The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Colonel, by Annie Fellows Johnston

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Title: The Little Colonel

Author: Annie Fellows Johnston

Release Date: December, 2005  [EBook #9407]
[This file was first posted on September 29, 2003]
[Most recently updated: May 28, 2004]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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THE LITTLE COLONEL

By Annie Fellows Johnston

1895






TO ONE OF KENTUCKY'S DEAREST LITTLE DAUGHTERS

The Little Colonel

HERSELF--THIS REMEMBRANCE OF A HAPPY SUMMER IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


"'CAUSE I'M SO MUCH LIKE YOU,' WAS THE STARTLING ANSWER".
"THE SAME TEMPER SEEMED TO BE BURNING IN THE EYES OF THE CHILD".
"WITH THE PARROT PERCHED ON THE BROOM SHE WAS CARRYING".
"THE LITTLE COLONEL CLATTERED UP AND DOWN THE HALL".
"SINGING AT THE TOP OF HER VOICE".
"'TELL ME GOOD-BY, BABY DEAR,' SAID MRS. SHERMAN".
"'AMANTHIS,' REPEATED THE CHILD DREAMILY".
"SHE CLIMBED UP IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR".
"THE SWEET LITTLE VOICE SANG IT TO THE END".




CHAPTER I.


It was one of the prettiest places in all Kentucky where the Little
Colonel stood that morning. She was reaching up on tiptoes, her eager
little face pressed close against the iron bars of the great entrance
gate that led to a fine old estate known as "Locust."

A ragged little Scotch and Skye terrier stood on its hind feet beside
her, thrusting his inquisitive nose between the bars, and wagging his
tasselled tail in lively approval of the scene before them.

They were looking down a long avenue that stretched for nearly a quarter
of a mile between rows of stately old locust-trees.

At the far end they could see the white pillars of a large stone house
gleaming through the Virginia creeper that nearly covered it. But they
could not see the old Colonel in his big chair on the porch behind the
cool screen of vines.

At that very moment he had caught the rattle of wheels along the road,
and had picked up his field-glass to see who was passing. It was only
a coloured man jogging along in the heat and dust with a cart full of
chicken-coops. The Colonel watched him drive up a lane that led to the
back of the new hotel that had just been opened in this quiet country
place. Then his glance fell on the two small strangers coming through
his gate down the avenue toward him. One was the friskiest dog he had
ever seen in his life. The other was a child he judged to be about five
years old.

Her shoes were covered with dust, and her white sunbonnet had slipped
off and was hanging over her shoulders. A bunch of wild flowers she had
gathered on the way hung limp and faded in her little warm hand. Her
soft, light hair was cut as short as a boy's.

There was something strangely familiar about the child, especially in
the erect, graceful way she walked.

Old Colonel Lloyd was puzzled. He had lived all his life in
Lloydsborough, and this was the first time he had ever failed to
recognize one of the neighbours' children. He knew every dog and horse,
too, by sight if not by name.

Living so far from the public road did not limit his knowledge of what
was going on in the world. A powerful field-glass brought every passing
object in plain view, while he was saved all annoyance of noise and
dust.

"I ought to know that child as well as I know my own name," he said to
himself. "But the dog is a stranger in these parts. Liveliest thing I
ever set eyes on! They must have come from the hotel. Wonder what they
want."

He carefully wiped the lens for a better view. When he looked again he
saw that they evidently had not come to visit him.

They had stopped half-way down the avenue, and climbed up on a rustic
seat to rest.

The dog sat motionless about two minutes, his red tongue hanging out as
if he were completely exhausted.

Suddenly he gave a spring, and bounded away through the tall blue grass.
He was back again in a moment, with a stick in his mouth. Standing
up with his fore paws in the lap of his little mistress, he looked so
wistfully into her face that she could not refuse this invitation for a
romp.

The Colonel chuckled as they went tumbling about in the grass to find
the stick which the child repeatedly tossed away.

He hitched his chair along to the other end of the porch as they kept
getting farther away from the avenue.

It had been many a long year since those old locust-trees had seen a
sight like that. Children never played any more under their dignified
shadows.

Time had been (but they only whispered this among themselves on rare
spring days like this) when the little feet chased each other up and
down the long walk, as much at home as the pewees in the beeches.

Suddenly the little maid stood up straight, and began to sniff the air,
as if some delicious odour had blown across the lawn.

"Fritz," she exclaimed, in delight, "I 'mell 'trawberries!"

The Colonel, who could not hear the remark, wondered at the abrupt pause
in the game. He understood it, however, when he saw them wading through
the tall grass, straight to his strawberry bed. It was the pride of his
heart, and the finest for miles around. The first berries of the season
had been picked only the day before. Those that now hung temptingly red
on the vines he intended to send to his next neighbour, to prove his
boasted claim of always raising the finest and earliest fruit.

He did not propose to have his plans spoiled by these stray guests.
Laying the field-glass in its accustomed place on the little table
beside his chair, he picked up his hat and strode down the walk.

Colonel Lloyd's friends all said he looked like Napoleon, or rather like
Napoleon might have looked had he been born and bred a Kentuckian.

He made an imposing figure in his suit of white duck.

The Colonel always wore white from May till October.

There was a military precision about him, from his erect carriage to the
cut of the little white goatee on his determined chin.

No one looking into the firm lines of his resolute face could imagine
him ever abandoning a purpose or being turned aside when he once formed
an opinion.

Most children were afraid of him. The darkies about the place shook in
their shoes when he frowned. They had learned from experience that "ole
Marse Lloyd had a tigah of a tempah in him."

As he passed down the walk there were two mute witnesses to his old
soldier life. A spur gleamed on his boot heel, for he had just returned
from his morning ride, and his right sleeve hung empty.

He had won his title bravely. He had given his only son and his strong
right arm to the Southern cause. That had been nearly thirty years ago.

He did not charge down on the enemy with his usual force this time. The
little head, gleaming like sunshine in the strawberry patch,
reminded him so strongly of a little fellow who used to follow him
everywhere,--Tom, the sturdiest, handsomest boy in the county,--Tom,
whom he had been so proud of, whom he had so nearly worshipped.

Looking at this fair head bent over the vines, he could almost forget
that Tom had ever outgrown his babyhood, that he had shouldered a rifle
and followed him to camp, a mere boy, to be shot down by a Yankee bullet
in his first battle.

The old Colonel could almost believe he had him back again, and that he
stood in the midst of those old days the locusts sometimes whispered
about.

He could not hear the happiest of little voices that was just then
saying, "Oh, Fritz, isn't you glad we came? An' isn't you glad we've got
a gran'fathah with such good 'trawberries?"

It was hard for her to put the "s" before her consonants.

As the Colonel came nearer she tossed another berry into the dog's
mouth. A twig snapped, and she raised a startled face toward him.

"Suh?" she said, timidly, for it seemed to her that the stern, piercing
eyes had spoken.

"What are you doing here, child?" he asked, in a voice so much kinder
than his eyes that she regained her usual self-possession at once.

"Eatin' 'trawberries," she answered, coolly.

"Who are you, anyway?" he exclaimed, much puzzled. As he asked the
question his gaze happened to rest on the dog, who was peering at him
through the ragged, elfish wisps of hair nearly covering its face, with
eyes that were startlingly human.

"'Peak when yo'ah 'poken to, Fritz," she said, severely, at the same
time popping another luscious berry into her mouth. Fritz obediently
gave a long yelp. The Colonel smiled grimly.

"What's your name?" he asked, this time looking directly at her.

"Mothah calls me her baby," was the soft-spoken reply, "but papa an' Mom
Beck they calls me the Little Cun'l."

"What under the sun do they call you that for?" he roared.

"'Cause I'm so much like you," was the startling answer.

"Like me!" fairly gasped the Colonel. "How are you like me?"

"Oh, I'm got such a vile tempah, an' I stamps my foot when I gets mad,
an' gets all red in the face. An' I hollahs at folks, an' looks jus' zis
way."

She drew her face down and puckered her lips into such a sullen pout
that it looked as if a thunder-storm had passed over it. The next
instant she smiled up at him serenely. The Colonel laughed. "What makes
you think I am like that?" he said. "You never saw me before."

"Yes, I have too," she persisted. "You's a-hangin' in a gold frame over
ou' mantel."

Just then a clear, high voice was heard calling out in the road.

