In spite of all they said to quiet her fears, the Little Colonel was far from feeling comfortable, and took small pleasure at first in going to see the sights of the quaint little town. She was glad when they pushed away from the pier next morning, in the steamboat that was to take them across the lake to the William Tell chapel. She dreaded to return, but a handful of letters from Lloydsboro Valley, and one apiece from Betty and Eugenia that she found awaiting her at the inn, made her forget the shifting sands below her. She read and re-read some of them, answered several, and then began to look for the Major and Hero. They were nowhere to be found.

They went away directly after lunch, her father told her, to the chalet on the mountain back of the town. "You will have to be content with my humble society," he added. "You can't expect to be always escorted by titled soldiers and heroes."

"Now you're teasin'," said Lloyd, with a playful pout. "But I do wish that the Majah had left Hero. There are so few times left for us to go walkin' togethah."

"I'm afraid that you look oftener at that dog than you do at the scenery and the foreign sights that you came over here to see," said her father, with a smile. "You can see dogs in Lloydsboro Valley any day."

"But none like Hero," cried the Little Colonel, loyally. "And I am noticin' the sights, Papa Jack. I think there was nevah anything moah beautiful than these mountains, and I just love it heah when it is so sunny and still. Listen to the goat-bells tinklin' away up yondah where that haymakah is climbing with a pack of hay tied on his shouldahs! And how deep and sweet the church-bell sounds down heah in the valley as it tolls across the watah! The lake looks as blue as the sapphires in mothah's necklace. The pictuah it makes for me is one of the loveliest things that my wondah-ball has unrolled. Nobody could have a bettah birthday present than this trip has been. The only thing about it that has made me unhappy for a minute is that I must leave Hero and nevah see him again. He follows me just as well now as he does his mastah."

The Major came back from his long climb up the mountain, very tired. "It is more than I should have undertaken the first day," he said, "but back here in the scenes of my boyhood I find it hard to realise that I am an old, old man. I'll be rested in the morning, however, ready for whatever comes."

But in the morning he was still much exhausted, and came down-stairs leaning heavily on his cane. He asked to be excused from going up on the Rigi with them. He said that he would stay at home and sit in the sun and rest. They offered to postpone the trip, but he insisted on their going without him. They must be moving on to Zuerich, soon, he reminded them, and they might not have another day of such perfect weather, for the excursion.

Hero stood looking from the Major in his chair, to the Little Colonel, standing with her hat and jacket on, ready to start. He could not understand why he and his master should be left behind, and walked from one to the other, wagging his tail and looking up questioningly into their faces.

"Go, if you wish," said the Major, kindly patting his head. "Go and take good care of thy little Christine. Let no harm befall her this day!" The dog bounded away as if glad of the permission, but at the door turned back, and seeing that the Major was not following, picked up his hat in his mouth. Then, carrying it back to the Major, stood looking up into his master's face, wagging his tail.

The Major took the hat and laid it on the table beside him. "No, not to-day, good friend," he said, smiling at the dog's evident wish to have him go also. "You may go without me, this time. Call him, Christine, if you wish his company."

"Come Hero, come on," called Lloyd. "It's all right."

The Major waved his hand toward her, saying, "Go, Hero. Guard her well and bring her back safely. The dear little Christine!" The name was uttered almost in a whisper.

With a quick, short bark, Hero started after the Little Colonel, staying so closely by her side that they entered the train together before the guard could protest. If he could have resisted the appealing look in the Little Colonel's eyes as she threw an arm protectingly around Hero's neck, he could not find it in his heart to refuse the silver that Papa Jack slipped into his hand; so for once the two comrades travelled side by side. Hero sat next the window, and looked out anxiously, as the little mountain engine toiled up the steep ascent, nearer and nearer to the top.

It was noon when they reached the hotel on the summit where they stopped for lunch.

"How solemn it makes you feel to be up so high above all the world!" said Lloyd, in an awed tone, as they walked around that afternoon, and took turns looking through the great telescope, at the valley spread out like a map below them.

"How tiny the lake looks, and the town is like a toy village! I thought that the top of a mountain went up to a fine point like a church steeple, and that there wouldn't be a place to stand on when you got there. Seems that way when you look up at it from the valley. It doesn't seem possible that it is big enough to have hotels built on it and lots and lots of room left ovah. When the Majah said to Hero, in such a solemn way, 'Take good care of thy little Christine, let no harm befall her this day,' I thought maybe he wanted Hero to hold my dress in his teeth, so that I couldn't fall off."

Mrs. Sherman laughed and Mr. Sherman said, "Do you know that you are actually up above the clouds? What seems to be mist, rolling over the valley down there like a dense fog, is really cloud. In a short time we shall not be able to see through it."

"Oh, oh!" cried the Little Colonel, in astonishment. "Really, Papa Jack? I always thought that if I could get up into the clouds I could reach out and touch the moon and the stars. Of co'se I know bettah now, but I should think I'd be neah enough to see them."

"No," answered her father, "that is one of the sad facts of life. No matter how loudly we may cry for the moon, it is hung too high for us to reach, and the 'forget-me-nots of the angels,' as Longfellow calls the stars, are not for hands like ours to pick. But in a very little while I think that we shall see the lightning below us. Those clouds down there are full of rain. They may rise high enough to give us a wetting, so it would be wise for us to hurry back to the hotel."

"It is the strangest thing that evah happened to me in all my life!" said Lloyd a few minutes later, as they sat on the hotel piazza, watching the storm below them. Overhead the summer sun was shining brightly, but just below the heavy storm clouds rolled, veiling all the valley from sight. They could see the forked tongues of lightning darting back and forth far below them, and hear the heavy rumble of thunder.

"It seems so wondahful to think that we are safe up above the storm. Look! There is a rainbow! And there is anothah and anothah! Oh, it is so beautiful, I'm glad it rained!"

The storm, that had lasted for nearly an hour, gradually cleared away till the valley lay spread out before them once more, in the sunshine, green and dripping from the summer shower.

"Well," said the Little Colonel, as they started homeward, "aftah this I'll remembah that no mattah how hard it rains the sun is always shining somewhere. It nevah hides itself from us. It is the valley that gets behind the clouds, just as if it was puttin' a handkerchief ovah its face when it wanted to cry. It's a comfort to know that the sun keeps shining, on right on, unchanged."

It was nearly dark when they reached the little inn again in Zug. The narrow streets were wet, and the eaves of the houses still dripping. The landlord came out to meet them with an anxious face. "Your friend, the old Major," he said, in his broken English, "he have not yet return. I fear the storm for him was bad."

"Where did he go?" inquired Mr. Sherman. "I did not know that he intended leaving the hotel at all to-day. He did not seem well."

"Early after lunch," was the answer. "He say he will up the mountain go, behind the town. He say that now he vair old man, maybe not again will he come this way, and one more time already before he die, he long to gather for himself the Alpine rosen."

"Have you had a hard storm here?" asked Mrs. Sherman.

The landlord shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands.

"The vair worst, madame. Many trees blow down. The lightning he strike a house next to the church of St. Oswald, and a goatherd coming down just now from the mountain say that the paths are heaped with fallen limbs, and slippery with mud. That is why for I fear the Major have one accident met."

"Maybe he has stopped at some peasant's hut for shelter," suggested Mr. Sherman, seeing the distress in Lloyd's face. "He knows the region around here thoroughly. However, if he is not here by the time we are through dinner, we'll organise a searching party."

"Hero knows that something is wrong," said the Little Colonel, as they went into the dining-room a few minutes later. "See how uneasy he seems, walking from room to room. He is trying to find his mastah."

The longer they discussed the Major's absence the more alarmed they became, as the time passed and he did not return.

"You know," suggested Lloyd, "that with just one arm he couldn't help himself much if he should fall. Maybe he has slipped down some of those muddy ravines that the goatherd told about. Besides, he was so weak and tiahed this mawnin.'"

Presently her face brightened with a sudden thought.

"Oh, Papa Jack! Let's send Hero. I know where the Majah keeps his things, the flask and the bags, and the dog will know, as soon as they are fastened on him, that he must start on a hunt. And I believe I can say the words in French so that he'll undahstand. Only yestahday the Majah had me repeating them."

"That's a bright idea," answered her father, who was really more anxious than he allowed any one to see. "At least it can do no harm to try."

"I don't want any dessert. Mayn't I go now?" Lloyd asked. As she hurried up the stairs, her heart beating with excitement, she whispered to herself, "Oh, if he should happen to be lost or hurt, and Hero should find him, it would be the loveliest thing that evah happened."

