CHAPTER VI.

THE ENCHANTED NECKLACE.

Several days after Betty's arrival, the Little Colonel went into her mother's room with a troubled face.

"Mothah," she said, anxiously, "what are we goin' to do about the lawn fete at Anna Moore's this afternoon? Elizabeth hasn't a thing to weah but that lawn dress that she has put on every evenin' since she came, and it isn't fresh enough. I can't lend her anything because I'm not quite as tall as she is, and my clothes would be too short. What is she goin' to do?"

"Ah, that is my secret, little daughter," answered Mrs. Sherman, with a smile. "What do you suppose I spent that hot morning in town for, the day after she came, and why, do you think, have I driven over so many times to see Miss Dean? I have made at least six trips there."

"Was it to get some clothes made for Elizabeth?" asked Lloyd. A little expression of doubt showed in the anxious pucker of her forehead. "But, mothah, she is awfully proud if she is poah. Aren't you afraid of hurtin' her feelin's?"

"There are a great many ways of giving gifts, little daughter. If I provided her with clothes in a way to make her feel that I thought hers were too mean to be worn in my house, and that I was ashamed to have a guest of mine present such an appearance, that would naturally hurt her pride; but I have thought of a way that I am sure will please her. If you will call her up-stairs in a few minutes, I will show you. Where is she now?"

"Readin' on the stair landin'. At least she was when I came up. She was in the window-seat."

"Then wait until I take something into her room. I'll tell you when I am ready, and you may call her up."

Lloyd hung over the banister in the upper hall until she heard a whispered "Ready;" then she called: "Come up heah, Elizabeth, mothah wants us a minute in yo' room."

Mrs. Sherman was sitting by an open window with some sewing in her lap, when Lloyd and Betty skipped into the white and gold room. Betty had a book in her hand with her finger between the closed pages, to keep the place.



"Elizabeth," said Mrs. Sherman, "do you remember the story of the enchanted necklace that was in a book of fairy tales I sent you once?"

"Oh, yes!" cried Betty. "That is one of my favourite stories. I have read it twenty times, I am sure, and told it to Davy until he almost knows it by heart."

"I wish you would tell it to Lloyd, please. She has never heard it, and I want to illustrate it for her after awhile."

The little girl willingly dropped down into a big chair full of cushions, and with her finger still marking the place in the book, Betty began the story:

"Once upon a time, near a castle in a lonely wood, there lived an orphan maiden named Olga. She would have been all alone in the world had it not been for an old woman who befriended her. This woman was an old flax-spinner, and lived in a humble thatched cottage near the castle. She had taken pity on Olga when the little orphan was a helpless baby, and so kind had she always been that Olga had grown to maidenhood without feeling the lack of father, mother, brother, or sister. In all ways the old flax spinner had taken their places.

"Every morning Olga carried water from the spring, gathered the wild fruits of the woods, and spread the linen on the grass to bleach. This she did to help the old woman, for she had a good and grateful heart as well as a beautiful face.

"One day as Olga was wandering by the spring, searching for watercresses, the young prince of the castle rode by on his prancing charger. A snow-white plume waved in his hat, and a shining silver bugle hung from his shoulder, for he had been following the chase.

"He was thirsty and tired, and asked for a drink, but there was no cup from which to dip the water from the spring. But Olga caught the drops as they bubbled out from the spring, holding it in the hollow of her beautiful white hands, and, reaching up to where he sat, offered him the sparkling water. So gracefully was it done that the prince was charmed by her lovely face and modest manner, and, baring his head, when he had slaked his thirst he touched the white hands with his lips.

"Before he rode away he asked her name and where she lived. The next day a courier in scarlet and gold stopped at the door of the cottage and invited Olga to the castle. Princesses and royal ladies from all over the realm were to be entertained there, seven days and seven nights. Every night a grand ball was to be given, and Olga was summoned to each of the balls. It was on account of her pleasing manner and her great beauty that she had been bidden.

"The old flax-spinner curtsied low to the courier and promised that Olga should be at the castle without fail.

"'But, good dame,' cried Olga when the courier had gone, 'prithee tell me why thou didst make such a promise, when thou knowest full well this gown of tow is all I own? Wouldst have me stand before the prince in beggar's garb? Better to bide at home for aye than be put to shame before such guests.'

"'Have done, my child,' the old dame said. 'Thou shalt wear a court robe of the finest. Years have I toiled to give it thee, but that is naught. I loved thee as my own.'

"Then the old dame went into an inner room and pricked herself with her spindle until a great red drop of her heart's blood fell into her trembling hand. With witchery of words she blew upon it, and rolled it in her palm, and muttering, turned and turned and turned it. And as the spell was laid upon it, it shrivelled it into a tiny round ball like a seed, and she strung it on to a thread where were many others like it. Seventy times seven was the number of beads on this strange rosary. Then she laid it away until the time when it should be needed.

"When the night of the first ball rolled around, Olga combed her long golden hair and twined it with a wreath of snowy water-lilies, and then she stood before the old dame in her dress of tow. To her wonderment and grief she saw the old flax-spinner had no silken robe in waiting, only a string of beads which she clasped around Olga's white throat. Each bead in the necklace looked like a little shrivelled seed, and Olga's eyes were filled with tears of disappointment.

"'Obey me and all will be well,' said the old dame. 'When thou reachest the castle gate clasp one bead in thy fingers and say:

"'"For love's sweet sake, in my hour of need, Blossom and deck me, little seed."

"'Straightway, right royally shalt thou be clad. Thou hast been a good daughter to me, and thus I reward thee. But remember carefully the charm. Only to the magic words, "For love's sweet sake," will the necklace give up its treasures. If thou shouldst forget, then must thou be doomed alway to bear thy gown of tow.'

"So Olga sped on her moon-lighted way through the forest until she came to the castle gate. There she paused, and grasping a bead of the strange necklace between her fingers, repeated the old dame's charm:

"'For love's sweet sake, in my hour of need, Blossom and deck me, little seed.'

"Immediately the bead burst with a little puff, as if a seed pod had snapped asunder. A faint perfume surrounded her, rare and subtle as if it had been blown across from some flower of Eden. Olga looked down and found herself enveloped in a robe of such delicate texture that it seemed soft as a rose leaf, and as airy as the pink clouds that sometimes float across the sunset. The water-lilies in her hair had become a coronal of opals.

"When she entered the great ballroom, the prince of the castle started up from his throne in amazement. Never before had he seen such a vision of loveliness. 'Surely,' said he, 'some rose of Paradise hath found a soul and drifted earthward to blossom here.' And all that night he had eyes for none but her.

"The next night Olga started again to the castle in her dress of tow, and at the gate she grasped the second bead in her fingers, repeating the charm. This time the pale yellow of the daffodils seemed to have woven itself into a cloth of gold for her adorning. It was like a shimmer of moonbeams, and her hair held the diamond flashings of a hundred tiny stars.

"That night the prince paid her so many compliments and singled her out so often to bestow his favours, that Olga's head was turned. She tossed it proudly, and quite scorned the thought of the humble cottage which had given her shelter so long. The next day, when she had returned to her gown of tow, and was no longer a haughty court lady, but only Olga, the flax-spinner's maiden, she repined at her lot. Frowning she carried the water from the spring. Frowning she gathered the cresses and plucked the woodland fruit. And then she sat all day by the spring, refusing to spread the linen on the grass to bleach.

"She was discontented with the old life of toil, and pouted crossly because duties called her when she wanted to do nothing but sit idly dreaming of the gay court scenes in which she had taken a bright, brief part. The old flax-spinner's fingers trembled as she spun, when she saw the frowns, for she had given of her heart's blood to buy happiness for the maiden she loved, and well she knew there can be no happiness where frowns abide. She felt that her years of sacrifice had been in vain.

"That night outside the castle gate Olga paused. She had forgotten the charm. The day's discontent had darkened her memory as storm clouds darken the sky. But she grasped her necklace imperiously.

"'Deck me at once!' she cried, in a haughty tone. 'Clothe me more beautifully than mortal maid was ever clad before, so that I may find favour in the prince's sight and become the bride of the castle. I would that I were done for ever with the spindle and the distaff.'

"But the moon went under a cloud and the wind began to moan around the turrets. The black night hawks in the forests flapped their wings warningly, and the black bats flitted low around her head.

"'Obey me at once!' she cried, angrily, stamping her foot and jerking at the necklace. But the string broke and the beads went rolling away in the darkness in every direction, and were lost. All but one, which she held clasped in her hand.

"Then Olga wept at the castle gate; wept outside in the night and the darkness, in her beggar's garb of tow. But after awhile, through her sobbing, stole the answering sob of the night wind. 'Hush-sh!' it seemed to say. 'Sh-sh! Never a heart can come to harm, if the lips but speak the old dame's charm.'

"The voice of the night wind sounded so much like the voice of the old flax-spinner that Olga was startled and looked around wonderingly. Then suddenly she seemed to see the little thatched cottage and the bent form of the lonely old woman at the wheel. All the years in which the good dame had befriended her seemed to rise up in a row, and out of each one called a thousand kindnesses as with one voice: 'How canst thou forget us, Olga? We were done for thee, for love's sweet sake, and that alone.'