The child started up in alarm. "Oh, deah," she exclaimed in dismay, at
sight of the stains on her white dress, where she had been kneeling on
the fruit, "that's Mom Beck. Now I'll be tied up, and maybe put to bed
for runnin' away again. But the berries is mighty nice," she added,
politely. "Good mawnin', suh. Fritz, we mus' be goin' now."

The voice was coming nearer.

"I'll walk down to the gate with you," said the Colonel, anxious to
learn something more about his little guest. "Oh, you'd bettah not,
suh!" she cried in alarm. "Mom Beck doesn't like you a bit. She just
hates you! She's goin' to give you a piece of her mind the next time she
sees you. I heard her tell Aunt Nervy so."

There was as much real distress in the child's voice as if she were
telling him of a promised flogging.

"Lloyd! Aw, Lloy-eed!" the call came again.

A neat-looking coloured woman glanced in at the gate as she was passing
by, and then stood still in amazement. She had often found her little
charge playing along the roadside or hiding behind trees, but she had
never before known her to pass through any one's gate.

As the name came floating down to him through the clear air, a change
came over the Colonel's stern face. He stooped over the child. His hand
trembled as he put it under her soft chin and raised her eyes to his.

"Lloyd, Lloyd!" he repeated, in a puzzled way. "Can it be possible?
There certainly is a wonderful resemblance. You have my little Tom's
hair, and only my baby Elizabeth ever had such hazel eyes."

He caught her up in his one arm, and strode on to the gate, where the
coloured woman stood.

"Why, Becky, is that you?" he cried, recognizing an old, trusted servant
who had lived at Locust in his wife's lifetime.

Her only answer was a sullen nod.

"Whose child is this?" he asked, eagerly, without seeming to notice her
defiant looks. "Tell me if you can."

"How can I tell you, suh," she demanded, indignantly, "when you have
fo'bidden even her name to be spoken befo' you?"

A harsh look came into the Colonel's eyes. He put the child hastily
down, and pressed his lips together.

"Don't tie my sunbonnet, Mom Beck," she begged. Then she waved her hand
with an engaging smile.

"Good-bye, suh," she said, graciously. "We've had a mighty nice time!"

The Colonel took off his hat with his usual courtly bow, but he spoke no
word in reply.

When the last flutter of her dress had disappeared around the bend of
the road, he walked slowly back toward the house.

Half-way down the long avenue where she had stopped to rest, he sat down
on the same rustic seat. He could feel her soft little fingers resting
on his neck, where they had lain when he carried her to the gate.

A very un-Napoleonlike mist blurred his sight for a moment. It had been
so long since such a touch had thrilled him, so long since any caress
had been given him.

More than a score of years had gone by since Tom had been laid in a
soldier's grave, and the years that Elizabeth had been lost to him
seemed almost a lifetime.

And this was Elizabeth's little daughter. Something very warm and sweet
seemed to surge across his heart as he thought of the Little Colonel. He
was glad, for a moment, that they called her that; glad that his only
grandchild looked enough like himself for others to see the resemblance.

But the feeling passed as he remembered that his daughter had married
against his wishes, and he had closed his doors for ever against her.

The old bitterness came back redoubled in its force.

The next instant he was stamping down the avenue, roaring for Walker,
his body-servant, in such a tone that the cook's advice was speedily
taken: "Bettah hump yo'self outen dis heah kitchen befo' de ole tigah
gits to lashin' roun' any pearter."




CHAPTER II.


Mom Beck carried the ironing-board out of the hot kitchen, set the irons
off the stove, and then tiptoed out to the side porch of the little
cottage.

"Is yo' head feelin' any bettah, honey?" she said to the pretty,
girlish-looking woman lying in the hammock. "I promised to step up to
the hotel this evenin' to see one of the chambah-maids. I thought I'd
take the Little Cun'l along with me if you was willin'. She's always
wild to play with Mrs. Wyford's children up there."

"Yes, I'm better, Becky," was the languid reply. "Put a clean dress on
Lloyd if you are going to take her out."

Mrs. Sherman closed her eyes again, thinking gratefully, "Dear, faithful
old Becky! What a comfort she has been all my life, first as my nurse,
and now as Lloyd's! She is worth her weight in gold!"

The afternoon shadows were stretching long across the grass when Mom
Beck led the child up the green slope in front of the hotel.

The Little Colonel had danced along so gaily with Fritz that her cheeks
glowed like wild roses. She made a quaint little picture with such short
sunny hair and dark eyes shining out from under the broad-brimmed white
hat she wore.

Several ladies who were sitting on the shady piazza, busy with their
embroidery, noticed her admiringly. "It's Elizabeth Lloyd's little
daughter," one of them explained. "Don't you remember what a scene there
was some years ago when she married a New York man? Sherman, I believe,
his name was, Jack Sherman. He was a splendid fellow, and enormously
wealthy. Nobody could say a word against him, except that he was a
Northerner. That was enough for the old Colonel, though. He hates
Yankees like poison. He stormed and swore, and forbade Elizabeth ever
coming in his sight again. He had her room locked up, and not a soul on
the place ever dares mention her name in his hearing."

The Little Colonel sat down demurely on the piazza steps to wait for the
children. The nurse had not finished dressing them for the evening.

She amused herself by showing Fritz the pictures in an illustrated
weekly. It was not long until she began to feel that the ladies were
talking about her. She had lived among older people so entirely that
her thoughts were much deeper than her baby speeches would lead one to
suppose.

She understood dimly, from what she had heard the servants say, that
there was some trouble between her mother and grandfather. Now she heard
it rehearsed from beginning to end. She could not understand what
they meant by "bank failures" and "unfortunate investments," but she
understood enough to know that her father had lost nearly all his money,
and had gone West to make more.

Mrs. Sherman had moved from their elegant New York home two weeks ago
to this little cottage in Lloydsborough that her mother had left her.
Instead of the houseful of servants they used to have, there was only
faithful Mom Beck to do everything.

There was something magnetic in the child's eyes.

Mrs. Wyford shrugged her shoulders uneasily as she caught their piercing
gaze fixed on her.

"I do believe that little witch understood every word I said," she
exclaimed.

"Oh, certainly not," was the reassuring answer. "She's such a little
thing."

But she had heard it all, and understood enough to make her vaguely
unhappy. Going home she did not frisk along with Fritz, but walked
soberly by Mom Beck's side, holding tight to the friendly black hand.

"We'll go through the woods," said Mom Beck, lifting her over the fence.
"It's not so long that way."

As they followed the narrow, straggling path into the cool dusk of
the woods, she began to sing. The crooning chant was as mournful as a
funeral dirge.

  "The clouds hang heavy, an' it's gwine to rain.
  Fa'well, my dyin' friends.
  I'm gwine to lie in the silent tomb.
  Fa'well, my dyin' friends."

A muffled little sob made her stop and look down in surprise.

"Why, what's the mattah, honey?" she exclaimed. "Did Emma Louise make
you mad? Or is you cryin' 'cause you're so ti'ed? Come! Ole Becky'll
tote her baby the rest of the way."

She picked the light form up in her arms, and, pressing the troubled
little face against her shoulder, resumed her walk and her song.

  "It's a world of trouble we're travellin' through,
  Fa'well, my dyin' friends."

"Oh, don't, Mom Beck," sobbed the child, throwing her arms around the
woman's neck, and crying as though her heart would break.

"Land sakes, what is the mattah?" she asked, in alarm. She sat down on a
mossy log, took off the white hat, and looked into the flushed, tearful
face.

"Oh, it makes me so lonesome when you sing that way," wailed the Little
Colonel. "I just can't 'tand it! Mom Beck, is my mothah's heart all
broken? Is that why she is sick so much, and will it kill her suah
'nuff?"

"Who's been tellin' you such nonsense?" asked the woman, sharply.

"Some ladies at the hotel were talkin' about it. They said that
gran'fathah didn't love her any moah, an' it was just a-killin' her."
Mom Beck frowned fiercely.

The child's grief was so deep and intense that she did not know just
how to quiet her. Then she said, decidedly, "Well, if that's all that's
a-troublin' you, you can jus' get down an' walk home on yo' own laigs.
Yo' mamma's a-grievin' 'cause yo' papa has to be away all the time.
She's all wo'n out, too, with the work of movin', when she's nevah been
used to doin' anything. But her heart isn't broke any moah'n my neck
is."