Hero seemed to know, from the moment he saw the little flask marked with the well-known Red Cross, what was expected of him. All the guests in the inn gathered around the door to see him start on his uncertain quest. He sniffed excitedly at his master's slipper, which Lloyd held out to him. Then, as she motioned toward the mountain, and gave the command in French that the Major had taught her, he bounded out into the gloaming, with several quick short barks, and darted up the narrow street that led to the mountain road.

Maybe if he had not been with his master that way, the day before, he might not have known what path to take. The heavy rain had washed away all trails, so he could not trace him by the sense of smell; but remembering the path which they had travelled together the previous day, he instinctively started up that.

The group in the doorway of the inn watched him as long as they could see the white line of his silvery ruff gleam through the dusk, and then, going back to the parlour, sat down to wait for his return. To most of them it was a matter of only passing interest. They were curious to know how much the dog's training would benefit his master, under the circumstances, if he should be lost. But to the Little Colonel it seemed a matter of life and death. She walked nervously up and down the hall with her hands behind her, watching the clock and running to the door to peer out in the darkness, every time she heard a sound.

Some one played a noisy two-step on the loose-jointed old piano. A young man sang a serenade in Italian, and two girls, after much coaxing, consented to join in a high, shrill duet.

Light-hearted laughter and a babel of conversation floated from the parlour to the hall, where Lloyd watched and waited. Her father waited with her, but he had a newspaper. Lloyd wondered how he could read while such an important search was going on. She did not know that he had little faith in the dog's ability to find his master. She, however, had not a single doubt of it.

The time seemed endless. Again and again the little cuckoo in the hall clock came out to call the hour, the quarters and halves. At last there was a patter of big soft paws on the porch, and Lloyd springing to the door, met Hero on the threshold. Something large and gray was in his mouth.

"Oh, Papa Jack!" she cried. "He's found him! Hero's found him! This is the Majah's Alpine hat. The flask is gone from his collah, so the Majah must have needed help. And see how wild Hero is to start back. Oh, Papa Jack! Hurry, please!"

Her call brought every one from the parlour to see the dog, who was springing back and forth with eager barks that asked, as plainly as words, for some one to follow him.

"Oh, let me go with you! Please, Papa Jack," begged Lloyd.

He shook his head decidedly. "No, it is too late and dark, and no telling how far we shall have to climb. You have already done your part, my dear, in sending the dog. If the Major is really in need of help, he will have you to thank for his rescue."

The landlord called for lanterns. Several of the guests seized their hats and alpenstocks, and in a few minutes the little relief party was hurrying along the street after their trusty guide, with Mr. Sherman in the lead. He had caught up a hammock as he started. "We may need some kind of a stretcher," he said, slinging it over his shoulder.

They trudged on in silence, wondering what they would find at the end of their journey. The mountain path was strewn with limbs broken off by the storm. Although the moon came up presently and added its faint light to the yellow rays of the lanterns, they had to pick their steps slowly, often stumbling.

Hero, bounding on ahead, paused to look back now and then, with impatient barks. They had climbed more than an hour, when he suddenly shot ahead into the darkest part of the woods and gave voice so loudly that they knew that they had reached the end of their search, and pushed forward anxiously.

The moonlight could not reach this spot among the trees, so densely shaded, but the lanterns showed them the old man a short distance from the path. He was pinned to the wet earth by a limb that had fallen partly across him. Fortunately, the storm had been unable to twist it entirely from the tree. Only the outer end of the limb had struck him, but the tangle of leafy boughs above him was too thick to creep through. His clothes were drenched, and on the ground beside him, beaten flat by the storm, lay the bunch of Alpine roses he had climbed so far to find.

He was conscious when the men reached him. The brandy in the flask had revived him and as they drew him out from under the branches and stretched the hammock over some poles for a litter, he told them what had happened. He had been some distance farther up the mountain, and had stopped at a peasant's hut for some goat's milk. He rested there a long time, never noticing in the dense shade of the woods that a storm was gathering.

It came upon him suddenly. His head was hurt, and his back. He could not tell how badly. He had lain so long on the wet ground that he was numb with cold, but thought he would be better when he was once more resting warm and dry at the inn.

He stretched out his hand to Hero and feebly patted him, a faint smile crossing his face. "Thou best of friends," he whispered. "Thou—" Then he stopped, closing his eyes with a groan. They were lifting him on the stretcher, and the pain caused by the movement made him faint.

It was a slow journey down the slippery mountain path. The men who carried him had to pick their steps carefully. At the inn the little cuckoo came out of the clock in the hall and called eleven, half past, and midnight, before the even tramp, tramp of approaching feet made the Little Colonel run to the door for the last time.

"They're comin', mothah," she whispered, with a frightened face, and then ran back to hide her eyes while the men passed up the steps with their unconscious burden. She thought the Major was dead, he lay so white and still. But he had only fainted again on the way, and soon revived enough to answer the doctor's questions, and send word to the Little Colonel that she and Hero had saved his life. "Do you heah that?" she asked of Hero, when they told her what he had said. "The doctah said that if the Majah had lain out on that cold, wet ground till mawnin', without any attention, it surely would have killed him. I'm proud of you, Hero. I'm goin' to get Papa Jack to write a piece about you and send it to the Courier-Journal. How would you like to have yo' name come out in a big American newspapah?"

Several lonely days followed for the Little Colonel. Either her father or mother was constantly with the Major, and sometimes both. They were waiting for his niece to come from Zuerich and take him back with her to a hospital where he could have better care than in the little inn in Zug.

It greatly worried the old man that he should be the cause of disarranging their plans and delaying their journey. He urged them to go on and leave him, but they would not consent. Sometimes the Little Colonel slipped into the room with a bunch of Alpine roses or a cluster of edelweiss that she had bought from some peasant. Sometimes she sat beside him for a few minutes, but most of her time was spent with Hero, wandering up and down beside the lake, feeding the swans or watching the little steamboats come and go. She had forgotten her fear of the bottom dropping out of the town.

One evening, just at sunset, the Major sent for her. "I go to Zuerich in the morning," he said, holding out his hand as she came into the room. "I wanted to say good-bye while I have the time and strength. We expect to leave very early to-morrow, probably before you are awake."

His couch was drawn up by the window, through which the shimmering lake shone in the sunset like rosy mother-of-pearl. Far up the mountain sounded the faint tinkling of goat-bells, and the clear, sweet yodelling of a peasant, on his homeward way. At intervals, the deep tolling of the bell of St. Oswald floated out across the water.

"When the snow falls," he said, after a long pause, "I shall be far away from here. They tell me that at the hospital where I am going, I shall find a cure. But I know." He pointed to an hour-glass on the table beside him. "See! the sand has nearly run its course. The hour will soon be done. It is so with me. I have felt it for a long time."

Lloyd looked up, startled. He went on slowly.

"I cannot take Hero with me to the hospital, so I shall leave him behind with some one who will care for him and love him, perhaps even better than I have done." He held out his hand to the dog.

"Come, Hero, my dear old comrade, come bid thy master farewell." Fumbling under his pillow as he spoke, he took out a small leather case, and, opening it, held up a medal. It was the medal that had been given him for bravery on the field of battle.

"It is my one treasure!" murmured the old soldier, turning it fondly, as it lay in his palm. "I have no family to whom I can leave it as an heirloom, but thou hast twice earned the right to wear it. I have no fear but that thou wilt always be true to the Red Cross and thy name of Hero, so thou shalt wear thy country's medal to thy grave."

He fastened the medal to Hero's collar, then, with the dog's great head pressed fondly against him, he began talking to him softly and gently in French. Lloyd could not understand, but the sight of the gray-haired old soldier taking his last leave of his faithful friend brought the tears to her eyes.

She tried to describe the scene to her mother, afterward.

"Oh, it was so pitiful!" she exclaimed. "It neahly broke my heart. Then he called me to him and said that because I was like his little Christine, he knew that I would be good to Hero, and he asked me to take him back to America with me. I promised that I would. Then he put Hero's paw in my hand, and said, 'Hero, I give thee to thy little mistress. Protect and guard her always, as she will love and care for thee.' It was awfully solemn, almost like some kind of blessing.

"Then he lay back on the pillows as if he was too tiahed to say anothah word. I tried to thank him, but I was so surprised and glad that Hero was mine, and yet so sorry to say good-bye to the Majah, that the right words wouldn't come. I just began to cry again. But I am suah the Majah undahstood. He patted my hand and smoothed my hair and said things in French that sounded as if he was tryin' to comfort me. Aftah awhile I remembahed that we had been there a long time, and ought to go, so I kissed him good-bye, and Hero and I went out, leavin' the doah open as he told us. He watched us all the way down the hall. When I turned at the stairway to look back, he was still watchin'. He smiled and waved his hand, but the way he smiled made me feel worse than evah, it was so sad."

