"Nevah mine, honey," said Mom Beck. "It'll not be as bad as you think. The measles is done broke out on you beautiful—as thick as hops."

"But I hate this dahk room," wailed the Little Colonel, "and it's so poky and tiahsome, and I am so hot and I ache all ovah—"

Then Betty heard Mrs. Sherman go into the room, and the fretting ceased as her cool hand stroked the hot little forehead, and her voice began a slumber song. It was the "White Seal's Lullaby."

"'Oh, hush thee my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green.'"

How often she had read it in her "Jungle Book," but she had no idea how beautiful it was until she heard it as her godmother was singing it. There was the slow, restful, swinging motion of the waves in that music; the coolness of the deep green seas. How quickly it took away the fever and the aching, and left the healing of sleep in its wake!

"'Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow. Oh, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging seas.'"

Betty, in her room across the hall, leaned her head against the window-sill and looked out into the darkness. There were tears in her eyes. "Oh," she whispered, with a quivering lip, "if I only had a mother to sing to me like that, I wouldn't mind having the measles or anything else!"

* * * * *

The worst was over in a few days, and then two cots were carried into Eugenia's room for Lloyd and Joyce to occupy during the day. The windows still had to be kept darkened, but the girls managed to find a great deal to amuse themselves with. They would not have fared so well had it not been for Betty. Many an hour she spent in the dim room, when the summer was calling to her on every breeze to come out in its sunshine and be glad in its cheer. Many a game of checkers she played with the exacting invalids, when she longed to be riding over the country on Lad. And she read aloud by the single ray of light admitted through the shutters, and told stories until her voice was husky.

"It's fun, isn't it?" said Eugenia, one day when they were waiting for their lunch to be brought up. "I am always wondering what is coming next, for Cousin Elizabeth has never missed a day, sending up some surprise with our meals. It is a continual surprise-party."

"We'll be dreadfully spoiled," said Joyce, "like a little boy at home that I know. He insists on keeping Christmas the year around. As he is the only child, and they'd give him the moon if they could reach it, they let him hang up his stocking every night, and every morning there is a present in it for him."

"Cousin Elizabeth is spoiling us just the same way," said Eugenia. "Those little souvenir spoons she sent up with the chocolate yesterday are perfect darlings. I think the world of mine."

"I wonder what the surprise will be to-day," said Lloyd, as the jingling of silver and tinkling of ice in glasses sounded on the stairs.

"I know," said Betty, running to open the door for the procession of tray bearers. "It is conundrum salad. I helped godmother make it."

Eliot, Mom Beck, and the housemaid entered in solemn file, each bearing a tray containing a simple lunch, in the centre of which was a fancy plate containing a pile of crisp green lettuce.

"Isn't that a dainty dish to set before the king!" exclaimed Joyce, examining her conundrum salad. "Oh, girls, how that did fool me. I could have sworn that those were real lettuce leaves, and they are only paper. But what a clever imitation, and what a lot of conundrums written inside!"

"See if you can guess this one?" cried Eugenia. "Isn't it funny?" and she read a clever one that set them all to thinking. There was much laughter when they finally had to give it up, and she told them the answer.

"Now listen to this," said Lloyd next, and then it was Joyce's turn, and the lunch was eaten in the midst of much laughing and many bright remarks that the salad called forth.

"You wouldn't think that having measles was so funny," said Betty, when the trays had been carried out, "if you had had it the way I did. It was in the middle of harvest, so nobody had time to take care of me. Cousin Hetty had so much to do that she couldn't come up-stairs many times a day to wait on me. She'd just look in the door and ask if I wanted anything, and hurry away again. My little room in the west gable was so hot. The sun beat against it all afternoon, and the water in the pitcher wouldn't stay cool. Sometimes I'd cry till my throat ached, wishing that I had a mother to sit beside me, and put her cool hands against my face, and rub my back when it ached, and sing me to sleep. And after I got better, and my appetite began to come back, I'd lie and watch the door for hours, it seemed to me, waiting for Cousin Hetty to come up with my meals. I'd think of all sorts of dainty things that I had read about, until my mouth watered. Then when she came, maybe there would be nothing but a cup of tea slopped all over the saucer, and a piece of burnt toast. Or maybe it would be a bowl of soup half cold, or too salty. Poor Cousin Hetty was so busy she couldn't bother to fix things for me. I couldn't help crying when she'd gone down-stairs. I'd be so disappointed.

"But the worst thing of all was what Davy did one day. He wanted to be kind and nice, and do something for me, so he went off to the pond, and sat there on the hot sunny bank all morning, trying to catch me a fish. To everybody's surprise he did catch one about eleven o'clock,—a slimy-looking little catfish,—and came running straight up to my room with it in his dirty little hands. He smelled so fishy I could scarcely stand it, for it was the day I felt the very worst. But he didn't know that. He climbed up on the bed with it, and held it almost under my nose for me to see. He was so happy that his dirty little face was all one big smile. He kept saying, as he dangled it around, 'Ain't he pretty, Betty? I ketched him. I ketched him for you, 'cause you're sick.'

"Ugh! I can smell that fish yet! I smelled it all afternoon, for he took it down-stairs to have it cleaned and cooked. About one o'clock he came back up-stairs after I had had my lunch, and there he had it on a plate, fried up into a crisp. I couldn't have swallowed any of it, to save me, but I couldn't disappoint the little fellow when he had tried so hard to please me, so I had to ask him to leave it, and told him maybe I would feel more like eating after I had slept awhile. So he went out perfectly satisfied, and I lay there, growing sicker every minute from the smell of that fried fish. At last I gathered up strength enough to throw it out of the window to the cat, but the plate still smelled of it, and nobody came in to take it away until after dark.

"Cousin Hetty was dreadfully worried when she found that Davy had been in my room, but he didn't take the measles, and that was the only time I saw him while I was sick. I was alone all the time. You can't imagine how doleful it was to stay in that hot dark room all day by myself."

"You poor little Bettykins!" sighed Joyce, sympathetically. "It's too bad you can't have the measles all over again with us, here at the house party. It really isn't a bit bad now. I am enjoying it immensely."

As she spoke there was the sound of a horse's hoofs in the avenue, and a moment later a shrill whistle sounded under the window.

"Hello, Measles," shouted a merry voice.

"It's Rob!" exclaimed Lloyd. "Hello yourself!" she called back, laughingly. "Come in and have some, won't you?"

"No, thank you," he answered. "You are too generous. But I say, Lloyd, let down a basket or something, won't you? I've got a surprise here for you all."

"Take the scrap-basket, Betty," said Lloyd, excitedly pointing to a fancy little basket made of braided sweet grass, and tied with many bows. "My skipping-rope is in the closet. You can let it down by that if you tie it to the handles."

A moment later Betty's smiling face appeared at the window, and the basket was lowered to the boy on the horse below.

"I can't reach it without standing up on the saddle," called Rob. "Whoa, there, Ben! Easy, old boy!" With feet wide apart to balance himself, Rob carefully dropped something from the basket he carried on his arm to the one that Betty dangled on a level with his eyes.

"One for you, too, Betty," the girls heard him say, but he had cantered off down the avenue before they discovered what it was he had left for them.

Betty carefully drew the basket in, fearful lest the rope might slip, for "the surprise" was heavy. As she landed it safely and turned the basket over on the floor, out rolled four fat little fox-terrier puppies.

"What darlings!" cried Lloyd, springing off her cot to catch up one of the plump little things as it sprawled toward her on its awkward paws. "They are so much alike we'll never be able to tell them apart unless we tie different coloured ribbons on them. I'm going to name mine Bob after Robby, 'cause he gave them to us."

"Let's name them all that," said Betty. "We'll be taking them away to different places soon, so it will not make any difference." The suggestion was received with applause, and Eugenia sent Eliot to her trunk for a piece of pale green ribbon. "I'm going to have my Bob's necktie match my room," she said.

"We'll all do that, too," said Joyce, and in a few minutes the four Bobs were frisking clumsily over the floor, in their respective bows of pink, yellow, blue, and green. They afforded the girls entertainment all that afternoon, and in the evening there was another surprise.

In the starlight, when it was dark enough for the blinds and shutters to be all thrown open in their rooms, they heard a carriage coming down the avenue. It, too, stopped under the window, and in a moment they recognised the twang of Malcolm's banjo and Miss Allison's guitar. "It's a serenade," called Eugenia. "What a good alto voice Keith has!"

It was an old college tune that rose on the air. Miss Allison had parodied the words of the peanut song:

Any fellow that has any mea-sles And giveth his neighbour none, He sha'n't have any of my measles When his mea-sles are gone. Oh, that will be joyful, joyful, Oh, that will be joyful, when his mea-sles are gone.

Then they sang, "My love is like the red, red rose" and "Pop goes the weasel, the queen's got the measles." They were all silly little ditties, but the personal allusions made them interesting to the girls, and there was a storm of applause from the upper windows after each one. Mrs. Sherman brought out cake and lemonade to the serenaders, and the girls hung out of the windows as far as they dared, to see what was going on below.

"If we only hadn't gone to that horrid old gypsy camp," lamented the Little Colonel, "we might be down there now, having a share of the good time. What are you all laughing at?" she called. "It is simply maddening to be up here and listen to you and not know."

Malcolm leaned out of the carriage to sing, teasingly, "Thou art so near and yet so far," adding, "Never mind, Lloyd, we'll come again to-morrow, and bring a travelling show with us. Look out for us early in the morning, before it begins to get hot."

"What do you suppose those boys are going to do?" asked Eugenia, as Lloyd drew in her head, and the carriage rolled off, the serenaders still singing.

"I haven't the faintest idea. There's nothing to do but wait and see."