The positive words and the decided toss Mom Beck gave her head settled
the matter for the Little Colonel. She wiped her eyes and stood up much
relieved.

"Don't you nevah go to worryin' 'bout what you heahs," continued the
woman. "I tell you p'intedly you cyarnt nevah b'lieve what you heahs."

"Why doesn't gran'fathah love my mothah?" asked the child, as they came
in sight of the cottage. She had puzzled over the knotty problem all the
way home. "How can papas not love their little girls?"

"'Cause he's stubbo'n," was the unsatisfactory answer. "All the Lloyds
is. Yo' mamma's stubbo'n, an' you's stubbo'n--"

"I'm not!" shrieked the Little Colonel, stamping her foot. "You sha'n't
call me names!"

Then she saw a familiar white hand waving to her from the hammock, and
she broke away from Mom Beck with very red cheeks and very bright eyes.

Cuddled close in her mother's arms, she had a queer feeling that she had
grown a great deal older in that short afternoon.

Maybe she had. For the first time in her little life she kept her
troubles to herself, and did not once mention the thought that was
uppermost in her mind.

"Yo' great-aunt Sally Tylah is comin' this mawnin'," said Mom Beck, the
day after their visit to the hotel. "Do fo' goodness' sake keep yo'self
clean. I'se got too many spring chickens to dress to think 'bout
dressin' you up again."

"Did I evah see her befo'?" questioned the Little Colonel.

"Why, yes, the day we moved heah. Don't you know she came and stayed so
long, and the rockah broke off the little white rockin'-chair when she
sat down in it?"

"Oh, now I know!" laughed the child. "She's the big fat one with curls
hangin' round her yeahs like shavin's. I don't like her, Mom Beck. She
keeps a-kissin' me all the time, an' a-'queezin' me, an' tellin' me to
sit on her lap an' be a little lady. Mom Beck, I de'pise to be a little
lady."

There was no answer to her last remark. Mom Beck had stepped into the
pantry for more eggs for the cake she was making.

"Fritz," said the Little Colonel, "yo' great-aunt Sally Tylah's comin'
this mawnin', an' if you don't want to say 'howdy' to her you'll have to
come with me."

A few minutes later a resolute little figure squeezed between the
palings of the garden fence down by the gooseberry bushes.

"Now walk on your tiptoes, Fritz!" commanded the Little Colonel, "else
somebody will call us back."

Mom Beck, busy with her extra baking, supposed she was with her mother
on the shady, vine-covered porch.

She would not have been singing quite so gaily if she could have seen
half a mile up the road.

The Little Colonel was sitting in the weeds by the railroad track,
deliberately taking off her shoes and stockings.

"Just like a little niggah," she said, delightedly, as she stretched out
her bare feet. "Mom Beck says I ought to know bettah. But it does feel
so good!"

No telling how long she might have sat there enjoying the forbidden
pleasure of dragging her rosy toes through the warm dust, if she had not
heard a horse's hoof-beats coming rapidly along.

"Fritz, it's gran'fathah," she whispered, in alarm, recognizing the
erect figure of the rider in its spotless suit of white duck.

"Sh! lie down in the weeds, quick! Lie down, I say!" They both made
themselves as flat as possible, and lay there panting with the exertion
of keeping still.

Presently the Little Colonel raised her head cautiously.

"Oh, he's gone down that lane!" she exclaimed. "Now you can get up."
After a moment's deliberation she asked, "Fritz, would you rathah have
some 'trawberries an' be tied up fo' runnin' away, or not be tied up and
not have any of those nice tas'en 'trawberries?"




CHAPTER III.


Two hours later, Colonel Lloyd, riding down the avenue under the
locusts, was surprised by a novel sight on his stately front steps.

Three little darkies and a big flop-eared hound were crouched on the
bottom step, looking up at the Little Colonel, who sat just above them.

She was industriously stirring something in an old rusty pan with a big,
battered spoon.

"Now, May Lilly," she ordered, speaking to the largest and blackest of
the group, "you run an' find some nice 'mooth pebbles to put in for
raisins. Henry Clay, you go get me some moah sand. This is 'most too
wet."

"Here, you little pickaninnies!" roared the Colonel, as he recognized
the cook's children. "What did I tell you about playing around here,
tracking dirt all over my premises? You just chase back to the cabin
where you belong!"

The sudden call startled Lloyd so that she dropped the pan, and the
great mud pie turned upside down on the white steps.

"Well, you're a pretty sight!" said the Colonel, as he glanced with
disgust from her soiled dress and muddy hands to her bare feet.

He had been in a bad humour all morning. The sight of the steps covered
with sand and muddy tracks gave him an excuse to give vent to his cross
feelings.

It was one of his theories that a little girl should always be kept as
fresh and dainty as a flower. He had never seen his own little daughter
in such a plight as this, and she had never been allowed to step outside
of her own room without her shoes and stockings.

"What does your mother mean," he cried, savagely, "by letting you run
barefooted around the country just like poor white trash? An' what are
you playing with low-flung niggers for? Haven't you ever been taught any
better? I suppose it's some of your father's miserable Yankee notions."

May Lilly, peeping around the corner of the house, rolled her frightened
eyes from one angry face to the other. The same temper that glared from
the face of the man, sitting erect in his saddle, seemed to be burning
in the eyes of the child, who stood so defiantly before him. The same
kind of scowl drew their eyebrows together darkly.

"Don't you talk that way to me," cried the Little Colonel, trembling
with a wrath she did not know how to express.

Suddenly she stooped, and snatching both hands full of mud from the
overturned pie, flung it wildly over the spotless white coat.

Colonel Lloyd gasped with astonishment. It was the first time in his
life he had ever been openly defied. The next moment his anger gave way
to amusement.

"By George!" he chuckled, admiringly. "The little thing has got spirit,
sure enough. She's a Lloyd through and through. So that's why they call
her the 'Little Colonel,' is it?"

There was a tinge of pride in the look he gave her haughty little head
and flashing eyes. "There, there, child!" he said, soothingly. "I didn't
mean to make you mad, when you were good enough to come and see me. It
isn't often I have a little lady like you pay me a visit."

"I didn't come to see you, suh," she answered, indignantly, as she
started toward the gate. "I came to see May Lilly. But I nevah would
have come inside yo' gate if I'd known you was goin' to hollah at me an'
be so cross."

She was walking off with the air of an offended queen, when the Colonel
remembered that if he allowed her to go away in that mood she would
probably never set foot on his grounds again. Her display of temper had
interested him immensely.

Now that he had laughed off his ill humour, he was anxious to see what
other traits of character she possessed. He wheeled his horse across the
walk to bar her way, and quickly dismounted.

"Oh, now, wait a minute," he said, in a coaxing tone. "Don't you want
a nice big saucer of strawberries and cream before you go? Walker's
picking some now. And you haven't seen my hothouse. It's just full of
the loveliest flowers you ever saw. You like roses, don't you, and pinks
and lilies and pansies?"

He saw he had struck the right chord as soon as he mentioned the
flowers. The sullen look vanished as if by magic. Her face changed as
suddenly as an April day.

"Oh, yes!" she cried, with a beaming smile. "I loves 'm bettah than
anything!"

He tied his horse, and led the way to the conservatory. He opened the
door for her to pass through, and then watched her closely to see what
impression it would make on her. He had expected a delighted exclamation
of surprise, for he had good reason to be proud of his rare plants. They
were arranged with a true artist's eye for colour and effect.

She did not say a word for a moment, but drew a long breath, while the
delicate pink in her cheeks deepened and her eyes lighted up. Then she
began going slowly from flower to flower, laying her face against the
cool, velvety purple of the pansies, touching the roses with her lips,
and tilting the white lily-cups to look into their golden depths.

As she passed from one to another as lightly as a butterfly might have
done, she began chanting in a happy undertone.

Ever since she had learned to talk she had a quaint little way of
singing to herself. All the names that pleased her fancy she strung
together in a crooning melody of her own.

There was no special tune. It sounded happy, although nearly always in a
minor key.

"Oh, the jonquils an' the lilies!" she sang. "All white an' gold an'
yellow. Oh, they're all a-smilin' at me, an' a-sayin' howdy! howdy!"

She was so absorbed in her intense enjoyment that she forgot all about
the old Colonel. She was wholly unconscious that he was watching or
listening.

"She really does love them," he thought, complacently. "To see her face
one would think she had found a fortune."

