishing
+must have drawn you. Now that daughter is married and gone, I get so
+lonesome, with Mr. Bisbee in town all day, that I often find myself
+talking to myself just for the sake of sociability. Not a soul has been
+in for the last two days, and usually I have callers from morning till
+night. This is such a good dropping-in place, you know. So central that
+I see and hear everything."
+
+She ushered Lloyd into a room, gay with big-flowered chintz curtains,
+and quaint with old-fashioned carved furniture. There was a high
+four-poster bed in one corner, with a chintz valance around it, and pink
+silk quilled into the tester. The only modern thing in the room was a
+tiled grate, piled full of blazing coals. It threw out such a
+summer-like heat that Lloyd almost gasped. She was glad to accept Mrs.
+Bisbee's invitation to take off her coat and gloves. She moved her chair
+back as far as possible into the bay-window.
+
+"I reckon you feel it's pretty warm in here," said Mrs. Bisbee. "I have
+to keep it that way so that I can sit over here against the window
+without catching cold. I couldn't afford to miss all that's going on in
+the street. It's my only amusement."
+
+She drew her work-basket toward her and picked up the quilt pieces she
+had laid down when she went to welcome Lloyd. She was making a silk
+quilt of the tea-chest pattern, and the basket was full of bright silk
+scraps and pieces of ribbon.
+
+"It's like a panorama, I tell Mr. Bisbee. Oh, by the way, I've been
+aching to find out. Where did you all go that day just before Christmas
+when you started off, a whole party of you, traipsing down the road with
+a new saucepan and baskets and things? I heard you had a picnic in the
+snow. Is that so?"
+
+Lloyd really gasped this time, but not from the heat. She was so
+surprised that Mrs. Bisbee should have taken such an interest in her
+affairs, or in any of the unimportant doings of their set, as to
+remember them longer than the passing moment. Mrs. Bisbee was
+associated in Lloyd's mind with solemn churchly things, like the
+Gothic-backed pulpit chairs or the sombre brown pews. Lloyd had never
+seen her before, except when she was singing hymns, or sitting with
+meekly folded hands through sermon-time. It was almost as surprising to
+find that she was inquisitive and interested in human happenings as it
+would have been to discover that the ivy-covered belfry kept an eye on
+her.
+
+In the midst of her description of the picnic, Mrs. Bisbee leaned
+forward and peered eagerly out of the window over her spectacles.
+
+"I don't want to interrupt you," she said; "I just wanted to make sure
+that that was Caleb Coburn out again. He has been house-bound with
+rheumatism ever since Thanksgiving."
+
+Lloyd looked out in time to see a tall, stoop-shouldered man with a
+bushy beard go slowly across the road. He was buttoned up in a heavy
+overcoat, and limped along with the aid of two canes.
+
+"He's the queerest old fellow," commented Mrs. Bisbee, looking after
+him, with a gentle shake of the head. "Lately he has taken to knitting,
+to pass the time."
+
+"To knitting!" echoed Lloyd, in amazement. "That big man?"
+
+"Yes. He calls it hooking. He has a needle made out of a ham bone. Fancy
+now! Daughter said it was the funniest thing in life to see him propped
+up in bed with a striped skull-cap on, hooking his wife a shawl."
+
+Lloyd laughed, but she followed the stooped figure with a glance of
+sympathy. She knew from experience how hard it was to spend the time in
+enforced idleness. Old Mr. Coburn had always been a familiar figure to
+her. She recognized him on the road as she did the trees and the houses
+which she passed daily, but he had never aroused her interest any more
+than they. Now the knowledge that he was lonely like herself, so lonely
+that, big, bearded man as he was, he had learned to knit in order to
+occupy the dull days, seemed to put them on a common footing.
+
+Lloyd took a long step forward out of her childhood that morning when
+she wakened to the fact that some things are as hard to bear at fifty as
+at fifteen. With a dawning interest she watched the people of the Valley
+go by, one by one,--people whom she had passed heretofore as she had
+passed the fence-posts on the road. It could never be so again, for
+henceforth she would see them in a new light,--the light of
+understanding and sympathy shed on them by Mrs. Bisbee's choice bits of
+gossip or scraps of personal history.
+
+She had watched the procession for nearly an hour, when Agnes Waring
+suddenly turned the corner, and went into the store with a bundle in her
+arms. Mrs. Bisbee, pausing in the act of threading a needle, looked out
+again over her spectacles.
+
+"There goes a girl I'm certainly sorry for. She is a born lady, and
+comes of as good a family as anybody in the Valley, but she has to work
+harder than any darkey in Lloydsboro. She's up at four o'clock these
+winter mornings, milks the cow, chops wood, gets breakfast, and maybe
+walks two or three miles with a big bundle like that, taking home
+sewing, or going out to fit a dress for somebody."
+
+Miss Allison had already awakened Lloyd's interest in Agnes, and she
+leaned forward to watch her, while Mrs. Bisbee went on.
+
+"She's never had any of the pleasures that most girls have. To my
+certain knowledge she's never had a beau or been to a big party or
+travelled farther than Louisville. I suppose you could count on the
+fingers of one hand the times she has been on a train. She's wild about
+music, but she's never had any advantages. By the way, she was in here
+the day after the King's Daughters met at Allison MacIntyre's, to fit a
+wrapper on me. Knowing how few outings she has, I encouraged her to talk
+it all over, as I knew she was glad to do. I declare she made as much of
+it as if it had been the governor's ball. She told me how much she
+enjoyed your singing. She said that, if there was any one person in the
+world whom she envied more than another, it was Lloyd Sherman. Not for
+your looks or the handsome things you have (for the Valley is full of
+pretty girls, and many of them are wealthy), but for the advantages you
+have had in the way of music and travel.
+
+"They have an old piano, about all that was saved out of the wreck when
+their father lost his fortune. She'd give her eyes to be able to play on
+it. But she wasn't much more than a baby when her father died, so she
+missed the advantages the older girls had. You see she is twenty years
+younger than Marietta, and nearly twenty-five years younger than Sarah.
+Poor Agnes! I suppose she will never know anything but work and poverty.
+It's too bad,--such a sweet, refined girl, and as proud as she is
+poor."
+
+Lloyd echoed Mrs. Bisbee's sympathetic sigh, as she looked after the
+hurrying figure in its worn jacket and shabby shoes. She was just coming
+out of the store again.
+
+"I feel so sorry for her sistahs, too," she ventured. "I nevah knew till
+the othah day that Miss Marietta has been an invalid so long. Miss
+Allison told me she had been in bed for fifteen yeahs! It's awful! Why,
+that is as long as my whole lifetime has been."
+
+"She was to have been married," began Mrs. Bisbee, pouring out the
+romance at which Miss Allison had only hinted. "She was engaged to
+Murray Cathright, one of the finest young lawyers I ever knew, steady as
+a meeting-house. He had the respect and confidence of everybody. Well,
+Marietta had her trousseau all ready, and a beautiful one it was. Her
+father had sent to Paris for the wedding-gown, and all her linen was
+hand-embroidered by the nuns in some French convent.
+
+"They certainly had all that heart could wish in those days. It is a
+pity that Agnes was too young to enjoy her share of luxuries. Well, just
+a week before the time set for the wedding, Murray Cathright
+mysteriously disappeared. He had gone away on a short business trip. His
+family traced him to a hotel in Pittsburg, and then lost all clue,
+except that just before leaving the hotel he had asked the clerk for the
+time-tables of an Eastern railroad. There was a terrible wreck on that
+road that same night. The entire train went through a bridge into the
+river, and they thought he must have been swept away with the
+unidentified dead. But it was months before Marietta would believe it.
+
+"She acted as if her mind were a little touched all that summer. Used to
+dress up every evening in the clothes he had liked best, with a flower
+in her hair, and go down to the honeysuckle arbour to wait for him.
+She'd sit there and wait and wait all alone, until her father'd go down
+and lead her in. The next day she'd go through the same performance. It
+ended in a spell of brain fever. She came out of that with her mind all
+right, but she never was strong again. After all the rest of their
+troubles came, she had a stroke of paralysis. It's left her so she can't
+walk. But she can lie there and make buttonholes and pull basting
+threads. She's a perfect marvel, she's so patient and cheerful. People
+like to go there just on that account. You'd never know she had a
+trouble to hear her talk. But I know what she's suffered, and I know
+that she still keeps the wedding-gown. It's laid away in rose leaves
+for her to be buried in."
+
+Mrs. Bisbee paused and spread out the finished quilt-piece on her knee,
+patting it approvingly before choosing the scraps for another block.
+Then she wiped her spectacles. "Sometimes I don't know which I'm the
+sorriest for, Marietta, who had such a good man for a lover as Murray
+Cathright was, and lost him, or Agnes, who's never had anything."
+
+"Why don't people invite her out and give her a good time?" asked Lloyd.
+"Her being a seamstress oughtn't to make any difference to old family
+friends, when she's such a lady."
+
+"It doesn't," answered Mrs. Bisbee. "People used to be nice to those
+girls, and they were always invited everywhere at first. But after
+awhile there was Marietta always in bed, and Agnes a mere baby, and poor
+Miss Sarah with the burden of their support. She had only her needle to
+keep the wolf from the door. She couldn't accept invitations then. There
+was no time. Gradually people stopped asking her. She dropped out of the
+social life of the Valley so completely that Agnes grew up without any
+knowledge of it. All she has known has been hard work. Miss Allison has
+tried to draw her into things, but the older sisters are proud, as I
+said. Agnes cannot dress suitably, and they can make no return of
+hospitalities, so she has never ventured into anything more than the
+King's Daughters' Circle."
+
+"There's Alec with the carriage!" exclaimed Lloyd. "He's stopping at the
+stoah. If I hurry, I can ride back home. I've stayed so long that mothah
+will wondah what has become of me."
+
+"Don't go!" begged Mrs. Bisbee, as Lloyd began drawing on her coat. "I
+don't know when I've enjoyed a morning so much. Since daughter's married
+and gone I miss her young friends so much. She used to have the house
+full of them from morning till night. Now I fairly pine for the sight of
+a fresh young face sometimes. You've livened me up more than you can
+know. _Do_ come again!"
+
+Lloyd went away highly pleased by her cordial reception. She had enjoyed
+being talked to as if she were grown, and these glimpses into the lives
+of her neighbours were more interesting than any her books could give
+her. When she passed the lane leading up to the house where the three
+sisters lived, she wished that she could turn over a leaf and read more
+about them. She wondered if Miss Marietta ever took out the beautiful
+wedding-dress that was to be her shroud. She mused over the newly
+discovered romance all the way home.
+
+If it had not been for that morning's call, and the interest it aroused
+in her neighbours, several things might not have happened, which
+afterward followed each other like links in a chain. Probably Miss Sarah
+would have walked up to Locust just the same, to take home a wrapper she
+had finished, and not finding Mrs. Sherman at home would have stepped
+inside the door a moment to warm by the dining-room fire; and Lloyd,
+with the courtesy that never failed her, would have been as graciously
+polite as her mother could have been. But if it had not been for the
+interest in her that Mrs. Bisbee's story gave, several other happenings
+might not have followed.
+
+As Lloyd looked at the gray-haired woman on whom toil and poverty and
+care had left their marks, and remembered there had been a time when
+Miss Sarah had been as tenderly cared for as herself, a sudden pity
+surged up into her heart. She longed to lighten her load in some way,
+and to give back to her for a moment at least the comforts she had lost.
+With a quick gesture she motioned her away from the dining-room door.
+"No, come in heah!" she exclaimed, leading the way into the
+drawing-room, and pushing a big armchair toward the fire.
+
+Blue and cold from her long walk against the wind, Miss Sarah sank down
+among the soft cushions and leaned back luxuriously.
+
+"It's so ti'ahsome walking against the wind," exclaimed the Little
+Colonel. "When I came in awhile ago, I was puffing and blowing. I'm
+going to make you a cup of hot tea. That's what mothah always takes. No!
+It won't be any _trouble_," she exclaimed, as Miss Sarah protested. "It
+will be the biggest kind of a pleasuah. It will give me a chance to use
+mothah's little tea-ball. I deahly love to wiggle it around in the cup
+and see the watah po'ah out of all the little holes. I've been wishing
+somebody would come, or that I had something to do. Now you have granted
+both wishes. I can have a regulah little tea-pah'ty. Excuse me just a
+minute, please."