"Then was Olga sorry and ashamed that she had been so proud and forgetful, and she wept again. The tears seemed to clear her vision, for now she saw plainly that through no power of her own could she wrest strange favours from fortune. Only the power of the old charm could make them hers. She remembered it then, and holding fast to the one bead in her hand, she repeated, humbly:

"'For love's sweet sake, in my hour of need, Blossom and deck me, little seed.'

"Lo, as the words left her lips, the moon shone out from behind the clouds above the dark forest. There was a fragrance of lilies all about her, and a gossamer gown floated around her, whiter than the whiteness of the fairest lily. It was fine, like the finest lace that the frost-elves weave, and softer than the softest ermine of the snow. On her long golden hair gleamed a coronet of pearls.

"So beautiful, so dazzling was she as she entered the castle door, that the prince came down to meet her, and kneeling, kissed her hand, and claimed her as his bride. Then came the bishop in his mitre, and led her to the throne, and before them all the flax-spinner's maiden was married to the prince, and made the Princess Olga.

"Then, until the seven days and seven nights were done, the revels lasted in the castle. And in the merriment the old flax-spinner was again forgotten. Her kindness of the past, her loneliness in the present, had no part in the thoughts of the Princess Olga.

"But the beads that had rolled away into the darkness buried themselves in the earth, and took root and sprang up. There at the castle gate they bloomed, a strange, strange flower, for on every stem hung a row of little bleeding hearts.

"One day the Princess Olga, seeing them from her window, went down to them in wonderment. 'What do you here?' she cried, for in her lonely forest life she had learned all speech of bird and beast and plant.

"'We bloom for love's sweet sake,' they answered. 'We have sprung from the old flax-spinner's gift,—the necklace thou didst break and scatter. From her heart's best blood she gave it, and her heart still bleeds to think she is forgotten.'

"Then they began to tell the story of the old dame's sacrifices, all the seventy times seven that she had made for the sake of the maiden, and Olga grieved as she listened, that she could have been so ungrateful. Then she brought the prince to listen to the story of the strange, strange flowers, and when he had heard, together they went to the lowly cottage and fetched the old flax-spinner to the castle, there to live out all her days.

"And still the flowers that we call bleeding hearts bloom on by cottage walls and castle gardens, reminding us how often 'tis through hearts that bleed for love's sweet sake we reach our happiness."

Betty came to the end of the story and paused, smiling, while the Little Colonel, who had listened with one arm around her mother's neck, waited for what was to follow.

Mrs. Sherman took up a little box that had been lying in her lap under the sewing, and lifted something out of the jeweller's cotton it contained.

"Elizabeth," she asked, motioning the child toward her, "do you suppose the Princess Olga's necklace was anything like this?" What she held up was a string of little gold beads.

"Oh, they are almost like mine," cried Lloyd, fingering them admiringly. Before Betty realised what was coming, she found them clasped on her neck, and Mrs. Sherman was saying: "It isn't made out of my heart's blood by any means, and it will not lead you to any Prince Charming, but it is my privilege as godmother to lay a spell on them. Let's see how it will work. Go over to that little trunk of yours in the corner, dear, and lay your hand on it. Now shut your eyes while you repeat Olga's charm, and see what will happen."

Delighted by this dramatising of the old tale, Betty scrambled to her feet, ran across the room, and laid her hand on top of the shabby little leather trunk. Shutting her eyes so tight that her nose wrinkled up like a kitten's, while her mouth smiled broadly, she repeated the rhyme:

"For love's sweet sake, in my hour of need, Blossom and deck me, little seed!"

As she opened her eyes, Lloyd, obeying a whisper from her mother, threw back the lid of the trunk. All that Betty could utter, as she looked within, was a long-drawn cry of surprise: "Oh-oo-oo!"

There, inside, lay a pile of light summer dresses, some white, and the rest in as many tints of pale pinks and blues and buffs and lilacs as could be found in a bunch of fresh sweet peas. Below were glimpses of linen and lace and embroidery, and in the top tray two pretty hats. One trimmed simply with rosettes of ribbon, the other a broad-brimmed leghorn with a wreath of forget-me-nots.

One look into Betty's face was enough reward for Mrs. Sherman. It was ample return for all the trouble she had taken. What was the money expended and the discomforts of that tiresome morning that she shopped in town, or the many trips to the dressmaker's, compared to the rapture in Betty's shining eyes? Mrs. Sherman had never seen such happiness, or heard such a gladness in a voice as when Betty cried out, "Oh, godmother! Are you a witch? It is too good to be true. I thought I was coming to an ordinary house party, and I've walked straight into a real, live fairy tale! Oh, I can never thank you enough! Never, never, never." She threw her arms around her godmother's neck and kissed her again and again.

Presently leaving Betty to gloat over her treasures by herself, Lloyd followed Mrs. Sherman out of the room. "Now I see what you meant, mothah," she said, "about the different ways of givin' things. It can't hurt anybody's pride if you make them feel that you give it for love's sweet sake. That was a beautiful way you did it, mothah, and I'll never fo'get it."



CHAPTER VII.

BITS FROM BETTY'S DIARY.

"THE LOCUSTS," June 4, 1900.

This morning when I sat down at my writing-desk to finish a letter to Davy, I found this little blank book, bound in white kid, with my initials on the back in gold letters. When I first came, godmother heard me wishing that I could put a slice of my good times away in a box every day, and save it to take home and enjoy afterward, as people do fruit-cake sometimes, after Christmases and weddings. So she has given me this pretty white book, and every day while I am in this House Beautiful I shall write something in it with this darling little pearl-handled pen.

Even if I should live to be a grandmother, I am sure I shall never be too old to enjoy reading the account of what we did at this house party. So far I am the only guest. The others will be here in a few days. They have so much farther to travel than I had.

Cousin Hetty would say that I "am eating my white bread now," for it is nothing but play from morning until night.

At first it seemed so strange,—no beds to make, no dishes to wash, no churning to do. I like the evenings best of all. Then we sit on the porch in the twilight, and godmother talks about mamma. I never knew anything about her before, for I was so little when she died; but now she seems so real to me and so sweet.

Then we go into the long drawing-room, and the wax tapers are lighted. Godmother says she always intends to use candle-light in that room, because it would spoil some of its quaint old-time charm to use modern lights. And she plays on the piano, and Lloyd on the harp. Lloyd is only learning, and godmother doesn't seem to think much of her playing, but to me the music they make seems almost heavenly. They forget that the only music that I am used to hearing, except what the birds make, is pumped out of the wheezy little organ at church.

I could sit up all night to listen to them. It makes me feel so strange that I hardly know how to describe it,—as if I were away off from everything, and high up, where it is wide and open, and where the stars are. It makes me want to write. All sorts of beautiful thoughts come to me, that I can almost put into words. But they are like will-o'-the-wisps. When I get to the place with my rhyme, where I saw them shining, they are still beyond my reach.

JUNE 5th.

Rob Moore came over to-day, and he and Lloyd and I went fishing.

We carried our lunch with us, and ate it on a big rock that sticks up like a sort of island in the middle of the creek. We had to take off our shoes and stockings to wade out to it, and after we got there the rock was hardly big enough to hold the basket and all of us comfortably. We had to hold fast with one hand and grab for our sandwiches with the other.

It was lots of fun, for Rob and Lloyd kept saying such funny things that we laughed all the time. I don't know how it happened, but we got to laughing so hard that Lloyd choked on a piece of chicken. We began pounding her on the back to help her get her breath, and all of a sudden off we went from the rock into the creek—kersplash!

It wasn't deep enough to hurt us, but we did look so funny when we stood up as wet as three frogs, and wiped the water out of our eyes. We laughed so hard we could scarcely fish the basket out of the creek and wade to shore. The basket was the only thing we caught except a turtle; Rob got that, and Lloyd made him let it go again.

Of course our tumble into the water ended the fishing for to-day, for we all had to hurry home for dry clothes. But Rob came back again in the afternoon, and he and Lloyd have been giving me my first lesson in lawn-tennis.

JUNE 6th.

Joyce came to-day on the noon train. She has the blue room across the hall from mine. It suits her, for she is a blonde like Lloyd, but her hair doesn't curl any. It is just soft and wavy, and hangs in two long braids below her waist. Her eyes are gray, with long dark lashes, and while she isn't exactly pretty, she has a face that you like to keep looking at. It is so bright and jolly, as if she was always thinking funny things, and having a good time all to herself.

She came all the way alone, and didn't mind it a bit, although she had to change cars twice, and was all night on the sleeping-car. She brought a sketch-book in her satchel that is almost full of pictures she drew on the train. There is one that is so funny. It is the head of an old man, gone to sleep with his mouth open. She wrote under that one, "As others see us." Then she drew two cunning babies playing peek-a-boo in the aisle. She called that "Innocence abroad." There are ever so many more that godmother says are really clever, and remarkably well done for a girl of thirteen. I thought they were perfect.

It didn't take long to get acquainted with Joyce. She has been here only a part of a day, and already I feel as if I had known her always.

JUNE 7th.

It was nearly six o'clock yesterday when Eugenia came. Godmother and Lloyd drove down to the station to meet her, but Joyce and I walked up and down under the locusts, wondering what she would be like.