It was another bond between them.

After awhile he took a small basket from the wall, and began to fill it
with his choicest blooms. "You shall have these to take home," he said.
"Now come into the house and get your strawberries."

She followed him reluctantly, turning back several times for one more
long sniff of the delicious fragrance.

She was not at all like the Colonel's ideal of what a little girl
should be, as she sat in one of the high, stiff chairs, enjoying her
strawberries. Her dusty little toes wriggled around in the curls on
Fritz's back, as she used him for a footstool. Her dress was draggled
and dirty, and she kept leaning over to give the dog berries and cream
from the spoon she was eating with herself.

He forgot all this, however, when she began to talk to him.

"My great-aunt Sally Tylah is to our house this mawnin'," she announced,
confidentially. "That's why we came off. Do you know my Aunt Sally
Tylah?"

"Well, slightly!" chuckled the Colonel. "She was my wife's half-sister.
So you don't like her, eh? Well, I don't like her either."

He threw back his head and laughed heartily. The more the child talked
the more entertaining he found her. He did not remember when he had ever
been so amused before as he was by this tiny counterpart of himself.

When the last berry had vanished, she slipped down from the tall chair.

"Do you 'pose it's very late?" she asked, in an anxious voice. "Mom Beck
will be comin' for me soon."

"Yes, it is nearly noon," he answered. "It didn't do much good to run
away from your Aunt Tyler; she'll see you after all."

"Well, she can't 'queeze me an' kiss me, 'cause I've been naughty, an'
I'll be put to bed like I was the othah day, just as soon as I get home.
I 'most wish I was there now," she sighed. "It's so fa' an' the sun's so
hot. I lost my sunbonnet when I was comin' heah, too."

Something in the tired, dirty face prompted the old Colonel to say,
"Well, my horse hasn't been put away yet. I'll take you home on Maggie
Boy."

The next moment he repented making such an offer, thinking what
the neighbours might say if they should meet him on the road with
Elizabeth's child in his arm.

But it was too late. He could not unclasp the trusting little hand that
was slipped in his. He could not cloud the happiness of the eager little
face by retracting his promise.

He swung himself into the saddle, with her in front. Then he put his
one arm around her with a firm clasp, as he reached forward to take the
bridle.

"You couldn't take Fritz on behin', could you?" she asked, anxiously.
"He's mighty ti'ed too."

"No," said the Colonel, with a laugh. "Maggie Boy might object and throw
us all off."

Hugging her basket of flowers close in her arms, she leaned her head
against him contentedly as they cantered down the avenue.

"Look!" whispered all the locusts, waving their hands to each other
excitedly. "Look! The master has his own again. The dear old times are
coming back to us."

"How the trees blow!" exclaimed the child, looking up at the green arch
overhead. "See! They's all a-noddin' to each othah." "We'll have to get
my shoes an' 'tockin's," she said, presently, when they were nearly
home. "They're in that fence cawnah behin' a log."

The Colonel obediently got down and handed them to her. As he mounted
again he saw a carriage coming toward them. He recognized one of his
nearest neighbours. Striking the astonished Maggie Boy with his spur,
he turned her across the railroad track, down the steep embankment, and
into an unfrequented lane.

"This road is just back of your garden," he said. "Can you get through
the fence if I take you there?"

"That's the way we came out," was the answer. "See that hole where the
palin's are off?"

Just as he was about to lift her down, she put one arm around his neck,
and kissed him softly on the cheek. "Good-bye, gran'fatha'," she said,
in her most winning way. "I've had a mighty nice time." Then she added,
in a lower tone, "'Kuse me fo' throwin' mud on yo' coat."

He held her close a moment, thinking nothing had ever before been half
so sweet as the way she called him grandfather.

From that moment his heart went out to her as it had to little Tom and
Elizabeth. It made no difference if her mother had forfeited his love.
It made no difference if Jack Sherman was her father, and that the two
men heartily hated each other.

It was his own little grandchild he held in his arms.

She had sealed the relationship with a trusting kiss.

"Child," he said, huskily, "you will come and see me again, won't you,
no matter if they do tell you not to? You shall have all the flowers and
berries you want, and you can ride Maggie Boy as often as you please."

She looked up into his face. It was very familiar to her. She had looked
at his portrait often, unconsciously recognizing a kindred spirit that
she longed to know.

Her ideas of grandfathers, gained from stories and observation, led her
to class them with fairy godmothers. She had always wished for one.

The day they moved to Lloydsborough, Locust had been pointed out to her
as her grandfather's home. From that time on she slipped away with
Fritz on every possible occasion to peer through the gate, hoping for a
glimpse of him.

"Yes, I'll come suah!" she promised. "I likes you just lots,
gran'fathah!" He watched her scramble through the hole in the fence.
Then he turned his horse's head slowly homeward.

A scrap of white lying on the grass attracted his attention as he neared
the gate.

"It's the lost sunbonnet," he said, with a smile. He carried it into the
house, and hung it on the hat-rack in the wide front hall.

"Ole marse is crosser'n two sticks," growled Walker to the cook at
dinner. "There ain't no livin' with him. What do you s'pose is the
mattah?"




CHAPTER IV.


Mom Beck was busy putting lunch on the table when the Little Colonel
looked in at the kitchen door.

So she did not see a little tramp, carrying her shoes in one hand, and a
basket in the other, who paused there a moment. But when she took up the
pan of beaten biscuit she was puzzled to find that several were missing.

"It beats my time," she said, aloud. "The parrot couldn't have reached
them, an' Lloyd an' the dog have been in the pa'lah all mawnin'.
Somethin' has jus' natch'ly done sperrited 'em away."

Fritz was gravely licking his lips, and the Little Colonel had her mouth
full, when they suddenly made their appearance on the front porch.

Aunt Sally Tyler gave a little shriek, and stopped rocking.

"Why, Lloyd Sherman!" gasped her mother, in dismay. "Where have you
been? I thought you were with Becky all the time. I was sure I heard you
singing out there a little while ago."

"I've been to see my gran'fathah," said the child, speaking very fast.
"I made mud pies on his front 'teps, an' we both of us got mad, an'
I throwed mud on him, an' he gave me some 'trawberries an' all these
flowers, an' brought me home on Maggie Boy."

She stopped out of breath. Mrs. Tyler and her niece exchanged astonished
glances.

"But, baby, how could you disgrace mother so by going up there looking
like a dirty little beggar?"

"He didn't care," replied Lloyd, calmly. "He made me promise to come
again, no mattah if you all did tell me not to."

Just then Becky announced that lunch was ready, and carried the child
away to make her presentable.

To Lloyd's great surprise she was not put to bed, but was allowed to go
to the table as soon as she was dressed. It was not long until she had
told every detail of the morning's experience.

While she was taking her afternoon nap, the two ladies sat out on the
porch, gravely discussing all she had told them.

"It doesn't seem right for me to allow her to go there," said Mrs.
Sherman, "after the way papa has treated us. I can never forgive him
for all the terrible things he has said about Jack, and I know Jack can
never be friends with him on account of what he has said about me. He
has been so harsh and unjust that I don't want my little Lloyd to have
anything to do with him. I wouldn't for worlds have him think that I
encouraged her going there."

"Well, yes, I know," answered her aunt, slowly. "But there are some
things to consider besides your pride, Elizabeth. There's the child
herself, you know. Now that Jack has lost so much, and your prospects
are so uncertain, you ought to think of her interests. It would be a
pity for Locust to go to strangers when it has been in your family for
so many generations. That's what it certainly will do unless something
turns up to interfere. Old Judge Woodard told me himself that your
father had made a will, leaving everything he owns to some medical
institution. Imagine Locust being turned into a sanitarium or a
training-school for nurses!"

"Dear old place!" said Mrs. Sherman, with tears in her eyes. "No one
ever had a happier childhood than I passed under these old locusts.
Every tree seems like a friend. I would be glad for Lloyd to enjoy the
place as I did."

"I'd let her go as much as she pleases, Elizabeth. She's so much like
the old Colonel that they ought to understand each other, and get along
capitally. Who knows, it might end in you all making up some day."

Mrs. Sherman raised her head haughtily. "No, indeed, Aunt Sally. I can
forgive and forget much, but you are greatly mistaken if you think I can
go to such lengths as that. He closed his doors against me with a curse,
for no reason on earth but that the man I loved was born north of the
Mason and Dixon line. There never was a nobler man living than Jack,
and papa would have seen it if he hadn't deliberately shut his eyes and
refused to look at him. He was just prejudiced and stubborn."