+
+Left to herself, Miss Sarah sat looking around at the handsome
+furnishings: the thick Persian rugs, the old portraits, the tall,
+burnished harp in the corner, the bowl of hothouse violets on the table
+at her elbow, until Lloyd returned, bearing a toasting fork and a plate
+of thinly sliced bread. Miss Sarah turned toward her with wistful eyes.
+
+"I have always loved this old room," she said. "This is the first time I
+have been in it for twenty years. It is an old friend. I have spent many
+happy hours here in your grandmother's day. She was always entertaining
+the young people of the Valley. Sometimes that time seems so far away
+that I wonder if it was not all a dream. It was a very beautiful dream,
+at any rate. I often wish Agnes could have had a share in it. She has
+missed so much in not having _her_ friendship."
+
+She nodded toward the portrait over the mantel. "Amanthis Lloyd was my
+ideal woman when I was a young girl like yourself," she added, softly,
+with her eyes on the beautiful features above her.
+
+"I have missed so much, too," said Lloyd, following Miss Sarah's gaze.
+"And yet it seems to me I must have known her. The portrait has always
+seemed alive to me. I used to talk to it sometimes when I was a little
+thing, and I nevah could beah to look at it when I had been naughty. I
+wish you would tell me about her."
+
+She knelt on the hearth-rug as she spoke, and held the long
+toasting-fork toward the fire. "Mothah and grandfathah often talk about
+her, but they don't tell the same things that one outside of the family
+might."
+
+By the time the toast was delicately browned and buttered, Mom Beck came
+in with the tea-tray, and placed it on the table beside the bowl of
+violets.
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Lloyd, seating herself on the other side of the table
+as the old woman left the room. "I didn't think to tell her to bring
+cold turkey and strawberry preserves and fruit cake, but she remembered
+that I didn't eat much lunch, and she is always trying to tempt my
+appetite. She's the best old soul that evah was. Oh, Miss Sarah, I'm so
+glad you came. I haven't had a pah'ty like this for ages. Heah! I'll let
+you wiggle the tea-ball in yoah own cup, so that you can make it as
+strong as you like, because you're company."
+
+The dimples deepened playfully in her cheeks as she passed the tea-ball
+across the table. Miss Sarah smiled, although her eyes felt misty. "You
+dear child!" she exclaimed. "That was Amanthis Lloyd all over again. She
+never reached out and gave pleasure to other people as if she were
+bestowing a favour. She always made it seem as if it were only her own
+pleasure which you were enhancing by sharing. You don't know what an
+interest I have taken in you for her sake, as I've watched you growing
+up here in the Valley. I used to hear remarks about your temper and your
+imperious ways, and day after day, as I've watched you ride past the
+house beside your grandfather, sitting up in the same straight, haughty
+way, I've thought she's well named. She's the Colonel over again.
+
+"But to-day, in this old room, you are startlingly like her in some way,
+I can hardly tell what." She glanced up again at the portrait. "Your
+eyes look at me in the same understanding sort of way. They almost
+unseal the silence of twenty years. I have never said this to any one
+else. But I used to look at her sometimes and think that George Eliot
+must have meant her when she wrote in her 'Choir Invisible' of one who
+could 'be to other souls the cup of strength in some great agony.' She
+was that to me. People always used to go to her with their troubles."
+
+Lloyd bent over her cup, her face flushing. "Then I'm so glad you think
+I'm even a little bit like her," she said, softly. "Nobody evah told me
+that befoah. I've always wanted to be."
+
+The thought gave her a glow of pleasure all through the meal. Long after
+Miss Sarah went away, warmed and quickened in heart as well as body, it
+lingered with her. Afterward it prompted her to pause before the
+portrait with a questioning glance into the clear eyes above her.
+
+"'The cup of strength to other souls in some great agony,'" she
+repeated. "And you were that! Oh, I would love to be, too, if I didn't
+have to suffer too much first to learn how to sympathize and comfort.
+Maybe that is what I am to learn from this wintah's disappointment,--a
+way to help othah people beah their disappointments. If I could do
+that," she whispered, looking wistfully at the face above her, "if only
+one person in the world could remembah me as Miss Sarah remembahs _you_,
+you beautiful Grandmothah Amanthis, it would be worth all the misahable
+time I have had."
+
+Then she turned suddenly and went into the library to look for the poem
+Miss Sarah had quoted. She had never taken the volume from the shelves
+before. She did not care for poetry as Betty did, and it took her some
+time to find the lines she was looking for. But when she found them, she
+took the book back to the drawing-room, and read the page again and
+again, with a quick bounding of the pulses as she realized that here in
+words was the ambition which she had often felt vaguely stirring within
+her. Even if she could not reach the highest ones, and be "the cup of
+strength," or "make undying music in the world," she could at least
+attempt the other aims it held forth. She could at least try "to ease
+the burden of the world." She could live "in scorn for miserable aims
+that end with self."
+
+With the book open on her lap, and her hands clasped around her knees,
+she sat looking steadily into the fire. She did not know what a long,
+long step she was taking out of childhood that afternoon, nor that the
+sweet seriousness of her new purpose shone in her upturned face. But
+when the old Colonel came into the room and found her sitting there in
+the firelight, he paused and then glanced up at the portrait. He was
+almost startled by the striking resemblance,--a likeness of expression
+that he had never noticed before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+"CINDERELLA"
+
+
+LLOYD sat on the window-seat of the stair-landing, looking out on the
+bare February landscape. She was thinking of the poem she had learned
+three weeks before, on the afternoon of Miss Sarah's visit, and it made
+her dissatisfied. When one was all a-tingle, as she had been, with a
+high purpose to help ease the burden of the world and make undying music
+in it, and when one longed to do big, heroic deeds and had ambitions
+high enough to reach the stars, it was hard to be content with the
+commonplace opportunities that came her way.
+
+The things she had been doing seemed so paltry. To carry a glass of
+jelly to the Crisps, a pot of pink hyacinths to Miss Marietta, to write
+a letter for Aunt Cindy, to sit for an hour with Mrs. Bisbee,--these all
+were so trivial and pitifully small that she felt a sense of disgust
+with herself and her efforts. Yawning and swinging her foot, she sat in
+the window-seat several minutes longer, then started aimlessly
+up-stairs to her room. In the upper hall the door leading into the attic
+stairway stood open, and for no reason save that she had nothing else to
+do, she began to mount the steps. She had not been up in the attic since
+Christmas week, when she and Rob had gone to finish his Christmas hunt.
+
+She stood looking around her an instant, then, moved by some
+unaccountable impulse, drew out the chest containing the fancy-dress
+costumes they had used in so many plays and tableaux. One by one she
+shook them out and hung them over Rob's headless hobby-horse, when she
+had finished examining them. There were the velvet knickerbockers and
+blouse she had worn as Little Boy Blue at the Hallowe'en party at the
+Seminary. There was Betty's Dresden Shepherdess dress, and the
+godmother's gown, and the long trailing robe of the Princess Winsome.
+Even the little tulle dress she had worn as the Queen of Hearts at
+Ginger's Valentine party, years ago, came out of the chest as she dived
+deeper into its contents, and a star-spangled costume of red, white, and
+blue, in which she had fluttered as the Goddess of Liberty one Fourth of
+July.
+
+Slippers and buckles and plumes, fans and gloves and artificial
+flowers, were piled up all around her. The hobby-horse was hidden under
+a drapery of velvet and lace and silk. Still the chest held a number of
+old party gowns that had never been cut down to fit their childish
+revels.
+
+As Lloyd shook them out, thinking of the gay scenes they had been a part
+of, the picture of Agnes Waring in her worn jacket and shabby shoes
+flashed across her mind, followed by Mrs. Bisbee's remark: "She's never
+had any of the pleasures that most girls have. Twenty-five years old,
+and to my certain knowledge she's never had a beau or been to a big
+party, or travelled farther than Louisville."
+
+Lloyd pressed her lips together and stood staring at the old finery
+around her, thinking hard. A sudden vision had come to her of this
+modern Cinderella, and of herself as the fairy godmother. Her eyes shone
+and her cheeks grew pink as she stood pondering. If she could only make
+an occasion, it would be easy enough to provide the coach and the
+costume, even the glass slippers. There lay a pair of white satin ones,
+beaded in tiny crystal beads that shone like dewdrops. Suppose she
+should play godmother and send Agnes to a ball. Suppose the shy, timid
+girl should look so fine in her fine feathers that people would stare
+at her and wonder who that beautiful creature was. Suppose a prince
+should be there who never would have noticed her but for the magic glass
+slippers, and then suppose--
+
+Lloyd did not put the rest of the delightful daydream into words, but
+just stood thinking about it a long time, until her expression grew very
+sweet and tender over a little romance which she dreamed might grow out
+of her plan to give Agnes pleasure.
+
+"If I only had thought of it in time to have had a Valentine pah'ty,"
+she exclaimed aloud, "that would have been the very thing. But it is too
+late now. This is the seventeenth." Then she clasped her hands
+delightedly as that date suggested another. "It is five days till
+Washington's Birthday. Maybe there will be time to get up a Martha
+Washington affair. I'll ask Miss Allison about it this very night at
+choir practice. She always has so many new ideas."
+
+Tumbling the costumes back into the trunk, helter-skelter, she danced
+down the stairs, impatient to tell her mother about it. But there were
+guests in the library who had been invited to spend the afternoon and
+stay to dinner, and Lloyd had no opportunity to speak of the subject
+that was uppermost in her thoughts. Immediately after dinner she
+excused herself, to slip into her red coat and furs, while Mom Beck
+lighted the lantern they were to carry.
+
+It was only a short distance to the Mallard place, where the choir was
+to meet that week, so they did not need Alec's escort this time. The
+wind flared their lantern as they went along the quiet country road.
+They could see other lights bobbing along toward them, and, as they
+neared the gate, Lloyd recognized Mrs. Walton's voice. She and Miss
+Allison were coming up with their brother Harry.
+
+"Is that you, Lloyd?" called Mrs. Walton, as they drew nearer. "I hoped
+you would come early, for I have a letter from the girls that I know you
+will want to read. They are full of preparations for a grand affair to
+be given on the twenty-second,--a Martha Washington reception. As usual,
+Kitty wants to depart from the accustomed order of things, and have a
+costume in George's honour, instead of Martha's. She says why not, as
+long as it is his birthday. She's painted a picture of the dress she has
+concocted for the occasion. It is green tarlatan dotted all over with
+little silver paper hatchets, and trimmed with garlands and bunches of
+artificial cherries."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad you brought the pictuah with you to-night!" exclaimed
+Lloyd. "And I'm wild to see the lettah. Kitty always writes such funny
+ones. And I'm glad I met you out heah befoah the choir practice begins.
+I want to ask you about a celebration I have been planning. It's for
+Agnes Waring," she explained, catching step with them as they turned in
+at the gate. "So of co'se I can't talk about it befoah all the othah
+people.
+
+"I happened to be looking ovah a chest of old costumes to-day, thinking
+of all the fun we'd had in them, when I remembahed her and what Mrs.
+Bisbee had told me about her nevah having good times like othah girls.
+She said she'd nevah had any attention, and nevah been to a big pah'ty.
+I thought I'd like to give her one on the twenty-second, because I could
+offah her a costume then without hurting her feelings. I was suah that
+you and Miss Allison could suggest something moah than I had thought of.
+I don't know exactly how to begin. People will think it strange, and
+Agnes might, too, if I gave a pah'ty just for her, when all her friends
+whom I would want to invite are so much oldah than I."
+
+Miss Allison and her sister exchanged glances in the lantern-light, then
+Mrs. Walton said, hesitatingly: "Why--I don't know--I'm sorry, Lloyd,
+that we didn't know before. We've already made plans which I am afraid
+will interfere with yours. The King's Daughters' Circle has arranged to
+have an oyster supper at my house on the afternoon and evening of the
+twenty-second. Most of the people you would want to ask will be busy
+there, for everybody in the Valley lends a hand at these
+entertainments."