Although the question was asked several times that evening before bedtime, and the girls amused themselves for a quarter of an hour guessing what kind of a travelling show was to be brought by for their entertainment, not one of them thought of it again next morning. The doctor had decided that their eyes were well enough to bear the light, and, at his visit, threw open several of the blinds. Mrs. Sherman drove down to the station, and Mom Beck went to the servants' cottage. Only Eliot was left to keep an eye on the invalids, and she had been invited to bring her sewing and listen to a story that Betty was reading aloud. They had grown very fond of patient old Eliot, for she had been the kindest and best of nurses in their illness. The girls were all lounging around the room in wrappers, each with her own particular Bob in her lap.

The reading had gone on for about half an hour, when Eliot's sewing suddenly slid from her lap to the floor, and a queer rattle in her throat made every one look up in alarm. At first they thought that she must be having some kind of a fit. Her hands were thrown up, her mouth dropped open, there was a look of wild terror in her staring eyes, and her face was deathly pale. It was terrifying to see a grown woman seem so frightened. She was pointing to the door, and, as their eyes followed her shaking finger, they forgot her fear in their own fright.

There, standing on its hind legs in the door, was an enormous bear, taller than any man they had ever seen. Its mouth was open, and a long red tongue hung out between its gleaming teeth. Trailing behind him was a heavy rope, that showed that he had broken away from some place of confinement.



There was one wild scream after another, as the girls sprang up, spilling the four Bobs out of their laps to the floor. Eugenia rolled under the bed in such mad haste that she bumped her head against the footboard, crying in an imploring tone as she disappeared, "Oh, don't eat me! Don't eat me!" Joyce scrambled up on a high chest of drawers, and from there to the top of the wardrobe, where she sat panting and looking down at the bear, who seemed surprised at his reception. After one frightened scream, Betty buried her head in a sofa pillow like a little ostrich, and made no attempt to escape. She seemed glued to her chair.

The Little Colonel, who had stumbled over all of the four Bobbies in her confusion, and fallen on top of them as she tried to scramble up from her knees, gave one more startled look at the intruder, and then sprang up with an angry cry. "It's that old tramp beah that belongs to Malcolm and Keith," she exclaimed, in a great passion. The girls had never seen her in such a fury.

"Get out of heah, mistah!" she shrieked, stamping her foot and scowling darkly. "This is the second time you have neahly frightened me to death! Get out of heah, I say, or I'll break every bone in yo' body!" She had been so startled by Eliot's appearance and then the general outcry, that her nervousness passed into a rage. Picking up the book that Betty had been reading, she hurled it at the astonished bear with all her force. Eliot's work-basket followed next, and the pillows from the bed and sofa. Next she tore off her slippers, and sent them flying against the brown furry back now turned toward her. Not knowing what to make of such a shower of spools and needles, scissors, buttons, and wearing apparel, old Bruin dropped on all fours and ambled out of the doorway just as Lloyd caught up the water pitcher.

A panting little coloured boy met him on the stairs and caught up the rope trailing behind him. "He won't hurt you, Miss Lloyd," he called, assuringly. "He b'long to Mistah Keith an' Mistah Malcolm. They done tole me to lead him up heah, and I stopped to shet the gate an' he broke away from me. They comin' 'long theyselves, toreckly, I b'lieve that's them a-comin' now. The beah ain't gwine to hurt you."

"Oh, I am not afraid of the beah," answered Lloyd, "but I hate to be surprised. It came walkin' in on us so easy that I didn't have time to see that it was only an old tame beah. It stood up on its hind legs lookin' twice as big as usual, and when everybody screamed and carried on so, I didn't know what I was doin'. As soon as I realised that it was the boys' pet I wasn't afraid, but it made me mad to be startled that way. And that's the second time it has happened."

"Is he gone?" asked Eugenia, poking her head slowly out from under the bed like a cautious turtle.

"Yes, Wash has him," answered the Little Colonel, laughing hysterically now that her temper had spent itself. "You girls look too funny for any use. Come down off your perch on that wardrobe, Joyce. It was only an old pet that the boys bought from a tramp one time. They keep it up at 'Fairchance,' the home that Mr. MacIntyre founded for little waifs and strays. I s'pose that is what Malcolm meant by a travellin' show. I might have thought of that, for they are always makin' it show off its tricks."

Eliot had found her voice by this time, and was sitting limply back in her chair with her hand over her heart. "If that is their travelling show," she said, weakly, "I wish they'd choose another road. I was that scared I couldn't have spoken a word if my life had depended on it; and all the time I was trying my hardest to scream. I thought it was a wild beast that had walked in from the woods to devour us all."

"But, Eliot," said the Little Colonel, still laughing, "you know we don't have wild beasts in these woods nowadays. There hasn't been any for yeahs and yeahs."

But Eliot shook her head doubtfully, and when the boys came up with a banjo and French harp to put the bear through his performances, she watched the dancing at a respectful distance. She was not at all sure about her safety after that, as long as she was in sight of the Kentucky woods. She could not be convinced that all sorts of ravenous beasts were not lurking in their shadows, and would not have been surprised at any time to have met a live Indian in war-paint and feathers.

Eugenia's frenzied wail became a byword, and for many days one had only to say, "Oh, don't eat me!" to start a peal of laughter.



CHAPTER XI.

SOME STORIES AND A POEM.

"What is the worst thing you evah did in yo' life, Joyce?" asked the Little Colonel. It was the first day after their recovery from the measles that the girls had been allowed to go down-stairs, and they were trying to amuse themselves in the library. Time had dragged for the last half-hour, and Lloyd's question was welcomed with interest.

"Um, I don't know," answered Joyce, half closing her eyes as she tried to remember. "I've done so many bad things that I have been ashamed of afterward, that I can hardly tell which is the worst. One of the meanest things I ever did was when I was too small to know how cruel it was. It was so long ago that I could not talk plainly, but I remember distinctly what a stifling hot day it was. Mamma had been packing her furs away for the summer in moth-balls. You know how horridly those camphor things smell. I hung over her and asked questions every time she moved. She told me how the moth-millers lay eggs in the furs if they are not protected, and showed me an old muff that she had found in the attic, which was so badly moth-eaten that it had to be thrown away. I watched her lay the little balls all among the furs, and then tie them up in linen bags, and pack them away in a chest.

"It happened that I had an old cat named Muff, and as soon as mamma had gone down-stairs, I took it into my head to pack her away in camphor balls. So I put her into an old pillow-case with a handful of suffocating moth-balls, and tied her up tight. She mewed and scratched at a terrible rate, but I tugged away at the heavy lid of the chest until I got it open, and then pop went poor old Muff in with the other furs.

"Luckily, mamma found an astrakhan cape, several hours later, that she had overlooked, and went back to the attic to put it into the chest, or the poor cat would have smothered. When she raised the lid there was that pillow-case squirming around as if it were alive. It frightened her so that she jumped back and dropped the lid, and then stood screaming for Bridget. I didn't know what had startled her, and she did not know that I had any connection with it, for I stood looking on as innocent as a lamb, with my thumb in my mouth.

"When Bridget came and saw the pillow-case squirming and bumping around, she said, 'Shure, ma'am, an' it's bewitched them furs is, and I'd not be afther touching 'em wid a tin-fut pole. I'll run call the gard'ner next dure.' So she put her head out at the attic window and screamed for Dennis, and Dennis thought the house was on fire, and came running up the stairs two steps at a time. He untied the pillow-case and turned it upside down with a hard shake, and, of course, out bounced poor old Muff in a shower of moth-balls, nearly smothered from being shut up so long with that stifling odour. She was sick all day, and Bridget said that it was a lucky thing that cats have nine lives, or she couldn't have gotten over it.

"I cried because they had let her out, and said I didn't want the nasty moths to spoil my kitty's fur, and mamma laughed so hard that she sat right down on the attic floor. Then she took me in her lap and explained how Muff took care of her own fur, and did not need to be packed away in the summer-time."

"That makes me think of a scrape that Lloyd and I got into," said Eugenia, "when she lived in New York. We had seen a mattress sent away from the house to be renovated, and had asked the nurse all sorts of questions about it. We concluded it would be a fine thing to renovate the mattress of one of our doll-beds. So we ripped one end open and pulled out all the cotton and excelsior it was stuffed with, and burned it in the nursery grate. Then we began to look around the house for something to refill it with.

"Down in the library was a beautiful fur rug. I don't remember what kind of a wild beast it was made from; I was so little, then, you know. But papa was very proud of it, for he had killed the animal himself out in the Rocky Mountains, and had had the skin made into a rug as a souvenir of that hunting trip. It had the head left on it, and we were a little afraid of that head. The glass eyes glared so savagely, and the teeth were so sharp in its open jaws! But the fur was long and soft and thick, and we decided to shear off a little to stuff our mattress with. We thought it wouldn't take much. So I took the nurse's scissors, and we slipped down into the library with the empty mattress-tick.

"The beast's eyes seemed to look at me in such a life-like way that I was afraid to touch it until Lloyd put a sofa pillow over its head and sat down on it. Then I began to shear off a little near the tail, where I thought it wouldn't show much; but the mattress didn't fill up very fast. So I kept on shearing, a little farther and a little farther, here a patch and there a patch, until I had taken a great streak out of the middle of the back, and the rug was ruined."

"What did your father say?" asked Joyce.

"Oh, he was furious! He said a seven-year-old child ought to know better than to do a thing like that, and if she didn't she should be taught. But mamma wouldn't let him touch me, and only scolded the nurse for not watching me more closely."

"Now it is Betty's turn," said Joyce, when the giggling that followed Eugenia's tale had subsided. "What mischief did you get into, Betty?"

Before she could reply there was a step in the hall, a tap at the open door, and a pleasant voice said: "Good morning, young ladies."

"Oh, it is the minister's wife, Mrs. Brewster," whispered Lloyd, jumping up from the sofa and going forward to greet her.