Aunt Sally said nothing, but her thoughts took the shape of Mom Beck's
declaration, "The Lloyds is all stubborn."

"I wouldn't go through his gate now if he got down on his knees and
begged me," continued Elizabeth, hotly.

"It's too bad," exclaimed her aunt; "he was always so perfectly devoted
to 'little daughter,' as he used to call you. I don't like him myself.
We never could get along together at all, because he is so high-strung
and overbearing. But I know it would have made your poor mother mighty
unhappy if she could have foreseen all this."

Elizabeth sat with the tears dropping down on her little white hands,
as her aunt proceeded to work on her sympathies in every way she could
think of.

Presently Lloyd came out all fresh and rosy from her long nap, and went
to play in the shade of the great beech-trees that guarded the cottage.

"I never saw a child with such influence over animals," said her mother,
as Lloyd came around the house with the parrot perched on the broom she
was carrying. "She'll walk right up to any strange dog and make friends
with it, no matter how savage-looking it is. And there's Polly, so old
and cross that she screams and scolds dreadfully if any of us go near
her. But Lloyd dresses her up in doll's clothes, puts paper bonnets on
her, and makes her just as uncomfortable as she pleases. Look! that is
one of her favourite amusements."

The Little Colonel squeezed the parrot into a tiny doll carriage, and
began to trundle it back and forth as fast as she could run.

"Ha! ha!" screamed the bird. "Polly is a lady! Oh, Lordy! I'm so happy!"

"She caught that from the washerwoman," laughed Mrs. Sherman. "I should
think the poor thing would be dizzy from whirling around so fast."

"Quit that, chillun; stop yo' fussin'," screamed Polly, as Lloyd grabbed
her up and began to pin a shawl around her neck. She clucked angrily,
but never once attempted to snap at the dimpled fingers that squeezed
her tight. Suddenly, as if her patience was completely exhausted, she
uttered a disdainful "Oh, pshaw!" and flew up into an old cedar-tree.

"Mothah! Polly won't play with me any moah," shrieked the child, flying
into a rage. She stamped and scowled and grew red in the face. Then she
began beating the trunk of the tree with the old broom she had been
carrying.

"Did you ever see anything so much like the old Colonel?" said Mrs.
Tyler, in astonishment. "I wonder if she acted that way this morning."

"I don't doubt it at all," answered Mrs. Sherman. "She'll be over it in
just a moment. These little spells never last long."

Mrs. Sherman was right. In a few moments Lloyd came up the walk,
singing.

"I wish you'd tell me a pink story," she said, coaxingly, as she leaned
against her mother's knee.

"Not now, dear; don't you see that I am busy talking to Aunt Sally? Run
and ask Mom Beck for one."

"What on earth does she mean by a pink story?" asked Mrs. Tyler.

"Oh, she is so fond of colours. She is always asking for a pink or a
blue or a white story. She wants everything in the story tinged with
whatever colour she chooses,--dresses, parasols, flowers, sky, even the
icing on the cakes and the paper on the walls."

"What an odd little thing she is!" exclaimed Mrs. Tyler. "Isn't she lots
of company for you?"

She need not have asked that question if she could have seen them that
evening, sitting together in the early twilight.

Lloyd was in her mother's lap, leaning her head against her shoulder
as they rocked slowly back and forth on the dark porch.

There was an occasional rattle of wheels along the road, a twitter of
sleepy birds, a distant croaking of frogs.

Mom Beck's voice floated in from the kitchen, where she was stepping
briskly around.

  "Oh, the clouds hang heavy, an' it's gwine to rain.
  Fa'well, my dyin' friends,"

she sang.

Lloyd put her arms closer around her mother's neck.

"Let's talk about Papa Jack," she said. "What you 'pose he's doin' now,
'way out West?"

Elizabeth, feeling like a tired, homesick child herself, held her close,
and was comforted as she listened to the sweet little voice talking
about the absent father.

The moon came up after awhile, and streamed in through the vines of
the porch. The hazel eyes slowly closed as Elizabeth began to hum an
old-time negro lullaby.

"Wondah if she'll run away to-morrow," whispered Mom Beck, as she came
out to carry her in the house.

"Who'd evah think now, lookin' at her pretty, innocent face, that she
could be so naughty? Bless her little soul!"

The kind old black face was laid lovingly a moment against the fair,
soft cheek of the Little Colonel. Then she lifted her in her strong
arms, and carried her gently away to bed.




CHAPTER V.


Summer lingers long among the Kentucky hills. Each passing day seemed
fairer than the last to the Little Colonel, who had never before known
anything of country life.

Roses climbed up and almost hid the small white cottage. Red birds
sang in the woodbine. Squirrels chattered in the beeches. She was
out-of-doors all day long.

Sometimes she spent hours watching the ants carry away the sugar she
sprinkled for them. Sometimes she caught flies for an old spider that
had his den under the porch steps. "He is an ogah" (ogre), she explained
to Fritz. "He's bewitched me so's I have to kill whole families of flies
for him to eat."

She was always busy and always happy.

Before June was half over it got to be a common occurrence for Walker
to ride up to the gate on the Colonel's horse. The excuse was always to
have a passing word with Mom Beck. But before he rode away, the Little
Colonel was generally mounted in front of him. It was not long before
she felt almost as much at home at Locust as she did at the cottage.

The neighbours began to comment on it after awhile. "He will surely make
up with Elizabeth at this rate," they said. But at the end of the summer
the father and daughter had not even had a passing glimpse of each
other. One day, late in September, as the Little Colonel clattered up
and down the hall with her grandfather's spur buckled on her tiny foot,
she called back over her shoulder: "Papa Jack's comin' home to-morrow."

The Colonel paid no attention.

"I say," she repeated, "Papa Jack's comin' home to-morrow."

"Well," was the gruff response. "Why couldn't he stay where he was? I
suppose you won't want to come here any more after he gets back."

"No, I 'pose not," she answered, so carelessly that he was conscious of
a very jealous feeling.

"Chilluns always like to stay with their fathahs when they's nice as my
Papa Jack is."

The old man growled something behind his newspaper that she did not
hear. He would have been glad to choke this man who had come between him
and his only child, and he hated him worse than ever when he realized
what a large place he held in Lloyd's little heart.

She did not go back to Locust the next day, nor for weeks after that.

She was up almost as soon as Mom Beck next morning, thoroughly enjoying
the bustle of preparation.

She had a finger in everything, from polishing the silver to turning the
ice-cream freezer.

Even Fritz was scrubbed till he came out of his bath with his curls all
white and shining. He was proud of himself, from his silky bangs to the
tip of his tasselled tail.

Just before train time, the Little Colonel stuck his collar full of late
pink roses, and stood back to admire the effect. Her mother came to the
door, dressed for the evening. She wore an airy-looking dress of the
palest, softest blue. There was a white rosebud caught in her dark hair.
A bright colour, as fresh as Lloyd's own, tinged her cheeks, and the
glad light in her brown eyes made them unusually brilliant.

Lloyd jumped up and threw her arms about her. "Oh, mothah," she cried,
"you an' Fritz is so bu'ful!"

The engine whistled up the road at the crossing. "Come, we have just
time to get to the station," said Mrs. Sherman, holding out her hand.

They went through the gate, down the narrow path that ran beside the
dusty road. The train had just stopped in front of the little station
when they reached it.

A number of gentlemen, coming out from the city to spend Sunday at the
hotel, came down the steps. They glanced admiringly from the beautiful,
girlish face of the mother to the happy child dancing impatiently up and
down at her side. They could not help smiling at Fritz as he frisked
about in his imposing rose-collar.

"Why, where's Papa Jack?" asked Lloyd, in distress, as passenger after
passenger stepped down. "Isn't he goin' to come?"

The tears were beginning to gather in her eyes, when she saw him in the
door of the car; not hurrying along to meet them as he always used to
come, so full of life and vigour, but leaning heavily on the porter's
shoulder, looking very pale and weak.

Lloyd looked up at her mother, from whose face every particle of colour
had faded. Mrs. Sherman gave a low, frightened cry as she sprang forward
to meet him. "Oh, Jack! what is the matter? What has happened to you?"
she exclaimed, as he took her in his arms. The train had gone on, and
they were left alone on the platform.