+
+They could not see the disappointment that shadowed Lloyd's face as she
+listened to this announcement in silence. But Miss Allison knew it was
+there, and, as they walked on up the path together, she slipped her arm
+around Lloyd's waist.
+
+"Never mind, dear," she said. "You shall not have your beautiful plan
+spoiled by the old oyster supper. We'll combine forces. As Agnes is a
+member of the Circle, maybe you can bring about what you want more
+naturally and easily this way than in any other. The girls who are to
+wait on the table are to powder their hair and wear white kerchiefs and
+Martha Washington caps. But we had intended to ask you to take charge of
+the fancy-work table, as you have more time for getting up elaborate
+costumes. We wanted to ask you to dress in as handsome a costume of that
+period as you could find. We remember what lovely brocade gowns and
+quilted petticoats and old-fashioned fol-de-rols used to be laid away in
+your grandmother's attic that belonged to _her_ grandmother. If you
+like, you may give your place to Agnes, and let her be the belle of the
+ball."
+
+Lloyd returned the pressure of the arm about her with an impulsive hug.
+"Oh, I _knew_ you'd think of something perfectly lovely," she cried.
+"That would be much the best way, for she is so timid and quiet you
+couldn't keep her from being a wall-flowah at an ordinary pah'ty. But
+this way she will have something to do, and she'll have to talk when
+people come to buy things. I wish it were not so long till to-morrow! I
+want to tell her about it this minute."
+
+Usually the choir practice was a bore to Lloyd. She was one of the few
+members who sang by note, and Mrs. Walton, the leader, had to take them
+through the simple anthems over and over again, until they caught the
+tune by ear. Lloyd, knowing that her strong young voice was needed, sang
+dutifully through the tiresome repetitions, but sometimes she wanted to
+put her fingers in her ears to shut out the sound. To-night she did not
+chafe inwardly at the false starts and the monotonous chant, "Oh, be
+thankful! Oh, be thankful!" which had to be sung over numberless times
+in order that the bass and alto singers might learn to come in at the
+proper places with their responsive refrain. She was so absorbed in
+thinking of the pleasure in store for Agnes, and imagining what she
+would say, that she sang the three measures over and over, unheeding how
+long the choir stuck there, or uncaring how many times they seesawed up
+and down on the same tiresome notes.
+
+The excitement began for Agnes next day, when Lloyd delivered Miss
+Allison's invitation, and bore her away in the carriage to search
+through the attic for a costume. She had never been farther than the
+door at Locust. Her journeys thither had been to carry home some
+finished garment. But many an hour of patient sewing had been brightened
+by her sisters' tales of the place. Both Miss Sarah and Miss Marietta
+remembered it affectionately, for the sake of the woman who had welcomed
+them there on so many happy occasions in the past.
+
+Agnes thought she knew just how the interior of Locust would look,
+especially the stately old drawing-room, with its portraits and candles,
+its harp and the faint odour of rose-leaves; and really there was
+something familiar to her in its appearance as she caught a glimpse of
+it on her way up-stairs to Lloyd's room. But she had never imagined such
+a dainty rose of a room as the pink and white bower Lloyd led her into.
+There might have been a throb of resentment that all such beauty and
+luxury had been left out of her life, if there had been time for her to
+look around and compare it with her own scantily furnished room at home.
+
+Lloyd hurried over to the bed, eager to display a gorgeous brocade gown
+of rose and silver laid out there, which Mrs. Sherman had brought down
+from the attic in her absence, and from which Mom Beck had pressed all
+the wrinkles.
+
+"It's as good as new," said Lloyd. "I'm glad that mothah wouldn't let us
+cut it up last yeah, when we wanted to make it fit Katie. There are pink
+slippahs to match, but I hoped you'd rathah weah these. They make me
+think of Cinderella's glass ones, and they're twice as pretty."
+
+She tossed the crystal beaded slippers over to Agnes for her inspection.
+"Try them on," she urged. "I want to see how you'll look."
+
+In a few moments the shabby shoes and the old brown dress lay in a heap
+on the floor like a discarded chrysalis, and Agnes stepped out, a
+dazzled butterfly, in her gorgeous robes of rose and silver.
+
+Lloyd clasped her hands ecstatically. "Oh, Agnes, it's _lovely_! And
+it's almost a perfect fit. If Miss Sarah can just take it up a little on
+the shouldahs, and change the collah a tiny bit, it will look as if it
+were made for you. When yoah hair is powdahed and you have this little
+bunch of plumes in it, you'll be simply perfect. It doesn't mattah if
+the slippahs do pinch a little. They look so pretty you can stand a
+little thing like that for one evening."
+
+Lloyd walked around and around her, till she had admired her to her
+heart's content, and then led her away to show to Mrs. Sherman. "You
+ought to carry yoah head that way all the time," she said. "It's
+becoming to you to 'walk proud,' as old Mammy Easter used to say."
+
+It was with the air of a duchess that Agnes sailed into the
+drawing-room, and with the feeling that at last she had come into her
+own. On every side the dim old mirrors flashed back the reflection of
+the slender figure with its head proudly high. She looked at it
+curiously, scarcely recognizing the delicate, high-bred features for her
+own. There was colour in her face for one thing. The dull browns and
+grays, which she wore for economy's sake, were apt to make her look
+sallow. But this wonderful rose-pink lent a glow to her cheeks, and
+pleasure and expectancy brightened her eyes, and left her a-tingle with
+these new sensations.
+
+"You'll be the feature of the occasion," Mrs. Sherman assured her. "Come
+up to lunch with us Thursday. We'll powder your hair and help you dress,
+and take you down in the carriage with us. Tell your sisters that we'll
+see that you get home safely that night."
+
+So to the other pleasures of the twenty-second was added the
+undreamed-of delight of being invited out to lunch, and forgetting for
+awhile that there were such tiresome things in the world as
+sewing-machines and endless ruffling for other people. Although she wore
+her old brown dress, darned at the elbows, and, with her usual timidity,
+scarcely ventured a remark at the table unless directly questioned, she
+was all aglow with the new experience.
+
+Afterward it was easy to talk and laugh with Lloyd, as they went through
+the conservatory cutting the flowers which were to decorate the tables
+at The Beeches. Hyacinths and lilies-of-the-valley made a spring-time of
+their own under the sheltering skylight. Agnes bent over them with a cry
+of delight. "They make you forget the calendar, don't they?" she said,
+looking shyly up at Lloyd. She wanted to add, "And so do you. You make
+me forget that I am ten years older than you. It seems only pussy-willow
+time by my feelings to-day." But their friendship was too new as yet for
+such personal speeches.
+
+As they went back to the drawing-room with a basket piled full of
+hothouse blooms, Mrs. Sherman called to Lloyd that she needed her
+up-stairs a few moments. Hastily excusing herself, she left Agnes with a
+new magazine for her entertainment. When she came down later, the
+magazine was lying uncut on the table, and Agnes, seated in front of the
+piano, was fingering the keys with light touches which made no sound,
+they pressed the ivory so gently. She started guiltily as Lloyd came in.
+
+"I couldn't help it!" she stammered. "It drew me over here like a
+magnet. It has been the dream of my life to know how to play, but it is
+all such a mystery. I've puzzled over the music in the hymn-book many a
+time, the little notes flying up and down like birds through a fence,
+and then watched Miss Allison's fingers on the organ keys, going up and
+down the same way."
+
+"It is just as easy as reading the alphabet," said Lloyd. "I'll show
+you. Wait till I find my old music primer. It is somewhere in this
+cabinet."
+
+Hastily turning over the exercise books and worn sheets of music that
+filled one of the lower shelves, she dragged out an old dog-eared
+instruction book, which she propped up on the rack in front of Agnes.
+
+"Heah," she said, pointing to a note. "When one of those little birds,
+as you call them, perches on this place on the fence, then you're to
+strike the A key on the piano. If it lights on the line just above it,
+then you strike the next key, B. See?" She ran her fingers lightly up
+the octavo and began again with A. Agnes leaned hungrily over the page,
+reading the printed directions below each simple measure, where the
+fingering was plainly marked.
+
+"Oh, I could learn to do it by studying this!" she cried, her face all
+alight. "I am sure I could. I don't mean that I could ever learn to play
+as you do, or Miss Allison, but I could learn simple things and the
+accompaniments to old songs that Marietta loves. It would be almost as
+great a joy to her and sister Sarah as it would to me, for my learning
+to play has always been one of our favourite air-castles. If you could
+loan me this instruction book for awhile--" She hesitated.
+
+"Of co'se!" cried Lloyd, thrilled by the eagerness of the eyes which met
+hers. "I'll give you a lesson right now, if you like. I'll teach you a
+set of chords you can use for an accompaniment. They are so easy you can
+learn them befoah you go home, and you can surprise Miss Marietta by
+singing and playing for her. They fit evah so many of the ballads."
+
+Turning the leaves of the instructor, she found the simple chords of
+"Annie Laurie," and wrote beside each note the letters that would enable
+Agnes to find them on the keyboard. "This isn't the right way to begin,"
+she said, with a laugh, "but we'll take this short cut just to surprise
+Miss Marietta. You can come back aftahward and learn about time and all
+the othah things that ought to come first. I'll give you a lesson every
+week for awhile, if you like."
+
+The eyes that met hers now were brimming with happy tears.
+
+"If I like," Agnes repeated, with a tremulous catch of the voice. "As if
+I wouldn't jump at the chance to have the key to paradise put into my
+hands. It's the happiest thing that ever happened to me."
+
+With her heart as well as her whole attention given to the effort, it
+was not long before Agnes found her fingers falling naturally into
+place, and she played the chords over and over, humming the tune softly,
+with a pleasure that was pathetic to Lloyd.
+
+"Oh, I could keep on all day and all night!" exclaimed Agnes, when Mrs.
+Sherman called to them that it was time to dress. "I've never been so
+happy in all my life! You don't know what it means to me!" she cried,
+turning a radiant face to Lloyd's. "You've lifted me clear off the
+earth. I wish I could run home before the reception begins and play this
+for Marietta. I want to see her face when I open the old piano."
+
+Lloyd followed her up the stairs, wondering at the girl's uplifted mood.
+She did not see how such a trifle could bring about such a
+transformation in any one's spirits, not realizing that this bit of
+knowledge which Agnes had picked up was to her a veritable key which
+would open the door she had longed for years to enter.
+
+When Agnes swept into the house at The Beeches, she was in such high
+spirits that people looked twice to be sure that they knew the radiant
+girl presiding so gaily over the fancy-work table.
+
+"She is actually talking," Miss McGill whispered to Libbie Simms.
+"Talking and laughing and making jokes like other girls. Somebody has
+surely worked a hoodoo charm on her."
+
+But happiness was the only hoodoo, and, under its expanding influence,
+she fairly bloomed that night. Lloyd, hovering near her, jubilant over
+the success of her popular Cinderella, beamed and dimpled with pleasure,
+and stored away the many compliments she overheard, to repeat to Agnes
+next day. Once she darted into the butler's pantry, where Miss Allison
+was slicing cake, to announce, in an excited whisper: "Agnes has
+actually had three invitations to suppah. She's gone in now with Mistah
+John Bond. I must run back and take charge of the sales, but I just had
+to tell you. Do peep in and see her there at the cawnah table, eating
+ice-cream and talking away as if she'd been used to such attentions all
+her life. Isn't it great? Now people can't shake their heads and say
+poah girl, she's nevah had any attentions like othah girls. Nobody takes
+any interest in her."
+
+Miss Allison turned to give Lloyd's cheek a playful pinch. "You dear
+little fairy godmother! All Cranford will take an interest in her, now
+that she has blossomed out so unexpectedly. Even old Mr. Wade, who never
+says nice things about any one, asked me who our distinguished-looking
+guest was, and, when I told him Agnes Waring, he fairly gasped and
+dropped his eye-glasses. Then he gave his usual contemptuous sniff that
+always makes me want to shake him, and walked away, saying: 'Who'd have
+thought it! Well, well, fine feathers certainly do make fine birds!'"