There was no need of introductions, for the girls had met the sweet-faced old lady several times.

"Mothah isn't heah, Mrs. Brewster," said Lloyd. "She went to town this mawnin' on the early train, but we are lookin' fo' her to come on this next train. And we are just dyin' fo' company, ou'selves. Won't you come in an' wait, please?"

Involuntarily on her arrival the girls stopped lolling in their chairs, and sat up straight, with their hands folded primly in their laps. Mrs. Brewster had an air of quiet dignity that always made people want to be on their best behaviour before her. Every one in the Valley was fond of the minister's wife, but most people stood in awe of her, and considered the turn of their sentences and the pitch of their voices when talking to her. She never had a pin awry. Her gray hair was always as smooth as a brush could make it, and every breadth of her skirts always fell in straight, precise folds. From bonnet-strings to shoe-laces there was never a wrinkle or a spot. But the Little Colonel felt no awe. She had discovered that under that prim exterior was a heart thoroughly in sympathy with all her childish joys and griefs, and in consequence the two had become warm friends. Lloyd stood beside the rocking-chair, where she had seated Mrs. Brewster, and waved a big fan so vigorously that the bonnet-strings fluttered, and a lock of gray hair was blown out of place and straggled across the placid brow.

"We were tellin' each othah about some of the worst things we evah did in ou' lives, Mrs. Brewster," said Lloyd. "Won't you tell us about some of the things you did when you were a naughty little girl?"

Mrs. Brewster laughed. Few people would have remembered that she had ever been a little girl, and only the Little Colonel would have dared to intimate that she had been a naughty one, for she was one of those dignified persons who look as if they had always been proper and grown up.

"That is a long time ago to look back to, dear," she began. "I was very strictly brought up, and the training of my conscience began so early that I was always a good child in the main, I think. I was more timid than my brothers and sisters, which may account for some of my goodness, and for the most daring deed I ever did, I was punished so severely that it had a restraining effect on me ever after."

"What was that?" asked Lloyd, with such an air of interest, that Mrs. Brewster, looking around on the listening faces, was beguiled into telling it.

"It was when we lived in a little New England village, and I was about eight years old. Although I was a very quiet child, I dearly loved company, and always felt a delicious thrill of excitement when I heard that the Dorcas Sewing Society was to be entertained at our house, or that some one was coming to tea. Mother thought that growing children should eat only the simplest, most wholesome dishes, so usually we had very frugal fare. But on state occasions a great many tempting goodies were set out. I remember that we always had spiced buns and tarts and a certain kind of plum marmalade that mother had great skill in making. It was highly praised by every one. But it was not alone for these things that I was in a state of complete happiness from the time the company arrived until they departed. I enjoyed listening to every word that was said. An hour before the guests began to arrive I would station myself at the window, to watch for them. I loved to see the ladies stepping primly down the garden path in their best gowns, between the stiff borders of box and privet, stopping to admire mother's hollyhocks or laburnum bushes.

"Children were seen and not heard in those days and as soon as they had been ushered into the guest chamber, where they laid aside their wraps, and had seated themselves in the parlour, I used to carry my little stool in and sit down in one corner to listen.

"One autumn it happened that for several reasons mother had had no invited company for weeks. I was hungry for some of the tarts and marmalade that I knew would appear if the guests would only arrive, and one night a plan came into my head that seemed to me so clever that I could hardly wait for morning to come, in order that I might carry it out.

"Mother sent me on an errand to the village store next day, and on the way I stopped at the doctor's house. I could scarcely reach the great brass knocker on the front door, but when I did, standing on tiptoe, it sent such a loud clamour through the house that my heart jumped up in my throat, and I was minded to run away. But before I could do that the doctor's wife opened the door. I made my best courtesy that mother had carefully taught me, and then was so embarrassed I could not lift my eyes from the ground. When I spoke, my voice sounded so meek and shy and high up in the air that I scarcely recognised it as mine.

"'Mrs. Mayfair, please come to tea to-morrow,' I said. Then I courtesied again, and hurried off, while Mrs. Mayfair was calling after me to tell my mother that it gave her great pleasure to accept her invitation. But you see it wasn't mother's invitation. I didn't say 'mother says please come to tea,' I just asked them to come of my own accord, in a fit of reckless daring, and then waited to see what would happen. I invited nearly all the Dorcas Society."

"And what happened?" asked the Little Colonel, eagerly.

Mrs. Brewster laughed at the remembrance, such a contagious, hearty laugh, that her bonnet-ribbons shook.

"I never said a word about it at home, but next day, a little while before sundown, I went to the window to watch for them. Mother, who had been busy all day, boiling cider and making apple-butter, sat down with her knitting to rest a few minutes before supper. She said she was tired, and that she would not cook much; that mush and milk would be enough.

"She couldn't imagine what had happened when all the ladies appeared, and she sent me to open the door while she hurried to change her dress. I followed the usual programme; invited them into the guest-chamber to lay aside their wraps and mantles, and then gave them seats in the parlour. Mother was puzzled when she came in and saw them with their bonnets off, for she supposed, when she saw them coming down the path, that they were a committee from the Dorcas Society, on some business. But presently one of the ladies patted me on the head, and complimented my pretty manners in delivering the invitation to tea.

"If a piece of the sky had fallen, mother could not have been more surprised, but she gave no sign of it then. She only smiled and made a pleasant answer.

"I began to feel very comfortable, and to congratulate myself on the success of my little plan. Presently she excused herself, and beckoned me to follow her out of the room. Without a word, or even a glance of reproach, she bade me run across the street and ask my Aunt Rachel and her daughter Milly to come over at once and help her prepare for the unexpected guests. They were both of them quick, capable women and fine housekeepers, and 'flew around,' as they expressed it, in such a marvellous way that at the proper time the customary feast was spread.

"It did look so good! I walked around the table, my mouth watering as I looked at the tarts and marmalade and spiced buns, and all the other tempting dishes. Mother watched me do it, and then, just before she invited the ladies out to the table, she sent me off to bed without a morsel to eat,—not even a spoonful of mush and milk.

"I lay in an adjoining room, listening to the clatter of knives and forks, and the ladylike hum of conversation, and knew that the good things were slowly but surely disappearing, and that I could not have a taste. I was so hungry and disappointed that I cried myself to sleep. That disappointment and the lecture which followed next morning was punishment enough, and you may be sure that that was the last time I ever invited my mother's friends on my own responsibility."

Mrs. Brewster paused amid the girls' laughing exclamations, and just then Mrs. Sherman came in from the train, hot and dusty, and her arms full of little packages. "Come on up to my room with me," she said to Mrs. Brewster, who was a frequent and familiar visitor at Locust.

"Don't take her away," begged the Little Colonel, "she is entertaining us."

"My turn now," laughed Mrs. Sherman. And the two ladies went up-stairs, once more leaving the girls to the task of providing their own amusement.

"Wasn't that a picture?" said Joyce, when Mrs. Brewster had left the room. "Can't you just see it? that quaint little girl in her old-fashioned dress, going from door to door with her courtesies and her invitations, and, afterward, all the ladies coming down the stiff-bordered path between the rows of hollyhocks. I'd love to draw that picture if I could."

"Try it," urged the girls, so warmly that Joyce went up-stairs for her drawing material. Betty watched her spread her paper on the library table. "I believe that I could put that story into rhyme," she said, after a few minutes of silent thought. "I can feel it humming in my head."

"Oh, I didn't know that you could write poetry," exclaimed Lloyd. "Try it now, and see what you can do. You write the poem, and Joyce will illustrate it."

"I have to be by myself when I write, and I never know how long it will take. It is like making butter. Sometimes it will come in a few minutes, and sometimes I have to churn away for hours."

"Begin, anyhow!" insisted the girls, and in a few minutes Betty slipped away to her room. At lunch-time they teased her to show them what she had written, but she had only a few lines completed, and would not let them see even the paper on which she had been scribbling. After lunch the others went to their rooms to write letters and sleep awhile, but she went back to her task. Joyce's picture did not turn out to her satisfaction, and she tore it up, but Betty did her work over and over, rewriting each line many times. When they were all dressed for dinner, she did not appear. Finally Joyce went to see what kept her so long. She found her bending over the paper, her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining.

"It is done," she cried, writing the last word with a flourish, "but I hadn't any idea it was so late. I thought I had been up here only a few minutes. Some of the rhymes just wouldn't twist into shape, but I think they fit now."

"I'm going to take it down and show it to the girls, while you dress," cried Joyce, catching up the paper and running off with it. Although Betty knew the time was short and she ought to hurry, she could not resist stealing to the banister and leaning over to hear how it sounded when her godmother, who was sitting in the lower hall with Lloyd and Eugenia, read it aloud.

Jemima Araminta knew Whenever company Sat round the frugal board, they had Plum marmalade for tea.

And spiced buns and toothsome tarts, And divers sweets beside, Were set to tempt the appetite With good housewifely pride.

While walking out one day, it chanced She fell a-pondering sore. A wicked thought in her small mind Did tempt her more and more.

At all the neighbours' doors she paused, Demure and shy was she. With downcast eyes, she courtesied, And said, "Please come to tea."

Next day along the garden path, Just as the sun went down, A score of ladies primly walked, Each in her Sabbath gown.

Surprised, her mother heard them say, "Dear child! So shy is she! What pretty manners she did have When asking us to tea."

Jemima now remembers well They once had company, Preserves and buns and toothsome tarts When ne'er a taste had she.

For, supperless, to bed that night, She went, severely chid; No more the neighbours to invite, Save at her mother's bid.

"Bravo! little girl," cried Mrs. Sherman, while the girls clapped loudly. "Have you anything else with you that you have written? If you have, bring it down with you when you come."