We could hardly wait for the carriage to come, we were so eager to know. I couldn't tell what it was about her, but somehow, when she stepped out of the carriage and shook hands with us, she made me feel awkward and shy and out of place. Maybe it was because she had such a grown-up manner and seemed so young-ladified, although she is only Joyce's age. Then she spoke in such a superior sort of way to her maid, when she ordered her to follow up-stairs with the satchels.

They went straight to the green room to dress for dinner, and Joyce and I locked arms again, and strolled down to the gate. Joyce asked me what I thought of her. I told her that I would be thankful to the end of time that I got here first. Seeing her arrive in such a stylish travelling suit, gloves, and Knox hat, and carrying such a handsome leather bag, opened my eyes to the way I must have looked when I came. It tickled Joyce, the way I described myself, travelling in a sunbonnet and carrying my belongings in an old-fashioned willow basket.

She gave my chin a soft nip and kissed rue on each cheek, and said, "You funny little Bettykins! As if it made any difference to your friends what you wore."

I told her I believed it would make a difference to Eugenia, and she thought, too, that maybe it might. Then I told her I believed that was why godmother gave me the enchanted necklace before she came, so that I wouldn't feel uncomfortable. Joyce had not heard about the necklace, so I showed her my gold beads and told her their story. She thought it was lovely of godmother to make the fairy tale come true, but she advised me not to tell Eugenia. Girls who always travel in private cars and have everything they wish for, she said, can't understand what it means to be poor. Then she told me about a box that her Cousin Kate had sent her, and how good it made everybody in the little brown house feel, when it came.

JUNE 8th.

We had the grandest surprise this morning. Lloyd came up to the house soon after breakfast, on Tarbaby, leading her mother's riding horse, a graceful little bay mare. Behind her came one of the coloured men leading two ponies, so that we could all have a ride. The bay mare was for Eugenia, who is a fine horsewoman. She learned in a New York riding-school. The ponies were for Joyce and me. Mr. Sherman had them sent out from Louisville after he went away, for us to use all the time we are here.

One of the ponies is named Calico, because he is marked so queerly. His hair grows in such funny little streaks and stripes and patches that he looks as if he had been painted that way on purpose. He was a clown pony in a circus one time, and is supposed to know a lot of tricks. Joyce wanted him because he is so gentle, and she had never ridden any before. She didn't mind his ridiculous looks. So Lad fell to my share,—a pretty brown one that is as easy as a rocking-horse after the stiff-jointed old farm-horses that I am used to bouncing around on at home.

They were all ready to start, so we went galloping down to Judge Moore's after Rob, and the five of us raced all over the valley till nearly lunch-time. It was grand. The dust flew, and people ran to the windows when we went by, as if we had been a circus.

We did have a sort of circus when we passed by Taylor's grove. A Butchers' Union had come out from town for a big picnic, and they had a brass band with them. It struck up a waltz just as we reached the grove, and Joyce's pony, Calico, began turning around and around as if he had lost his senses. Joyce screamed and threw her arms around his neck, frightened almost to death until Rob called out that Calico was dancing, and for her to hang on and see what he would do. What he did was to stand on his hind legs and dump Joyce off into the middle of the road.

She sat there in the dust, too astonished to move, until Rob helped her up, and then they both leaned against the fence to laugh at Calico's antics. He was so funny. He kept up his performances until the music stopped. Then he walked over to Rob and held up his fore foot to shake hands, as if he wanted to be congratulated. The music of the band seemed to have brought back all his old tricks to his memory. I didn't suppose that Joyce would mount him again, but she did. Rob called to the men and asked them please not to play again until we were out of hearing, and we rode off.

JUNE 9th.

I don't believe that I could ever love Eugenia very dearly, because she makes me feel uncomfortable so often. She has a way of looking down on you that would rile anybody. But she is a fascinating sort of girl, when she wants to be friendly and entertaining. We have been in her room all morning, listening to her talk.

It must be grand to live in one of the biggest hotels in the world, and see all the sights she sees. I imagine it is a sort of a palace. She showed us the picture of her three best friends at school. It is in a big silver locket set with sapphires, and hangs over a corner of her mirror. We heard a great deal of them this morning. She seems to think more of that Mollie and Fay and Kell than she does of her father.

It is funny that when you are with Eugenia you can't help feeling the same way she does about what she's telling; that it is right to break the rules and skip recitations and torment the teachers and play jokes on the girls not in their set. She seems to have a great influence over Lloyd. I don't believe godmother would like it if she knew how much. Already Lloyd has promised to tease her father and mother into letting her go to New York next fall, to enter Eugenia's school. She told us that it is very select, and said, "You know sometimes schools that advertise themselves as being awfully select are no better than those horrid public schools, for they take anybody who applies, no matter how common they are."

Joyce asked her why she called public schools horrid, and she answered in such a disgusted, patronising way, "Oh, nobody who is anybody would go to a public school."

That made Joyce mad, and she told her that she went to one and that she was proud of it; that where she lived public schools were considered better than the private ones. They had better teachers and more progressive methods; and she said she wouldn't give up the Plainsville High School for all the select seminaries in New York.

Then Eugenia drawled in such a bored tone, "Oh, wouldn't you! Well, maybe you wouldn't, being from the West, you know. I've always heard it spoken of out there as wild and woolly, and I suppose it is all a matter of taste."

Then she gave a provoking little laugh, and began to hum a tune, as if public schools and people who went to them were too common for her to think about. Joyce looked out of the window with a sort of don't-care expression, and said something in French. Of course I couldn't understand it, but she told me afterward that it was a well-known proverb about the opinion of a wise fool.

Eugenia was so astonished! She did not know that Joyce can speak French. She has a way of using it herself all the time when she talks. She is always throwing in a French word or sentence that Lloyd and I can't understand. Joyce laughed about it to me the first day she came, and said Eugenia is just as apt to use the wrong word as the right one. This was the first time that Joyce had spoken French, and Eugenia was so surprised she couldn't help showing it, and asked her why she had never said anything before in that language. Joyce told her that her teacher never allowed her to mix the languages. She said it was in bad taste to do so in speaking to people who only understood one; that it seemed affected, or as if the person wanted to show off how much she knew.

Then that made Eugenia mad, and she asked her in a spiteful way if it was a public school teacher that told her that, and said she didn't know that they taught French out West. Joyce said yes, that they did, but that of course a year abroad was quite a help, and that before she left France they told her that her accent was quite Parisian.

That took the wind out of Eugenia's sails. She did not know that Joyce had been abroad. She is crazy to go herself, but that is the one thing that her father will not humour her in. He says that she must wait until she is older, and he has time to go with her himself. All her friends have been, and it seemed to mortify her that Joyce was ahead of her there. She hasn't put on any airs with Joyce since, although she still does with me.

This is a great deal of nonsense to write in my "Good times" book, but I have put it in to explain why we have paired off as we have. Joyce and I go together now, and Eugenia and Lloyd. Eugenia flatters her all the time, and never says hateful things to her as she does to us, and Lloyd thinks that Eugenia is perfection.

Some letters came this afternoon,—a whole handful for Eugenia, written on handsome linen paper and sealed with pretty monogram seals. I had a letter, too. The first one since I have been here. It was from Davy, and printed in big tipsy letters that straggled all over the page. There were only a few lines, but I knew how long the little fellow must have worked over them, gripping the pencil tight in his hard little fist. I was so proud of it, Davy's first letter, that I passed it around for the girls to see. Lloyd and Joyce were interested and amused, and laughed as I had done over the dear crooked letters; but Eugenia was in one of her high and mighty moods, and she only lifted those black eyebrows in that indifferent way of hers, and tossed it back.

"What awfully queer letter-paper," she said. "Ruled! I didn't know that anybody ever wrote on ruled paper nowadays, but servants. Eliot always does, but it's so common to use it, you know."

I could hardly keep the tears back to have her make fun of poor little Davy's letter. For a few minutes I was so homesick that I wished I was back with Davy in the plain old farmhouse, where it doesn't make any difference whether there are lines on your paper or not, or any such silly things as that. Everybody uses ruled paper there, for that matter, because Squire Jaynes doesn't sell any other kind. What difference does it make, anyhow, I should like to know?

I went off to my own room with the letter, and Joyce followed me and found me crying. She made a face out of the window at Eugenia, and told me never to mind what anybody said. There was a big wide world outside of Eugenia's set with its silly airs and graces, and sensible people made fun of them. Then she offered to illustrate my answer to Davy's letter, and drew a picture of Calico and Lad at the top of the page, and Lloyd's parrot at the bottom. That reminded me to tell him some funny things the parrot had said, and in writing them I got over my homesickness.

Eugenia has a crest on her paper, because some one of her great-great-great-grandfathers, almost back to Noah, was a lord. But it doesn't make her remember to act like a lady. She ought to be made to learn the lines that were in my copy-book once:

"Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood."



CHAPTER VIII.

THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER.

There had fallen a pause in the round of merry-makings. After a week of picnics and fishing-parties, lawn fetes and tennis tournaments, there came a day for which no special entertainment had been planned. It was a hot morning, and the girls were out under the trees: Betty in the swing, with a book in her lap, as usual, Joyce on a camp-stool near by, making a sketch of her, and Eugenia swinging idly in a hammock.