+
+Lloyd hurried back to her place behind the fancy-work table. Nearly
+every one was out in the room where supper was being served, and except
+for an occasional question from some one who strolled by to ask the
+price of a laundry-bag or a hemstitched centrepiece, no one disturbed
+her. To the music of mandolin, guitar, and piano, played softly behind
+the palms in one corner, she went on with her pleasing day-dreams for
+Agnes. She would make other opportunities for her next week, take her in
+town to a concert or a matinee. She wished she could offer her clothes,
+but she dared not take that step. There would be the Waring pride to
+reckon with if she did.
+
+In the midst of this reverie, Agnes came up all a-flutter, saying,
+shyly: "Lloyd, would you mind if I didn't go back in the carriage with
+you? Your mother wouldn't think it strange, would she? It was because I
+had no other way to get home that she invited me. But Mr. Bond has
+asked to take me home behind his new team. He wants me to see what fine
+travellers his horses are."
+
+"Of co'se mothah wouldn't think it strange!" exclaimed Lloyd.
+"Especially if it is Mistah Bond who wants to take you. She and Papa
+Jack are so fond of him."
+
+"He wants me to join the choir," Agnes went on, in a lower tone, as a
+group of people crowded around the table. "Mrs. Walton and Mrs. Mallard
+and Miss Flora Marks have asked me also. I've pinched myself black and
+blue this evening, trying to make sure that I am awake. Oh, Lloyd,
+you'll never, never know how I have enjoyed it all."
+
+There was no time for further conversation then. People were beginning
+to leave, and were crowding around the table to claim the articles they
+had purchased earlier in the evening. But it was not necessary for Agnes
+to repeat that she was radiantly happy. It showed in every word and
+laugh and gesture. Lloyd went home that night nearer to the Castle of
+Content than she had been for many weeks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A HARD-EARNED PEARL
+
+
+THE reaction came next day, however, when a budget of letters from the
+girls turned her thoughts back to all that she was missing. Betty was
+rooming with Juliet Lynn now, and they were writing a play together in
+spare minutes. Allison had had honourable mention three times in the
+Studio Bulletin, and a number of her sketches had been chosen for
+display on the studio walls. Kitty had surprised them all by the
+interest she had suddenly taken in French, and had translated a poem so
+cleverly that Monsieur Blanc had sent it home for publication in a Paris
+paper. The work was so interesting now, Betty wrote, and the time so
+full, Warwick Hall grew daily more inspiring and more dear.
+
+The old ache came back to Lloyd as she read. She felt that she had
+fallen hopelessly behind the others. She was so utterly left out of all
+their successes. The little efforts she had made to fill her days with
+things worth while suddenly shrivelled into nothing, and she sat with
+the letters in her lap, staring moodily into vacancy.
+
+"What's the use?" she sobbed. "All that I can do heah doesn't amount to
+a row of pins. I am out of it."
+
+Thinking of Warwick Hall and the girls and all that she was missing, she
+sat pitying herself until the tears began to come. She let them trickle
+slowly down her face without attempting to wipe them away or fight them
+back. Nobody was there to see, and she could be as miserable as she
+chose. In the midst of her gloomy reverie she heard the door-bell ring.
+
+Dabbing her handkerchief over her eyes, she started across the room to
+make her escape up-stairs before Mom Beck could open the front door. But
+she was too late. As she pushed aside the portieres, she heard Agnes
+Waring ask if she were at home, and Mom Beck immediately ushered her in.
+
+"I came to bring the costume back," she began, hurriedly. "No, I must
+not sit down, thank you. I am on my way to Mrs. Moore's to fit a lining.
+But I just had to stop by and tell you what a lovely time I had
+yesterday and last night. You should have seen Marietta's face this
+morning when I opened the piano and played and sang for her. The tears
+just rolled down her face, but it was because we were so happy.
+
+"She said she had been afraid that I would grow morose and bitter
+because I had so few pleasures, and she is so glad about the music
+lessons and my joining the choir. Mr. Bond is going to come by for me
+next Friday night. Sister Sarah said she had no idea that colours could
+make such a difference in one till she saw me in that costume. She has
+been looking over the silk quilt pieces your mother sent Marietta, and
+she recognized two pieces that are parts of dresses your grandmother
+used to wear. One is a deep rich red,--a regular garnet colour, and the
+other is sapphire blue. She said that if they had belonged to any one
+else but Amanthis Lloyd she couldn't do it,--but instead of cutting them
+up into quilt pieces she--she is going to make them into shirt-waists
+for me."
+
+The colour deepened in Agnes's face as she made the confession, with an
+unconscious lifting of the head that made Lloyd remember Mrs. Bisbee's
+remark about the Waring pride. She hastened to say something to cover
+the awkward pause that followed.
+
+"Grandmothah Amanthis and Miss Sarah were such good friends, even if
+there was so much difference in their ages. I know she would be glad for
+you to use the silk that way. Looking pretty in it and having good times
+in it seems a bettah way to use it as a remembrance of her than putting
+it into a quilt, doesn't it?"
+
+Then, to change the subject, which disconcerted her more than it did
+Agnes, she held up the package of letters.
+
+"I heard from the girls to-day, and they are all getting on so
+beautifully, and making such good records, that it neahly breaks my
+hah't to think I can't be with them." She laughed nervously. "I suppose
+you wondahed what made my eyes so red, when you came in. I've been
+regularly howling. I couldn't help it. I sat heah thinking about deah
+old Warwick Hall, and all that I had to give up, till I was so misahable
+I _had_ to cry."
+
+Agnes, turning toward the window so that her face could not be seen,
+looked out at the bare branches of the locusts.
+
+"I wonder," she began, slowly, "if it would make any difference to
+you--if it would make your disappointment any easier to bear--to know
+how much your being in the Valley this winter has meant to me. Fifty
+years from now one term more or less in your studies won't amount to
+much. It will not count much then that you've solved a few more problems
+in algebra, or learned a little more French, or fallen behind the others
+in a few credit marks, but it will make all the difference in the world
+to me that you were here to open a door for me.
+
+"If you've done nothing more than give me that one music lesson, it has
+showed me the possibility of all that I may accomplish, and started me
+on the road to my heart's desire. If you've done no more than prove to
+me that I can conquer my timidity and be like other girls, and accept
+the little pleasures just at hand for the taking, don't you see that you
+have opened up a way for me that I never could have found alone? And to
+do that for any one, why, it's like teaching him a song that he will
+teach to some one else, and that one will go on repeating, and the next
+and the next, until you've started something that never stops. If I were
+making up the accounts in the Hereafter, I am very sure I'd count it
+more to your credit,--the unselfish way you are helping people than all
+the lessons you could learn in a term at school. I am not saying half
+what I feel. I couldn't. It is too deep down. But, oh, I do want you to
+know that your disappointment has not all been in vain."
+
+The voice that uttered the last sentence was tremulous with feeling.
+Tears were very near the surface now. Before Lloyd could think of any
+reply to her impetuous speech, she had started toward the door.
+
+"Mrs. Moore will wonder what is keeping me," she said, as she turned the
+knob. "Good-bye!"
+
+With a lighter heart than Lloyd could have believed possible half an
+hour earlier, she went up to her room. Dropping the damp little ball of
+a handkerchief into her laundry-bag, she opened a drawer for a fresh
+one. By mistake she drew out, not her handkerchief-box, but one that in
+some previous haste had been pushed into its place,--the sandalwood box
+containing the pearl beads. She took up the uncompleted rosary and began
+slipping the beads back and forth over the string,--the string that
+would have been two-thirds full by this time if she could have gone on
+with school work. Suddenly she looked at it with widening eyes.
+
+"I wondah," she said aloud, "I wondah if I couldn't slip one moah on for
+yestahday. She said herself that it ought to count for moah than school
+work. In a way she said it was like making 'undying music in the
+world.' And what was it old Bishop Chartley said at the carol service?"
+She stood with a little pucker on her forehead, trying to recall his
+words about keeping the White Feast.
+
+"So may we offer our pearls, days unstained by selfishness." That was
+it. She could go on with her rosary then, and, instead of perfect
+lessons at school, she could fill the string in token of days spent
+unselfishly at home. Days not stained by regrets and tears and idle
+repining for what could not be helped.
+
+With a deep sigh of satisfaction, she slipped one more pearl bead down
+the string, and laid it back in the box.
+
+"That is for yestahday. I can't count to-day, for I sat for an houah
+thinking about my troubles and pitying myself and making myself just as
+misahable as possible."
+
+So the little string began to grow again, and, though she was
+half-ashamed of the childish pleasure it gave her, it did help when she
+could see every night a visible token that she had tried to live that
+'day through unselfishly and well,--that she had kept tryst with the
+duty of cheerfulness which we all owe the world.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE RODE OVER TO ROLLINGTON"]
+
+But not all her pearls were earned as easily as the one that marked her
+efforts for Agnes. One day, when she rode over to Rollington with some
+illustrated magazines for the Crisp children, she was met by an
+announcement from Minnie, the oldest one, who had charge of the family
+in her mother's absence.
+
+"Mis' Perkins said I was to tell you she didn't see why folks passed her
+by when she liked wine jelly and good things just as well as some other
+people she knew."
+
+"Who is Mrs. Perkins?" asked Lloyd, astonished by such a message.
+
+Minnie nodded her towhead toward a weather-beaten house of two rooms
+across the street. "She lives over there. She's sick most of the time.
+She saw you cooking in our kitchen that day that you came and got
+dinner, and ma sent her over a piece of the pie you made, and she's been
+sort of sniffy ever since, because nobody does such things for her."
+
+Minnie seemed so anxious that Lloyd should include Mrs. Perkins in her
+visit that finally Lloyd agreed to be escorted over to see her. Wrapping
+the baby in a shawl, and staggering along under its weight, Minnie
+ordered the other children to stay where they were, and led the way
+across the street.
+
+The tilt of Lloyd's dainty nose, as she went in, said more plainly than
+words, "Poah white trash!" For the house had a stuffy smell of liniment
+and bacon grease. An old woman came forward to meet them in her stocking
+feet and a dirty woollen wrapper. Her uncombed gray hair straggled
+around her ears, and her wrinkled face was unwashed and grimy. Lloyd was
+thankful that she did not offer to shake hands. She sat down on the edge
+of a chair, breathing the stuffy air as sparingly as possible.
+
+She had always been taught that old age must be respected, no matter how
+unlovely, and as Mrs. Perkins counted her aches and pains in a weak,
+whining voice, pity got the better of Lloyd's disgust. She began to feel
+sorry for this poor old creature, for whom no one else seemed to have
+any sympathy. She complained bitterly of her neighbours and the
+church-members who professed to be so charitable, but who left her to
+suffer.
+
+Then she praised the lemon pie that Lloyd had made, until Lloyd gladly
+promised to make one for her. "I'll bring it down the last of the week,"
+she promised, later, when she rose to go, and Mrs. Perkins introduced
+the subject again. But that was not what the old woman wanted.
+
+"Why can't you come down here and make it in my kitchen?" she whined,
+"same as you did in Mrs. Crisp's. I get dreadful lonesome setting here,
+and it would be so much company to see you whisking around beating eggs
+and rolling out the crust. Then I could smell it baking, and eat it hot
+out of the oven. It's been many a long day since I've done a thing like
+that. It makes my mouth water, just thinking of it."
+
+"Certainly I could do it heah, if you would like it bettah," promised
+Lloyd, rashly. "Is there anything I can do for you befoah I go?"
+
+"Yes, there is," was the ready answer. "I didn't eat much dinner, and
+I'm that weak and faint I'd like if you'd make me a cup of tea."
+
+"Certainly," answered Lloyd again. "If you'll just tell me where to find
+things."
+
+"I'll be going on," said Minnie Crisp, beginning to wrap the baby up in
+its shawl again. "Those kids will be turning the house upside down if
+I'm not there to watch them."
+
+Nobody paid any attention to her departure, for Lloyd, hanging her coat
+over the back of a dusty chair, had gone into the kitchen before Minnie
+finished making a woollen mummy of the baby.
+
+"The tea is in a paper bag in the corner cupboard," called Mrs. Perkins.
+"Mrs. Moore sent it to me. It's green tea, and I never did care for any
+kind but black. I'd pretty nigh as soon have none as green. You might
+poach me an egg, too, if you feel like it, and make a bit of toast."
+
+With a shiver of disgust, Lloyd looked around her. Everything was dirty.