"Yes, godmother," answered Betty, over the banister, blushing until she could feel her cheeks burn. She was all a-tingle at the thought of her godmother seeing her verses. She wanted her to see them, and yet,—she couldn't take down her old ledger for them all to read and criticise. Not for worlds would she have Eugenia read her verses on "Friendship," and there was one about "Dead Hopes" that she felt none of them would understand. They might even laugh at it.

Several minutes went by before she could make up her mind. When she went down-stairs she had put the old ledger back into her trunk and carried only one of the loose leaves in her hands.

"I'll show the others to godmother sometime when we are alone," she said to herself, as she went shyly up to the group waiting for her, "Here is one I called 'Night,'" she said, her cheeks flaming with embarrassment. "There are four verses."

Mrs. Sherman took it, and, glancing down the lines, read aloud the little poem, commencing:

"Oh, peaceful Night, thou shadowy Queen Who rules the realms of shade, Thy throne is on the heaven's arch, Thy crown of stars is made."

"Oh, Betty, that's splendid!" cried the girls, in chorus. "How could you think of it?"

"It is remarkably good for a little girl of twelve," said Mrs. Sherman, glancing over the last verses again. "But I am not surprised. Your mother wrote some beautiful things. She scribbled verses all the time."

"Oh, I didn't know that!" cried Betty. "How I wish I could see some of them!"

"You shall, my dear! I have an old portfolio in the library, full of such things. Poems that she wrote and pictures that Joyce's mother drew; caricatures of the professors, the little pen and ink sketches of the places in the Valley we loved the best. I'll get them out for you, after dinner. You will all be interested in them, especially in a journal they kept for me one summer when I was at the seashore. One kept a record of all that happened in the Valley during my absence, and the other illustrated it."

"Dinner is ready now," said Lloyd, jumping up as the maid opened the dining-room door. As they all rose to go in, Mrs. Sherman lingered a moment in the hall, to take the paper from Betty's hand.

"Will you give me this little poem, dear?" she asked, slipping an arm around the child's waist. "I am very proud of my little god-daughter. The world will hear from you some day, if you keep on singing. Just do your bravest and best, and it will be glad to listen to your music."

She stooped and kissed Betty lightly on the forehead. It was as if she had set the seal of her approval upon her, and to be approved by her beautiful godmother,—ah, that meant more to the devoted little heart than any one could dream; far more, even, than if she had been made the proud laureate of a queen.



CHAPTER XII.

A PILLOW-CASE PARTY.

They were all sitting on the vine-covered porch, looking out between the tall white pillars into the sultry June darkness. The light from the hall lamp streamed across the steps where the four Bobs rolled and tumbled around over each other, but except for that one broad path of light they could see nothing. There was not even starlight.

"How hot and still it is," said Mrs. Sherman. "There doesn't seem to be a leaf stirring, and there's not a star in sight. I think it will surely storm before morning."

"Betty," said Joyce, "your 'shadowy queen who rules the realms of shade' has forgotten to put on her crown. Now if I could write poetry like some people I know, I would write an ode to Night and compare it to a stack of black cats. It wouldn't sound so pretty as your description, but it would be nearer the truth."

"Well, cats or queens, it doesn't make any difference what you call it," said the Little Colonel, "it's the stupidest night I evah saw. I wish something would happen. It seems ages since we have done anything lively. Now that we are ovah the measles it's wastin' time to be sittin' heah so poky and stupid. What can we do, mothah?"

"Let's tell ghost stories," said Mrs. Sherman, who knew what was going to happen in a short time, and wanted to keep the girls occupied until then. "I know a fine one," she began, sinking her voice to a creepy undertone that made the girls cast uneasy glances behind them. "It's all about a haunted house that has clanking chains in the cellar, and muffled footsteps, and icy fingers that c-lutch you by the throat on the stairs as the clock tolls the midnight hour."

"Ugh! How good and spooky!" said Joyce, with a little shiver. "I love that kind."

They drew their chairs around Mrs. Sherman to listen, so interested in the story that two of the Bobs rolled over each other and off the high porch, and nobody noticed their whining. Presently, in the most thrilling part of her story, Mrs. Sherman paused and pointed impressively down the avenue.

"Oo-oo-oo! what is it? Ghosts?" shrieked the Little Colonel, her teeth chattering, and in such haste to throw herself into her mother's arms that her chair turned over with a bang.

"It is a pillow-case party," answered Mrs. Sherman, laughing, "but it is certainly the most ghostly-looking affair that I ever saw."

Down the long avenue toward them came a wavering line of white-sheeted, masked figures. They had square heads, and great round holes for eyes, and the candle that each one carried flashed across a hideous grinning face, whose mouth and nose had been drawn with burnt cork. The leader of this strange procession was a veritable giant,—the Goliath of all the ghosts,—for he loomed up above them to nearly twice the height of the tallest one in the line. It took two sheets to cover him; one flapped about his long thin legs, and one swung from his shoulders, swaying from side to side as he moved noiselessly along with gigantic strides.

"Oh, mothah, it's awful!" whispered the Little Colonel, clinging around Mrs. Sherman's neck.

"It is almost enough to frighten one," she replied. "But they are all friends of yours, Lloyd. For instance, the giant is nobody but your good friend and playfellow, Robby Moore, on stilts; and somewhere in that bunch of little tots at the tail end of the procession are those funny little Cassidy twins, Bethel and Ethel. They begged so hard to be allowed to come that their mother at last consented, although they are only six years old. She said she would dress up in a sheet and pillow-case herself, and come with them, to see that nothing happened to them, so I suppose she is somewhere in the line. I was told that everybody in the neighbourhood was coming; old people as well as children, but I'll leave you to find out for yourself, as the fun of a party like this is in the guessing. They will unmask before they go home."

The procession glided on in silence until it reached the house, and then ranged itself in a long line in front of the group on the porch.

"There are thirty-eight," whispered Joyce. "I counted them. Isn't that one at the end funny? That one in a bolster-case tied at the top, and his hands sticking out of the slits at the sides, like fishes' fins. I'm almost sure that it is Keith. I could tell if I could only see his hands, but he has white stockings drawn over them."

The figures began waving to and fro, faster and faster, until they were all drawn into a weird, uncanny dance, in which each one flapped or writhed or swayed back and forth as he pleased, in ghostly silence. The movements of the ones in the bolster-cases were the most comical, and the little audience on the porch laughed until they could only gasp and hold their sides.

At a signal from the tall leader, the sheeted party suddenly divided, half of the masked faces grinning on one side of the steps, and half going to the other. Then an auction began, one side being sold to the other. The bidding was all in pantomime, and they all looked so much alike that nobody knew whom he was bidding for, or to whom he was knocked down. The giant was the auctioneer.

At last each bidder was provided with a partner, and two by two they all went gravely up the steps to shake hands with Mrs. Sherman and the girls. Every one spoke in an assumed voice, and recognition was almost impossible. The girls talked with every one in turn, but Rob and Keith were the only boys they had recognised when the signal for unmasking was given, and little Bethel Cassidy was the only girl. They knew her queer little lisp.

Cake and sherbet were brought out, and great was everybody's astonishment when masks were slipped off, and the pillow-cases jerked away from the wearers' rumpled hair. To Keith's disgust, he found that the partner whom he had bid for energetically, thinking it was Sally Fairfax, was only his brother Malcolm, and Malcolm teased him all evening by quoting aloud some of the complimentary speeches Keith had whispered to him under cover of their disguises.

"Oh, gracious!" roared Malcolm. "It was too funny; Keith, fanning me with one of those stubby little stocking-covered fins of his, and making complimentary speeches about my eyes. Told me he would know them anywhere. And he spouted poetry, he did," added Malcolm, doubling up with another laugh. "Oh, it was too good! Hi, Buddy," chucking Keith under the chin, "are you of the same opinion still? Ain't they pretty, 'mine eyes so blue and tender?'"

"Aw, hush!" growled Keith, in a shamefaced sort of way, adding, in a savage undertone, "I'll make black eyes of 'em if you don't stop."

That was not the only odd assortment of partners, for Miss Allison had bid for plump little Mrs. Cassidy, thinking it was one of the boys in her Sunday school class; and one little maid of seven found that an old bachelor uncle had fallen to her lot.

"You see we made a wholesale affair of it," said Miss Allison to Eugenia. "We drove around the neighbourhood in two big wagonettes, and picked up whole families at a time."

"It is the jolliest surprise I ever saw," answered Eugenia, looking all around at the little groups laughing and talking over their refreshments. "It is hard to tell which are having the best time, the children or the grown people; they are all mixed up together."

As she spoke the buzz of voices ceased, for there was a sudden blinding flash of lightning and a loud peal of thunder that made the windows rattle. The storm which Mrs. Sherman had predicted would come before morning, had crept up unnoticed, and caught them unawares.

"Come inside!" cried Mrs. Sherman, as, with a furious rush and roar the wind swept across them, banging window shutters, whirling leaves and gravel in their faces, and lashing the trees until they were bent almost double. Another blinding glare of lightning followed, with such a crash of thunder that Eugenia put her fingers in her ears and screamed, and Betty hid her face in her hands.

"Hurry!" cried Mrs. Sherman. "I am afraid that some of these flying shingles, or whatever they are, will hurt some one. It is almost a cyclone."

Breathless and excited, they all hurried into the house, and banged the great front door in the face of the storm. The children tumbled into the drawing-room, the smaller ones huddling in a frightened heap in the middle of the floor, until the fury of the storm was over. There was nothing to do but wait with bated breath after each vivid flash of lightning for the terrific crash that always followed, and listen to the wind outside as it fought with the sturdy tree-tops. Now and then a limb snapped in the fierce struggle, and fell to the ground with a loud crackling noise.

"I hope there will be enough of a roof left over our heads to shelter us," said Mrs. Sherman, as bricks from the chimney tops began rolling down the roof and falling to the ground below with heavy thuds.