Mr. Sherman went with the Major next morning, when he was taken to Zuerich. Lloyd was asleep when they left the inn, so the last remembrance she had of the Major was the way he looked as he lay on his couch in the sunset, smiling, and waving his hand to her. When Christmastide came, it was as he said. He was with his little Christine.

"I can hardly keep from crying whenever I think of him," Lloyd wrote to Betty. "It was so pitiful, his giving up everything in the world that he cared for, and going off to the hospital to wait there alone for his hour-glass to run out. Hero seems to miss him, but I think he understands that he belongs to me now. I can scarcely believe that he is really mine, and that I may take him back to America with me. He is the best thing that the wonder-ball has given me, or ever can give me.

"To-morrow we start to Lucerne to see the Lion in the rocks, and from there we go to Paris. Only a little while now, and we shall all be together. I can hardly wait for you to see my lovely St. Bernard with his Red Cross of Geneva, and the medal that he has earned the right to wear."



CHAPTER VII.

IN TOURS

A dozen times between Paris and Tours the Little Colonel turned from the car window to smile at her mother, and say with a wriggle of impatience, "Oh, I can't wait to get there! Won't Betty and Eugenia be surprised to see us two whole days earlier than they expected!"

"But you mustn't count too much on seeing them at the hotel the minute we arrive," her mother cautioned her. "You know Cousin Carl wrote that they were making excursions every day to the old chateaux near there, and I think it quite probable they will be away. So don't set your heart on seeing them before to-morrow night. Some of those trips take two days."

Lloyd turned to the window again and tried to busy herself with the scenes flying past: the peasant women with handkerchiefs over their heads, and the men in blue cotton blouses and wooden shoes at work in the fields; the lime-trees and the vineyards, the milk-carts that dogs helped to draw. It was all as Joyce had described it to her, and she pinched herself to make sure that she was awake, and actually in France, speeding along toward the Gate of the Giant Scissors, and all the delightful foreign experience that Joyce had talked about. She had dreamed many day-dreams about this journey, but the thought that was giving her most pleasure now was not that these dreams were at last coming true, but that in a very short time she would be face to face with Betty and Eugenia.

It was noon when they reached Tours, and went rattling up to the Hotel Bordeaux in the big omnibus. At first Lloyd was disposed to find fault with the quaint, old-fashioned hotel which Cousin Carl had chosen as their meeting-place. It had no conveniences like the modern ones to which she had been accustomed. There was not even an elevator in it. She looked in dismay at the steep, spiral stairway, winding around and around in the end of the hall, like the steps in the tower of a lighthouse. On a side table in the hall, several long rows of candles, with snuffers, suggested the kind of light they would have in their bedrooms.

But everything was spotlessly clean, and the landlady and her daughter came out to meet them with an air of giving them a welcome home, which extended even to the dog. After their hospitable reception of Hero, Lloyd had no more fault to find. She knew that at no modern hotel would he have been treated so considerately and given the liberty of the house. Since he was not banished to the courtyard or turned over to a porter's care, she was willing to climb a dozen spiral stairways, or grope her way through the semi-darkness of a candle-lighted bedroom every night while they were in France, for the sake of having Hero free to come and go as he pleased.

"Come on!" she cried, gaily, to her mother, as a porter with a trunk on his shoulder led the way up the spiral stairs. "It makes me think of the old song you used to sing me about the spidah and the fly, 'The way into my pahlah is up a winding stair.' Nobody but a circus acrobat could run up the whole flight without getting dizzy. It's a good thing we are only goin' to the next floah."

She ran around several circles of steps, and then paused to look back at her mother, who was waiting for Mr. Sherman's helping arm. "The elephant now goes round and round when the band begins to play," quoted Lloyd, looking down on them, her face dimpling with laughter.

"Look out!" piped a shrill voice far above her. "I'm coming!" Lloyd gave a hasty glance upward to the top floor, and drew back against the wall. For down the banister, with the speed of a runaway engine, came sliding a small bare-legged boy. Around and around the dizzy spiral he went, hugging the railing closely, and bringing up with a tremendous bump against the newel post at the bottom.

"Hullo!" he said, coolly, looking up at the Little Colonel.

"It's Henny!" she exclaimed, in amazement. "Henderson Sattawhite! Of all people! How did you get heah?"

But the boy had no time to waste in talking. He stuck his thumb in his mouth, looked at her an instant, and then, climbing down from the banister, started to the top of the stairs as fast as his short legs could carry him, for another downward spin.

Lloyd waited for her mother to come up to the step on which she stood, and then said, with a look of concern, "Do you suppose they are all heah, 'Fido' an' all of them? And that Howl will follow me around as he did on shipboard, beggin' for stories? It will spoil all my fun with the girls if he does."

"'Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you,'" said her father, playfully pinching her cheek. "You'll find it easier to escape persecution on land than on shipboard. Henny didn't seem at all anxious to renew his acquaintance with you. He evidently finds sliding down bannisters more to his taste. Maybe Howell has found something equally interesting."

"I certainly hope so," said Lloyd, running on to their rooms at the end of the hall. The casement window in her room looked out over a broad bouleyard, down the middle of which went a double row of trees, shading a strip of grass, where benches were set at intervals.

Lloyd leaned out to look and listen. A company of soldiers was marching up the street in the gay red and blue of their French uniforms, to the music of a band. A group of girls from a convent school passed by. Then some nuns. She stood there a long time, finding the panorama that passed her window so interesting that she forgot how time was passing, until her mother called to her that they were going down to lunch.

"I like it heah, evah so much," she announced, as she followed her father and mother into the dining-room. "Did you ask in the office, Papa Jack, when the girls would be back?"

"Yes, they have gone to Amboise. They will be home before dark. I am sorry you missed taking that trip with them, Lloyd. It is one of the most interesting chateaux around here in my opinion. Mary, Queen of Scots, went there a bride. There she was forced to watch the Hugenots being thrown over into the river. Leonardo da Vinci is buried there, and Charles VIII. was killed there by bumping his head against a low doorway."

"Oh, deah!" sighed the Little Colonel, "my head is all in a tangle. There's so many spots to remembah. Every time you turn around you bump into something you ought to remembah because some great man was bawn there, or died there, or did something wondahful there. It would be lots easiah for travellers in Europe if there wasn't so many monuments to smaht people. Who must I remembah in Tours?"

"Balzac," said her father, laughing. "The great French novelist. But that will not be hard. There is a statue of him on one of the principal streets, and after you have passed him every day for a week, you will think of him as an old acquaintance. Then this is the scene of one of Scott's novels—'Quentin Durward.' And the good St. Martin lived here. There is a church to his memory. He is the patron saint of the place. At the chateaux you will get into a tangle of history, for their chief interest is their associations with the old court life."

"Where is Hero?" asked Mrs. Sherman, suddenly changing the conversation.

"He's in the pahlah, stretched out on a rug," answered Lloyd. "It's cool and quiet in there with the blinds down. The landlady's daughtah said no one went in there often, in the middle of the day, so nobody would disturb him, and he'd not disturb anybody. He's all tiahed out, comin' so far on the cars. May I go walkin' with him aftah awhile, mothah?"

Mrs. Sherman looked at her husband, questioningly. "Oh, it's perfectly safe," he answered. "She could go alone here as well as in Lloydsboro Valley, and with Hero she could have nothing to fear."

"I want you to rest awhile first," said Mrs. Sherman. "At four o'clock you may go."

Leaving Hero comfortably stretched out asleep in the parlour, Lloyd went back to her room. She lay down for a few minutes across the bed and closed her eyes. But she could not sleep with so many interesting sights in the street below. Presently she tiptoed to the window, and sat looking out until she heard her mother moving around in the next room. She knew then that she had had her nap and was unpacking the trunks.

"Mothah," called Lloyd, "I want to put on my prettiest white embroidered dress and my rosebud sash, because I'll meet Cousin Carl and the girls to-night."

"That is just what I have unpacked for you," said her mother. "Come in and I'll help you dress."

Half an hour later it was a very fresh and dainty picture that smiled back at Lloyd from the mirror of her dressing-table. She shook out her crisp white skirts, gave the rosebud sash an admiring pat, and turned her head for another view of the big leghorn hat with its stylish rosettes of white chiffon. Then she started down the hall toward the spiral stairway. It was a narrow hall with several cross passages, and at one of them she paused, wondering if it did not lead to Eugenia's and Betty's rooms.

To her speechless surprise, a door popped open and a cupful of water was dashed full in her face. Spluttering and angry, she drew back in time to avoid another cupful, which came flying through the transom above the same door. Retreating still farther down the passage, and wiping her face as she went, she kept her gaze on the door, walking backward in order to do so.