The Little Colonel had been swinging with her, but something had called her to the house, and a deep silence fell on the little group after her departure. Betty, lost in her book, and Joyce, intent on her sketch, did not seem to notice it, but presently Eugenia sat up in the hammock and gave her pillow an impatient thump.



"Whew! how deadly stupid it is here!" she exclaimed. "I'm glad that I don't have to live in the country the year round! Nothing to do—nothing to see—I'd turn to a vegetable in a little while and strike root. I wish something exciting would happen, for I'm bored stiff."

Betty looked up from her story in astonishment. "Why, I think it is lovely here!" she cried. "I'd never get tired of Locust in a hundred years!"

Eugenia smiled, a pitying, amused sort of smile that brought a flush to Betty's cheek. There was a tinge of a sneer in it that seemed to say, "Oh, you poor thing, of course you like it. You have never known any better."

Betty's eyes went back to her book again. Eugenia, thrusting one little foot from a mass of pink ruffles, gave an impatient push against the ground with the toe of her slipper, which set the hammock to swinging violently.

"Ho-hum!" she yawned, discontently. "I wish that we could go down to the gypsy camp that we passed yesterday."

"So do I," agreed Joyce. "It looked so picturesque with the tents and the white covered wagons, and that old crone bending over the camp-fire. I know a woman at home who had her fortune told by a gypsy, and every single thing that was told her came true."

"I wonder how they can tell," said Eugenia.

"By the lines in their hands. It is as plain as the alphabet to some people. They can tell how long you're going to live, whether you'll be married or not, and what sort of a future you're to have. They say that there are some lines in your hand that mean wealth, and some health, and there are stars for success and crosses for losses and all sorts of signs."

"Oh, how interesting!" cried Betty, again pausing in her story, and spreading out her little brown hands, to examine them, Eugenia held up one of her slim palms, and studied it intently, tracing the lines with a tapering white forefinger.

"Here's a star in my hand," she cried, excitedly, "and all sorts of queer lines and marks that I never noticed before. I wonder which is the marriage line. Oh, girls, I'm just wild to have my fortune told. Let's ride down to the camp before lunch."

"Costs too much," said Joyce, holding her sketch off at arm's length and studying the effect through half-shut eyes. "Rob Moore said that his brother Edward went over to the camp with a party, several nights ago, and they had to pay a dollar apiece. That bars me out, for dollars don't grow on bushes at my house. Besides, Bob said his brother said that they are not real gypsies. The people around here think they are a set of strolling horse thieves. Mister Edward says that the old woman looks like a Florida cracker, and talks like one too, but she vows that she is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter and was born on the banks of the Nile."

"That settles it!" cried Eugenia, "I am going." She turned the sparkling rings on her finger and watched them reflect the light as she spoke. "We'll all go. It will be my treat. I haven't touched my allowance since I've been here, and papa gave me ten dollars more than usual this month. There isn't any place to spend money here but at the grocery and meat shop, and it's burning a hole in my purse. Only four dollars for all of us. That isn't very much."

"Only four dollars," thought Betty, lifting startled eyes, and thinking of the five nickels with which she had set forth on her journey. It seemed a fortune.

"Say that you will go," insisted Eugenia. "I'll think you're mean things if you don't, for it will give me more pleasure to take you than anything I can possibly think of."

"Yes, I'll be glad to go," said Joyce. "It is awfully sweet of you to stand treat, Eugenia."

"I think so, too," exclaimed Betty, adding her thanks. Joyce rose, gathering up her sketching materials.

"Are you going to the house?" asked Eugenia. "Then ask Lloyd if she won't send word to Alec to saddle the ponies, and tell her we want her to take a short ride with us before lunch. Don't say where we are going. We'll surprise her."

"All right," answered Joyce, moving off down the path.

"And Joyce," called Eugenia after her, "please tell Eliot to brush my hat and put some new laces in my boots. I'll be there by the time the ponies are at the house. Don't you think it will be fun?" she added, turning to Betty, when they were left alone. In the role of Lady Bountiful she felt very friendly and gracious.

"Yes, indeed!" cried Betty. "I think it will be perfectly lovely. It is so generous of you, Eugenia, to spend so much for our pleasure!"

"Oh, that's nothing," answered Eugenia, loftily. "Plenty more where that came from."

On the way to the house, Joyce met Mrs. Sherman driving toward her in a dog-cart. "Do you want to drive down to the post-office with me?" she asked. "There is room for one more."

Joyce shook her head and walked on, singing gaily, over her shoulder, "Other fish to fry, so it can't be I. Thank you kindly, ma'am!"

"Eugenia, Elizabeth, do either of you want to go?" Mrs. Sherman asked, stopping the dog-cart beside the hammock.

"No, I believe not, thank you," said Eugenia, languidly. "It's so hot this morning."

Betty's mouth and eyes both opened in astonishment at the excuse Eugenia gave, and her godmother smiled at the sight.

"Well, Elizabeth," she said, playfully, "I see that you are not going to leave me in the lurch. I knew that I wouldn't have to go begging far for company."

"Oh, I'd love to go, godmother," cried Betty, "if it was only any other time. But I've just been invited to ride over to the gypsy camp with the girls."

"To the gypsy camp!" echoed Mrs. Sherman, in surprise. "Why are you going there?"

"To have our fortunes told," answered the unsuspicious child, adding, gratefully, "Isn't it good of Eugenia? She is going to pay for all of us."

A smothered exclamation broke from Eugenia's lips, and she darted an angry look at Betty. There was a shadow of annoyance on Mrs. Sherman's face as she saw it.

"But you mustn't go there," she said. "I am sorry to have to disappoint you, but I couldn't think for a moment of allowing Lloyd to go there. They are a rough, low set of people,—gamblers and horse thieves. It wouldn't be proper for you little girls to go near them. I intended to mention the matter to Lloyd when I first heard that they had camped in the Valley, and tell her to avoid taking you on any of the roads leading to the camp. But I forgot it until you had ridden away. It would have worried me all the time you were out had I not known that Lloyd is a discreet child for her age, and she heard so much said about them when they were here last summer. I have never thought to mention it since that first day."

"I'm so sorry," said Eugenia; "I had set my heart on having my fortune told."

Mrs. Sherman tapped the wheel of the dog-cart with the lash of her whip, and sat considering. Presently she said, "Of course there isn't any truth in the fortunes they tell. One person knows just as much about the future as another. But I am sorry for your disappointment, for I know at your age such things are entertaining. How would it do for me to call at Miss Allison MacIntyre's while I am out, and ask her to come up to dinner to-night? She is a great friend of mine and knows enough about palmistry to tell some very interesting fortunes. She can amuse young people better than any one I ever knew. Her two nephews, Malcolm and Keith MacIntyre, came out from Louisville for a short visit yesterday, and I'll invite them, too. They are jolly boys, and I'm sure you will find them far more entertaining than any of the gypsies. What do you say to that plan? Will it make up for the disappointment?"

"Yes, indeed!" answered Betty, and Eugenia smiled her approval, for she had heard Lloyd talk about the MacIntyre boys, and had been hoping to see them. But when Mrs. Sherman had driven on, she turned to Betty with an angry face.

"Tattletale," she said, in a sneering tone. "Why did you go and spoil everything? If you had kept still we could have gone and nobody would have been the wiser. Now it will be no end of trouble to get there without her finding it out."

"You don't mean that you are going after all that godmother has said?" cried Betty, with a look of horror in her big brown eyes. "Why, a wild Arab wouldn't treat his host with such disrespect as that after he'd eaten his salt."

Eugenia's black eyes flashed dangerously. "Yes, Miss Prunes and Prisms, I am going, I don't care what you say. I have made up my mind to have my fortune told by the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, that was born on the banks of the Nile, and all the king's horses and all the king's men can't make me change it again. It is foolish of Cousin Elizabeth to be so particular, and I am going to do as I please. I always do at home, no matter what papa says. I've never had to mind anybody all my life, and I'll certainly not begin it now that I am in my teens. It is all nonsense about it not being proper for us to go to the camp. Cousin Elizabeth is mighty nice and sweet, but she's an old fogy to talk that way. And she needn't think she has stopped me. I may not get there to-day, but I'll go to that camp before I go back to New York if it's the last thing I do."

She sprang out of the hammock and walked haughtily down the path, her head held high, and her pink ruffles switching angrily from side to side. Betty followed at a safe distance, reaching the house in time to see Joyce and Lloyd come down, ready for their ride. She would have made some excuse to stay at home if she thought that Eugenia intended to carry out her plans at once; but thinking she would surely not attempt it until a later day, she mounted with the others and started down the avenue.

At the gate, as they turned into the public road, they spied a noisy little cavalcade racing down the pike toward them. Rob Moore led the charge, and two strangers were following hard behind.

"It's the MacIntyre boys," exclaimed the Little Colonel, shading her eyes with her hand and then half turning in her saddle to explain to the girls. "It's Malcolm and Keith. You'll like them. They stayed out heah with their grandmothah one whole wintah, and they used to come up to ou' house lots. You remembah I told you 'bout them. They bought that pet beah from a tramp and neahly frightened me to death at their valentine pahty. I went into a dahk room, where it was tied up, and didn't know it was theah till it stood up on its hind feet and came at me. I neahly lost my mind, I was so sca'd."