"We expected to start home about this time," Miss Allison was saying. "We ordered the wagonettes to come back for us at ten o'clock, but it looks now as if we are storm-bound for the night. Did you ever hear such a downpour?"

"It's the clatter of the rain on the tin roof of the porch," answered Mrs. Sherman, speaking at the top of her voice in order to be heard above the deafening din of the rain and wind.

For nearly half an hour they sat waiting for the storm to pass. Several games were proposed, but none of the children wanted to play. They seemed to feel more comfortable when they were snuggled up close against some grown person, or holding some elderly protecting hand. But gradually the lightning grew fainter and fainter, and the thunder went growling away in the distance, although the rain kept steadily on. Mrs. Sherman called for some music in the drawing-room, and while Miss Allison and Mrs. Cassidy played the liveliest duets they knew, the children drifted out into the hall and over the house as they pleased.

Most of the older boys and girls sat on the stairs in groups of twos and threes, while from the upper hall the scurry of feet, and the singsong cry that London Bridge was falling down, showed what the little ones were playing. It was after eleven o'clock when the wagonettes came rumbling up to the door. The rain had stopped, and a few stars were beginning to struggle through the clouds.

"How cold and damp it is!" exclaimed Mrs. Sherman, as she stepped out on the front porch. "The thermometer must have fallen twenty degrees since you came. You will all need wraps of some kind. Wait till I can get you some shawls and things."

"No, indeed!" every one protested. "We will wrap up in our sheets again. We do not need anything else."

There was a laughing scrimmage over the pile of sheets that had been thrown hastily into one corner of the hall, when the party ran in out of the storm. Nearly all the masks and pillow-cases were put on again, too, so that the party broke up in laughing confusion. Nobody recognised his neighbour or knew who he was bumping against as he hurried up to bid his perplexed hostess good night.

With a great cracking of whips and creaking of wheels the spectral party drove off, to the tune of "Good-night, ladies, we're going to leave you now." Far down the road the chorus came floating back to the listeners on the porch, "Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along."

"Wasn't it funny?" yawned Lloyd, as she went sleepily up the stairs. "But oh, I'm so tiahed. I believe if they had stayed much longah, I'd have fallen ovah in a heap on the flo'."

All the lights were out down-stairs, and the girls were nearly undressed, when they were surprised to hear one of the wagonettes coming back. A frantic clang of the knocker on the front door brought them all to the windows.

"Oh, Mrs. Sherman!" cried an agonised voice out of the darkness, that they recognised as Mrs. Cassidy's, "are the twins here? Bethel and Ethel? We can't find them anywhere. I was sure that I lifted them into the wagonette myself, but every one was so disguised that I must have mistaken somebody else's children for mine."

"They are not in either wagonette," added Rob Moore's voice. "We never thought to count noses until we reached the Cassidy place, and then we found they were missing."

Hastily slipping into a wrapper, Mrs. Sherman ran down-stairs with a candle in her hand, and opened the front door. Plump little Mrs. Cassidy was standing there, wringing her hands.

"Oh, don't tell me that they are not here!" she cried. "Didn't you see them when you were locking up the house after we left? Then I know they're lost. They must have slipped away from the porch before the storm came up, and were playing outside somewhere when we all ran inside and shut the door. Oh, my babies!" she wailed. "If they were out in all that awful storm it has killed them, I know. Oh, why did I do such a foolish thing as to bring them? They were too little to come, I knew that. But they begged so hard, and they looked so cute in those little ruffled pillow-cases, that I hadn't the heart to refuse. Oh, what shall I do?"

"They must be somewhere about the house," said Mrs. Sherman, with such decision that Mrs. Cassidy was comforted, and began wiping her eyes.

"Come in, and help me search. Maybe they slipped up-stairs when the other children were playing, and went to sleep in some dark corner. Come on, boys. Light up the house from attic to cellar, and see who will be first to find them. It will be a game of hunt the twins, instead of hunt the slipper."

Then up-stairs, and down-stairs, and in my lady's chamber, went a strange procession, for nearly every one was still draped in sheet and pillow-case. Into closets, behind screens, in all the corners, and under all the beds they looked. Keith, remembering the sad story of Ginevra, even lifted the lid of every chest and trunk in the linen room. Poor little Mrs. Cassidy followed, wringing her hands, and sobbing that she knew that they had been shut outside in the storm and the night. Suddenly, when they had been all over the house for the third time, she caught up a lamp, and ran out in the dark, like some poor mad creature, calling, "Oh, Bethel! Oh, my little Ethel! Don't you hear your mother?"

By this time, the servants' quarters were aroused, and Mrs. Sherman, now really alarmed, called for Walker and Alec to bring lanterns. The lawn was a wreck, strewn with leaves and fallen limbs and pieces of broken flower urns that had been overturned by the wind. The searchers stumbled over them as they waded through the wet grass, looking in every nook and corner where it was possible for a child to have strayed, but their search was in vain. Never a trace did they find of the lost twins.

"Stay in the house, girls," said Mrs. Sherman, as she caught up the trail of her wrapper, and ran out to follow the flickering lanterns and Mrs. Cassidy's frantic cries. "It might give you your death of cold to expose yourselves so soon after the measles."

As they stood in the door watching the wavering lights, Lloyd exclaimed, "The puppies are gone, too. I wonder where they can be. Maybe they were left outside in the storm when we all ran indoors in such a hurry. Maybe the twins were playing with them."

She leaned out of the door, peering into the night. "Heah, Bob!" she called, snapping her fingers, and whistling the shrill signal she always gave when she fed them. There was no response from the darkness outside, and she turned indoors repeating the whistle, and calling, "Heah, Bob! Heah, puppy! Come to yo' miss!"

In answer there was a stir under the low Persian couch in the library, then a whine, and an inquiring little nose was thrust through the heavy knotted fringe that draped the lower part of the couch. The next instant Lloyd's Bob came sprawling joyously toward her, his pink bow cocked rakishly over one ear. Lloyd dropped on her knees, and, lifting the fringe, looked under. Then she gave an excited scream.

"Heah they are!" she called. "I've found them! Heah's the twins, and all the Bobs!"

"They're found!" called Joyce, running out on the porch and shouting the news until the searchers farthest from the house heard, and ran joyfully back. "They're found! Lloyd's found them!"

"Who ever would have thought of squeezing into such a place as that?" said Miss Allison, as she came running in, out of breath. "I started to look under that couch twice, but it was so low I thought they couldn't possibly have crawled under. Besides, some one was sitting on it all evening, and they surely would have been seen if they had attempted it."

Rob and Malcolm lifted the couch and set it aside, and there, curled up on two fat sofa cushions, with the puppies beside them, lay the twins fast asleep. Great beads of perspiration stood on their foreheads and trickled down their dimpled faces. Their hair curled in little wet rings all over their heads, and their chubby arms and necks were red with prickly heat.

"It is a wonder that they weren't smothered," cried Mrs. Cassidy, taking them up in her arms and waking them with her tearful kisses. "Oh, why did you hide away from mother, precious?" she asked, reproachfully, as Bethel's eyes opened with a dazed stare at the crowd of faces around her. She leaned her head heavily on her mother's shoulder, for she was not fully awake, and clung around her neck with both arms. Finally, in answer to the chorus of questions that came from all sides, she roused enough to answer.

"It lightened, that's why we hid. Mammy Chloe thed if you go get in a dark plathe on a pile of featheths, no lightnin' can hurt you. Mammy Chloe always puth uth in the middle of her feather-bed. Tho me and thithter took a thofa pillow and got under the thofa and shut our eyeth tight. We wath hot," she added, gravely, "and tho wath the puppieth, but the lightnin' couldn't get uth."

The laugh that went up from the amused listeners aroused both the twins so thoroughly that they joined in without knowing what they were laughing about. Then Alec and Walker carried them triumphantly on their shoulders to the wagonette, and once more the party started homeward. This time they moved off without singing, but from the gate came back three cheers for the twins, then three cheers for the Little Colonel, who had found them. Once started to cheering, somebody proposed three for the pillow-case party, and so lustily did they give them, that an old rooster, awakening from sleep as the wheels creaked by, thought it the call of some giant chanticleer, and promptly crowed an answering challenge, that was echoed by every cock in the Valley.



CHAPTER XIII.

MORE MEASLES.

It seemed to Betty that that night would never end. It was after midnight before the house grew quiet. Then, whenever she closed her eyes, she could see those ghostly figures dancing before her in a long, white wavering line. After awhile she gave up the attempt to sleep, and lay with her eyes wide open, staring into the darkness, alert, and quivering at the slightest sound.

"I don't know what makes me so nervous," she thought. "I feel as if I should fly, and the dark seems so horrible, as if it was full of creepy, crawling things, with horns and claws."

A beetle boomed against the window, striking the pane with a heavy thud. She drew the sheet over her head and shivered. "Maybe if I'd read awhile it would make me sleepy," she thought, and, slipping softly out of bed, she groped her way across the room in the dark to the dressing-table. Lighting a candle in one of the crystal candlesticks that always reminded her of twisted icicles, she put it on a stand beside her bed. The light flickered unsteadily, but she piled the pillows up behind her and settled herself to read.

It was a new book that she was greatly interested in, and before long she was so deep in the story that she never noticed how the time was flying. Instead of bringing sleep to her eyes, it seemed to drive it farther and farther away. The candle burned lower and lower, but she never noticed it, and read on by its unsteady light until she heard the hall clock strike four. The candle was flickering in its socket, and the June dawn was beginning to streak the sky. Her eyes smarted and burned, and ached with a dull throbbing pain.

She turned over and went to sleep then, and slept so heavily that she did not hear the noises of the awakening household. Once Mrs. Sherman came to the door and peeped in, but, finding her asleep, tiptoed out again. It was nearly noon when she awoke, feeling as tired as when she went to bed. She dressed languidly and went down-stairs, but was so unlike her usually sunny self, that Mrs. Sherman watched her anxiously. Late in the afternoon she sent for Doctor Fuller, and a general wail went up when he announced what was the matter with her.