Another cupful came splashing out into the hall through the transom. A boy, tiptoeing up to the door, dodged back so quickly that not a drop touched him; then with a long squirt gun that he carried, he knelt before the keyhole and sent a stream of water squirting through it. It was Howell.

There was a scream from the bedroom, Fidelia's voice. "Stop that, you hateful boy! I'll tell mamma! You've nearly put my eye out."

A muffled giggle and a scamper of feet down the hall was the only answer. Fidelia threw open the door and looked out, a water pitcher in her hand. She stopped in amazement at sight of the Little Colonel, who was waiting for a chance to dodge down the hall past the dangerous door, into the main passage.

"For mercy sakes!" exclaimed Fidelia. "When did you come?"

"In time fo' yoah watah fight," answered the indignant Little Colonel, shaking out her wet handkerchief. She was thoroughly provoked, for the front of her fresh white dress was drenched, and the dainty rosebud sash streaked with water.

Fidelia laughed. "You don't mean to say that you caught the ducking I meant for Howl!" she exclaimed. "Well, if that isn't a joke! It's the funniest thing I ever heard of!" Putting the pitcher on the floor and clasping her hands to her sides, she laughed until she had to lean against the wall.

"It's moah bad mannahs than a joke!" retorted Lloyd, angered more by the laugh than she had been by the wetting. "A girl as old as you oughtn't to go travellin' till you know how to behave yo'self in a hotel. I don't wondah that wherevah you go people say, 'Oh, those dreadful American children!'"

"It isn't so! They don't say it!" snapped Fidelia. "I've got just as good manners as you have, anyhow, and I'll throw this whole pitcher of water on you if you say another word." She caught it up threateningly.

"You just dare!" cried the Little Colonel, her eyes flashing and her cheeks flushing. Not for years had she been so angry. She wanted to scream and pull Fidelia's hair with savage fingers. She wanted to bump her head against the wall, again and again. But with an effort so great that it made her tremble, she controlled herself, and stood looking steadily at Fidelia without a word.

"I mustn't speak," she kept saying desperately to herself. "I mustn't speak, or my tempah will get away with me. I might claw her eyes out. I wish I could! Oh, I wish I could!" Her teeth were set tightly together, and her hands were clenched.

Fidelia met her angry gaze unflinchingly for an instant, and then, with a contemptuous "pooh!" raised the pitcher and gave it a lurch forward. It was so heavy that it turned in her hands, and instead of drenching Lloyd, its contents deluged Fanchette, who suddenly came out of the door beside Lloyd, with the thousand dollar poodle in her arms.

Poor Beauty gave an injured yelp, and Fidelia drew back and slammed the door, locking it hastily. She knew that the maid would hurry to her mistress while he was still shivering, and that there would be an uncomfortable account to settle by and by.

Howell, who had crept up to watch the fuss, doubled himself with laughter. It amused him even more than it had Fidelia that he had escaped the water, and Lloyd had caught it in his stead. Lloyd swept past him without a word, and ran to her mother's room so angry that she could not keep the tears back while telling her grievance.

"See what that horrid Sattawhite girl has done!" she cried, holding out her limp wet skirts, and streaked sash, with an expression of disgust. I just despise her!"

"It was an accident, was it not?" asked Mrs. Sherman.

"Oh, she didn't know she was throwing the watah on me, when she pitched it out, but she was glad that it happened to hit me. She didn't even say 'excuse me,' let alone say that she was sorry. And she laughed and held on to her sides, and laughed again, and said, 'oh, what a joke,' and that it was the funniest thing that she evah saw. I think her mothah ought to know what bad mannahs she's got. Somebody ought to tell her. I told Fidelia what I thought of her, and I'll nevah speak to her again! So there!"

Mrs. Sherman listened sympathetically to her tale of woe, but as she unbuttoned the wet dress, and Lloyd still stormed on, she sighed as if to herself, "Poor Fidelia!"

"Why, mothah," said Lloyd, in an aggrieved tone, "I didn't s'pose that you'd take her part against me."

"Stop and think a minute, little daughter," said Mrs. Sherman, opening her trunk to take out another white dress. Lloyd was working herself up into a white heat. "Put yourself in Fidelia's place, and think how she has always been left to the care of servants, or of a governess who neglected her. Think how much help you have had in trying to control your temper, and how little you have had to provoke it. Suppose you had Howell and Henderson always tagging after you to tease and annoy you, and that I had always been too busy with my own affairs to take any interest in you, except to punish you when I was exasperated by the tales that you told of each other. Wouldn't that have made a difference in your manners?"

"Y-yes," acknowledged Lloyd, slowly. Then, after a moment's silence, she broke out again. "I might have forgiven her if only she hadn't laughed at me. Whenevah I think of that I want to shake her. If I live to be a hundred yeahs old, I can nevah think of Fidelia Sattawhite, without remembahin' the mean little way she laughed!"

"What kind of a memory are you leaving behind you?" suggested Mrs. Sherman, touching the little ring on Lloyd's finger that had been her talisman since the house party. "Will it be a Road of the Loving Heart?"

Lloyd hesitated. "No," she acknowledged, frankly. "Of co'se when I stop to think, I do want to leave that kind of a memory for everybody. I'd hate to think that when I died, there'd be even one person who had cause to say ugly things about me, even Fidelia. But just now, mothah, honestly when I remembah how she laughed, I feel that I must be as mean to her as she is to me. I can't help it."

Mrs. Sherman made no answer, but turned to her own dressing, and presently Lloyd kissed her, and went slowly down-stairs to find Hero. He was no longer dreaming in peace. Two restless boys cooped up in the narrow limits of the hotel, and burning with a desire to be amused, had discovered him through the crack of the door, and immediately pounced upon him.

"Aw, ain't he nice!" exclaimed Henny, stroking the shaggy back with a dirty little hand. Howl felt in his blouse, hoping to find some crumb left of the stock of provisions stored away at lunch-time.

"Feel there, Henny," he commanded, backing up to his little brother, and humping his shoulders. "Ain't that a cooky slipped around to the back of my blouse? Put your hand up and feel."

Henny obligingly explored the back of his brother's blouse, and fished out the last cooky, which they fed to Hero.

"Wisht we had some more," said Howell, as the cake disappeared. "Henny, you go up and see if you can't hook some of Beauty's biscuit."

"Naw! I don't want to. I want to play with the dog," answered Henny, "He's big enough to ride on. Stand up, old fellow, and let me get on your back."

"I'll tell you a scheme," cried Howl; "you run up-stairs and get one of mamma's shawl-straps, and we'll fix a harness for him, and make him ride us around the room."

"All right," agreed Henny, trotting out into the hall. At the door he met Lloyd. When she went into the room she found Howell lying on the floor, burrowing his head into the dog's side for a pillow. Hero did not like it, and, shaking himself free, walked across the room and lay down in another place.

Howl promptly followed, and pillowed his head on him again. Hero looked around with an appealing expression in his big, patient eyes, once more got up, crossed the room, and lay down in a corner. Howell followed him like a teasing mosquito.

"Don't bothah him, Howl," said Lloyd. "Don't you see that he doesn't like it?"

"But he makes such a nice, soft pillow," said the boy, once more burrowing his hard little head into Hero's ribs.

"He might snap at you if you tease him too much. I nevah saw him do it to any one, but nobody has evah teased him since he belonged to me."

"Is he your dog?" asked Howl, in surprise.

"Yes," answered Lloyd, proudly. "He saved my life one time, and his mastah's anothah. And that medal on his collah was one that was given by France to his mastah fo' bravery, and the Majah gave it to him because he said that Hero had twice earned the right to wear it."

"Tell about it," demanded Howl, scenting a story. "How did he—" His question was stopped in the middle by Hero, who, determined to be no longer used as a pillow, stood up and gave himself a mighty shake. Walking over to the sofa piled with cushions, he took one in his mouth, and carrying it back to Howl dropped it at his feet as if to say, "There! Use that! I am no sofa pillow." That done he stretched himself out again in the farthest corner of the room, and laid his head on his paws with a sigh of relief.

"Oh! Oh!" cried the Little Colonel. "Did you evah see anything so sma'ht as that in all yo' life? It's the brightest thing I evah saw a dog do. He thought it all out, just like a person. I wish Papa Jack could have seen him do it. I'm goin' to treat you to something nice fo' that, Hero. Wait till I run back up-stairs and get my purse."

Anxious to make him do something else interesting, Howl still followed the dog. He tickled his paws, turned his ears back and blew in them and blindfolded him with a dirty handkerchief.