"Just a little sick spell," he answered, with a smile. "We had a fire
out at the mines, and I overtaxed myself some. I've had fever ever
since, and it has pulled me down considerably."

"I must send somebody for a carriage," she said, looking around
anxiously.

"No, indeed," he protested. "It's only a few steps; I can walk it
as well as not. The sight of you and the baby has made me stronger
already."

He sent a coloured boy on ahead with his valise, and they walked slowly
up the path, with Fritz running wildly around them, barking a glad
welcome.

"How sweet and homelike it all looks!" he said, as he stepped into the
hall, where Mom Beck was just lighting the lamps. Then he sank down on
the couch, completely exhausted, and wearily closed his eyes.

The Little Colonel looked at his white face in alarm. All the gladness
seemed to have been taken out of the homecoming.

Her mother was busy trying to make him comfortable, and paid no
attention to the disconsolate little figure wandering about the house
alone. Mom Beck had gone for the doctor.

The supper was drying up in the warming-oven. The ice-cream was melting
in the freezer. Nobody seemed to care. There was no one to notice the
pretty table with its array of flowers and cut glass and silver.

When Mom Beck came back, Lloyd ate all by herself, and then sat out on
the kitchen door-step while the doctor made his visit.

She was just going mournfully off to bed with an aching lump in her
throat, when her mother opened the door.

"Come tell papa good-night," she said. "He's lots better now."

She climbed up on the bed beside him, and buried her face on his
shoulder to hide the tears she had been trying to keep back all evening.

"How the child has grown!" he exclaimed. "Do you notice, Beth, how much
plainer she talks? She does not seem at all like the baby I left last
spring. Well, she'll soon be six years old,--a real little woman. She'll
be papa's little comfort."

The ache in her throat was all gone after that. She romped with Fritz
all the time she was undressing.

Papa Jack was worse next morning. It was hard for Lloyd to keep quiet
when the late September sunshine was so gloriously yellow and the whole
outdoors seemed so wide awake.

She tiptoed out of the darkened room where her father lay, and swung on
the front gate until she saw the doctor riding up on his bay horse. It
seemed to her that the day never would pass.

Mom Beck, rustling around in her best dress ready for church, that
afternoon, took pity on the lonesome child.

"Go get yo' best hat, honey," she said, "an' I'll take you with me."

It was one of the Little Colonel's greatest pleasures to be allowed to
go to the coloured church.

She loved to listen to the singing, and would sit perfectly motionless
while the sweet voices blended like the chords of some mighty organ
as they sent the old hymns rolling heavenward. Service had already
commenced by the time they took their seats. Nearly everybody in the
congregation was swaying back and forth in time to the mournful melody
of "Sinnah, sinnah, where's you boun'?"

One old woman across the aisle began clapping her hands together, and
repeated in a singsong tone, "Oh, Lordy! I'm so happy!"

"Why, that's just what our parrot says," exclaimed Lloyd, so much
surprised that she spoke right out loud.

Mom Beck put her handkerchief over her mouth, and a general smile went
around.

After that the child was very quiet until the time came to take the
collection. She always enjoyed this part of the service more than
anything else. Instead of passing baskets around, each person was
invited to come forward and lay his offering on the table.

Woolly heads wagged, and many feet kept time to the tune:

  "Oh! I'se boun' to git to glory.
  Hallelujah! Le' me go!"

The Little Colonel proudly marched up with Mom Beck's contribution,
and then watched the others pass down the aisle. One young girl in a
gorgeously trimmed dress paraded up to the table several times, singing
at the top of her voice.

"Look at that good-fo'-nothin' Lize Richa'ds," whispered Mom Beck's
nearest neighbour, with a sniff. "She done got a nickel changed into
pennies so she could ma'ch up an' show herself five times."

It was nearly sundown when they started home. A tall coloured man,
wearing a high silk hat and carrying a gold-headed cane, joined them on
the way out.

"Howdy, Sistah Po'tah," he said, gravely shaking hands. "That was a fine
disco'se we had the pleasuah of listenin' to this evenin'."

"'Deed it was, Brothah Fostah," she answered. "How's all up yo' way?"

The Little Colonel, running on after a couple of white butterflies, paid
no attention to the conversation until she heard her own name mentioned.

"Mistah Sherman came home last night, I heah."

"Yes, but not to stay long, I'm afraid. He's a mighty sick man, if I'm
any judge. He's down with fevah,--regulah typhoid. He doesn't look to me
like he's long for this world. What's to become of poah Miss 'Lizabeth
if that's the case, is moah'n I know." "We mustn't cross the bridge till
we come to it, Sistah Po'tah," he suggested.

"I know that; but a lookin'-glass broke yeste'day mawnin' when nobody
had put fingah on it. An' his picture fell down off the wall while I was
sweepin' the pa'lah. Pete said his dawg done howl all night last night,
an' I've dremp three times hand runnin' 'bout muddy watah."

Mom Beck felt a little hand clutch her skirts, and turned to see a
frightened little face looking anxiously up at her.

"Now, what's the mattah with you, honey?" she asked. "I'm only a-tellin'
Mistah Fostah about some silly old signs my mammy used to believe in.
But they don't mean nothin' at all."

Lloyd couldn't have told why she was unhappy. She had not understood all
that Mom Beck had said, but her sensitive little mind was shadowed by a
foreboding of trouble.

The shadow deepened as the days passed. Papa Jack got worse instead of
better. There were times when he did not recognize any one, and talked
wildly of things that had happened out at the mines.

All the long, beautiful October went by, and still he lay in the
darkened room. Lloyd wandered listlessly from place to place, trying to
keep out of the way, and to make as little trouble as possible.

"I'm a real little woman now," she repeated, proudly, whenever she was
allowed to pound ice or carry fresh water. "I'm papa's little comfort."

One cold, frosty evening she was standing in the hall, when the doctor
came out of the room and began to put on his overcoat.

Her mother followed him to take his directions for the night.

He was an old friend of the family's. Elizabeth had climbed on his knees
many a time when she was a child. She loved this faithful, white-haired
old doctor almost as dearly as she had her father.

"My daughter," he said, kindly, laying his hand on her shoulder, "you
are wearing yourself out, and will be down yourself if you are not
careful. You must have a professional nurse. No telling how long this is
going to last. As soon as Jack is able to travel you must have a change
of climate."

Her lips trembled. "We can't afford it, doctor," she said. "Jack has
been too sick from the very first to talk about business. He always said
a woman should not be worried with such matters, anyway. I don't know
what arrangements he has made out West. For all I know, the little
I have in my purse now may be all that stands between us and the
poorhouse."

The doctor drew on his gloves.

"Why don't you tell your father how matters are?" he asked.

Then he saw he had ventured a step too far.

"I believe Jack would rather die than take help from his hands," she
answered, drawing herself up proudly. Her eyes flashed. "I would, too,
as far as I am concerned myself."

Then a tender look came over her pale, tired face, as she added, gently,
"But I'd do anything on earth to help Jack get well."

The doctor cleared his throat vigorously, and bolted out with a
gruff good night. As he rode past Locust, he took solid satisfaction in
shaking his fist at the light in an upper window.




CHAPTER VI.


The Little Colonel followed her mother to the dining-room, but paused
on the threshold as she saw her throw herself into Mom Beck's arms and
burst out crying.

"Oh, Becky!" she sobbed, "what is going to become of us? The doctor says
we must have a professional nurse, and we must go away from here soon.
There are only a few dollars left in my purse, and I don't know what
we'll do when they are gone. I just know Jack is going to die, and then
I'll die, too, and then what will become of the baby?" Mom Beck sat
down, and took the trembling form in her arms.

"There, there!" she said, soothingly, "have yo' cry out. It will do you
good. Poah chile! all wo'n out with watchin' an' worry. Ne'm min', ole
Becky is as good as a dozen nuhses yet. I'll get Judy to come up an'
look aftah the kitchen. An' nobody ain' gwine to die, honey. Don't you
go to slayin' all you's got befo' you's called on to do it. The good
Lawd is goin' to pahvide fo' us same as Abraham."

The last Sabbath's sermon was still fresh in her mind.

"If we only hold out faithful, there's boun' to be a ram caught by
the hawns some place, even if we haven't got eyes to see through the
thickets. The Lawd will pahvide whethah it's a burnt offerin' or a
meal's vittles. He sho'ly will." Lloyd crept away frightened. It seemed
such an awful thing to see her mother cry.