"More measles, Mrs. Sherman," he said, cheerfully. "Well, this is the most extraordinary house party I ever heard of. You seem to be exceedingly partial to this one line of amusements."

"It isn't fair for Betty to have it," exclaimed Joyce, "when she wouldn't go to the camp, and she's had it before! It's just too bad!"

"We'll all have to be mighty good to her," said the Little Colonel, "for she was so sweet about amusing us. We'll take turns reading to her and entertaining her, for she stayed hours with us in that dark room when she could have been outdoors enjoying herself."

"That is probably the reason she is laid up now," answered the doctor. "She should have kept entirely away from you."

"But she had had one case," explained Mrs. Sherman, "and we never dreamed of her having another. Poor little thing! I hope this will be light. She had a hard time before, so we must make a regular frolic of this, girls."

"Well, no, madam, at least not for several days," said the doctor, gravely, "And you must be extremely careful about her eyes. They seem to be badly affected, and I must warn you that they are really in danger."

They told Betty that afterward, thinking it would stop her crying, when everything else failed to do so, if she realised how necessary it was for her not to inflame them with her tears. Usually she was a sensible little body, obedient to the slightest suggestion, but now she lay curled up in a disconsolate little heap in bed, sobbing as if her heart would break.

"Oh, I don't want to have the measles!" she sobbed, catching her breath in great gasps. "Oh, I don't want to!"

"My dear little girl, don't let it distress you so!" begged Mrs. Sherman, leaning over and tenderly wiping the flushed little face.

"It will not be any worse for you than for the other girls, and in a few days when you feel better we are going to have all sorts of sport out of it. The girls are planning now what they shall do to make up to you for this disappointment. They feel as if they are to blame for bringing this illness upon you by their disobedience, and you cannot imagine how bad it makes them feel to have you take it to heart so bitterly."

But even that failed to stop her tears, and presently Mrs. Sherman went out into the hall, where the girls were waiting for her.

"There is some reason for all this distress that I am unable to discover," she said. "Joyce, maybe if you would go in and talk to her you might find out."

"She must be lots worse than we were," whispered Eugenia to Lloyd, as the high, shrill voice, so unlike Betty's usual tones, went on complainingly in the next room.

"Hush!" warned Lloyd. "She's telling Joyce what the matter is." The words came out to them distinctly. She was speaking with a nervous quickness as if her fever had almost reached delirium.

"I was trying to dig one of those roads," wailed Betty, in a high, querulous voice. "One that would last for ever, don't you know? like the one they built for Tusitala. You do know, don't you?" she insisted, feverishly, but Joyce had to acknowledge that she had never heard of it, and Betty cried again, because she felt too nervous and ill to explain.

"There, there! never mind!" said Joyce, soothingly, thinking that Betty's mind was wandering. "You can tell me all about it when you get well."

"But I want you to know now!" sobbed Betty, with all the unreasoning impatience of a sick child. "It is all in my 'Good times book.' I cut it out of an old Youth's Companion, just after I came, and the piece is inside the cover of that little white and gold book in the writing-desk. Read it, won't you? Then you will understand."

Joyce took the slip of paper to the window, and glanced rapidly along the lines.

"No, read it aloud!" demanded Betty, fretfully. "I want to hear it, too. It is such a sweet story, and I read it over every day to help me remember."

Mrs. Sherman and the girls, sitting outside the door, leaned forward to listen, as Joyce read aloud the newspaper clipping that Betty counted among her chief treasures. This is what they heard:

"THE ROAD OF THE LOVING HEART."[1]

"Remembering the great love of his highness, Tusitala, and his loving care when we were in prison and sore distressed, we have prepared him an enduring present, this road which we have dug for ever."

* * * * *

In a far-off island, thousands of miles from the mainland, and unconnected with the world by cable, stands this inscription. It was set up at the corner of a new road, cut through a tropical jungle, and bears at its head the title of this article, signed by the names of ten prominent chiefs. This is the story of the road, and why it was built:

Some years ago a Scotchman, broken in health and expecting an early death, sought out this lonely spot, because here the climate was favourable to the disease from which he suffered. He settled here for what remained to him of life.

He bought an estate of several hundred acres, and threw himself earnestly into the life of the natives of the island. There was great division among the many chiefs, and prolonged warfare. Very soon the chiefs found that this alien from a strange land was their best friend. They began coming to him for counsel, and invited him to their most important conferences.

Though he did not bear that name, he became a missionary to them. He was their hero, and they loved and trusted him because he tried to lead them aright. They had never had such a friend. And so it came about that when the wars ceased, the chiefs of both sides called him by a name of their own, and made him one of their own number, thus conferring upon him the highest honour within their power.

But many of the chiefs were still in prison, because of their political views or deeds, and in constant danger of being put to death. Their sole friend was the Scotchman, whom they called Tusitala. He visited them, comforted them, repeated passages from the history of Christ to them, and busied himself incessantly to effect their release.

At length he obtained their freedom, and then, glowing with gratitude, in despite of age, decrepitude, and loss of strength, they started directly for the estate of their benefactor, and there, in the terrible heat, they laboured for weeks in building him a road which they knew he had long desired. Love conquered weakness, and they did not cease their toil until their handiwork, which they called "The Road of the Loving Heart," was finished.

Not long after this the white chief suddenly died. At the news the native chiefs flocked from all parts of the island to the house, and took charge of the body. They kissed his hand as they came in, and all night sat in silence about him. One of them, a feeble old man, threw himself on his knees beside the body of his benefactor, and cried out between his sobs:

"I am only a poor black man, and ignorant. Yet I am not afraid to come and take the last look of my dead friend's face. Behold, Tusitala is dead. We were in prison and he cared for us. The day was no longer than his kindness. Who is there so great as Tusitala? Who is there more loving-compassionate? What is your love to his love?"

So the chiefs took their friend to the top of a steep mountain which he had loved, and there buried him. It was a mighty task.

The civilised world mourns the great author. The name of Robert Louis Stevenson is lastingly inwrought into English literature. But the Samoans mourn in his loss a brother, who outdid all others in loving-kindness, and so long as the island in the Pacific exists, Tusitala will be gratefully remembered, not because he was so greatly gifted, but because he was a good man.

The phrase, "The Road of the Loving Heart," is a gospel in itself. "The day is not longer than his kindness" is a new beatitude. Fame dies, and honours perish, but "loving-kindness" is immortal.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Editorial in old copy of Youth's Companion.]

Joyce finished and looked up inquiringly. She still did not see what connection the road could have with Betty's distress over the measles.

"Now, don't you see?" asked Betty, tremulously, "It is for godmother that I wanted to build that road, for ever since I came she has been like Tusitala to me. 'The day is no longer than her kindness.' Oh, Joyce, nobody knows how good she has been to me!" Then between her sobs she told Joyce again the story of the gold beads, and the many things her godmother had done to make her visit a continual delight. Mrs. Sherman, outside the door, felt her eyes grow dim and her cheeks wet, as the child babbled on, reciting a long list of little kindnesses that she had treasured in her memory, and that her godmother had either done unconsciously, or had forgotten long ago.

It showed how hungry the poor little heart had been, that such trifles could make it brim over with gratitude. She wiped her eyes more than once as the voice went on.

"Of course I couldn't dig a road like those chiefs did, and she wouldn't have wanted one, even if I could; but I thought maybe I could leave a memory behind me when this beautiful visit is done, that would be like a smooth, white road. You know remembering things is like looking back over a road. At least it always seemed that way to me, and the unpleasant things that have happened are like the stones and rocks that we stumble over. But if there haven't been any unpleasant things to remember, then we can look back and see it stretched out behind us, all smooth and white and shining.

"So I tried from the very first of my visit to leave nothing behind me for her memory to stumble over; not a frown, a cross word, or a single disobedience. That's why I wouldn't go with you that day to have my fortune told. It would have spoiled my 'Road of the Loving Heart,' and put a stone in it that would always have made godmother sorry when she thought of my visit.

"That's why I came back from the picnic at the old mill and missed the charades. It would have spoiled the road if I hadn't kept my promise,—kept it to the utmost. And now after all the days I have tried so hard, it is going to be spoiled because I've gone and got sick. I'll be so much care and trouble that the Memory Road will be all spoiled—my 'Road of the Loving Heart!'"

Betty was so exhausted by this time, that she was not crying any longer; but now and then a long sob shook the little body from head to foot. Joyce, not knowing what to say, slipped away and went out into the hall.

"So that is the cause of the child's distress," whispered Mrs. Sherman. "Bless her little heart, now I've found out what is the matter, maybe I can succeed in quieting her."

What she said to comfort her the girls never knew, for the door closed behind her and they stole away to their own rooms.

But presently they heard the "White Seal's Lullaby" sung softly within. She had taken Betty in her arms, and was rocking her as tenderly as she had rocked the Little Colonel, while she sang, "Oh, hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us."

When Betty fell asleep it was in the embrace of something far more comforting and restful than the "arms of the slow-swinging seas." For the first time in her life since she could remember, she felt what it was to be folded fast in the mother-love that she had always longed for.



CHAPTER XIV.

A LONG NIGHT.

"Oh, isn't it awful!" exclaimed the Little Colonel, in a shocked tone, and with such a look of horror in her face that Eugenia leaned forward to listen. Lloyd was speaking to Joyce on the porch just outside of the library window, where Eugenia sat reading.

"What is awful?" asked Eugenia, her curiosity aroused by the expression of the girls' faces.

