The Little Colonel at Boarding-School

The quarter of an hour was almost over when she led the way into the long drawing-room, which she had reserved until last. "Of co'se it doesn't look as it does when we are living heah. It makes such a difference having the curtains down and the furniture covahed; but I want you to see my harp." She I began slipping the cover from the tall burnished frame.

"It belonged to my grandmothah Amanthis, and I am proudah of it than anything I own. That's her portrait ovah the mantel. Isn't she beautiful? Somehow I nevah can call her just grandmothah, as if she were an old lady. She nevah lived to be one, you know. I always have to add her name, Amanthis, and I think of her as she looks there in the pictuah, the young girl she was when grandfathah first saw her, a June rose in her hair and anothah at her throat. 'The fairest flowah in all Kentucky,' he told me once. That's always seemed such a sweet romance to me. She wasn't much oldah than you when he brought her here a bride. He always talks about her when the locusts bloom, for they were in blossom then, and the avenue was white with them."

Lloyd had expected more outspoken admiration from Ida when she showed her the portrait, and was disappointed to have her barely glance up at it, murmuring, "Yes, she is lovely," in an absent-minded way, and then hurry to the window, exclaiming, "Oh, there he is. I can see him just coming in at the gate."

Lloyd's glance followed Ida's, and, stepping back from the window, she began hastily drawing the cover over the harp.

"Oh, don't put it on yet," said Ida. "I want to show it to him." Lloyd hesitated an instant, then stammered confusedly, "But – but – oh, Ida, I'm so sorry, but don't you see, I can't ask him into the house."

"Why not?" cried Ida. "You promised on the way up here you'd do anything you could for me."

Tears of distress gathered in the Little Colonel's eyes. It was impossible to answer Ida's question without wounding her deeply, for it was in this very room she had heard her grandfather say: "It's a pity Cy Bannon's youngest boy is such a profligate. Why, sir, he isn't worth the powder and shot that would put an end to his worthless existence. I wouldn't let him darken my doors, sir!" And it was in this room also that she had heard her father say: "No, Elizabeth, for the judge's sake I'd like to show Ned some attention, and some families do receive him. But his unprincipled conduct bars him out here. He's a fellow whom I never could permit Lloyd to know."

Ida repeated her question. "Oh, Violet," cried Lloyd, "it's just breaking my heart to refuse you, but I can't let him come in. It isn't my house, and I've no right to when grandfathah and Papa Jack have both forbidden it. But it's warmah on the poa'ch than it is in the house with no fiah, and I'll put some chairs out for you, and wait for you in heah."

"Won't you even come out and be introduced?"

"Oh, Violet, don't ask me!" begged the Little Colonel. "I'd like to for your sake, but I can't. I simply can't!"

"Why not? Are you going to let your father's prejudices stand in the way? He doesn't know him as I do. He's just taken a dislike to him as aunt has done on account of things he's heard. It's unfair! It's unjust to condemn him on account of other people's mistaken opinions and prejudices."

The Little Colonel wavered. Ida's absolute trust made it seem possible that she might be right and everybody else mistaken. She peered out of the window again. He was half-way up the avenue now, sauntering along at a leisurely gait with a cigarette in his mouth.

"Besides," continued Ida, "nobody need ever know you have met him. It's easy enough to keep it secret, so what's the difference – "

She stopped in the middle of her sentence, surprised by the change in the Little Colonel's manner. She had drawn herself up haughtily, and in her fearless scorn bore a strong resemblance to the portrait of the soldier-boy in gray in the frame above her.

"I hope," she said, slowly, "that I have too much respect for the family honah to do such an undahhanded thing as that. Do you think that I'd be willing to be the only one of all the Lloyds who couldn't be trusted?"

"Why, Princess, I don't see what's changed you so suddenly," said Ida. "I haven't asked you to do anything more than you've been doing all along, by letting me use your post-office box."