All at once her bright, happy world had changed to such a strange,
uncertain place. She felt as if all sorts of terrible things were about
to happen.

She went into the parlour, and crawled into a dark corner under the
piano, feeling that there was no place to go for comfort, since the
one who had always kissed away her little troubles was so heart-broken
herself.

There was a patter of soft feet across the carpet, and Fritz poked his
sympathetic nose into her face. She put her arms around him, and laid
her head against his curly back with a desolate sob.

It is pitiful to think how much imaginative children suffer through
their wrong conception of things. She had seen the little roll of bills
in her mother's pocketbook. She had seen how much smaller it grew every
time it was taken out to pay for the expensive wines and medicines that
had to be bought so often. She had heard her mother tell the doctor that
was all that stood between them and the poorhouse.

There was no word known to the Little Colonel that brought such,
thoughts of horror as the word poorhouse.

Her most vivid recollection of her life in New York was something that
happened a few weeks before they left there. One day in the park she ran
away from the maid, who, instead of Mom Beck, had taken charge of her
that afternoon.

When the angry woman found her, she frightened her almost into a spasm
by telling her what always happened to naughty children who ran away.

"They take all their pretty clothes off," she said, "and dress them up
in old things made of bed-ticking. Then they take 'm to the poorhouse,
where nobody but beggars live. They don't have anything to eat but
cabbage and corndodger, and they have to eat that out of tin pans. And
they just have a pile of straw to sleep in."

On their way home she had pointed out to the frightened child a poor
woman who was grubbing in an ash-barrel.

"That's the way people get to look who live in poorhouses," she said.

It was this memory that was troubling the Little Colonel now.

"Oh, Fritz!" she whispered, with the tears running down her cheeks, "I
can't beah to think of my pretty mothah goin' there. That woman's
eyes were all red, an' her hair was jus' awful. She was so bony an'
stahved-lookin'. It would jus' kill poah Papa Jack to lie on straw an'
eat out of a tin pan. I know it would!"

When Mom Beck opened the door, hunting her, the room was so dark that
she would have gone away if the dog had not come running out from under
the piano.

"You heah, too, chile?" she asked, in surprise. "I have to go down now
an' see if I can get Judy to come help to-morrow. Do you think you can
undress yo'self to-night?"

"Of co'se," answered the Little Colonel. Mom Beck was in such a hurry to
be off that she did not notice the tremble in the voice that answered
her.

"Well, the can'le is lit in yo' room. So run along now like a nice
little lady, an' don't bothah yo' mamma. She got her hands full
already."

"All right," answered the child.

A quarter of an hour later she stood in her little white nightgown with
her hand on the door-knob.

She opened the door just a crack and peeped in. Her mother laid her
finger on her lips, and beckoned silently. In another instant Lloyd was
in her lap. She had cried herself quiet in the dark corner under the
piano; but there was something more pathetic in her eyes than tears. It
was the expression of one who understood and sympathized.

"Oh, mothah," she whispered, "we does have such lots of troubles."

"Yes, chickabiddy, but I hope they will soon be over now," was the
answer, as the anxious face tried to smile bravely for the child's sake,
"Papa is sleeping so nicely now he is sure to be better in the morning."

That comforted the Little Colonel some, but for days she was haunted by
the fear of the poorhouse.

Every time her mother paid out any money she looked anxiously to see how
much was still left. She wandered about the place, touching the trees
and vines with caressing hands, feeling that she might soon have to
leave them.

She loved them all so dearly,--every stick and stone, and even the
stubby old snowball bushes that never bloomed.

Her dresses were outgrown and faded, but no one had any time or thought
to spend on getting her new ones. A little hole began to come in the toe
of each shoe.

She was still wearing her summer sunbonnet, although the days were
getting frosty.

She was a proud little thing. It mortified her for any one to see her
looking so shabby. Still she uttered no word of complaint, for fear of
lessening the little amount in the pocketbook that her mother had said
stood between them and the poorhouse.

She sat with her feet tucked under her when any one called.

"I wouldn't mind bein' a little beggah so much myself," she thought,
"but I jus' can't have my bu'ful sweet mothah lookin' like that awful
red-eyed woman."

One day the doctor called Mrs. Sherman out into the hall. "I have just
come from your father's," he said. "He is suffering from a severe attack
of rheumatism. He is confined to his room, and is positively starving
for company. He told me he would give anything in the world to have his
little grandchild with him. There were tears in his eyes when he said
it, and that means a good deal from him. He fairly idolizes her. The
servants have told him she mopes around and is getting thin and pale. He
is afraid she will come down with the fever, too. He told me to use any
stratagem I liked to get her there. But I think it's better to tell you
frankly how matters stand. It will do the child good to have a change,
Elizabeth, and I solemnly think you ought to let her go, for a week at
least."

"But, doctor, she has never been away from me a single night in her
life. She'd die of homesickness, and I know she'll never consent to
leave me. Then suppose Jack should get worse--"

"We'll suppose nothing of the kind," he interrupted, brusquely. "Tell
Becky to pack up her things. Leave Lloyd to me. I'll get her consent
without any trouble."

"Come, Colonel," he called, as he left the house. "I'm going to take you
a little ride."

No one ever knew what the kind old fellow said to her to induce her to
go to her grandfather's.

She came back from her ride looking brighter than she had in a long
time. She felt that in some way, although in what way she could not
understand, her going would help them to escape the dreaded poorhouse.

"Don't send Mom Beck with me," she pleaded, when the time came to start.
"You come with me, mothah."

Mrs. Sherman had not been past the gate for weeks, but she could not
refuse the coaxing hands that clung to hers.

It was a dull, dreary day. There was a chilling hint of snow in the damp
air. The leaves whirled past them with a mournful rustling.

Mrs. Sherman turned up the collar of Lloyd's cloak.

"You must have a new one soon," she said, with a sigh. "Maybe one of
mine could be made over for you. And those poor little shoes! I must
think to send to town for a new pair."

The walk was over so soon. The Little Colonel's heart beat fast as they
came in sight of the gate. She winked bravely to keep back the tears;
for she had promised the doctor not to let her mother see her cry.

A week seemed such a long time to look forward to.

She clung to her mother's neck, feeling that she could never give her up
so long.

"Tell me good-bye, baby dear," said Mrs. Sherman, feeling that she could
not trust herself to stay much longer. "It is too cold for you to stand
here. Run on, and I'll watch you till you get inside the door."

The Little Colonel started bravely down the avenue, with Fritz at her
heels. Every few steps she turned to look back and kiss her hand.

Mrs. Sherman watched her through a blur of tears. It had been nearly
seven years since she had last stood at that old gate. Such a crowd of
memories came rushing up!

She looked again. There was a flutter of a white handkerchief as the
Little Colonel and Fritz went up the steps. Then the great front door
closed behind them.




CHAPTER VII.


That early twilight hour just before the lamps were lit was the
lonesomest one the Little Colonel had ever spent.

Her grandfather was asleep up-stairs. There was a cheery wood fire
crackling on the hearth of the big fireplace in the hall, but the great
house was so still. The corners were full of shadows.

She opened the front door with a wild longing to run away.

"Come, Fritz," she said, closing the door softly behind her, "let's go
down to the gate."

The air was cold. She shivered as they raced along under the bare
branches of the locusts. She leaned against the gate, peering out
through the bars. The road stretched white through the gathering
darkness in the direction of the little cottage.

"Oh, I want to go home so bad!" she sobbed. "I want to see my mothah."

She laid her hand irresolutely on the latch, pushed the gate ajar, and
then hesitated.

"No, I promised the doctah I'd stay," she thought. "He said I could help
mothah and Papa Jack, both of 'em, by stayin' heah, an' I'll do it."

Fritz, who had pushed himself through the partly opened gate to rustle
around among the dead leaves outside, came bounding back with something
in his mouth.

"Heah, suh!" she called. "Give it to me!" He dropped a small gray kid
glove in her outstretched hand. "Oh, it's mothah's!" she cried. "I
reckon she dropped it when she was tellin' me good-bye. Oh, you deah old
dog fo' findin' it."

She laid the glove against her cheek as fondly as if it had been her
mother's soft hand. There was something wonderfully comforting in the
touch.