"Sh!" whispered Lloyd, warningly, as she tiptoed to the window and sat down on the broad, low sill. "I am afraid Betty will hear us talking about her. The doctor has just been here, and he says—oh, Eugenia, it is too terrible to tell—he says he is afraid that Betty is going blind!"

The tears stood in the Little Colonel's eyes. "You know that people do lose their sight sometimes when they have the measles, and her eyes have been the worst part of it from the start. The night before the measles broke out on her she read till nearly morning by candle-light, because she was restless and couldn't go to sleep. Of course that made them worse."

"Blind!" echoed Eugenia, closing her own eyes a moment on the bright summer world without, and feeling a chill run over her, as she realised what black dungeon walls those five letters could build around a life.

"Was the doctor sure, Lloyd? Can't something be done?"

"Of co'se he wasn't suah. I heard him tell mothah that he wouldn't give up fighting for her sight as long as there was a shadow of a chance to save it, but he advised her to send for an oculist to consult with him, and she's just now telephoned to the city for one."

"Does Betty know it?"

"She knows that there is dangah of her losing her sight, and is tryin' so hahd to be quiet and patient."

Eugenia laid down her book, feeling faint and sick. For a long time after Lloyd and Joyce had left her she sat idly playing with the curtain cord, thinking over what they had told her. Presently she tiptoed up-stairs to her room. She stood a moment outside Betty's door, listening, for Betty was talking to Eliot, and she wanted to hear what a person with such a prospect staring her in the face would have to say.

"There are lots of beautiful things in the world to think about, Eliot," Betty was saying bravely, in her sweet, cheery little voice.

"'Specially when you've lived in the country and have all the big outdoors to remember. Now while I'm so hot I love to count up all the cool things I can remember. I like to pretend that I'm down in the orchard, way early in the morning, with a fresh breeze blowing through the apple-blossoms and the dewdrops shining on every blade of grass. Oh, it smells so fresh and sweet and delicious! Now I'm in the corn-fields and the tall green corn is rustling in the wind, and the morning-glories climb up every stalk and shake the dew out of their purple bells. Now I can hear the bucket splash down in the well, and come up cold and dripping. And now I'm dabbling my fingers in the spring down in the old stone spring house, and standing on the cold, wet rocks in my bare feet. And there's the winter mornings, Eliot, when the trees are covered with sleet till every twig twinkles like a diamond. And the frost on the window-panes—oh, if I could only lay my face against the cold glass now, how good it would feel!"

Eugenia could bear no more. She turned away from the door, and, meeting Mrs. Sherman on the threshold of her room, threw herself into her arms, sobbing: "Oh, Cousin Elizabeth, I can't stand it. If Betty goes blind it will be all my fault! She never would have had the measles if it hadn't been for me. But I would go, and I made the others go, too. And when Betty refused I was so mean and hateful to her! Oh, Cousin Elizabeth, what can I do?"

Mrs. Sherman drew Eugenia into her room and comforted her the best she could, but her own heart was heavy. She knew that Doctor Fuller had little hope of saving Betty's sight.

That knowledge threw a shadow over the entire household. The great oculist came, and gravely shook his head over the case. "There is one chance that she may see again," he said, "one in a hundred. That is all. Now if she could have a trained nurse who could watch her eyes constantly and follow directions to the letter—"

"She shall have anything!" interrupted Mrs. Sherman. "Everything that would help in the smallest degree."

"And it would be best not to let the child know," he continued. "It would probably excite her, and, above all things, that must be guarded against."

But Betty, lying with bandaged eyes, caught a whisper, felt the suppressed sympathy in the atmosphere, as one feels the tingle of electricity in the air before a storm, and began to guess the truth. When the trained nurse came and gave such careful attention to the treatment of her eyes, she was sure of it. But she said nothing of her suspicions, and they thought she had none.

One day Lloyd came into the room with a newspaper in her hand. Eugenia and Joyce followed softly. Lloyd tried to speak calmly, but there was a suppressed excitement in her voice as she exclaimed, "Betty, I've got the loveliest thing to show you. Mothah said I might be the one to tell, 'cause I'm so glad and proud, I don't know what to do. You know that little poem that you gave to mothah, called 'Night?' Well, she sent it away to an editah, and he has published it in this papah with yo' name at the bottom,—Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis! Now aren't you stuck up? We are all so proud of you we don't know what to do."

Betty stretched out one trembling hand for the paper, and involuntarily the other went up to her eyes to push away the bandages. "Let me see it," she cried, eagerly, but the thrill of gladness in her voice died in a pitiful little note of despair as she whispered, brokenly, "Oh, I forgot! I can't see!"

But the next instant her hand was groping for the paper again. "Where is it?" she asked. "Let me feel it, anyway. Oh, to think that something I have written has really been published! Where is it, Lloyd? Put my hand on the spot, please. You don't know how glad I am, how glad and thankful. I have always wanted to write—always hoped that some day, after I had tried years and years, I might be able to do something good enough to be published, but to have it come now while I am a little girl,"—her voice sunk almost to a whisper,—"oh, Lloyd you don't know how wonderful it seems to me!"

She was trembling so that the paper shook in her hands. "Where is it?" she asked again, feeling blindly over the page.

"There," said Lloyd, placing the little groping finger on a spot at the head of a column. "There is the word NIGHT, and heah," guiding her fingers down the page, "heah is yo' name. If I were you I'd be so stuck up I wouldn't speak to common people that can't have verses published in the papah."

"But—oh—if you couldn't—see—it!" Betty's words came in choking little gasps. She paused a moment and turned her face away, swallowing hard. Then she went on more calmly.

"Wasn't it queer that I should have written about Night, just before mine begun? That the only thing I shall ever have published should be called that? My long, long night! But there are no stars in this night. Lloyd, it's awful to think you'll always be in the dark!"

Lloyd turned with a startled glance to the other girls.

"I—I don't know what you mean," she stammered.

"Yes, you do," insisted Betty. "What you've been trying to keep from me, all of you, that I am always going to be—blind!"

She ended the sentence with a little shiver, and, choking with sobs, turned her face to the wall. At a sign from the nurse, Lloyd slipped away and ran to her mother's room. She found Eugenia already there, with her head buried in Mrs. Sherman's lap.

"Oh, it almost broke my heart!" she was saying. "To see those poor little fingers groping over the paper feeling for the poem that she couldn't see. And she said so pitifully, 'My long, long night! There are no stars in this night!' And to think it's all my fault! Oh, it is just killing me! I could hardly sleep last night for thinking of it, and when I did I had a dreadful nightmare.

"I dreamed that I was in a great market-place going from stall to stall, trying to buy something, but I had forgotten what it was I wanted. A horrid grinning little dwarf, with great fangs in his jaw, like a boar's tusks, followed me everywhere, carrying my purse. I'd stand awhile in front of every stall, trying to remember what it was I'd come for, and when I'd thought awhile I'd cry out, 'Now I know what I want, give me my own way. It is my own way that I want.' Everybody in the market would stop to listen, and the man behind the counter would say, 'Not unless you can pay the price.'

"Then that horrible dwarf would step up, grinning, his old tusks showing all hideous and yellow, and say, 'Here is the price! Give her her own way. Here is the price. Let the whole world see the price that she has paid for her own way,—Betty's eyes is the price. Betty's beautiful brown eyes!' And then he would hold them out in his ugly knotted hand, and they would look up at me so reproachfully, that I would scream and tear my hair. I don't know how many times I had to go through that scene in my sleep, but when I got up this morning I was as tired as if I had been running all night, and every place I turn I can see that hideous old hand thrust out at me with Betty's brown eyes in it. I'll never insist on having my own way again."

There was no time for Mrs. Sherman to comfort Eugenia then, for Betty needed her, and in answer to the nurse's summons she hurried away to soothe the child, sorely distressed by this turn that the house party had taken.

"Go out on the ponies for awhile," she said, as she left the three girls sitting disconsolately on the floor. "Go out and get some of this summer sunshine into your faces and voices so that you can bring it back to Elizabeth. She will need all that you can bring her, poor child; so, instead of brooding over your own feelings, think of something that you can do to cheer her up."

In a little while there was a clatter of ponies' hoofs down the avenue, and Mrs. Sherman, sitting by the window in Betty's room, waved her hand to Eugenia, Joyce, and the Little Colonel as they rode away. They were gone all morning, and when they came back the June sunshine had done its work. Their faces were bright and smiling, and they giggled continuously as they bumped into each other, running up the stairs.

Betty's door was open, and to their surprise they heard a little laugh as they stopped to peep in. She was lying back among the pillows with bandaged eyes, but there was a smile on her lips.

"Come in, girls," she cried. "Godmother and I are making alphabet rhymes. We started at A, and have been taking turns. She has just made a good one: 'P is a pie-man, portly and proud, pugnaciously prattling'—What's the rest of it, godmother? You tell them. I have forgotten."

But Mrs. Sherman's rhyme was broken short in an astonished exclamation, as her glance fell on the Little Colonel.

"Why, Lloyd Sherman!" she cried. "What have you been doing? Your dress is torn to tatters, and you are so dirty and dusty that I can scarcely believe that you are my child!"

The Little Colonel screwed herself around to look at the back of her dress-skirt, which was torn into a dozen ragged strips, and fluttered behind her in long fringes. There was a three-cornered tear on the shoulder and a hole in the elbow of her sleeve.

"Reckon I must have toah it gettin' through a bobwiah fence," she answered, cheerfully. "But, look at Eugenia! She's as much of a sight as I am, with her hair hangin' all in her eyes, like an ole witch, and that scratch across her face, and her stockings full of burrs."

"Joyce is nearly as bad!" cried Eugenia; "both hair ribbons gone, the heel lost off one shoe, grass stains on her dress, and her face red as a turkey gobbler's, from running so fast."

"Where have you all been, and what have you been doing?" demanded Mrs. Sherman so emphatically that, with much giggling and exclaiming, they all began to talk at once.