"But I nevah would have done that" cried Lloyd, "if I'd have known who yoah Edwardo was, and now I've found out that it is some one that Papa Jack disapproves of, of co'se I can't carry yoah lettahs any moah."

"Oh, Princess, I thought you'd stand by me against the whole world!" sobbed Ida. "I had counted so much – just these few days he'll be here in the Valley – on seeing him up here. I didn't think you'd be unreasonable and unjust. It seems as if it would break my heart to have my only friend fail me now."

The tears were streaming down Lloyd's face, too, but she clenched her hands and shook her head stubbornly. "No, tell him he can't come heah again, and that he mustn't send any moah lettahs to my address."

Without another word Ida turned and walked out to the porch, where she stood waiting behind the bare vines that twined the pillars for Edwardo to come to her. All the pretty colour had died out of her face, and Lloyd felt in a sudden spasm of remorse that she was responsible for the tears in the beautiful eyes and the look of trouble on the face that only a little while before had been aglow with happiness. The odour of a cigarette floated in through the hall. Then Ida closed the door, and the two sat down on the step outside.

Lloyd paced up and down the long room with her hands behind her back. There was an ache in her throat. She was so miserably disappointed in Edwardo, so miserably sorry for Ida. More than all, she was miserably sorry for herself; for the friendship which she had counted one of the most beautiful things of her life lay in ruins. For a moment she doubted if she had done right to shirk the obligations it had laid upon her, and wondered if it were not a greater sacrifice than her father ought to expect her to make for him. The temptation pressed sorely upon her to go to Ida and tell her she would stand by her as she had promised, and for a few days longer, at least, be the bearer of their letters. She even started toward the door; but half-way across the room some compelling force drew her eyes toward the portrait of Amanthis, and she stood still, looking into the depths of the clear, true eyes which had given counsel to more than one troubled heart.

Years before, the old Colonel, standing with his head bowed on the mantel, had murmured, brokenly, "Oh, Amanthis, tell me what to do!" and, obedient to the silent message of that straightforward gaze, had started off through the falling snow to be reconciled to his only daughter. And now Lloyd, looking up in the same way, no longer had any doubts about her duty.

"It wouldn't be right, would it!" she murmured. "You nevah did anything you had to hide. You wouldn't stoop to anything clandestine." She straightened herself up proudly, and wiped her eyes. "Neithah will I, no mattah what it costs me not to!" Then she went on, brokenly, as if talking to a living presence: "Oh, it's so pitiful for her to be so deceived in him; for of co'se grandfathah and Papa Jack and her aunt and everybody put togethah couldn't be mistaken. And I love her so much; I wish mothah were here, or Papa Jack – but I'll promise you, Grandmothah Amanthis, I'll nevah make you ashamed of me again. I wouldn't have carried the lettahs if I had known, and you can trust me always aftah this, for evah and evah."

It seemed to Lloyd that an approving smile rested on the girlish face, and a red streak of light from the wintry sunset, stealing in through the uncurtained window, shone across the June rose at her throat till it burned for the moment with the live red of a living rose.

She slipped the cover on the harp again, and taking one more look around the room at every familiar object grown dear from years of happy associations, she closed the door softly and stole up-stairs to rejoin Mom Beck. She felt as if she had been to a funeral and had suddenly grown very old and worldly wise – years older and wiser than when she started blithely up to Locust an hour or two before.

It was late when she and Mom Beck came down-stairs again. The sunset glow had almost faded from the sky. They bolted the front door and went out the back, Mom Beck taking the key again.

"Ida is waiting for me on the front poa'ch," Lloyd explained. "Good-bye, Mom Beck. I'm mighty homesick to come back to you all."

"Good-bye, honey," responded the faithful old soul. "I'm going to bring you some prawlines in the mawnin'. Ole Becky knows what'll cheer up her baby."

Lloyd paused at the corner of the porch. "I think we ought to go now," she called.

"In a minute," answered Ida. "I'll catch up with you."