"Oh, yes," cried Joyce. "I saw their pictures, all dressed up like little knights when they were in the tableaux." She surveyed them with great interest as the cloud of dust they were raising rapidly drew nearer.

"Which one was it ran away with you in a hand-car, and nearly let the locomotive run over you?" asked Betty.

"That was Keith, the youngest one. He is on the black hawse."

"And which one gave you the silver arrow?" asked Eugenia.

"Malcolm," answered the Little Colonel, putting up her hand to feel the little pin that fastened her sailor collar.

"Oh, she's got it on now!" exclaimed Eugenia, turning to laugh over her shoulder at the other girls. "See how red her face is. I believe he is her sweet-heart."

"It's no such a thing!" cried the Little Colonel, angrily. "Eugenia Forbes, you are the biggest goose I evah saw! Mothah says it's silly for children to talk about havin' sweethea'ts. We are just good friends."

"It isn't silly!" insisted Eugenia. "I have two sweethearts who send me flowers and candy, and write me notes, and they are just as jealous of each other as they can be."

"Then I'd be ashamed to brag of it," cried the Little Colonel, angry that her mother's opinion had been so flatly contradicted. But there was no time for a quarrel. The boys had come up with them, and Lloyd had to make the necessary introductions. Eugenia thought she had never seen two handsomer boys, or any one with more courtly manners, and as Malcolm rode along beside her, she wished that Mollie and Fay and Kell could see her knightly escort.

Joyce and Keith followed, and Betty and Rob brought up the rear. The Little Colonel led the way. At the station she turned, saying, "Which way do you all want to go?"

"Have you ever been down by the gypsy camp?" asked Malcolm. "We boys passed that way a little while ago, and they were playing on banjos and dancing, and having a fine old time. It's quite a sight."

"Oh, yes, let's go!" cried Eugenia. "I'm wild to see it and have my fortune told. Joyce and I were talking about it a little while before we started. You want to go, don't you, Joyce?" she called back over her shoulder.

"What's that?" she answered. "To the gypsy camp? Of course. I thought that that was where we had decided to go when we started."

She had been in the house when Mrs. Sherman had discussed the matter with Eugenia and Betty, and was wholly unconscious that there was any objection to their going.

"I'm afraid mothah might not want us to go," said Lloyd. "Maybe it would be bettah to wait until anothah day and ask her."

Rob and Betty had fallen a little behind the others, having spied a bunch of four-leafed clovers, and Rob had dismounted to pick them, so they did not hear the discussion that followed. Lloyd was not willing to go without her mother's permission, remembering what had been said about the camp the previous summer, but Eugenia had her way as she usually did. Her influence over Lloyd was growing stronger every day.

Busily talking with Rob, as they followed along, Betty did not notice where they were going, until the strumming of a banjo and loud singing drew her attention to the fact that they were almost upon the gypsy camp.

"Oh, we mustn't go in here!" she called, in alarm, seeing that the other girls were dismounting, and the boys were hitching their ponies along the fence.

"Why?" asked Joyce, pausing in the act of springing from the saddle.

"Godmother said we mustn't. Not an hour ago, she said it wasn't a proper place for us, and that she wouldn't think for a moment of allowing Lloyd to come. When she saw that we were disappointed, she planned an entertainment for us to-night, and we agreed to it, both of us, Eugenia and I. Eugenia knows she did."

There were some very curious glances exchanged in the little group, and the boys drew to one side, leaving the girls to settle the matter between them. Eugenia darted a glance at Betty that would have withered her if it could.

"For goodness' sake don't make such an everlasting fuss about nothing," she exclaimed. "Come on; it will be all right."

"But Eugenia," interrupted Lloyd, "if mothah said I couldn't go that settles it."

"She didn't tell you, did she?" asked Eugenia.

"No, but if she told you, it is just the same."

"But she didn't tell me," persisted Eugenia, grown desperate to carry out her own wishes, and not stopping at the truth. "I'll tell you how it was."

Putting an arm around Lloyd, she drew her aside. "It is all Elizabeth's imagination," she protested, in a low tone. "I never saw such a little silly for making mountains out of mole-hills. She is such a fraid-cat that she wouldn't look behind her if a fly buzzed. Now you know, Lloyd, that, as particular as I am, I wouldn't think of going anywhere that wasn't proper, any more than your mother would. I'll take the responsibility. I'm sure I am old enough, and it's all right for us to go when three big boys are with us."

The others could not hear what passed between the two. Eugenia coaxed and wheedled and sneered by turns, and finally Lloyd yielded, and they all started in. All but Betty. She waited in the lane alone, riding up and down, up and down, for ages it seemed to her, waiting for them to come back.

In reality it was not quite an hour that she kept her solitary vigil in the lane. As she rode back and forth she could catch glimpses of Eugenia's pink dress inside the tent, where they were all gathered around the old fortune-teller. Now and then she heard voices and laughter, and it gave her such a lonely, left-out feeling that she could scarcely keep back the tears. She knew that the others thought she was fussy and overparticular, and that helped to make her thoroughly uncomfortable.

The fretful wail of a sick baby sounded at intervals from the tent. The banjo-playing had stopped on their arrival. It was nearly noon when the six children came straggling out of the tent.

"I wouldn't have missed it for anything!" said Eugenia, triumphantly. "Betty was a goose not to go, wasn't she? Why, Betty, she told me my whole past, and even described the three girls I go with at school. I am to have a long life and lots of money, and to be married twice. And she told me to beware of a fleshy, dark person with black eyes, who is jealous of me and will try to do me harm."

"What did she tell you, Joyce?" asked Betty, eagerly, feeling that she had missed the great opportunity of her life for lifting the veil that hid her future.

"She said that I had been across a big body of water and was going again, but the rest was a lot of stuff that I didn't believe and can't remember."

"She didn't give me a dollar's worth of fortune," complained Rob. "Not by a long shot." He had paid his own way and now thought regretfully of the two circuses to which the squandered dollar might have admitted him.

"Let's not tell anybody we've been here," suggested Eugenia as they started homeward. "It will make it so much more romantic, to keep it a secret. We can wait and see what comes true, and tell each other years afterward."

"But I always tell mothah everything," cried the Little Colonel, in surprise. "She would enjoy hearing the funny fortunes the old woman told us, and I'm suah if she knew how sick that poah baby is she'd send it something. She is always helpin' poah people."

"But I have a special reason for keeping it a secret," urged Eugenia. "Promise not to say anything about it for awhile anyhow. Wait till I am ready to go home."

"Why?" asked Lloyd, with a puzzled expression.

"She's afraid for godmother to know," said Betty, unable to control her tongue any longer, and still smarting with the recollection of some of the things with which Eugenia had answered her refusal to go into the camp with them.

"It is no such a thing!" cried Eugenia. "It was all right for us to go, and I've a private reason of my own for not saying anything about it for awhile. It is a very little thing to ask, and I'm sure that, as a guest of Lloyd's, it is a very little thing for her to do, to respect my wishes that much."

"Oh, of course, if you put it that way," said Lloyd, "I'll not say anything about it till you tell me that I can."

"You boys don't mind promising, either, do you?" asked Eugenia, flashing a smile of her black eyes at each one in turn.

"Cross your hearts," she cried, laughing, as they gave their promise, "and swear 'Really truly, blackly, bluely, lay me down and cut me in twoly,' that you won't tell."

Joyce laughingly followed the boys' example, and Eugenia gave a significant smile toward Betty, riding on alone in dignified silence. "Then it is all right," she exclaimed, loud enough for her to hear, "that is, if Miss Goody-goody doesn't feel it her duty to run and tell."

Betty was too angry to make any answer. She rode on with her cheeks burning and her head held high. Mrs. Sherman was sitting in the wide, cool hall when the little party stopped at the steps. The boys had ridden down the avenue, too, and dismounted to speak to her.

"I have left invitations for you all to come to dinner to-night," she said, as Malcolm and Keith came up to shake hands. "Your Aunt Allison has consented to play fortune-teller for us. Have you ever had your fortune told, Rob? You are to come, too."

"Yes, once," answered Rob, cautiously, catching a warning look from Eugenia. "It wasn't very satisfactory, though, and I'll be glad to try it again."

Such a flush had spread over the Little Colonel's face that Mrs. Sherman noticed it. "I am afraid you have ridden too far in this noonday heat, little daughter," she said. "You'd better go up-stairs and bathe your face."

The boys took their leave, and Lloyd escaped from her mother's watchful eyes to follow her advice. When she came down to lunch, the flush was gone from her cheeks, but there was an uncomfortable pricking of her conscience that stayed with her all that afternoon, and deepened steadily after Miss Allison's arrival.



CHAPTER IX.

HER SACRED PROMISE.

The fortune-telling began immediately after dinner. Miss Allison sat one side of a screen, and one by one the palms were thrust through a narrow opening for her to examine. Mrs. Sherman sat beside her, so neither of them saw the amused glances the children exchanged behind the screen, whenever her prophecies contradicted what the old gypsy had told them.

"I can judge of your chief characteristics by your hands," she said, "and it is wonderful how much palmistry reveals in that way; but I shall have to draw on my imagination for your future fortunes." This she did in such a bright amusing way that screams of laughter went up from behind the screen, and the hands she held often shook with merriment.