Lloyd was gone longer than she intended, for she could not find her purse for several minutes, and she stopped to tell her mother of Hero's performance with the sofa pillow. When she went into the parlour again, both boys were kneeling beside the dog. Their backs were toward the door, Henderson had brought the shawl-strap, and they were using it for the further discomfort of the patient old St. Bernard.

"Here, Henny, you sit on his head," commanded Howl, "and I'll buckle his hind feet to his fore feet, so that when he tries to walk he'll wabble around and tip over. Won't that be funny?"

"Stop!" demanded Lloyd. "Don't you do that, Howl Sattawhite! I've told you enough times to stop teasing my dog."

Howl only giggled in reply and drew the buckle tighter. There was a quick yelp of pain, and Hero, trying to pull away found himself fast by the foot.

Before Howl could rise from his knees, the Little Colonel had darted across the room, and seizing him by the shoulders, shook him till his teeth chattered.

"There!" she said, giving him a final shake as she pushed him away. "Don't you evah lay a fingah on that dog again, as long as you live. If you do you'll be sorry. I'll do something awful to you!"

For the second time that afternoon her face was white with anger. Her eyes flashed so threateningly that Howl backed up against the wall, thoroughly frightened. Releasing Hero from the strap, she led him out of the room, and, with her hand laid protectingly on his collar, marched him out into the street.

"Those tawmentin' Sattawhites!" she grumbled, under her breath. "I wish they were all shut up in jail, every one of them!"

But her anger died out as she walked on in the bright sunshine, watching the strange scenes around her with eager eyes. More than one head turned admiringly, as the daintily dressed little girl and the great St. Bernard passed slowly down the broad boulevard. It seemed as if all the nurses and babies in Touraine were out for an airing on the grass where the benches stood, between the long double rows of trees.

Once Lloyd stopped to peep through a doorway set in a high stone wall. Within the enclosure a group of girls, in the dark uniforms of a charity school, walked sedately around, arm in arm, under the watchful eyes of the attendant nuns. Then some soldiers passed on foot, and a little while after, some more dashed by on horseback, and she remembered that Tours was the headquarters of the Ninth Army corps, and that she might expect to meet them often.

Not till the tolling of the great cathedral bell reminded her that it was time to go back to the hotel, did she think again of Howl and Kenny and Fidelia. By that time her walk had put her into such a pleasant frame of mind, that she could think of them without annoyance.



CHAPTER VIII.

WITH BETTY AND EUGENIA

When the Little Colonel reached the hotel, the omnibus was leaving the door to go to the railroad station, a few blocks away. Thinking that Betty and Eugenia might be on the coming train, she went into the parlour to wait for the return of the omnibus. She had bought a box of chocolate creams at the cake shop on the corner to divide with Hero.

Fidelia had wandered down to the parlour in her absence, and now seated at the old piano was banging on its yellow keys with all her might. She played unusually well for a girl of her age, but Lloyd had a feeling that a public parlour was not a place to show off one's accomplishments, and her nose went up a trifle scornfully as she entered.

Then she caught sight of herself in the mirror over the mantel, and her expression changed instantly.

"For mercy sakes!" she said to herself. "I look like one of the proud and haughty sistahs in 'Cindahella,' as if I thought the earth wasn't good enough for me to step on. It certainly isn't becoming, and it would make me furious if anybody looked at me in such a cool, scornful way. I know that I feel that way inside whenevah I talk to Fidelia. I wondah if she sees it in my face, and that's what makes her cross and scratchy, like a cat that has had its fur rubbed the wrong way. Just for fun I believe I'll pretend to myself for ten minutes that I love her deahly, and I'll smile when I talk to her, just as if she were Betty, and nevah pay any attention to her mean speeches. I'll give her this one chance. Then if she keeps on bein' hateful, I'll nevah have anything moah to do with her again."

So while Fidelia played on toward the end of the waltz, purposely regardless of Lloyd's presence, Lloyd, sitting behind her, looked into the mirror, and practised making pleasant faces for Fidelia's benefit.

The music came to a close with a loud double bang that made Lloyd start up from her chair with a guilty flush, fearing that she had been caught at her peculiar occupation. Before Fidelia could say anything, Lloyd walked over to her with the friendliest of her practised smiles, and held out the box of chocolate creams.

"Take some," she said. "They are the best I've had since I left Kentucky."

"Thanks," said Fidelia, stiffly, screwing around on the piano-stool, and helping herself to just one. But feeling the warmth of Lloyd's cordial tone, urging her to take more, she thawed into smiling friendliness, and took several. "They are delicious!" she exclaimed. "You got them at the cake shop on the corner, didn't you? There are two awfully nice American girls stopping at this hotel who took me in there one day for some. They've been in Kentucky, too. The one named Elizabeth lives there."

"Why, it must be Betty and Eugenia!" cried Lloyd. "The very girls we came here to meet. Do you know them?"

"Not very well. We've only been here a few days. But I dearly love the one you call Betty. She came into my room one night when I had the tooth-ache, and brought a spice poultice and a hot-water bag. Mamma was at a concert, and Fanchette was cross, and I was so miserable and lonesome I wanted to die. But Elizabeth knew exactly what to do to stop the pain, and then she stayed and talked to me for a long time. She told me about a house party she went to last year, where the girls all caught the measles at a gypsy camp, and she nearly went blind on account of it."

"That was my house pahty," exclaimed the Little Colonel, "and my mothah is Betty's godmothah, and Betty is goin' to live at my house all next wintah, and go to school with me."

Fidelia swung farther around on the piano-stool, and faced Lloyd in surprise. "And are you the Little Colonel!" she cried. "From what Elizabeth said, I thought she was pretty near an angel!" Fidelia's tone implied more plainly than her words that she wondered how Betty could think so.

A cutting reply was on the tip of Lloyd's tongue, but the sight of her face in the mirror checked it. She only said, pleasantly, "Betty is certainly the loveliest girl in the world, and—"

"There she is now!" interrupted Fidelia, nodding toward the door as voices sounded in the hall and footsteps came out from the office.

"Oh, they'll be so surprised!" said Lloyd, looking back with a radiant face as she ran toward the door. "We came two whole days earlier than they expected!"

Fidelia heard the joyful greeting, the chorus of surprised exclamations as Lloyd flew first at Betty, then at Eugenia, with a hug and a kiss, then turned to greet her Cousin Carl.

"Betty will never look at me again," Fidelia thought, with a throb of jealousy, turning away from the sight of their happy meeting, and beginning to strike soft aimless chords on the piano. "I wish I were one of them," she whispered, with the tears springing to her eyes. "I hate to be always on the edge of things, and never in them. We never stay in a place long enough at a time to make any real friends or have any good times."

Chattering and laughing, and asking eager questions, the girls hurried up the stairs to Mrs. Sherman's room. Almost a year had gone by since Eugenia and Lloyd had parted on the lantern decked lawn at Locust, the last night of the house party. The year had made little difference in Lloyd, but Eugenia had grown so tall that the change was startling.

"Really, you are taller than I," exclaimed Mrs. Sherman, in the midst of an affectionate greeting, as she held her off for a better view.

"And doesn't she look stylish and young ladyfied, with her skirts down to her ankles," added Lloyd. "You'd nevah think that she was only fifteen, would you?"

"I had to have them made long," explained Eugenia, much flattered by Lloyd's speech. It was her greatest wish to appear "grown up." "Papa says that I am probably as tall now as I shall ever be, and really I'd look ridiculous with my dresses any shorter."

Mrs. Sherman noticed presently, with a smile, that Eugenia seemed to have gained dignity with her added height. There was something amusingly patronising in her manner toward the younger girls. She answered Lloyd several times with an "Oh, no, child" that was almost grandmotherly in its tone.

"But here is somebody who has come back just as sweet and childlike as ever," thought Mrs. Sherman, twisting one of Betty's brown curls around her finger. Then she said aloud. "Was the trip as delightful as you dreamed it would be, my little Tusitala?"

"Oh, yes, godmother," sighed Betty, blissfully. "It was a thousand times better! And the best of it is my eyes are as well as ever. I needn't be afraid, now, of that 'long night' that haunted me like a bad dream."

All during dinner Fidelia kept looking across at the merry party sitting at the next table, and wished she could be with them. She could not help hearing all they said, for they were only a few feet away, and there was no one talking at the table where she sat. The boys were in the children's dining-room with Fanchette, and her mother was spending the evening with some friends at the new hotel across the way.

"I'm going to make believe that I'm one of them," the lonely child said to herself, smiling as she caught a friendly nod from Betty. So she listened eagerly to Mr. Forbes's account of their visit to Venice, and to the volcano of Vesuvius, and laughed with the others over the amusing experiences Betty and Eugenia had in Norway with a chambermaid who could not understand them, and in Holland with an old Dutch market-woman, the day they became separated from Mr. Forbes, and were lost for several hours.