"We met the boys ovah on the pike," began the Little Colonel, "Malcolm and Keith and Robby, and we were all ridin' along as polite as anything, when the boys began to tell about the good times they used to have playin' Indian."

"But first," interrupted Joyce, "Keith told about the time they tied his little cousin Ginger to a tree in the woods, and left her there until it was so dark she nearly had a spasm."

"Yes," said Eugenia, "and I said what a pity it was that we were too old to play Indian; that I had had the blues all day, and felt that nothing would do me so much good as to get out some place where nobody could hear, and yell and carry on at the top of my voice. And Malcolm said that, just for once, supposing we'd pretend like we were ten years old, instead of thirteen, and pitch in and have a good ripping, tearing old game of Indian. It was away up the pike, where there was nothing in sight but a few farmhouses, scattered along the road, and it didn't seem as if it would make any difference, so we said we would."

"First thing I knew," broke in Joyce, "Robby Moore gave an outlandish war-whoop right in my ear, that nearly deafened me, and grabbed me by my hair, yelling he was going to tomahawk me. And I saw Eugenia go sailing up the road as fast as her horse could carry her, with Keith after her, swinging on to those two long black braids of hers. You see Lloyd had the advantage of us with her short hair. They couldn't scalp her so easily; but Malcolm chased after her like all possessed."

"Maybe you think it wasn't excitin'," said the Little Colonel. "I felt like a real suah 'nuff Indian was aftah me, and I screeched bloody murdah till you could have heard me almost to the old mill."

"I should say she did!" giggled Joyce. "The way Tarbaby got over the ground was something to remember, and the way Lloyd yelled would have made a wild coyote take to its heels. Just as we got in sight of the toll-gate, we met one of those big three-story huckster-wagons, full of chickens and ducks and things. You know how funny they always look, with so many bills and legs and tails sticking through the slats. Well, the horses shied as we went dashing up to them, and first thing we knew they had backed that wagon into a ditch at the side of the road, and one of the coops went off the top ke-bang! into the ditch."

"You never saw anything madder than that old huckster," interrupted Eugenia. "He jumped down off the wagon, and came up to us with a big whip in his hands, scolding, as cross as two sticks. But he couldn't stay angry with those boys. They were so polite, and apologised, and said if they had done anything wrong they wanted to make it right. They offered to pay for the coop if it was broken, and got off their horses to help him lift it on to the wagon again. But when they took hold of it three chickens flopped out of the broken side, and went squawking across the fields."

"It was so funny!" laughed Lloyd. "There they went, legs stretching, wings flapping, lickety split! It made me think of Papa Jack's story about the old witch: 'she ran, she flew, she ran, she flew!' We all told the old huckstah we'd help him catch them and that's why we got so dirty."



"Oh, such a chase!" added Joyce. "Through barb-wire fences, over ploughed fields and into blackberry briers. That is how we got so scratched and torn. But we caught the chickens, and brought them back, with feathers flying, and with them squawking at the tops of their voices."

"What fun it must have been!" said Betty. "I wish I could have seen you then, and I wish I could see you now. You must be wrecks."

"They are not pretty sights, I can assure you," said Mrs. Sherman, laughing in spite of her disapproval. "I'm astonished that you would make such a commotion on a public road, and I'm afraid I would have to lecture you a little if I were not sure that you would never do it again. Run along now and make yourselves presentable for lunch, and first thing you do, look in your mirrors. You'll not be charmed, I'm sure."

"One little, two little, three little Indians," sang Betty, as they skipped out of the room, hand in hand, and Joyce whispered in the hall, "How can she be so cheerful? She's the bravest little thing I ever saw."

They learned the secret of her cheerfulness next time they went to her room. She turned to them with a wistful little smile, sadder, somehow, than tears, saying, "Godmother has helped me to find some stars in my long night, girls. She told me about Milton. I didn't know before that he was blind when he wrote 'Paradise Lost.' And she told me about Fanny Crosby, too, the blind hymnwriter, whose hymns have helped so many people and are sung all over the world.

"I've made up my mind that if the doctor can't save my sight I'll do as they did. It's like dropping the curtains on the outside darkness when night comes on, godmother says, and turning up the lights and stirring the fire, and making it so bright and cheerful and sweet inside that you forget how dark it is outdoors.

"And maybe if I can do that, and think all the time about the beautiful things I have seen and read, I can make up stories some day as they did their poems and hymns. I will write fairy tales that the children will love to listen to and ask to hear, over and over again. I know I can do it, for the ones I've made for Davy he likes best of all. I'd never hope to write stories that grown people would be interested in, and love as they love Tusitala's, but just to be the children's 'tale-teller,' and to write stories that they would listen to long after I am dead and gone—why that would be worth living for, even if I never saw the light again. And godmother thinks I can do it."

"I know you can," assented Lloyd, warmly, "and we'll copy them for you, and send them away to be put into books."

"Joyce," asked Betty, "would you mind reading that little newspaper clipping to the girls about the Road of the Loving Heart? I want them to know about it, too."

She did not know that they had already heard it, listening outside her door with heavy hearts and troubled faces, and when Joyce had found it and again read it aloud, she told them the story of the memory road that she was trying to leave behind her.

"It will be harder to do now that I am blind," she said, at the last, "for I can't help being a care and a trouble to everybody, everywhere I go now. But godmother says people won't mind that much if I'll only be pleasant and cheerful about my misfortune, and not let it cast its shadow on other lives any more than I can help. I haven't said anything about it yet to her, but if there is enough money in the bank that papa left to educate me with, I want to go to a school for the blind and learn to read those queer raised letters, and to do everything for myself. Then I'll not be such a trouble to everybody."

"But how can you be cheerful and pleasant, and go on that way for a whole lifetime?" asked Eugenia, with a shiver. "You may live to be an old, old woman."

"Oh, Eugenia!" exclaimed Joyce, in a shocked undertone. "Don't remind the poor little thing of of that."

"I know," answered Betty, her smile all gone now, and her lip trembling. "Sometimes when I think of that, it's so awful that I can hardly stand it. But it will be only a day at a time, and if I can manage to get through them one by one, and keep my courage up to the end, it will be all right afterward, you know, for there is no night there. The nurse read me that yesterday out of Revelation. That's the only thing that comforts me sometimes." She repeated it in a soft whisper, turning her face away: "There'll be no night there!"



CHAPTER XV.

"THE ROAD OF THE LOVING HEART."

Joyce sat with her elbows on her dressing-table and her chin in her hands, gazing thoughtfully into the mirror. She had just come from Betty's room, and the child's patient cheerfulness, in the face of the dark future that threatened her, had brought the tears to her eyes.

"Dear little Betty!" she said to her reflection in the mirror. "What a beautiful memory of her we will all carry away with us! There isn't a single thing I would want to forget about her. She will be leaving each one of us a Road of the Loving Heart to look back on. And it's like the work of the old Samoan chiefs, too! Built to last for ever. It frightens me to think that what I've done is going to be remembered for ever and ever and ever; but that is what Mrs. Sherman said: 'The memories we dig into our souls will go with us into eternity.'

"If I should die right now, what a lot of things I would want people to forget about me; especially the family. I've been so mean to Jack and so selfish with Mary. I'm going to begin the minute I get back to the little brown house to start to make a memory road for everybody, that I need not be ashamed of when I lie a-dying."

Then she gave a shamefaced little glance at her reflection in the mirror. "No, that's putting it off too long. That is one of my worst habits. I'll begin this minute and write that letter to mamma that I have been putting off all week. And I'll take time to make it interesting, and write all the little things that I know she wants to hear about. And I'll not be so snappish with Eugenia, and make her feel that she was most to blame about our getting the measles. I've taken a mean sort of pleasure in doing it before. Poor thing, she seems to feel dreadfully bad about it, and there's no use my adding anything to her distress." And Joyce, jumping up, took out her writing materials, and sat down at her desk.

At the same moment the Little Colonel was hanging around the door waiting for Mrs. Sherman, who sat in the room until Betty fell asleep. There was a lingering tenderness in Lloyd's kiss as she threw her arms around her mother's neck, and, though no word was spoken, Mrs. Sherman knew that Lloyd had taken Betty's little sermon to heart.

"Where is Eugenia, dear?" she asked.

"She has gone to her room, I think."

"I want to have a little talk with her. She has seemed so miserable and unhappy, since all this happened. The poor child has nearly made herself ill worrying about it."

Across the hall Eugenia had thrown herself down on her bed, and was staring out of the windows. She saw nothing of the summer skies outside, or any of all that outdoor brightness. Her gaze was turned inward on herself.

"I wish I could begin at the beginning and do it all over,—all my life!" she thought. "Somehow I've always thought it rather smart to say and do exactly as I pleased; to be the ringleader in all the mischief and make the teachers dread me, and have the girls afraid of me. But Betty makes you look at things so differently. I'd give anything I've got to have people remember me as they will her. What must papa think of me? I'm all he's got, and he is so good to me! Oh, it would have been better if I had never been born! Every day I've lived I've left a whole road full of stones for somebody to jolt over. Poor old Eliot can't think of me as anything else than an imp of selfishness, for I'm always making it hard for her, and she's a stranger in a strange land,' and I ought to have remembered that she has feelings as well as I have, even if she is a servant. And now Betty's eyes—"

She turned over on the bed, face downward, and began to cry. It was just then that Mrs. Sherman tapped at the door. For almost an hour Lloyd could hear the low murmur of voices going on inside the room, and knew that Eugenia was hearing now what she had always most sorely needed, a sympathetic, motherly talk. If she could have had that loving advice, those straightforward words of warning, long ago, how much they might have done for the motherless child. As it was, that hour opened Eugenia's eyes to many things, and awakened a desire to grow more like the gentle woman beside her, sweet and sincere, unselfish and helpful.