Not having had the experience of the gypsy tent, Betty awaited her turn with more interest than the others, and thrust her little brown hand through the opening, half afraid. She wondered what secrets it would tell Miss Allison, who, in addition to all the pleasant, complimentary things she had told, had added some very plain truths. Eugenia's hand, she said, showed its owner to be extravagant and wilful; Malcolm's, vain and overbearing; Keith's, disorderly; and Rob's, lacking in judgment.

Miss Allison held Betty's hand a moment, not certain to whom it belonged, although she might have guessed, considering how brown and hardened by work it was. "Too sensitive and too imaginative by far," she said. "But I like this little hand. It will always be faithful in little things as well as big, and will keep its promises to the utmost. It is a hand that can be trusted."

Betty's face shone. What Miss Allison had said pleased her more than the fortune which followed, although it foretold a long life full of as many interesting happenings as if she had Aladdin's wonderful lamp to use as she chose. She looked at her hand with a new interest after she had withdrawn it from the screen, and Keith found her studying it again after the fortune-telling was done, and the others had gone into the drawing-room.

Eugenia sat at the piano, Lloyd twanged on the harp, while Joyce tuned her mandolin and Malcolm his banjo. Rob lolled in an open window, listening, and beating time with both feet. Mrs. Sherman and Miss Allison were down at the far end of the wide porch, where the moonlight was stealing through the vines and shimmering on the floor.

It was on the porch steps that Keith found Betty looking at her hands again, as they lay spread out on her lap, and studying their lines by moonlight. He sat down beside her.

"How does your Aunt Allison know?" she asked, without looking up. "It seems like some sort of witches' work to me, the way she guessed things about the rest of you; and I suppose it's just as true what she said about me,—at least the part about being too sensitive and imaginative is true, I know. Cousin Hetty says I go about with my head in the clouds half the time. I would love to think that the other part is true, too. She said it in such a sweet solemn sort of a way, as if she laid some kind of a spell on my hand that was not to be broken. 'It will keep its promises to the utmost,' she said, and I feel that it will have to do it now, just because she said so."

"That is Aunt Allison's way," answered Keith. "Nobody knows how much she has helped Malcolm and me by giving us these, and expecting us to live up to them." He touched a little badge on the lapel of his coat, as he spoke. It was a tiny flower of white enamel, with a little diamond in the centre, like a drop of dew.

"What is that for?" asked Betty, curiously. "I have been wondering why you and your brother both wear them."

"Aunt Allison gave them to us. She calls us her two little knights, and this is the badge of our knighthood, 'wearing the white flower of a blameless life,' It began one time when we were out at grandmother's all winter. We gave a benefit for a little tramp, who came very near being burned to death in a cabin on the place. We had tableaux, you know, and Malcolm and I were knights in one of them."

"Oh, I know," interrupted Betty, eagerly. "I've seen your picture taken in that costume, and it is lovely."

"And then Aunt Allison explained all about King Arthur and his Round Table, and gave us the motto: 'Live pure, speak truth, right the wrong, honour the king, else wherefore born?'"

Betty repeated it softly. "How lovely!" she exclaimed, in a low tone. All the instruments were going now in the drawing-room,—harp, mandolin, piano, and banjo, and the music floated out sweetly on the night air to the earnest little couple on the steps. And the music, and the moonlight, and Betty's sympathetic little face, made it easy for Keith to grow confidential just then, and speak of things that usually make boys shy. He told her of his ambition to live up to his knightly motto, and of some of his boyish efforts to right the wrong in the big world about him, and all that he hoped to do when he was grown, and was free to use the money his grandfather had left him.

"I wish I could be a knight," sighed Betty to herself, moved to large ambitions by the boy's words, and discontented with her own small sphere. How manly he looked in the moonlight, his handsome face aglow with the thought of his noble purposes!

"It's funny," said Keith, looking down at her, "you're the only person that I ever talked to about such things, but Aunt Allison. You seem to understand in the same way that she does. I believe you'd have made a good knight yourself if you had lived in those days, because that is one of the things they had to vow, to keep a promise to the utmost."

Betty smiled happily, but made no answer. Rob joined them just then, and they fell to talking of childish things again,—games and pets, and things they had done, and places they had been. Next morning in her "Good times" book, Betty carefully wrote every word she could remember that Keith had said the evening before, about knights and knightly deeds. It was a half-hour that she loved to think about.

Miss Allison had invited them all to a picnic at the old mill on the following day. They were to go in the afternoon and come back by moonlight. It was not quite four o'clock when Mrs. Sherman stepped into the carriage at the door, followed by Eliot with an armful of wraps, which might be needed later in the evening. Every spare inch of the carriage was packed with things for the picnic. A huge lunch hamper stood on the front seat beside the coachman, and he could scarcely find room for his feet for the big freezer of ice-cream that took up so much space. Rugs, cushions, and camp-stools were tucked in at every corner, and Mrs. Sherman held Joyce's mandolin in her lap.

"Oh, girls!" she called, leaning out of the carriage and looking up at the second story windows. "Can I trust one of you to post the letter that I have left on the hall table?"

Two bright faces appeared at the same instant at different windows, and two voices called in the same breath, one answering, "Yes, godmother," and the other, "Yes, Cousin Elizabeth."

"I would take it myself," said Mrs. Sherman, "if I were going past the post-office, but I have to drive a roundabout way to the Ross place, to get some berries I engaged for the picnic. It is very important that the letter should go on to-night's mail train, and if one of you will drop it in the box as you go by, I'll be so much obliged."

"Yes'm, I'll do it," answered each girl again, almost in the same breath. With a nod and a smile to them, Mrs. Sherman told Alec to drive on. The ponies, already saddled and bridled, were waiting in front of the house. The girls were to ride by the MacIntyre place and escort Miss Allison's carriage to the picnic-ground, and had promised to be there at four, but the hall clock struck the hour before the last dress was buttoned and the last ribbon tied.

"Do you heah that?" cried the Little Colonel, in a panic of haste, as the musical chime sounded through the house. "It will nevah do to keep Miss Allison waitin'! Come on!" she exclaimed, adding, as she flew through the upper hall, "The last one down the stairs is a pop-eyed monkey!"

"I'm not it!" shrieked Joyce, racing past her.

"I'm not it!" echoed Betty, darting ahead of them both, and reaching the ponies first.

"Eugenia's last! She is the pop-eyed monkey!" cried Joyce, cheerfully, looking back with a laugh as she began to untie Calico. Eugenia switched her skirts disdainfully through the hall, and mounted in dignified disgust.

"You're elegant, I must say!" she exclaimed, scornfully. "I wouldn't play such a kid game!" Nevertheless, she dashed down the avenue at the top of her speed, when Joyce called out, tantalisingly, "The last one through the gate is a jibbering ornithorhynchus!" In her zeal not to be dubbed such a title for the rest of the day as a jibbering ornithorhynchus, Betty urged Lad along until she nearly bounced out of her saddle, and the letter lay on the hall table, forgotten by both the girls who had promised to post it.

It was a devious way to the ruins of the old stone mill,—down unfrequented roads, through meadow gates, and over a narrow pasture lot, then up a little hill and into a cool beech woods, where the peace of the summer reigned unbroken. Piloted by Lloyd, they reached the place just as Mrs. Sherman drove in from the opposite side of the woods.

The vacant windows of the old mill seemed staring in surprise at the gay party gathering on the hill above it, although it should have been accustomed to all kinds of picnics by this time, considering the number of generations it had watched them come and go. Nobody could tell how long it had been since the mill wheel turned its last round and the miller ground his last grist, but if the stones could babble secrets like the little spring, trickling down the rocky bank, they would have had many an interesting tale to tell of all that had happened in their hearing.

There were many names and initials carved in the bark of the old beech-trees. Malcolm found his father's and mother's on one, as he wandered around with Eugenia, and set to work to cut his own underneath. Eugenia seated herself on a rock near by, to watch him. Keith and Rob, and the other boys who had been invited to the picnic, busied themselves by dragging up sticks and logs for a big bonfire. The girls began a game of "I spy" behind the great rock where the columbines clambered in the spring, and spread their blossoms like butterflies poised on an airy stem.

"Come on, Eugenia," they called, but she shrugged her shoulders with what the girls called a "young ladified air," and turned to Malcolm with a coquettish glance of her big black eyes.

"I know whose initials you are going to cut with yours," she said.

"Whose?" asked Malcolm, digging away at a capital M.

"Oh, I'll not tell, but I know well enough. There's only one that you could cut, you know."

"You needn't be so sure about that," said Malcolm, loftily. "I know plenty of names that I wouldn't mind cutting here in this tree with mine."

"With a heart around them, like the ones on this tree?" she asked, pointing to a rude carving on the trunk against which she leaned.

"Yes, with a heart around them," he repeated.

"But there's only one name you would carve that way, and put an arrow through it," she said, meaningly. "At any rate, a silver arrow. Oh, maybe you think I haven't seen her wear it, and blush when I teased her about it."