Fidelia's salad almost choked her, there was such an ache in her throat when she heard them planning an excursion for the next day. She had no one to make plans with, and when she was taken sightseeing it was by a French teacher, more intent on improving her pupil's accent than in giving her a happy time.

As they were finishing their dessert, Mr. Sherman suddenly remembered that he had a letter in his pocket for Lloyd, which he had forgotten to give her.

"It is from Joyce," she said, looking at the post-mark. "Oh, if she were only heah, what a lovely time we could have! It would be like havin' anothah house pahty. May I read it now at the table, mothah? It is to all of us."

Fidelia almost held her breath. She was so afraid that Mrs. Sherman would suggest waiting until they went to the parlour. There she could no longer be one of them, no matter how hard she might pretend. She wanted the interesting play to go on as long as possible. She did not know that she ought not to listen. There were many things she had never been taught. Lloyd began to read aloud.

"DEAR GIRLS:—You will be in Tours by the time this letter reaches you, and I am simply wild to be there with you. Oh, if I could be there only one day to take you to all the old places! Do please go to the home of the 'Little Sisters of the Poor,' and ask for Sister Denisa. Give her my love, and tell her that I often think of her. And do go to that funny pie shop on the Rue Nationale, where everybody is allowed to walk around and help themselves and keep their own count. And eat one of those tiny delicious tarts for me. They're the best in the world.

"I can't think of anything else to-day, but that walk which you will be taking soon without me. I can shut my eyes and see every inch of the way, as it used to look when we went home just after sunset. There is the river Loire all rosy red in the after-glow, and the bridge with the soldiers marching across it; and on the other side of the river is the little old village of St. Symphorian with its narrow, crooked streets. How I love every old cobblestone! You will see the fat old women rattling home in their market carts, and hear the clang and click of wooden shoes down the streets. Then there'll be the high gate of customs in the old stone wall that fences in the village, and the country road beyond. You'll climb the hill with the new moon coming up behind the tall Lombardy poplars, and go on between the fields, turning brown in the twilight, till the Gate of the Giant Scissors looms up beside the road like a picture out of some fairy tale. A little farther on you'll come to Madame's dear old villa with the high wall around it, and the laurel hedges and lime-trees inside.

"I wonder which of you will have my room with the blue parrots on the wall-paper. Oh, I'm homesick to go back. Yet, isn't it strange, when I was there I used to long so for America, that many a time I climbed up in the pear-tree at the end of the garden for a good cry. Don't forget to swing up into that pear-tree. There's a fine view from the top.

"When you see Jules, ask him to show you the goats that chewed up the cushions of the pony cart, the day we had our Thanksgiving barbecue in the garden. I fairly ache to be with you. Please write me a good long letter and tell me what you are doing; and whenever you hear the nightingales in Madame's garden, and the cathedral bells tolling out across the Loire, think of your loving JOYCE."

"Let's do those things to-morrow," exclaimed Lloyd, as she folded the letter and slipped it back into its envelope. "I don't want to waste time on any old chateaux with the Gate of the Giant Scissors just across the river, that we haven't seen yet."

"I have heard about that gate ever since we left America," said Mr. Forbes, laughingly. "Nobody has taken the trouble to inform me why it is so important, or why it was selected for a meeting-place. Somebody owes me an explanation."

"It's only an old gate with a mammoth pair of scissors swung on a medallion above it," said Mr. Sherman. "They were put there by a half-crazy old man who built the place, by the name of Ciseaux. Joyce Ware spent a winter in sight of it, and she came back with some wonderful tale about the scissors being the property of a prince who went around doing all sorts of impossible things with them. I believe the girls have actually come to think that the scissors are enchanted."

"Oh, Papa Jack, stop teasin'!" said the Little Colonel. "You know we don't!"

"If it is really settled that we are to go there to-morrow, I want to hear the story," said Cousin Carl. "I make a practice of reading the history of a place before I visit it, so I'll have to know the story of the gate in order to take a proper interest in it."

"Come into the parlour," said Mrs. Sherman rising. "Betty will tell us."

As she turned, she saw Fidelia looking after the girls with wistful eyes, and she read the longing and loneliness in her face.

"Wouldn't you like to come too, and hear the fairy tale with us?" she asked, kindly holding out her hand.

A look of happy surprise came over Fidelia's face, and before she could stammer out her acceptance of the unlooked-for invitation, Mrs. Sherman drew her toward her and led her into the little circle in one corner of the parlour.

"Now, we are ready, Tusitala," said Mrs. Sherman, settling herself on the sofa, with Fidelia beside her. Shaking back her brown curls, Betty began the fairy tale that Joyce's Cousin Kate had told one bleak November day, to make the homesick child forget that she was "a stranger in a strange land."

"Once upon a time, in a far island of the sea, there lived a king with seven sons."

Word for word as she had heard it, Betty told the adventures of the princes ("the three that were dark and the three that were fair"), and then of the middle son, Prince Ethelried, to whom the old king gave no portion of his kingdom. With no sword, nothing but the scissors of the Court Tailor, he had been sent out into the world to make his fortune. Even Cousin Carl listened with close attention to the prince's adventures with the Ogre, in which he was victorious, because the grateful fairy whom he had rescued laid on the scissors a magic spell.

"Here," she said, giving them into his hands again, "because thou wast persevering and fearless in setting me free, these shall win for thee thy heart's desire. But remember that thou canst not keep them sharp and shining unless they are used at least once each day in some unselfish service." After that he had only to utter his request in rhyme, and immediately they would shoot out to an enormous size that could cut down forests for him, bridge chasms, and reap whole wheat fields at a single stroke.

Many a peasant he befriended, shepherds and high-born dames, lords and lowly beggars; and at the last, when he stood up before the Ogre to fight for the beautiful princess kept captive in the tower, it was their voices, shouting out their tale of gratitude to him for all these unselfish services, that made the scissors grow long enough and strong enough to cut the ugly old Ogre's head off.

"So he married the princess," concluded Betty at last, "and came into the kingdom that was his heart's desire. There was feasting and merrymaking for seventy days and seventy nights, and they all lived happily ever after. On each gable of the house he fastened a pair of shining scissors to remind himself that only through unselfish service to others comes the happiness that is highest and best. Over the great entrance gate he hung the ones that served him so valiantly, saying, 'Only those who belong to the kingdom of loving hearts can ever enter here'; and to this day they guard the portal of Ethelried, and only those who belong to the kingdom of loving hearts may enter the Gate of the Giant Scissors."

"Go on," said Mr. Forbes, as Betty stopped. "What happened next? I want to hear some more."

"So did Joyce," said Betty. "She used to climb up in the pear-tree and watch the gate, wishing she knew what lay behind it, and one day she found out. A poor little boy lived there with only the care-taker and another servant. The care-taker beat him and half starved him. His uncle didn't know how he was treated, for he was away in Algiers. Joyce found this little Jules out in the fields one day, tending the goats, and they got to be great friends She told him this story, and they played that he was the prince and she was the Giant Scissors who was to rescue him from the clutches of the Ogre. She made up a rhyme for him to say. He had only to whisper:

"'Giant Scissors, fearless friend, Hasten, pray, thy aid to lend,'

and she would fly to help him. She really did, too, for she played ghost one night to frighten the old care-taker, and she told Jules's uncle, when he came back, how cruelly the poor little thing had been treated.

"Then the little prince really did come into his kingdom, for all sorts of lovely things happened after that. The gate had been closed for years on account of a terrible quarrel in the Ciseaux family, but at last something Joyce did helped to make it up. The gate swung open, and the old white-haired brother and sister went back to the home of their childhood together, and it was Christmas Day in the morning. They had been kept from going through the gate all those years, because the Giant Scissors wouldn't let them pass. Only those who belong to the kingdom of loving hearts can enter in."

"Some day you must put that all in a book, Betty," said Cousin Carl, when she had finished. "When we go to see the gate, I'll take my camera, and we'll get a picture of it. Now I feel that I can properly appreciate it, having heard its wonderful history."

There was a teasing light in his eyes that made Lloyd say, "Now you're laughin' at us, Cousin Carl, but it doesn't make any difference. I'd rathah see that gate than any old chateau in France."



CHAPTER IX.

AT THE GATE OF THE GIANT SCISSORS

Each of the girls answered Joyce's letter, but the Little Colonel's was the first to find its way to the little brown house in Plainsville, Kansas.

"Dear Joyce," she wrote. "We were all dreadfully disappointed yesterday morning when mother and Papa Jack came back from Madame's villa, and told us that she could not let us stay there. She has some English people in the house, and could not give us rooms even for one night. She said that we must be disappointed also about seeing Jules, for his Uncle Martin has taken him to Paris to stay a month. I could have cried, I was so sorry.