Lloyd walked on slowly by herself, down the avenue, through the gate, beside the railroad track. She was in sight of the depot before Ned Bannon struck off across a field and Ida joined her. She did not speak as they hurried on toward the seminary, and Lloyd felt, with a desolate sinking of the heart, that the old intimacy could never be resumed.

CHAPTER XII

GHOST OR GIRL

Allison, struggling into her jacket as she ran, hurried along the path through Clovercroft to overtake Kitty and Katie on their way home at noon.

"Wait!" she called, waving her gloves frantically to attract their attention as they looked back from the woodland gate.

"I have some news for you." She was almost breathless when she caught up with them.

"What do you think of this? Ida and Lloyd have had a falling out of some kind. Neither one will say what it's about, but they don't have anything more to do with each other, and Ida has resigned from the Shadow Club. She told me just now to tell you all that she couldn't come any more, and that we might as well invite somebody else to join in her place. She didn't give any reason for leaving, and you know when she puts on that dignified, grown-up air of hers, one doesn't feel at liberty to ask questions. I told her I was sorry, and started to beg her to change her mind, but she wouldn't listen; just smiled in a mournful sort of way as if she had lost her last friend, and hurried past me.

"I asked Betty if she knew what was the matter, and she said it must be a quarrel of some kind, for Lloyd was dreadfully unhappy. After she came back from Locust yesterday evening she threw herself across the bed and cried, and cried, and wouldn't tell what for. She wouldn't go down to supper, either, and afterward, when Betty fixed her something on the chafing-dish, she barely tasted it."

"We'll have a gay old club meeting to-morrow," said Katie, "with Ida gone and Lloyd in the dumps and Betty unable to come, on account of her cold – "

"And her head so full of the book she's writing that she can't take any interest in anything else," interrupted Kitty. "It's too bad that there's only half a club left. Three of us can't get enough things ready to have a fair by Easter."

"That isn't the worst of it," answered Katie. "The three of us alone never can get even with Mittie Dupong and carry out our hoodoo plot to punish her, because we are all outside of the seminary. I'm tired of having the girls laugh whenever they see me eating an apple and make remarks about C. D."

"And I'm tired of hearing everlastingly about that old valentine!" chimed in Kitty. "If the other girls won't help us I think we ought to act on Ida's suggestion and take in some new members who would."

"Lucy Smith would be glad to join in Ida's place," said Allison. "She rooms across the hall from Mittie, and she'd dare do anything that we would suggest."

"And Retta Long's room is just above, and she's a good friend of ours," added Kitty. "Let's talk it over with Betty and Lloyd as soon as we get back to the seminary after dinner, and if they're willing we'll swear in the new members at recess."

"All right," assented Katie. "I'll hurry back and meet you here at the depot as soon as I get through dinner. We'll settle this before night."

But much running back and forth and consulting and discussing was necessary before the new addition to the club was in full working order. Lloyd and Betty were willing to admit Retta and Lucy, but Retta and Lucy were not willing to join unless their roommates were included in the invitation; and their roommates, Dora Deersly and Rose Parker, were not willing to spend any time in making fancy articles for the fair. It was too near the holidays, they said. They needed all their spare time for the presents they were trying to finish before Christmas.

"Couldn't they be sort of honorary members, and not have to work?" suggested Kitty. "They needn't even meet with us on Saturdays, if they'll help us play ghost to scare Mittie."

"Yes, there are some secret societies, like the Masons, that have different orders," Allison said. "Why couldn't we have, too? We'll be one kind of shadow, the kind that casts the influence, and the other four can be another kind and do the mischief. We can call ourselves the G. G.'s for good ghosts. Betty, can't you fix up something for the others?"

"Yes," answered Betty, "if you'll give me enough time."

She turned to the little note-book she always carried, and began looking over a list of words on the last page. The girls often laughed at Betty's devotion to the dictionary. Frequently they found her poring over its pages, picking out new words that pleased her fancy, as they would pick out the kernels of a nut, and jotting them down for future use.