+She wished she dared run across the street and prepare the lunch in Mrs.
+Crisp's immaculate kitchen. There everything shone from repeated
+scrubbings with soft soap and sand. She enjoyed cooking over there. As
+she opened the cupboard door a roach ran out, and she jumped aside with
+another shiver of disgust. She wanted a pan in which to poach the egg,
+but nothing looked clean enough to use. Finally she chose a battered
+saucepan, but dropped it when she discovered that a spider had woven a
+web inside.
+
+Spiders had always been an abomination to Lloyd. It made her feel cold
+and creepy to touch a cobweb. But the story of Ederyn flashed through
+her thoughts, and she grasped the pan, determined to use it or die in
+the effort. She had started and she would not turn back. It was plainly
+her duty to minister to the wants of this complaining old invalid whom
+others neglected, and she would keep tryst at any cost. With many an
+inward shudder she went on with her task. As the water in the kettle was
+already steaming, it was not long before the lunch was ready, and she
+carried it in.
+
+"It's simply impossible for me to come and make the pie in this dirty
+kitchen," thought Lloyd, "and I can't tell her so. Maybe I could ask
+Mrs. Crisp to invite her ovah and she could see it done there."
+
+While she worried over the problem of introducing the subject tactfully,
+Mrs. Perkins herself opened the way. She hadn't been well enough to do
+any cleaning for several weeks, she said. If she could get a little
+stronger, she intended to do two things: to slick up the place a bit,
+and to go on a visit to Jane O'Grady's up near the black bridge. She had
+been wanting to spend the day with Jane all winter, but didn't have any
+way to get there. It was too far to walk. Lloyd saw her opportunity and
+seized it.
+
+"Why, mothah will send the carriage for you, Mrs. Perkins, any day you
+set. She'd be glad to. Alec can drive you ovah early in the mawning,
+when he is out for the marketing, and go for you befoah dah'k."
+
+"Then you may send to-morrow," said Mrs. Perkins, ungraciously. "I don't
+want to risk putting it off. Folks usually forget such promises
+overnight. So I'd best make sure of it."
+
+Lloyd flushed angrily, but the next instant excused the old woman's
+rudeness on the score of her ill health. She had a plan that she was
+anxious to carry out, and she hurried home to begin, all a-tingle with
+her charitable impulses. She was surprised that her mother should treat
+it so lightly.
+
+"Of course you can have the carriage," said Mrs. Sherman. "But, my good
+little Samaritan, I must warn you. That old woman is a pauper in spirit.
+She hasn't a particle of proper pride. People have done too much for
+her. She'll take all she can get, and grumble because it isn't more. So
+you mustn't be disappointed if, instead of thanks, you get only
+criticism."
+
+But Lloyd, full of the zeal of a true reformer, danced down to the
+servants' quarters to find May Lily, one of the cook's grandchildren.
+May Lily, a neat-looking coloured girl of seventeen, had been one of
+Lloyd's most loyal followers since they made mud pies together on the
+Colonel's white door-steps, and the readiness to serve her now was
+prompted not so much by the promised dollar as the desire to still
+follow her lead. So next morning, soon after Mrs. Perkins's departure in
+the Sherman carriage, a mighty revolution began in the house she left
+behind her.
+
+May Lily, strong and willing, went to work like a small cyclone. Under
+Lloyd's direction, she swept and scrubbed and scoured. The bed was
+aired, the stove was blacked, the windows washed, the tins polished till
+they shone like new. By four o'clock not a cobweb or a speck of dust was
+to be seen in either room. Lloyd sat down to wait for Mrs. Perkins's
+return. She felt that it was safe to breathe now, and she did not have
+to sit gingerly on the edge of the chair. Every piece of furniture had
+been washed and rubbed. She could keep her promise about the pie very
+comfortably now. Everything smelled so clean and wholesome to her that
+she was sure that Mrs. Perkins would notice the change at once and be
+pleased.
+
+Mrs. Perkins did notice the change the moment she entered the door, but
+it was with a displeased face. "Hm! Hm!" she sniffed. "Smells mightily
+of soft soap in here. What have you been doing? I never could bear the
+smell of soft soap or lye. Hm! Hm!"
+
+Then she turned accusingly on Lloyd. "Didn't you know better than to put
+stove-blacking on that stove? When it gets het up, it will smoke to
+fare-ye-well, and start my asthma to going again full tilt. Some folks
+are mighty thoughtless, never have no consideration for other people."
+
+Lloyd shrank back, almost overcome by such a reception. It was like a
+dash of cold water in her face. She was angry and indignant.
+
+"Well," continued Mrs. Perkins, still sniffing around the room, as she
+put her bonnet and shawl away. "Now you're here I'd like it if you would
+put on the teakettle and make me a good strong cup of coffee. Jane
+O'Grady gave me a pound, all parched and ground. I haven't had any
+before to-day for weeks. I'm plumb tuckered out with the visit."
+
+Lloyd hurried to build up the fire, thankful that May Lily had spent
+much time scouring the old coffee-pot. Otherwise she could not have
+brought herself to touch it. It shone like new now. As she poured the
+water into it, three tiny streams spurted out of the side, hissing and
+sputtering over the stove.
+
+"Now just see what you done!" scolded Mrs. Perkins. "You hadn't ought to
+have scoured that coffee-pot so. You'd ought to have let well enough be,
+for you might have known you'd rub holes in it and make it leak."
+
+"I'll get you a new one in place of it at once," said Lloyd, stiffly,
+her indignation rising till she could hardly speak calmly. "I'll go this
+minute."
+
+There was a small grocery store farther up the hill, where a little of
+everything was kept in stock, and Lloyd dashed out bareheaded, glad of
+an excuse to cool her temper. By the time she had made the coffee in the
+new pot, Alec drove up to the door for her.
+
+"You'll come again to-morrow to make that lemon pie, won't you?" asked
+Mrs. Perkins, anxiously.
+
+"No, I can't come till the day aftah."
+
+"What? Thursday?" was the impatient answer. "Time drags awful slow for a
+body that can only sit and wait."
+
+"I have an engagement to-morrow," said Lloyd, stiffly, remembering it
+was the day for Agnes Waring's music lesson. "But you can depend on me
+Thursday."
+
+Mrs. Sherman only laughed when Lloyd repeated her day's adventure at
+home, but the old Colonel fairly snorted with indignation.
+
+"Poor white trash!" he exclaimed. "Don't go near her again!"
+
+"But I promised," answered Lloyd, dolefully. "I must keep my promise."
+
+"Then tell Cindy to make a pie, and let Alec take it down," he
+suggested.
+
+"No, she said she wanted to smell it cooking, and to eat it hot out of
+the oven, and I promised her she might."
+
+The Colonel glared savagely at the fire. "Beggars shouldn't be
+choosers," he muttered, then turned to Mrs. Sherman. "Little daughter,
+are you going to let that poor child of yours be imposed on by that
+creature?"
+
+"I can't interfere with her promise, papa," she answered. "It may be a
+disagreeable experience, but it will not hurt her any more than it hurt
+the old woman to sweep the cobwebs out of the sky. Hers was a thankless
+job, too, but no doubt she was better for the exercise, and she must
+have learned a great deal on such a trip."
+
+It was in the same spirit in which Ederyn cried, "Oh, heart and hand of
+mine, keep tryst! Keep tryst or die!" that Lloyd gathered up the
+necessary materials and started off on Thursday to Mrs. Perkins's
+cottage. This time there was no admiring audience of little towheads
+tiptoeing around the table, as there had been at Mrs. Crisp's. But
+everything was clean, and, with her recipe spread out before her, Lloyd
+followed directions to the letter.
+
+Mrs. Perkins, watching the beating of eggs and stirring of the golden
+filling, the deft mixing of pastry, grew cheerful and entertaining. She
+forgot to complain of her neighbours, and was surprised into the telling
+of some of her girlish experiences that actually brought an amused
+twinkle to her sharp old eyes. Lloyd was vastly entertained. She had,
+too, a virtuous feeling that in keeping her promise she had given
+pleasure to one who rarely met kindness. It gave her a warm inward glow
+of satisfaction.
+
+To her mortification, when she finally drew the pie from the oven, the
+meringue, which had been like a snowdrift a moment before, and which
+should have come out with just a golden glow on it from its short
+contact with the heat, was all shrivelled and brown.
+
+"The nasty little oven was too hot!" cried Lloyd, in disgust.
+
+"Just my luck," whined Mrs. Perkins. "I might have known that I'd never
+get anything I set my heart on. But you can scrape off the meringue, and
+I'll try and make out with the plain pie."
+
+Although she ate generously, she ate grumblingly, disappointed because
+of the scorched meringue, and it wasn't as sweet as she liked.
+
+That night, Lloyd, mortified over her failure, stood long with the white
+rosary in her hand. "Maybe I ought to count the poah pie as I would an
+imperfect lesson," she thought, hesitating, with a bead in her fingers.
+Then she said, defiantly: "But I did my best, and the day has certainly
+been disagreeable enough to deserve two pearls."
+
+After another moment of conscientious weighing of the matter, she
+slipped the bead slowly down the string. "There!" she exclaimed. "I
+suahly went through the black watahs of Kilgore to get that one."
+
+Next day when she stopped in Rollington to pay for the coffee-pot, and
+drove by the Crisps' to ask about the baby, Minnie Crisp told her
+several things. Mrs. Perkins was sick all night, and had told her ma
+that it was the lemon pie that was the cause of the trouble; that it
+would have made a dog sick. "Them was her words," said Minnie,
+solemnly.
+
+"I don't wondah!" cried Lloyd. "The greedy old thing! There was enough
+for foah people, and it was very rich, and she ate it all."
+
+"And she didn't like it because you had May Lily scrub and clean while
+she was gone," added Minnie, with childlike lack of tact. "She talked
+about you dreadful after you went away. Didn't she, ma?"
+
+"Shoo, Minnie!" answered Mrs. Crisp, with a wave of her apron. "Don't
+tell all you know."
+
+"I didn't," answered the child. "I didn't say a word about the names she
+called her,--meddlesome Matty, and all that."
+
+Lloyd took her leave presently, with a flushed face and a sore heart. On
+the way home she stopped at The Beeches, and Mrs. Walton, who saw at a
+glance that something was wrong, soon drew out the story of her
+grievance.
+
+"Don't pay any attention to that old creature," she said, laughing
+heartily, "and forgive my laughing. Everybody in the Valley has had a
+similar experience. The King's Daughters long ago gave her up in
+disgust. She's one of those people who doesn't want to be reformed and
+won't stay helped. Her house will be just as dirty next week as when
+you first went there."
+
+"I didn't suppose there were such people in the world," said Lloyd, in
+disgust.
+
+"You'll find out all sorts of disagreeable things as you get older,"
+sighed Mrs. Walton. "It is one of the penalties of growing up. But still
+it is good to have such experiences, for the wiser we grow the better we
+know how to 'ease the burden of the world,' and that is what we are here
+for."
+
+Lloyd's eyes widened with surprise. Here was another person quoting from
+the poem she had learned. She was glad now that she had committed it to
+memory, since on three occasions it had made people's meaning clearer to
+her.
+
+"Yes," she answered, the dimples stealing into her smile. "But the next
+time I'll find out first if they really want their burden eased, and if
+that burden is dirt, like Mrs. Perkins's, I'll suahly let it alone."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+"SWEET SIXTEEN"
+
+
+THE red coat Lloyd wore that winter was long remembered in the Valley,
+for wherever it went it carried a bright face above it, a cheery
+greeting, and some pleasant word that made the day seem better for its
+passing.
+
+Mrs. Bisbee and the little Crisps were not the only ones who learned to
+watch for it. As all the lonely town of Hamelin must have felt toward
+the one child left to it after the Pied Piper had passed through its
+streets, so all the Valley turned with tender regard to the young girl
+left in its midst. Mothers, whose daughters were away at school, stopped
+to talk to her with affectionate interest. The old ladies whom she
+regularly visited welcomed her as if she were a part of their vanished
+youth. The young ladies took her under their wing, glad to have her in
+the choir and the King's Daughters' Circle, for she was bubbling over
+with girlish enthusiasm and a sincere desire to help.