Malcolm went on cutting, without an answer. He had admired Eugenia more than any girl he had ever seen, but somehow this speech jarred on him. It did not seem exactly ladylike for her to insist on twitting him in such a personal way about his friendship for the Little Colonel. She would never have done such a thing, he felt quite sure. For a moment he half wished that it was Lloyd sitting on the rock beside him, but Eugenia could be very entertaining when she chose, and she was trying her best now to make an agreeable impression on this handsome boy who seemed so fond of Lloyd. She wanted to be first in his attentions, and, as usual, she had her way.

"I told you so!" she cried, presently, as a large capital L appeared under Malcolm's initials. "I knew you just couldn't help making an L, and the next one will be an S."

"I'm not done yet," he said, with a smiling side-glance at her, and added two more lines, changing the L to an E. An expression of pleasure flashed across her face, as he outlined an F next to it. It would be something to tell Mollie and Fay and Kell next time she wrote, that the handsomest boy in Kentucky (as she enthusiastically described him to them), with the manners of a Sir Philip Sidney, had left the record of his attachment for her where all might read.

She gave him another smile from under her long black eyelashes, and then looked down with a blush. He added the heart to the inscription then, and pierced it with an arrow.

While these two played at a game that older children had played before them for many a generation (as the scarred old tree-trunks bore silent witness on every hand), the game of "I spy" went on uproariously behind the columbine rock. The bonfire blazed higher and higher. It lighted the cool depths of the darkening woods, and sent dancing shadows across the deep ravines, and presently the picnic feast was spread near by and part of the supper was cooked over its coals.

It was by its weird light that the charades were played, when the feast had been cleared away. Miss Allison arranged them. The actors were all little negroes, the funniest, blackest little pickaninnies that ever sung a song or danced a double shuffle.

"It's Sylvia Gibbs's family," explained Miss Allison, to the girls. "Our circle of King's Daughters had them under its wing all winter, or they would have starved. When I discovered what heathen they were, I turned missionary and taught them an hour every Sunday afternoon. They will do anything for me now, and are such clever little mimics that I know they can act the charades charmingly. Besides, they will give us a cake-walk afterward, and sing for us like nightingales."

While Miss Allison marshalled her flock of little darkies behind the great rock, Mrs. Sherman called the children to seat themselves in a semicircle on the camp-stools and rugs in front. "This is to be a guessing contest," she explained, as she passed a card and pencil to each guest. "There must be no talking, and no comparing notes. As each syllable is acted, write down the word you think is meant. The one who guesses the most charades wins the prize. Stir the bonfire, Alec. Now, all ready!"

Miss Allison came out in front of her audience. "This word is the name of a favourite book," she announced. "It consists of two words. The first word is in three syllables, the second in two. They will be given in five separate acts."

Every eye watched intently, as three little coloured boys came out from behind the rock and went through the scene of a highway robbery. Little Jim Gibbs, his white teeth and gleaming eyeballs making his face seem as black as night by contrast, strode out with a high silk hat, a baggy umbrella, and an old carpet-bag. He was evidently intended to represent a lonely traveller, for, as he sauntered along in front of the audience, two other boys of the Gibbs family sprang out of the bushes in the background, with white cloth masks over their faces. One carried a dark lantern and the other a toy pistol, which he held at Jim's head. They proceeded to go through the traveller's pockets, stealing watch, purse, carpet-bag, and umbrella. After that they took to their heels, leaving the poor despoiled traveller looking mournfully at his empty pockets, which were turned wrong side out.

"Steal" wrote Eugenia on her card, although she could think of no book beginning with that name. "Thieves" wrote Rob, and any one looking over the shoulders of the group would have seen several cards which bore the same word, but more which their puzzled owners had left blank. Betty tapped her teeth a moment with a pencil and then triumphantly wrote "rob."

The next act showed a hastily constructed house made of a clothes-horse and heavy roofing paper. Doors and windows had been roughly outlined in charcoal. In front, a swinging sign-board announced it as the "Traveller's Rest" and offered refreshment within for man and beast.

"Inn" wrote Betty, quickly guessing the second syllable. She was sure of the whole word, now, but the majority of the children sat with their pencils in their mouths, unable to think of any word that would fit in place beside the one already written.

"Oh, this is easy," said Betty to herself, writing the name "Robinson Crusoe" after the last act, as the crew of little pickaninnies, seated in an old skiff which had been dragged up from the mill stream for that purpose, took up a piece of patch-work and began to sew. Betty was the only one who had guessed it.

The next charade was easier. Every one wrote "music" on his card, after the two acts in which plaintive mews floated up from the rocks and the Gibbs family were taken sick. All but Jim, who, in the high silk hat he had worn before, took the part of doctor.

"If they are all as easy as this," thought Betty, "I can surely take one of the prizes," and she waited eagerly for the next word. In the first act 'Tildy Gibbs came out with an envelope in her hands, and all of a sudden Betty's heart gave a guilty thump as she thought of the letter she and Eugenia had left lying on the hall table. They had forgotten their promise.

"But it is Eugenia's fault every bit as much as it is mine," she thought, looking across the semicircle, where Eugenia sat serenely unconscious of forgotten promises. "She's just as much to blame as I am. Oh, well, I'll mail it first thing in the morning."

But her conscience kept troubling her. "Your godmother asked if she could trust you, and she said it was important. You know you promised. There's time yet to slip away and post that letter before the mail train goes by."

But Betty would not listen to her conscience. She resolutely turned her attention to the charades, until all at once she seemed to hear Miss Allison's voice saying, "I like this little hand. It will keep a promise to the utmost." Then Keith's conversation of the night before came back to her about his motto and his badge. But more than all, the thought of being worthy of her godmother's trust in her impelled her to keep her promise.

It was a hard struggle that went on in the little girl's mind just then. From the puzzled glances around her she was sure that she was the only one who had guessed all the charades correctly; therefore she stood the best chance of winning the first prize, and she wanted it—oh, how she wanted it!—for Mrs. Sherman had said that it was a book. And yet—her sacred promise! If she kept it, she would lose her only chance. It was twilight in the woods, and it would be dark before she could get back to the picnic-grounds. It wouldn't be right to ask any one else to go with her, and miss the chance of winning the prize, too. Still, there was that promise, and it must be kept—to the utmost. All these thoughts went on, swaying her first to one decision and then another.

She half rose from the rug where she was sitting, then dropped down again. It seemed hardly fair that Eugenia should not share the responsibility, yet she knew her too well to ask her to go back to the house with her. Several times she started up and then sank back before she could make up her mind. Finally she walked over to a fence corner on the other side of the bonfire, where the water-bucket stood. The ponies were hitched below in the ravine. So intently was the group above watching the charades, that no one saw her when she scrambled down the steep path leading into the ravine, and began untying Lad. Climbing into the saddle, she gave one regretful look at the party she was leaving behind her, and resolutely turned his head toward home.

It was lighter out in the open, when they had left the shelter of the woods, and she guided the pony down the hill, across the pasture, and through the gate, glad that she did not have to go all the way in darkness. Lad, knowing that he was going home, dashed down the road, choosing his own direction when the lonely highway branched. He knew the way better than his little rider.

She looked around her, thinking how long the way seemed when she had to travel it all by herself. She was riding faster than she had ever ridden before, and yet it seemed hours since she had left the mill when she at last reached the great gate with the avenue of locusts stretching beyond it.

Springing off the pony when it stopped at the steps, she rushed into the hall, snatched the letter from the table, and ran out again, only pausing for a hasty glance at the clock. Mom Beck, who had heard the clatter of hoofs, the quick step on the porch, and the wild dash out again, feared that something was amiss, and came running to the door.

"What undah the sun is the mattah, honey?" she called, but Betty was far down the avenue, and never paused to look back.

Lad, turned away from home, was not so willing to run now, and Betty could hear the train whistling up the road. It was the seven o'clock mail train.

"Oh, Lad, hurry!" she urged. "Dear, good old Lad, please hurry! I'm so afraid we won't get there in time."

Lad looked around at her and stopped still in the road. The train whistled nearer. Guiding the pony to the fence, Betty stood up and broke a switch from an overhanging tree.

"I hate to do it, you poor old fellow," she said, "but I must. You must get to the post-office in time." Urged along by the switch and her tearful pleadings, Lad broke into a run and brought up at the post-office, just as the postmistress was locking the mail-bag. "Oh, Miss Mattie!" sounded an anxious little voice at the delivery window, "is it too late to send this letter? Mrs. Sherman said it must go, if possible, on this train."

"It's a close shave, my dear," said Miss Mattie, reaching out to take the letter eagerly thrust through the bars. "I'm a few minutes late, anyhow, and there's barely time to stamp it and slip it in, so!" She acted while she spoke, so that with the last word she had turned the key. A coloured porter, who stood waiting, caught up the bag and hurried across the road to the railroad station. The train came thundering down the track, and he jumped across in front of the locomotive.

Betty watched until she saw the mail-bag tossed aboard, and then gave a deep sigh of thankfulness. "Well," she exclaimed to Lad, in a relieved tone, "that's done! We're too late for the charades, but maybe we'll get back to the mill in time for the cake-walk."