"Ever since we left home I have been planning what we should do when we reached the Gate of the Giant Scissors. I wanted to do all the things that you did, as far as possible. I was going to have a barbecue for Jules, down in the garden by the pagoda, and to have some kind of a midsummer fete for the peasant children who came to your Christmas tree.

"Madame was sorry, too, that she couldn't take us, when she found that we were your friends, and she asked mother to bring us all out the next day and have tea in the pagoda. As soon as mother and Papa Jack came back, they took us to see Sister Denisa at the home of the Little Sisters of the Poor. I wish you could have seen her face shine when we told her that we were friends of yours. She said lovely things about you, and the tears came into her eyes when she told us how much she missed your visits, after you went back to America.

"Next day we went to Madame's, and she took us over to the Ciseaux place to see Jules's great-aunt Desiree. She is a beautiful old lady. She talked about you as if you were an angel, or a saint with a halo around your head. She feels that if it hadn't been for you that she might still be only 'Number Thirty-nine' among all those paupers, instead of being the mistress of her brother's comfortable home.

"After we left there, we passed the place where Madame's washerwoman lives. A little girl peeped out at us through the hedge. Madame told her to show the American ladies the doll that she had in her arms. She held it out, and then snatched it back as if she were jealous of our even looking at it. Madame told us that it was the one you gave her at the Noel fete. It is the only doll the child ever had, and she has carried it ever since, even taking it to bed with her. She has named it for you.

"Madame said in her funny broken English, 'Ah, it is a beautiful thing to leave such memories behind one as Mademoiselle Joyce has left.' I would have told her about the Road of the Loving Heart, but it is so hard for her to understand anything I say. I think you began yours over here in France, long before Betty told us of the one in Samoa, or Eugenia gave us the rings to help us remember.

"We took Fidelia Sattawhite with us. She is the girl I wrote to you about who was so rude to me, and who quarrelled so much with her brothers on shipboard. I thought it would spoil everything to have her along, but mother insisted on my inviting her. She feels sorry for her. Fidelia acted very well until we went over to the Ciseaux place. But when we got to the gate she stood and looked up at the scissors over it, and refused to go in. Madame and mother both coaxed and coaxed her, but she was too queer for anything. She wouldn't move a step. She just stood there in the road, saying, 'No'm, I won't go in. I don't want to. I'll stay out here and wait for you. No'm, nothing anybody can say can make me go in.'

"Down she sat on the grass as flat as Humpty Dumpty when he had his great fall, and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't have made her get up till she was ready. We couldn't understand why she should act so. She told Betty that night that she was afraid to go through the gate. She remembered that in the story where the old king and the brothers of Ethelried came riding up to the portal 'the scissors leaped from their place and snapped so angrily in their faces that they turned and fled. Only those who belong to the kingdom of loving hearts could enter in.' She told Betty that she knew she didn't belong to that kingdom, for nobody loved her, and often she didn't love anybody for days. She was afraid to go through the gate for fear the scissors would leap down at her, and she would be so ashamed to be driven back before us all. So she thought she would pretend that she didn't want to go in. She had believed every word of that fairy tale.

"We had a beautiful time in the garden. We went down all the winding paths between the high laurel hedges where you used to walk, and almost got lost, they had so many unexpected twists and turns. The old statues of Adam and Eve, grinning at each other across the fountain, are so funny. We saw the salad beds with the great glass bells over them, and we climbed into the pear-tree and sat looking over the wall, wondering how you could have been homesick in such an interesting place.

"Berthe served tea in the pagoda, and because we asked about Gabriel's music, Madame smiled and sent Berthe away with a message. Pretty soon we heard his old accordeon playing away, out of sight in the coach-house, and then we knew what kind of music you had at the Noel fete. Sort of wheezy, wasn't it? Still it sounded sweet, too, at that distance.

"We took Hero with us, and he was really the guest of honour at the party. When Madame saw the Red Cross on his collar and heard his history, she couldn't do enough for him. She fed him cakes until I thought he surely would be ill. It was a Red Cross nurse who wrote to Madame about her husband. He was wounded in the Franco-Prussian war, too, just as was the Major. Madame went on to get him and bring him home, and she says she never can forget the kindness that was shown to her by every one whom she met when she crossed the lines under the protection of the Red Cross.

"She had met Clara Barton, too, and while we were talking about the good she has done, Madame said, 'The Duchess of Baden may have sent her the Gold Cross of Remembrance, but the grateful hearts of many a French wife and mother will for ever hold the rosary of her beautiful deeds!' Wasn't that a lovely thing to have said about one?

"We start to London Thursday, and I'll write again from there. With much love from us all, Lloyd."

The long letter which Lloyd folded and addressed after a careful re-reading, had not been all written in one day. She had begun it while waiting for the others to finish dressing one morning, had added a few pages that afternoon, and finished it the next evening at bedtime.

"Heah is my lettah to Joyce, mothah," she said, as she kissed her good night. "Won't you look ovah it, please, and see if all the words are spelled right? I want to send it in the mawnin."

Mrs. Sherman laid the letter aside to attend to later, and forgot it until long after Lloyd was asleep, and Mr. Sherman had come up-stairs. Then, seeing it on the table, she glanced rapidly over the neatly written pages.

"I want you to look at this, Jack," she said, presently, handing him the letter. "It is one of the results of the house party for which I am most thankful. You remember what a task it always was for Lloyd to write a letter. She groaned for days whenever she received one, because it had to be answered. But when Joyce went away she said, 'Now, Lloyd, I know I shall be homesick for Locust, and I want to hear every single thing that happens. Don't you dare send me a stingy two-page letter, half of it apologising for not writing sooner, and half of it promising to do better next time.

"'Just prop my picture up in front of you and look me in the eyes and begin to talk. Tell me all the little things that most people leave out; what he said and she said on the way to the picnic, and how Betty looked in her daffodil dress, with the sun shining on her brown curls. Write as if you were making pictures for me, so that when I read I can see everything you are doing.'

"It was excellent advice, and as Joyce's letters were written in that way, Lloyd had a good model to copy. Joyce, being an artist, naturally makes pictures even of her letters. When Betty went away and began sending home such well-written accounts of her journey, I found that Lloyd's style improved constantly. She wrote a dear little letter to the Major, last week, telling all about Hero. I was surprised to see how prettily she expressed her appreciation of his gift."

Mr. Sherman took the letter and began to read. In two places he corrected a misspelled word, and here and there supplied missing commas and quotation marks. There was a gratified smile on his face when he finished. "That is certainly a lengthy letter for a twelve-year-old girl to write," he said, in a pleased tone, "and cannot fail to be interesting to Joyce. The letters she wrote me from the Cuckoo's Nest were stiff, short scrawls compared to this. I must tell my Little Colonel how proud I am of her improvement."

His words of praise were not spoken, however. He expressed his appreciation, later, by leaving on her table a box of foreign correspondence paper. It was of the best quality he could find in Tours, and to Lloyd's delight the monogram engraved on it was even prettier than Eugenia's.

"Why did Papa Jack write this on the first sheet in the box, mothah?" she asked, coming to her with a sentence written in her father's big, businesslike hand: 'There is no surer way to build a Road of the Loving Heart in the memory of absent friends, than to bridge the space between with the cheer and sympathy and good-will of friendly letters.'

"Why did Papa Jack write that?" she repeated.

"Because he saw your last letter to Joyce, and was so pleased with the improvement you have made," answered Mrs. Sherman. "He has given you a good text for your writing-desk."

"I'll paste it in the top," said Lloyd. "Then I can't lose it." "'There is no surer way,'" she repeated to herself as she carried the box back to her room, "'to bridge the space between ... with the cheer and sympathy and good-will.'"

There flashed across her mind the thought of some one who needed cheer and sympathy far more than Joyce did, and who would welcome a friendly letter from her with its foreign stamp, as eagerly as if it were some real treasure. Jessie Nolan was the girl she thought of, an invalid with a crippled spine, to whom the dull days in her wheeled chair by the window seemed endless, and who had so little to brighten her monotonous life.

"I'll write her a note this minute," thought Lloyd, with a warm glow in her heart. "I'll describe some of the sights we have seen, and send her that fo' leafed clovah that I found at the chateau yestahday, undah a window of the great hall where Anne of Brittany was married ovah fo' hundred yeahs ago. I don't suppose Jessie gets a lettah once a yeah."