+
+So she found the cobwebs in the neighbourhood sky, and disagreeable
+enough they were at times, even more disagreeable than her experience
+with Mrs. Perkins. But she swept away with praiseworthy energy, till
+gradually she found that the accumulation of outside interests, like the
+cobweb strands which Ederyn twisted, made a rope strong enough to lift
+her out of herself and her dungeon of disappointment.
+
+After the novelty of giving music lessons had worn off, it grew to be a
+bore. Not the lessons themselves, for Agnes's delight in them never
+flagged. It was the tied-up feeling it gave her to remember that those
+afternoons were not her own. It happened so often that the afternoons
+devoted to Agnes were the ones which of all the week she wanted to have
+free, and she had to give up many small pleasures on account of them.
+
+It grew to be a bore, also, calling on some of the people who claimed a
+weekly visit. She never tired of Mrs. Bisbee's lively comments on her
+neighbours and her interesting tales about them. But there was old Mr.
+and Mrs. Apwall, who, with nothing to do but sit on opposite sides of
+the fire and look at each other, were said to quarrel like cat and dog.
+It mortified Lloyd dreadfully to have them quarrel in her presence, and
+have them pour out their grievances for her to decide which was in the
+wrong.
+
+She always rose to go at that juncture, flushed and embarrassed, and
+vowing inwardly she would never visit them again. But they always
+managed to extract a promise before she got to the door that she would
+drop in again the next time she was passing.
+
+"Somehow you seem to get husband's mind off himself," Mrs. Apwall would
+whisper at parting. "He isn't half so touchy when you've cheered him up
+a spell."
+
+And Mr. Apwall would follow her out through the chilly hall to open the
+front door, and say, huskily: "Come again, daughter. Come again. Your
+visits seem to do the madam a world of good. They give her something to
+talk about beside my fancied failings."
+
+So inwardly groaning, Lloyd would go again, painfully alert to keep the
+conversation away from subjects that invariably led to disputes. And
+inwardly groaning, she went dutifully to the Coburns' at their repeated
+requests. The first few times the garrulous old couple were interesting,
+but the most thrilling tale grows tiresome when one has heard it a
+dozen times. She could scarcely keep from fidgeting in her chair when
+the inevitable story of their feud with the Cayn family was begun. They
+never left out a single petty detail.
+
+No one will ever know how often the thought of the little rosary in the
+sandalwood box helped Lloyd to listen patiently, and to keep tryst with
+the expectations of those about her, so that at nightfall there might be
+another pearl to slip on the silken cord, in token of another day
+unstained by selfishness.
+
+There was rarely time for envying the girls at school now. The days were
+too full. Almost before it seemed possible, the locusts were in bloom
+and it was mid-May by the calendar. In that time perfect health had come
+back to her. There were no more crying spells now, no more hours of
+nervous exhaustion, of fretful impatience over trifles. She went singing
+about the house, with a colour in her cheeks that rivalled the pink of
+the apple blossoms.
+
+"Spring has come indoors as well as out," said Mrs. Sherman one morning.
+"I think that we may safely count that your Christmas vacation is over,
+and you may go back to your music lessons whenever you choose."
+
+The night before her birthday, Lloyd sat with her elbows on her
+dressing-table, peering into the mirror with a very serious face.
+
+"You'll be sixteen yeahs old in the mawning, Lloyd Sherman," she told
+the girl in the glass. "'Sweet sixteen!' You've come to the end of lots
+of things, and to-morrow it will be like going through a gate that
+you've seen ahead of you for a long, long time. A big, wide gate that
+you have looked forward to for yeahs, and things are bound to be
+different on the othah side."
+
+Next morning, just in fun, she trailed down to breakfast in one of her
+mother's white dresses, with her hair piled on the top of her head. It
+was very becoming so, but it made her look so tall and womanly that she
+was sure her grandfather would object to it.
+
+"He'll nevah let me grow up if he can help it," she said, half-pouting,
+as she gave a final glance over her shoulder at the mirror, vastly
+pleased with her young ladylike appearance. "He'll say, 'Tut, tut!
+That's not grandpa's Little Colonel.' But I can't stay his Little
+Colonel always."
+
+She was standing by the window looking down the locust avenue when he
+came in to breakfast, so she did not see his start of surprise at sight
+of her. But his half-whispered exclamation, "_Amanthis!_" told her why
+he failed to make the speech she expected to hear. With her hair done
+high, showing the beautiful curve of her head and throat as she stood
+half-turned toward him, he had caught another glimpse of her startling
+resemblance to the portrait. He could not regret losing his Little
+Colonel if that loss were to give him a living reminder of a beloved
+memory.
+
+After breakfast, when an armful of birthday gifts had been duly admired
+and the donors thanked, and she had spent nearly an hour enjoying them,
+she strolled down the avenue, feeling very much grown up with the long
+dress trailing behind her. She wandered down to the entrance gate,
+hoping to meet Alec, who had gone for the mail. She was sure there would
+be a letter from Betty, for Betty never forgot people's birthdays. Then
+she trailed back again under the white arch of fragrant locust blooms.
+At the half-way seat she sat down and tucked a spray of the blossoms
+into her hair and fastened another at her belt. She had not long to wait
+there, enjoying the freshness of the sweet May morning, for in a few
+minutes Alec came up the avenue with a handful of letters and papers.
+She sorted out her own eagerly, six letters and a package.
+
+She opened Betty's first. It was a long one, ending with a birthday
+greeting in rhyme, and enclosing a handkerchief which she had made
+herself, sheer and fine and daintily hemstitched, with her initials
+embroidered in one corner in the smallest letters possible.
+
+The letters from Allison and Kitty were profusely illustrated all around
+the margins, and by the time Lloyd had read them, and Gay's ridiculous
+summary of school news, she felt as if she had been on a visit to
+Warwick Hall, and had seen all the girls. The next letter was from
+Joyce, a good thick one. But before she read it, curiosity impelled her
+to open the package, which was a flat one, bearing a foreign postmark
+and several Italian stamps. There were two photographs inside. She
+slipped the uppermost one from its envelope.
+
+"Why, it is Eugenia Forbes!" she exclaimed aloud. "But how she has
+changed!"
+
+The picture was not at all like the Eugenia whom Lloyd remembered, the
+thin slip of a girl who had raced up and down the avenue five years
+before at her house-party. She had blossomed into a beautiful young
+woman.
+
+"A regulah Spanish beauty!" Lloyd thought, as she looked at the picture,
+long and admiringly,--the picture of a patrician face with great dark
+eyes and a wealth of dusky hair. The old self-conscious, dissatisfied
+expression was gone. It was a happy face that smiled back at her. It had
+been nearly a year since Lloyd had had a letter from Eugenia. She had
+written from the school near Paris that her father was on his way over
+from America to join her and take her home immediately after her
+graduation. Lloyd had sent a reply addressed to her cousin Carl's
+office, but had heard nothing more.
+
+Thinking that the other photograph was her cousin Carl's, Lloyd
+unwrapped it, wondering if he had changed as much as Eugenia. To her
+surprise, it was not a middle-aged man she saw, with gray moustache and
+kindly tired eyes. It was the handsome boyish face of a stranger, yet so
+startlingly familiar that she looked at it with a puzzled frown.
+
+"Why should Eugenia be sending me this?" she thought. "And where have I
+seen that man befoah?" Then, "Phil Tremont!" she exclaimed aloud the
+next instant. "That's who it reminds me of. It is almost exactly like
+him, only it is oldah-looking, and the nose isn't quite like his."
+
+She turned the picture over. There on the back was written in Eugenia's
+hand the word Venice, and a date underneath the name, Stuart Tremont.
+
+"Phil's brother!" gasped Lloyd, in astonishment. "How strange that she
+should know him!"
+
+Tearing open the envelope lying on the bench beside her, Lloyd unfolded
+a twenty-page letter from Eugenia, written on thin blue foreign
+correspondence paper. Before her glance had travelled half-way down the
+second page, she gave another gasp, and sat staring at an underscored
+sentence in open-mouthed amazement. Then, never waiting to gather up the
+other letters which fluttered into the grass at her feet, as she sprang
+up, she rushed off toward the house as hard as she could go, waving
+Eugenia's letter in one hand and the photographs in the other.
+
+"Mothah!" she called, as she reached the end of the avenue. She was
+tripping over her long skirt, and scattering hairpins at every step, as
+her reckless flight sent her hair tumbling down over her shoulders.
+
+"Mothah!" she shrieked again, as she stumbled up the porch steps.
+
+"Here in my room, dear," came the answer from an upper window. Falling
+all over herself in her undignified haste, Lloyd tore up the stairs. A
+final tangling of skirts sent her headlong into her mother's room, where
+she half-fell in a breathless, laughing heap, and sat at Mrs. Sherman's
+feet with her hair almost hiding her eager face.
+
+"Guess what's happened!" she demanded, breathlessly. "_Eugenia is
+engaged!_ And to Phil Tremont's brother Stuart!"
+
+Then she sat enjoying her mother's surprise, which was almost as great
+as her own. "And she isn't much moah than eighteen," Lloyd exclaimed,
+rocking back and forth on the floor, with her arms clasped around her
+knees, while her mother examined the pictures.
+
+"She looks twenty at least in this picture," answered Mrs. Sherman,
+"even more than that. Eugenia was always old for her years. If you
+remember, she was wearing long dresses when we left her the summer we
+were in Europe together."
+
+"Yes, but it doesn't seem possible that Eugenia is old enough to be
+_married_," insisted Lloyd. "I can hardly believe it is true."
+
+She sat staring dreamily out of the window until a slight breeze
+fluttering the sheets of paper still clutched in her fingers reminded
+her that she had read only two of the twenty pages.
+
+"Heah is what she says about it," began Lloyd, reading slowly, for the
+closely written sheets were hard to decipher.
+
+          "'I know you are going to wonder how it all came
+          about, so I'll begin at the beginning. Last summer
+          papa came on to Paris in time for Commencement. He
+          was so pleased because I took first honours, when
+          he hadn't expected me to take any, that he said he
+          would do as fathers sometimes did in
+          fairy-tales,--grant me three wishes, anything in
+          reason; for he had had an unusually successful
+          year and could well afford it.
+
+          "'Well, I thought and thought, but I couldn't
+          think of anything I really wanted, as I just had
+          an entire new outfit in clothes, so I told him
+          finally I'd like to stop in London long enough to
+          have a tailor make me a riding-habit, and I'd
+          think of the other two wishes sometime during the
+          year. So we went to London. Papa is such an old
+          darling, and we've grown to be real chums. After
+          the tailor had taken my measure, we drove to our
+          banker's for the mail, and who should papa meet
+          there but Doctor Tremont, an American physician
+          whom he knew years ago when they were young men.
+          They belonged to the same college fraternity.
+
+          "'They forgot all about poor little me, sitting
+          over in the corner of the office, and stood and
+          talked about old times, and asked each other about
+          Tom, Dick, and Harry, until I was thoroughly tired
+          of waiting. But after awhile the handsomest young
+          man came into the room, and Doctor Tremont
+          introduced him to papa as his oldest son, Stuart.
+          Then they remembered my humble existence, and papa
+          brought them both over to me. In about two minutes
+          we all felt as if we had known each other always.
+
+          "'Doctor Tremont said he had had a very hard
+          winter in Berlin, making some study of microbes
+          with a noted scientist,--I forget his name. He
+          said Stuart had been closely confined also (he was
+          taking a medical course), and they were off on a
+          hard-earned holiday. They were going coaching up
+          in the lake regions, first in England, then in
+          Scotland, and maybe later would go over to the
+          Isle of Skye.
+
+          "'Would you believe it, before we left the bank,
+          Doctor Tremont had persuaded papa that he needed a
+          vacation also, and almost in no time it was
+          arranged that we should join them on their
+          coaching trip. We had a perfectly ideal time, and
+          Stuart and I got to be the best of friends. We
+          corresponded all summer and fall after that. I
+          didn't expect to see him again for two years,
+          because he intended to stay abroad until he had
+          finished his medical course. But along in the
+          winter papa's health broke down, and the doctor
+          told him he must keep away from business for a
+          year, and ordered him to Baden-Baden for the
+          water.