It would have been quite dark by the time she reached the cross-roads again, if it had not been that the moon was beginning to rise, and cast a faint whiteness over the dusky fields. She could not remember which way to turn. The first time she passed that way she had paid no attention to direction, but had followed heedlessly after Lloyd. The second time the pony had shot by so fast that she had had no time to consider. Now he stood still, not caring which way she chose so long as he had to travel away from his stall and feed-bin.

"It must be to the left," she said, in bewilderment, after a moment's hesitation, and slowly turned in that direction. But she had taken the wrong way. She went on and on, wondering why she did not come to a gate, when the road suddenly turned into a narrow wagon track, with dark corn-fields on each side. There was not a house or a human being in sight.

The moon was not high enough yet to dispel much of the gloom of the twilight, and bullbats were circling overhead, dipping so low at times that once they almost brushed her face.

"Oh, I'm lost!" she whispered, with trembling lips. All of a sudden there was a rustling of the high corn, and out of it limped a big burly negro. He had a gun on his shoulder, and a savage-eyed dog skulked at his heels. Betty nearly screamed in her terror at this sudden appearance. She knew at a glance that the fellow must be "Limping Tige," one of the worst characters in the county. He had just served a third term in the penitentiary, and she had heard Mom Beck say that nobody in the Valley would draw an easy breath while Limping Tige was loose.

A cold fear seized the child, and such a weakness numbed her trembling hands that she could scarcely hold the bridle.

Wheeling the pony so suddenly that she almost lost her balance, she gave him a cut with the switch that sent him flying back over the road he had come, at the top of his speed. Now every bush and every tree and every brier-tangled fence corner seemed to hold some nameless terror for her, and even her lips were cold and blue with fear.

At the cross-roads she had another fright, as something big and black loomed up in the moonlight ahead of her. "Oh, what is it?" she moaned, so frightened that her heart almost stopped beating. The next glance showed her that it was some one coming toward her on horseback, and then a cheery whistling reassured her. Nobody could be very dangerous, she knew, who could go along the road whistling "My Old Kentucky Home" in such a happy fashion.

It was Keith, who had come to hunt for her. They had missed her, when the charades were over, and, finding her pony gone too, thought that she must have been taken suddenly ill, and had slipped away quietly in order not to disturb the pleasure of the others.

Keith had offered to ride up to Locust and see what was the matter, and his surprise showed itself in his rapid questioning when he met her riding wildly away from the place where she had seen Limping Tige. It did not take long for him to learn the whole story of her lonely ride, and the fright she had had, for his questions were fired with such directness of aim that truthful Betty could not dodge them. "And you missed it all—the charades and the chance of taking the prize—and came all the way back by yourself just to post a letter, when you didn't know the way!" he exclaimed again as they drew in sight of the old mill.

"Well, I call that pretty plucky for a girl."

"I didn't want to," confessed Betty, "but there wasn't anything else to do. It was a sacred promise, you know, and I had to keep it—to the utmost."

They jogged along in silence side by side, a moment longer. Then as the bonfire at the old mill flared into sight, Keith looked down at the tired little figure on the pony beside him.

"Betty," he said, with a gleam of admiration in his eyes, "you're a brick!"



CHAPTER X.

"FOUND OUT."

"What makes everybody so snarly this morning?" asked Joyce, looking around on the circle of moody faces. The four girls had been lounging in hammocks and chairs under the trees for several hours, and in all that time scarcely a civil word had been spoken.

"There isn't any reason why we should be cross," Joyce went on. "It's a glorious day, we've had a delicious breakfast and a good ride, and there is the tissue-paper party at Sally Fairfax's to-night to look forward to. But in spite of it all I feel so mean and cross that I want to scratch somebody."

Betty looked up from her book and laughed. "I don't feel snarly, but I've been wondering ever since breakfast what had happened to make you all out of sorts. Lloyd looks as if she had been eating sour pickles, and Eugenia has snapped at everybody who has spoken to her this morning."

"That's a story!" exclaimed Eugenia, tartly, with such a frown that Lloyd began singing in a tantalising tone, "Crosspatch, draw the latch, sit by the fire and spin."

"Oh, hush up!" exclaimed Eugenia, crossly.

"Why, Lloyd," said Mrs. Sherman, coming up just then in time to hear Lloyd's song and Eugenia's answer, "you are surely not teasing one of your guests! I am surprised!"

To every one's astonishment, Lloyd flopped over in the hammock, and, covering her face with her arm, began to cry.

"What is the matter, little daughter?" asked Mrs. Sherman, in alarm, sitting down in the hammock beside her and stroking the short soft hair soothingly. She had never known Lloyd to be so sensitive to a slight reproof.

"Mother didn't mean to scold her little girl. I was only surprised to hear you saying anything unpleasant to a guest of yours."

"You-you'd have said it, too!" sobbed the Little Colonel, "if Eu-Eugenia had been so mean to you all mawnin'! She's been t-talkin so hateful and cross—"

"I have not!" cried Eugenia. "You began it, and you have tried to pick a quarrel ever since we came out here, and Joyce has kept nagging at me, too. You've both made me feel so miserable and unhappy that I wish I'd never set eyes on you and your horrid old Kentucky!"

Here, to Mrs. Sherman's still greater surprise, Eugenia fumbled for her handkerchief and began mopping up the tears that were streaming down her face.

"Really, girls, I am distressed!" exclaimed Mrs. Sherman. "Is there anything serious the matter that you have been quarrelling about, or are you only ill and nervous?"

"I nevah was so mizzible in all my life," said Lloyd. "My throat is soah and my eyes ache, and I can't help cryin' if anybody looks at me."

"That's just the way I feel," said Eugenia, still dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief, "and my head aches, besides."

"I think we are all three taking bad colds," said Joyce, from her hammock. "I haven't reached the crying stage yet, but I'm fast on the way toward it. Betty will be the only one able to go to the party to-night, and our tissue-paper dresses are so pretty."

Mrs. Sherman looked from one flushed face to another with a puzzled expression. "I don't know what to think," she said, "but if I were not sure that you have been no place where you possibly could have been exposed, I should be afraid that you are all taking the measles. Doctor Fuller told me the other day that there are several children in the gypsy camp down with it, and one poor little baby had died. It didn't have proper attention. Why, what is the matter, girls?" Mrs. Sherman paused, having seen a startled glance pass from Lloyd to Eugenia.

"Surely you haven't been near any of those people, have you? Passed them on the road, or met them at the station at any time?"

There was a long pause in which nobody answered, and in which Betty could hear her heart beat fast.

"Lloyd, answer me," insisted Mrs. Sherman.

"Eu-Eugenia won't l-let me!" sobbed the Little Colonel. "She made us all p-promise not to tell."

Eugenia's face turned pale, but she lifted her head defiantly as Mrs. Sherman turned to her, calling her name.

"What is the trouble, child? You surely didn't go to the camp that morning when I warned you not to?"

"Yes, we did," answered Eugenia, a little frightened now by the expression of Mrs. Sherman's face, but still defiant.

"When was it?"

"About a week ago, I think. I don't remember exactly."

"It's been nine days," said Betty, counting her fingers. "I remember it because it was the day before the picnic at the old mill."

"And there was a sick baby in the tent when we went in to have our fortunes told," added Joyce. "It lay in the old woman's lap all the time she held my hand, and it kept turning its head from side to side, and fretting in a weak little voice as if it didn't have strength to cry hard. That must have been the poor little thing that died."

"And you all went into that tent and all let that old woman hold your hands?" asked Mrs. Sherman, looking around from one to another with a distressed face.

"No, mothah," cried the Little Colonel, "Betty didn't go, and she tried to keep us from goin'. She said you wouldn't like it."

A loving smile of unspoken approval, that made Betty's heart glow with pleasure, lighted Mrs. Sherman's face for an instant. Then she turned to the others.

"Well, I'll send for Doctor Fuller immediately. If it proves to be the measles, we will turn the house into a hospital at once. If the old saying is true that misery loves company, then you ought to be a contented quartette."

"Oh, I've already had the measles," said Betty, quickly, "two years ago."

"Then I'm glad that you will not have to suffer for the disobedience of the others," answered her godmother. "It has brought its own punishment this time, so I'll not add a scolding. I'll leave the measles, if that's what it turns out to be, to preach you a sermon on the text, 'Be sure your sin will find you out.'"

Sally Fairfax welcomed no guests from Locust that night at her party, for the doctor made his visit and pronounced his verdict. No parties for many a long day. Lloyd and Eugenia and Joyce had the measles, and nobody would want Betty to come for fear of the contagion.

Mrs. Sherman and Eliot and Mom Beck went from one darkened room to another with hot lemonade, and Betty was left to roam about the place by herself. Once she slipped into the sewing-room where the tissue-paper costumes were laid out in readiness beside the dainty little flower-shaped hats. Joyce's was patterned after a pale blue morning-glory, and Eugenia's a scarlet poppy. Lloyd's looked like a pink hyacinth, and Betty's a daffodil.

"It's too bad," mourned Betty, tilting the graceful daffodil blossom of a hat on her brown curls, and admiring it in the mirror. "I haven't got the measles, and this is so sweet, it's a pity not to wear it somewhere."

Late that evening she heard the Little Colonel grumbling: "Well, this is a house pahty suah enough, I must say! Heah we are in the house, and heah we'll stay and miss all the fun. I don't like this kind of a house pahty!"