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.



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.