+
+          "'He was horribly ill after we got there, and I
+          was so frightened and inexperienced that I thought
+          he was going to die, and I telegraphed for Doctor
+          Tremont. It isn't far from Berlin, you know, as we
+          Americans count distances. But the doctor had gone
+          to Paris for several weeks, and Stuart came at
+          once in his place. Of course he wasn't an
+          experienced physician like his father, but he was
+          such a comfort, for he cheered papa up so much,
+          and assured us that the doctor in charge was doing
+          everything that his father could do. And he helped
+          nurse papa, and boosted up my spirits mightily,
+          and was so dear and thoughtful and considerate
+          that, when he went away, I felt as if the bottom
+          had dropped out of everything. You can't imagine
+          how kind and lovely he was all that week. Papa
+          fairly swore by him.
+
+          "'We wrote to each other every week after he went
+          back to Berlin. Early this March papa and I went
+          down into Italy. We shifted about from place to
+          place,--Naples, Sorrento, Rome, Florence, and
+          finally to Venice. I don't know why I never wrote
+          to you those days. You were often in my thoughts,
+          but you know how it is when one is constantly on
+          the wing.
+
+          "'I used to wish daily that Stuart could be with
+          us. He is the most satisfactory of travelling
+          companions, but I didn't know how very much I
+          wished it until one day in Venice. Papa was asleep
+          at the hotel, and I was so lonely that I started
+          out by myself to explore. I left a message with
+          the clerk that I had gone to vespers at Saint
+          Mark's Cathedral. There was a crowd of tourists in
+          the square in front of the cathedral, feeding the
+          pigeons. Hearing their English speech after so
+          many months of nothing but foreign tongues made me
+          homesick. In the whole plaza, no one but myself
+          seemed to be alone. They were walking in groups or
+          couples, and everybody seemed so gay and happy
+          that I was glad to cross over to the cathedral to
+          get out of sight.
+
+          "'The vesper service had just begun, and I stood
+          inside the door listening to the chanting of the
+          monks' voices, and getting more homesick every
+          moment. Just as the tears were ready to brim over,
+          I looked up, and there in the dim light beside me
+          stood Stuart. I thought I must be dreaming, but it
+          was a very happy dream, for I felt that I could
+          never be homesick or unhappy again when he looked
+          down and smiled.
+
+          "'I couldn't believe that I was awake and that he
+          was really there, until we got outside the
+          cathedral and he began to talk. Then he told me
+          that he had gone to the hotel, and they had given
+          him the message I had left for papa. It never
+          occurred to me to wonder why he had come to
+          Venice. It just seemed so natural and lovely that
+          he should be there that I never even asked him
+          why. He called a gondola, and we got in and went
+          drifting down the canals under the bridges and
+          past the old palaces, with the sunset turning
+          everything around us to rose-colour and gold. Oh,
+          I can't begin to tell you how perfectly heavenly
+          it all was. There was a new moon in the sky when
+          we turned back to the hotel, and, though Stuart
+          _hadn't_ proposed in the same way that Laurie did
+          to Amy in "Little Women," he had told me why he
+          came so far to find me, and I liked his way a
+          great deal better than Laurie's.
+
+          "'Wasn't it all romantic? Papa was awfully
+          surprised to see him, and nearly as glad as I, and
+          I told him that now I'd claim the other wishes he
+          had promised me at Commencement, and take the two
+          in one. I wished that he would say yes to the
+          question Stuart had come to ask him. Dear old dad,
+          he always keeps his promises, so he said yes after
+          awhile. After Stuart had explained that he didn't
+          intend to ask him to give me up. When he finishes
+          his medical course here next year, he has a
+          position waiting for him near New York City. We're
+          to have a little home on the Hudson, and papa is
+          to live with us. So is Doctor Tremont, when he
+          gets through with his microbe business. We are
+          done with hotels for ever.
+
+          "'I cannot remember ever having had a home, Lloyd.
+          I have always lived either in a hotel or at
+          boarding-school. And Stuart says the only one he
+          can remember distinctly was the one presided over
+          by his great-aunt Patricia, and she never did
+          understand boys. This summer I shall spend with
+          papa in Switzerland. He is about well now. Then in
+          the fall, when he goes back to New York, I am
+          going to a delightful school near Berlin which I
+          have just heard of. It is a school where none but
+          the daughters of the German nobility are
+          received, as a rule. They make an exception
+          sometimes in the case of Americans like myself.
+          There they are taught all the housewifely arts
+          that delight a good frau's soul. Don't laugh at
+          me, Lloyd. I'm going to learn how to broil and
+          brew and conduct a well-regulated establishment
+          from attic to cellar.
+
+          "'A year from this June, Cousin Jack and Cousin
+          Elizabeth are to bring you and Betty on to New
+          York to be my bridesmaids. I'd love to have Joyce,
+          too, if it were possible for her to leave home.
+          She has been so good to Stuart's brother Phil.
+          Isn't it strange that we should all be so linked
+          together? I'd like to have all of you girls that I
+          met at your never-to-be-forgotten house-party.
+          That was where I had my first taste of a real
+          home, and found out that there is something to
+          live for besides the things that money can buy.
+
+          "'I have looked so often lately at my little
+          Tusitala ring. I have been a better girl because
+          of that ring, Lloyd, and I intend it shall be the
+          inspiration of all my married life,--to help me
+          leave a road of the loving heart in the memory of
+          every one around me.
+
+          "'I wish everybody in the world could be as happy
+          as I am. I am sending Stuart's picture, so that
+          you can see for yourself what a fine, splendid
+          fellow you are to have for a cousin some day. Give
+          my love to your father and mother and Betty, and
+          do write soon and tell me that you are glad.
+                               "'Your loving cousin,
+                                               "'EUGENIA.'"
+
+Lloyd looked up from the reading of the letter, wondering what sort of
+an expression she would find on her mother's face. To her surprise, it
+was one of approval, and there were tears in her eyes.
+
+"Poor motherless child!" said Mrs. Sherman, softly. "I shall write to
+her to-day. I don't approve of early marriages, but Eugenia has always
+been more mature than most girls of her age, and she does need a home
+sadly. The care and pleasure of one will develop her character in a way
+that nothing else will. Let me see. She will be nearly twenty next June.
+Yes, I have no doubt but that, with this next year's training in
+housekeeping which she intends to take, she will be far better fitted
+for home-making than many an older woman."
+
+"And may Betty and I be bridesmaids?" interrupted Lloyd, eagerly, a
+starlike expectancy shining in her eyes.
+
+Mrs. Sherman considered a moment, then answered, slowly: "There is no
+reason why you should not be, so long as you are willing to go as little
+maids, and not young ladies. I am very jealous for your girlhood, Lloyd
+dear. I must guard against anything that would shorten it in the least.
+Mother's baby must not grow up too fast."
+
+"I don't want to grow up fast, honestly!" cried Lloyd, scrambling to her
+feet and tripping over the long skirts again as she threw her arms
+around her mother's neck. "I'm not dignified enough yet to fit yoah
+dresses, and my hair simply won't stay up. Sweet sixteen doesn't seem
+half as old when you really get there as you think that it is going to.
+I'll do my hair down and weah short skirts as long as you want me to,
+but, oh, I'm so glad that I'm going to be a bridesmaid! It will be
+_such_ fun. I must write to Betty this minute to tell her that you are
+willing."
+
+That night Lloyd sat before her dressing-table again, this time with the
+new photographs propped up in front of her. Stuart's picture almost
+seemed to bring Phil before her eyes, and for a moment, instead of the
+familiar walls of her room, she saw the moonlighted desert, and smelled
+the orange-blossoms, and heard a strong young voice ringing out across
+the silence of the sandy cactus plains:
+
+          "Till the sun grows cold,
+           And the stars are old,
+           And the leaves of the Judgment
+             Book unfold."
+
+"Wouldn't it be strange," she thought, "if he were really the one
+written for me in the stars, as Betty said in the beginning, and that we
+should meet at Eugenia's wedding again, and that some day, a long time
+after, I should find that he is the prince? But it couldn't be Phil,"
+she said to herself after another glance. "He doesn't measuah up to Papa
+Jack's yardstick. Neithah does Malcolm now, for that mattah," she mused,
+with her chin in her hand. "Jack Ware might, or Rob, but they seem moah
+like brothahs than anything else, and would not fit my ideal of a prince
+at all."
+
+"'As the falcon's feathahs fit the falcon,'" she quoted, dreamily. "It
+would have to be some strangah that I've nevah yet seen, to do that. Or,
+maybe Mammy Easter's grandmothah was right when she read my fortune in
+the teacups. Maybe I'll be an old maid. I wish I knew. I _wish_ I knew!"
+
+She peered wistfully into the mirror, as if she half-expected to see a
+shadowy hand stretch out of its dim background, and lift the veil of the
+future to her eager gaze. "The thoughts of youth are long, long
+thoughts." Lloyd's flew back to Eugenia's romance for an instant, then
+drifted far beyond the two in the gondola, with the Venetian sunset
+turning all their little world to rose-colour and gold.
+
+[Illustration: "'NO MATTAH WHAT LIES AHEAD . . . I'LL NOT DISAPPOINT
+THEM'"]
+
+One is a mariner at sixteen, sailing toward an undiscovered country,
+with seaweed and driftwood on the crest of every wave beginning to
+whisper, "Land ahead." Toward the dim outline of that untried shore,
+Lloyd drifted now in her reverie.
+
+"I _wish_ I could know what the next sixteen yeahs hold for me," she
+whimpered. "I hope it will be something bettah than I could choose for
+myself. Mothah and Papa Jack expect so much of me."
+
+Then her glance fell on the unfinished rosary, and, picking up the
+string of tiny pearls, she looped it around her throat, and faced the
+girl in the mirror with resolute eyes.
+
+"No mattah what lies ahead," she said, bravely, "I'll not disappoint
+them. I'll keep the tryst!"
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+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
+Scissors," put into a single volume.
+
+
+          The Little Colonel's House Party.
+               (Trade Mark)
+
+Illustrated by Louis Meynell.
+
+
+          The Little Colonel's Holidays.
+               (Trade Mark)
+
+Illustrated by L. J. Bridgman.
+
+
+          The Little Colonel's Hero.
+               (Trade Mark)
+
+Illustrated by E. B. Barry.
+
+
+          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.
+
+New plates, handsomely illustrated, with eight full-page drawings in
+color.
+
+          "The books are as satisfactory to the small girls,
+          who find them adorable, as for the mothers and
+          librarians, who delight in their
+          influence."--_Christian Register._
+
+        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
+THEIR DAUGHTERS.
+
+
+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
+these four stories, which were originally included in four of the
+"Little Colonel" books.
+
+
+Joel: A Boy of Galilee. By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON. Illustrated by L. J.
+Bridgman.
+
+        New illustrated edition, uniform with the Little Colonel
+          Books, 1 vol., large 12mo, cloth decorative       $1.50
+
+A story of the time of Christ, which is one of the author's best-known
+books.
+
+
+=Asa Holmes=; OR, AT THE CROSS-ROADS. A sketch of Country Life and
+Country Humor. By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON. With a frontispiece by Ernest
+Fosbery.
+
+        Large 16mo, cloth, gilt top,                        $1.00
+
+          "'Asa Holmes; or, At the Cross-Roads' is the most
+          delightful, most sympathetic and wholesome book
+          that has been published in a long while."--_Boston
+          Times._
+
+
+=The Rival Campers=; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF HENRY BURNS. By RUEL PERLEY
+SMITH. Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,             $1.50
+
+Here is a book which will grip and enthuse every boy reader. It is the
+story of a party of typical American lads, courageous, alert, and
+athletic, who spend a summer camping on an island off the Maine coast.
+
+          "The best boys' book since 'Tom Sawyer.'"--_San
+          Francisco Examiner._
+
+
+=The Rival Campers Afloat=; OR, THE PRIZE YACHT VIKING. By RUEL PERLEY
+SMITH.
+
+        Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,            $1.50
+
+This book is a continuation of the adventures of "The Rival Campers" on
+their prize yacht _Viking_. An accidental collision results in a series
+of exciting adventures, culminating in a mysterious chase, the loss of
+their prize yacht, and its recapture by means of their old yacht,
+_Surprise_.