When that note was written, Lloyd thought of Mom Beck and the pride that would shine in the face of her old black nurse if she should receive a letter from Europe, and how proudly it would be carried around and displayed to all the coloured people in the Valley. So with the kindly impulse of her father's text still upon her, she dashed off a note to her, telling her of some of her visits to the palaces of bygone kings and queens.

Eugenia came in as she finished, but before she closed her desk she jotted two names on a slip of paper. Mrs. Waters's was one. She was a little old Englishwoman, who did fine laundry work in the Valley, and who was always talking about the 'awthorne' edges in her old English home.

"I'll write to her from London," Lloyd thought. "If we should get a sight of any of the royal family, how tickled she would be to hear it."

The other name was Janet McDonald. She was a sad, sweet-faced young teacher whom Miss Allison always called her "Scotch lassie Jane." "I don't suppose she'd care to get a letter from a little girl like me," thought Lloyd, "but I know she'd love to have a piece of heather from the hills near her home. I'll send her a piece when we get up in Scotland."

The letter that Eugenia sent to Joyce was only a short outline of her plans. She knew that the other girls had sent long accounts of their trip through Touraine, so hers was much shorter than usual.

"Papa has decided to send me to a school just outside of Paris this year," she wrote, "instead of the one in New York, so it will be a long time before I see my native land again. He will have to be over here several months, and can spend Christmas and Easter with me, so I can see him fully as often as I used to at home.

"It is a very select school. Madame recommends it highly, and I am simply delighted. A New York girl whom I know very well is to be there too, and we are looking forward to all sorts of larks. Thursday we are to start to London for a short tour of England and Scotland. Then the others are going home and papa and I shall go by Chester for my maid. Poor old Eliot has had a glorious vacation at home, she writes. She is to stay at the school with me. We shall be so busy until I get settled that I shall not have time to write soon; but no matter how far my letters may be apart, I am always your devoted EUGENIA."



CHAPTER X.

ON THE WING

"Who is going away?" asked Lloyd, one afternoon, of the girls who were sitting in her room, manicuring their nails. "There goes a pile of trunks out to the baggage wagon."

As she spoke, a carriage drove up to the door of the hotel, and Fanchette went out with the poodle in her arms.

"The Sattawhites," answered Eugenia. "There's Howl and Henny climbing into the carriage, and, oh, look, girls! There comes Mrs. Sattawhite herself. I haven't had many glimpses of her. Isn't she gorgeous! You know they had to leave," she continued, turning to the girls. "I forgot to tell you what happened early this morning while you were down-town.

"I was up in my room writing to Joyce, when I heard a rumble and a running down in the back hall. Somebody called 'Fire! Fire!' Then somebody else took it up, and the old gentleman at the end of the hall, who never appears in public until noon, came bursting out of his room in his bath robe, his shoes in one hand and his false teeth in the other. It was the funniest sight! There was wild excitement for a few minutes. One woman began throwing things out of the window, and another stood and shrieked and wrung her hands.

"The waiter with the long black side-whiskers tore up-stairs and grabbed his arms full of those bottles in the racks—you know—those fire-extinguishing bottles that have some kind of chemical stuff in them. There was a strong smell of smoke and a little puff of it curling up from under the stairs. He threw all those bottles down into the lower hall. You can imagine the smash there was when they struck the stone floor.

"Papa rushed down to investigate, at the first alarm. He found that it was only Howl and Henny playing hook-and-ladder with a little red wagon. They had taken an old flannel blouse of Kenny's and set fire to it. Howl explained that they did it because woollen rags make such a nice thick smoke, and last a long time, and when they yelled fire they were not to blame, he said, if other people didn't know that they were 'jes' a-playin', and went and yelled in earnest.'

"Papa took their part, and said that two boys with as much energy as they have must find an outlet somewhere, and that it was no wonder that they were restless, cooped up in a hotel day after day, with no amusement but their prim walks with the maid and the poodle. But the old gentleman who had been so frightened that he ran out in public without his teeth, and the woman who had thrown her toilet bottles out of the window and broken them, were furious. They complained to the landlord, and said that it was not the first offence. The boys were always annoying them.

"So the landlord had to go to Mrs. Sattawhite. She found out what the old gentleman said, that a mother who had to go travelling around all over Europe, giving her time and attention to society and a miserable poodle, had better put her children in an orphan asylum before she started. She was so indignant that I could hear her talking away down in the office. She said that she would leave the instant that Fanchette could get the trunks packed. So there they go."

Mrs. Sattawhite had sailed back to the office during the telling of Eugenia's story, so their departure was delayed a moment. When she came out again, Fidelia followed her sulkily. Just as they drove off, she looked up at the open window, and saw the girls, who were waving good-bye. Then a smile flickered across her sorry little face, for, moved by some sudden impulse, the Little Colonel leaned out and threw her a kiss.

"I suppose I'll nevah see her again," she said, thoughtfully, as the carriage rolled around a corner, out of sight. "I wish now that I had been niceah to her. We may both change evah so much by the time we are grown, yet if I live to be a hundred I'll always think of her as the girl who was so quarrelsome that the English lady groaned, 'Oh, those dreadful American children!' And I suppose she'll remembah me for the high and mighty way I tried to snub her whenevah I had a chance."

As she spoke there was a knock at the door, and a maid brought in a package for Lloyd. "Oh, look, girls!" she exclaimed, holding up a tiny pair of silver embroidery scissors, Fidelia's parting gift They were evidently something that had been given her, for the little silver sheath into which they were thrust was beautifully engraved in old English letters with the name "Fidelia." Around them was wrapped a strip of rumpled paper on which was scrawled: "For you to remember me by. That day you took me to the Gate of the Giant Scissors was the best time I ever had."

"Poor little thing!" exclaimed Betty. "To think that she was afraid to go in, for fear that she didn't belong to the kingdom, and that the scissors might leap down and drive her back."

"Oh, if I had only known!" sighed Lloyd, remorsefully. "I feel too mean for anything! If I'd only believed that it was because she hadn't been brought up to know any bettah that she acted so horrid, and that all the time she really wanted to be liked! Mothah told me I ought to put myself in her place, and make allowances for her, but I didn't want to even try, and I nevah was nice to her but once—that time I gave her the candy. Then I was only pretendin' I cared for her, just for fun. I didn't want her to go with us to the Scissahs gate that day. Mothah made me invite her. I fussed about it. I'm goin' to write to her the minute I finish polishin' my nails, and tell her how sorry I am that I didn't leave a kindah memory behind me."

They rubbed away in silence for a few minutes, then Lloyd spoke again. "I suahly have enough things now to remind me about the memory roads I am tryin' to leave behind me for everybody. Every time I look at this little ring it says 'A Road of the Loving Heart.' And the scissahs will recall the fairy tale. It was only unselfish service that kept them bright and shining, and only those who belonged to the kingdom of loving hearts could go in at the gate. Then there's the Red Cross of Geneva on Hero's collah—there couldn't be a moah beautiful memory than the one left by all who have wo'n that Red Cross."

"Yes," said Betty, holding up a hand to inspect the pink finger nails now polished to her satisfaction. "And there is the white flower that the two little Knights of Kentucky wear. Keith said that his badge meant the same thing to him that my ring does to me. Their motto is 'Right the wrong.' That's what the Giant Scissors always did, and that's what Robert Louis Stevenson tried to do for the Samoan chiefs. That is why they loved him and built the road."

"Funny, how they all sing the same song," said Eugenia. "It's just the same, only they sing it in different keys."

After Betty and Eugenia had gone to their rooms, Lloyd sat a long time toying with the silver scissors, before writing her note of acknowledgment. The sheath was of hammered silver, and around the name was a beautifully wrought design of tiny clustered grapes.

"It is one of the prettiest things that my wondah-ball has unrolled," she said to herself, "and it has certainly taught me a lesson. Poah little Fidelia! If I'd only known that she cared, there were lots of times that she could have gone with us, and it would have made her so happy. If I had only put myself in her place when mothah told me! But I was so cross and hateful I enjoyed bein' selfish. Now all the bein' sorry in the world won't change things!"

It would be too much like a guide-book if this story were to give a record of the next two weeks. Betty's good-times book was filled, down to the last line on the last page, and the partnership diary had to have several extra leaves pasted inside the cover. From morning until night there was a constant round of sightseeing. The shops and streets of London first, the Abbey and the Tower, a hundred places that they had read about and longed to see, and after they had seen, longed to come back to for another visit.

"We can only take a bird's-eye view now and hurry on, but we must certainly come back some other summer," said Mr. Sherman, when Lloyd wanted to linger in the Tower of London among the armour and weapons that had been worn by the old knights, centuries ago. He repeated it when Betty looked back longingly at the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, where the great organ was echoing down the solemn aisles, and again when Eugenia begged for another coach ride out to Hampton Court.