+
+
+=The Rival Campers Ashore.= By RUEL PERLEY SMITH, author of "The Rival
+Campers," "The Rival Campers Afloat," etc.
+
+        Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,            $1.50
+
+"The Rival Campers Ashore" deals with the adventures of the campers and
+their friends in and around the town of Benton. Mr. Smith introduces a
+new character,--a girl,--who shows them the way to an old mill, around
+which the mystery of the story revolves. The girl is an admirable
+acquisition, proving as daring and resourceful as the campers
+themselves.
+
+
+=The Young Section-Hand=; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF ALLAN WEST. By BURTON E.
+STEVENSON, author of "The Marathon Mystery," etc.
+
+  Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by L. J. Bridgman, $1.50
+
+Mr. Stevenson's hero is a manly lad of sixteen, who is given a chance as
+a section-hand on a big Western railroad, and whose experiences are as
+real as they are thrilling.
+
+
+=The Young Train Dispatcher.= By BURTON E. STEVENSON, author of "The
+Young Section-hand," etc.
+
+        Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,            $1.50
+
+The young hero has many chances to prove his manliness and courage in
+the exciting adventures which befall him in the discharge of his duty.
+
+
+=Captain Jack Lorimer.= By WINN STANDISH.
+
+  Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by A. B. Shute,   $1.50
+
+Jack is a fine example of the all-around American high-school boy. He
+has the sturdy qualities boys admire, and his fondness for clean, honest
+sport of all kinds will strike a chord of sympathy among athletic
+youths.
+
+
+=Jack Lorimer's Champions=; or, sports on Land and Lake. By WINN
+STANDISH, author of "Captain Jack Lorimer," etc.
+
+        Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,            $1.50
+
+All boys and girls who take an interest in school athletics will wish to
+read of the exploits of the Millvale High School students, under the
+leadership of Captain Jack Lorimer.
+
+Captain Jack's Champions play quite as good ball as do some of the teams
+on the large leagues, and they put all opponents to good hard work in
+other summer sports.
+
+Jack Lorimer and his friends stand out as the finest examples of
+all-round American high school boys and girls.
+
+
+=Beautiful Joe's Paradise=; OR, THE ISLAND OF BROTHERLY LOVE. A sequel
+to "Beautiful Joe." By MARSHALL SAUNDERS, author of "Beautiful Joe."
+
+        One vol., library 12mo, cloth, illustrated,            $1.50
+
+          "This book revives the spirit of 'Beautiful Joe'
+          capitally. It is fairly riotous with fun, and as a
+          whole is about as unusual as anything in the
+          animal book line that has seen the light. It is a
+          book for juveniles--old and young."--_Philadelphia
+          Item._
+
+
+='Tilda Jane.= By MARSHALL SAUNDERS.
+
+        One vol., 12mo, fully illustrated, cloth decorative,   $1.50
+
+          "It is one of those exquisitely simple and
+          truthful books that win and charm the reader, and
+          I did not put it down until I had finished
+          it--honest! And I am sure that every one, young or
+          old, who reads will be proud and happy to make the
+          acquaintance of the delicious waif.
+
+          "I cannot think of any better book for children
+          than this. I commend it unreservedly."--_Cyrus
+          Townsend Brady._
+
+
+=The Story of the Graveleys.= By MARSHALL SAUNDERS, author of "Beautiful
+Joe's Paradise," "'Tilda Jane," etc.
+
+  Library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by E. B. Barry,   $1.50
+
+Here we have the haps and mishaps, the trials and triumphs, of a
+delightful New England family, of whose devotion and sturdiness it will
+do the reader good to hear.
+
+
+=Born to the Blue.= By FLORENCE KIMBALL RUSSEL.
+
+        12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,                  $1.25
+
+The atmosphere of army life on the plains breathes on every page of this
+delightful tale. The boy is the son of a captain of U. S. cavalry
+stationed at a frontier post in the days when our regulars earned the
+gratitude of a nation.
+
+
+=In West Point Gray.= By FLORENCE KIMBALL RUSSEL.
+
+        12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,                  $1.25
+
+West Point forms the background for the second volume in this series,
+and gives us the adventures of Jack as a cadet. Here the training of his
+childhood days in the frontier army post stands him in good stead; and
+he quickly becomes the central figure of the West Point life.
+
+
+=The Sandman: His Farm Stories.= By WILLIAM J. HOPKINS. With fifty
+illustrations by Ada Clendenin Williamson.
+
+        Large 12mo, decorative cover,                         $1.50
+
+          "An amusing, original book, written for the
+          benefit of very small children. It should be one
+          of the most popular of the year's books for
+          reading to small children."--_Buffalo Express._
+
+
+=The Sandman: More Farm Stories.= By WILLIAM J. HOPKINS.
+
+        Large 12mo, decorative cover, fully illustrated,      $1.50
+
+Mr. Hopkins's first essay at bedtime stories met with such approval that
+this second book of "Sandman" tales was issued for scores of eager
+children. Life on the farm, and out-of-doors, is portrayed in his
+inimitable manner.
+
+
+=The Sandman: His Ship Stories.= By WILLIAM J. HOPKINS, author of "The
+Sandman: His Farm Stories," etc.
+
+        Large 12mo, decorative cover, fully illustrated,      $1.50
+
+          "Mothers and fathers and kind elder sisters who
+          put the little ones to bed, and rack their brains
+          for stories, will find this book a
+          treasure."--_Cleveland Leader._
+
+          "Children call for these stories over and over
+          again."--_Chicago Evening Post._
+
+
+=Pussy-Cat Town.= By MARION AMES TAGGART.
+
+   Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in
+     colors,                                                      $1.00
+
+"Pussy-Cat Town" is a most unusual delightful cat story. Ban-Ban, a pure
+Maltese who belonged to Rob, Kiku-san, Lois's beautiful snow-white pet,
+and their neighbors Bedelia the tortoise-shell, Madame Laura the widow,
+Wutz Butz the warrior, and wise old Tommy Traddles, were really and
+truly cats.
+
+
+=The Roses of Saint Elizabeth.= By JANE SCOTT WOODRUFF, author of "The
+Little Christmas Shoe."
+
+   Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in
+     colors by Adelaide Everhart,                                 $1.00
+
+This is a charming little story of a child whose father was caretaker of
+the great castle of the Wartburg, where Saint Elizabeth once had her
+home.
+
+
+=Gabriel and the Hour Book.= By EVALEEN STEIN.
+
+   Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in
+     colors by Adelaide Everhart,                                 $1.00
+
+Gabriel was a loving, patient, little French lad, who assisted the monks
+in the long ago days, when all the books were written and illuminated by
+hand in the monasteries.
+
+
+=The Enchanted Automobile.= Translated from the French by MARY J.
+SAFFORD.
+
+  Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in
+     colors by Edna M. Sawyer,                                    $1.00
+
+The enchanted automobile was sent by the fairy godmother of a lazy,
+discontented little prince and princess to take them to fairyland, where
+they might visit their story-book favorites.
+
+
+=The Red Feathers.= By THEODORE ROBERTS, author of "Brothers of Peril,"
+etc.
+
+          Cloth decorative, illustrated,   $1.50
+
+"The Red Feathers" tells of the remarkable adventures of an Indian boy
+who lived in the Stone Age, many years ago, when the world was young,
+and when fairies and magicians did wonderful things for their friends
+and enemies.
+
+
+=The Wreck of the Ocean Queen.= By James Otis, author of "Larry Hudson's
+Ambition," etc.
+
+          Cloth decorative, illustrated,       $1.50
+
+This story takes its readers on a sea voyage around the world; gives
+them a trip on a treasure ship; an exciting experience in a terrific
+gale; and finally a shipwreck, with a mutineering crew determined to
+take the treasure to complicate matters.
+
+But only the mutineers will come to serious harm, and after the reader
+has known the thrilling excitement of lack of food and water, of attacks
+by night and day, and of a hand-to-hand fight, he is rescued and brought
+safely home again,--to realize that it's only a story, but a stirring
+and realistic one.
+
+
+=Little White Indians.= By FANNIE E. OSTRANDER.
+
+          Cloth decorative, illustrated,    $1.25
+
+The "Little White Indians" were two families of children who "played
+Indian" all one long summer vacation. They built wigwams and made camps;
+they went hunting and fought fierce battles on the war-trail.
+
+A bright, interesting story which will appeal strongly to the
+"make-believe" instinct in children, and will give them a healthy,
+active interest in "the simple life."
+
+
+
+
+PHYLLIS' FIELD FRIENDS SERIES
+
+_By LENORE E. MULETS_
+
+Six vols., cloth decorative, illustrated by Sophie Schneider. Sold
+separately, or as a set.
+
+          Per volume,    $1.00
+          Per set,        6.00
+
+          =Insect Stories.=
+          =Stories of Little Animals.=
+          =Flower Stories.=
+          =Bird Stories.=
+          =Tree Stories.=
+          =Stories of Little Fishes.=
+
+In this series of six little Nature books, it is the author's intention
+so to present to the child reader the facts about each particular
+flower, insect, bird, or animal, in story form, as to make delightful
+reading. Classical legends, myths, poems, and songs are so introduced as
+to correlate fully with these lessons, to which the excellent
+illustrations are no little help.
+
+
+THE WOODRANGER TALES
+
+_By G. WALDO BROWNE_
+
+          =The Woodranger.=
+          =The Young Gunbearer.=
+          =The Hero of the Hills.=
+          =With Rogers' Rangers.=
+
+  Each 1 vol., large 12mo, cloth, decorative cover, illustrated,
+     per volume,                                                  $1.25
+     Four vols., boxed, per set,                                   5.00
+
+"The Woodranger Tales," like the "Pathfinder Tales" of J. Fenimore
+Cooper, combine historical information relating to early pioneer days in
+America with interesting adventures in the backwoods. Although the same
+characters are continued throughout the series, each book is complete in
+itself, and, while based strictly on historical facts, is an interesting
+and exciting tale of adventure.
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE COUSIN SERIES
+
+
+The most delightful and interesting accounts possible of child life in
+other lands, filled with quaint sayings, doings, and adventures.
+
+Each one vol., 12mo, decorative cover, cloth, with six or more full-page
+illustrations in color.
+
+          Price per volume,   $0.60
+
+_By MARY HAZELTON WADE (unless otherwise indicated)_
+
+          =Our Little African Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Alaskan Cousin=
+            By Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
+
+          =Our Little Arabian Cousin=
+            By Blanche McManus
+
+          =Our Little Armenian Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Brown Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Canadian Cousin=
+            By Elizabeth R. Macdonald
+
+          =Our Little Chinese Cousin=
+            By Isaac Taylor Headland
+
+          =Our Little Cuban Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Dutch Cousin=
+            By Blanche McManus
+
+          =Our Little English Cousin=
+            By Blanche McManus
+
+          =Our Little Eskimo Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little French Cousin=
+            By Blanche McManus
+
+          =Our Little German Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Hawaiian Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Hindu Cousin=
+            By Blanche McManus
+
+          =Our Little Indian Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Irish Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Italian Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Japanese Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Jewish Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Korean Cousin=
+            By H. Lee M. Pike
+
+          =Our Little Mexican Cousin=
+            By Edward C. Butler
+
+          =Our Little Norwegian Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Panama Cousin=
+            By H. Lee M. Pike
+
+          =Our Little Philippine Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Porto Rican Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Russian Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Scotch Cousin=
+            By Blanche McManus
+
+          =Our Little Siamese Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Spanish Cousin=
+            By Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
+
+          =Our Little Swedish Cousin=
+            By Claire M. Coburn
+
+          =Our Little Swiss Cousin=
+
+          =Our Little Turkish Cousin=
+
+
+[Illustration: THE LITTLE COLONEL TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFFICE]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Frontispiece, "BOB" changed to "ROB" to match text. (EXCLAIMED ROB, IN)
+
+Page 50, "dreadfuly" changed to "dreadfully" (so dreadfully effusive)
+
+Page 176, "wth" changed to "with" (with the ruddy glow)
+
+Page 256, "amost" changed to "almost" (Lloyd almost gasped)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation, by
+Annie Fellows Johnston
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION ***
+
+***** This file should be named 26215.txt or 26215.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/2/1/26215/
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