As they walked slowly back toward the house she rolled it up and put it
lovingly away in her tiny apron pocket.

All that week it was a talisman whose touch helped the homesick little
soul to be brave and womanly.

When Maria, the coloured housekeeper, went into the hall to light the
lamps, the Little Colonel was sitting on the big fur rug in front of the
fire, talking contentedly to Fritz, who lay with his curly head in her
lap.

"You all's goin' to have tea in the Cun'ls room to-night," said Maria.
"He tole me to tote it up soon as he rung the bell."

"There it goes now," cried the child, jumping up from the rug.

She followed Maria up the wide stairs. The Colonel was sitting in a
large easy chair, wrapped in a gaily flowered dressing-gown, that made
his hair look unusually white by contrast.

His dark eyes were intently watching the door. As it opened to let the
Little Colonel pass through, a very tender smile lighted up his stern
face.

"So you did come to see grandpa after all," he cried, triumphantly.
"Come here and give me a kiss. Seems to me you've been staying away a
mighty long time."

As she stood beside him with his arm around her, Walker came in with a
tray full of dishes. "We're going to have a regular little tea-party,"
said the Colonel.

Lloyd watched with sparkling eyes as Walker set out the rare
old-fashioned dishes. There was a fat little silver sugar-bowl with a
butterfly perched on each side to form the handles, and there was a
slim, graceful cream-pitcher shaped like a lily.

"They belonged to your great-great-grandmother," said the Colonel, "and
they're going to be yours some day if you grow up and have a house of
your own."

The expression on her beaming face was worth a fortune to the Colonel.

When Walker pushed her chair up to the table, she turned to her
grandfather with shining eyes.

"Oh, it's just like a pink story," she cried, clapping her hands. "The
shades on the can'les, the icin' on the cake, an' the posies in the
bowl,--why, even the jelly is that colah, too. Oh, my darlin' little
teacup! It's jus' like a pink rosebud. I'm so glad I came!"

The Colonel smiled at the success of his plan. In the depths of his
satisfaction he even had a plate of quail and toast set down on the
hearth for Fritz.

"This is the nicest pahty I evah was at," remarked the Little Colonel,
as Walker helped her to jam the third time.

Her grandfather chuckled.

"Blackberry jam always makes me think of Tom," he said. "Did you ever
hear what your Uncle Tom did when he was a little fellow in dresses?"

She shook her head gravely.

"Well, the children were all playing hide-and-seek one day. They hunted
high and they hunted low after everybody else had been caught, but they
couldn't find Tom. At last they began to call, 'Home free! You can come
home free!' but he did not come. When he had been hidden so long they
were frightened about him, they went to their mother and told her he
wasn't to be found anywhere. She looked down the well and behind the
fire-boards in the fireplaces. They called and called till they were out
of breath. Finally she thought of looking in the big dark pantry where
she kept her fruit. There stood Mister Tom. He had opened a jar of
blackberry jam, and was just going for it with both hands. The jam was
all over his face and hair and little gingham apron, and even up his
wrists. He was the funniest sight I ever saw."

The Little Colonel laughed heartily at his description, and begged for
more stories. Before he knew it he was back in the past with his little
Tom and Elizabeth.

Nothing could have entertained the child more than these scenes he
recalled of her mother's childhood.

"All her old playthings are up in the garret," he said, as they rose
from the table. "I'll have them brought down to-morrow. There's a doll
I brought her from New Orleans once when she was about your size. No
telling what it looks like now, but it was a beauty when it was new."

Lloyd clapped her hands and spun around the room like a top.

"Oh, I'm so glad I came!" she exclaimed for the third time. "What did
she call the doll, gran'fathah, do you remembah?"

"I never paid much attention to such things," he answered, "but I
do remember the name of this one, because she named it for her
mother,--Amanthis."

"Amanthis," repeated the child, dreamily, as she leaned against his
knee. "I think that is a lovely name, gran'fathah. I wish they had
called me that." She repeated it softly several times. "It sounds like
the wind a-blowin' through white clovah, doesn't it?"

"It is a beautiful name to me, my child," answered the old man, laying
his hand tenderly on her soft hair, "but not so beautiful as the woman
who bore it. She was the fairest flower of all Kentucky. There never was
another lived as sweet and gentle as your Grandmother Amanthis."

He stroked her hair absently, and gazed into the fire. He scarcely
noticed when she slipped away from him.

She buried her face a moment in the bowl of pink roses. Then she went
to the window and drew back the curtain. Leaning her head against the
window-sill, she began stringing on the thread of a tune the things that
just then thrilled her with a sense of their beauty.

"Oh, the locus'-trees a-blowin'," she sang, softly. "An' the moon
a-shinin' through them. An' the starlight an' pink roses; an'
Amanthis--an' Amanthis!"

She hummed it over and over until Walker had finished carrying the
dishes away.

It was a strange thing that the Colonel's unfrequent moods of tenderness
were like those warm days that they call weather-breeders.

They were sure to be followed by a change of atmosphere. This time as
the fierce rheumatic pain came back he stormed at Walker, and scolded
him for everything he did and everything he left undone.

When Maria came up to put Lloyd to bed, Fritz was tearing around the
room barking at his shadow.

"Put that dog out, M'ria!" roared the Colonel, almost crazy with its
antics. "Take it down-stairs, and put it out of the house, I say! Nobody
but a heathen would let a dog sleep in the house, anyway."

The homesick feeling began to creep over Lloyd again. She had expected
to keep Fritz in her room at night for company. But for the touch of the
little glove in her pocket, she would have said something ugly to her
grandfather when he spoke so harshly.

His own ill humour was reflected in her scowl as she followed Maria down
the stairs to drive Fritz out into the dark. They stood a moment in the
open door, after Maria had slapped him with her apron to make him go off
the porch.

"Oh, look at the new moon!" cried Lloyd, pointing to the slender
crescent in the autumn sky.

"I'se feared to, honey," answered Maria, "less I should see it through
the trees. That 'ud bring me bad luck for a month, suah. I'll go out on
the lawn where it's open, an' look at it ovah my right shouldah."

While they were walking backward down the path, intent on reaching a
place where they could have an uninterrupted view of the moon, Fritz
sneaked around to the other end of the porch.

No one was watching. He slipped into the house as noiselessly as his
four soft feet could carry him.

Maria, going through the dark upper hall, with a candle held high above
her head and Lloyd clinging to her skirts, did not see a tasselled tail
swinging along in front of her. It disappeared under the big bed when
she led Lloyd into the room next the old Colonel's.

The child felt very sober while she was being put to bed.

The furniture was heavy and dark. An ugly portrait of a cross old man in
a wig frowned at her from over the mantel. The dancing firelight made
his eyes frightfully lifelike.

The bed was so high she had to climb on a chair to get in. She heard
Maria's heavy feet go shuffling down the stairs. A door banged. Then it
was so still she could hear the clock tick in the next room.

It was the first time in all her life that her mother had not come to
kiss her good night. Her lips quivered, and a big tear rolled down on
the pillow.

She reached out to the chair beside her bed, where her clothes were
hanging, and felt in her apron pocket for the little glove. She sat up
in bed, and looked at it in the dim firelight. Then she held it against
her face. "Oh, I want my mothah! I want my mothah!" she sobbed, in a
heart-broken whisper.

Laying her head on her knees, she began to cry quietly, but with great
sobs that nearly choked her.

There was a rustling under the bed. She lifted her wet face in alarm.
Then she smiled through her tears, for there was Fritz, her own dear
dog, and not an unknown horror waiting to grab her.

He stood on his hind legs, eagerly trying to lap away her tears with his
friendly red tongue.

She clasped him in her arms with an ecstatic hug. "Oh, you're such a
comfort!" she whispered. "I can go to sleep now."

She spread her apron on the bed, and motioned him to jump. With one
spring he was beside her.

It was nearly midnight when the door from the Colonel's room was
noiselessly opened.

The old man stirred the fire gently until it burst into a bright flame.
Then he turned to the bed. "You rascal!" he whispered, looking at Fritz,
who raised his head quickly with a threatening look in his wicked eyes.

Lloyd lay with one hand stretched out, holding the dog's protecting paw.
The other held something against her tear-stained cheek.

"What under the sun!" he thought, as he drew it gently from her fingers.
The little glove lay across his hand, slim and aristocratic-looking. He
knew instinctively whose it was. "Poor little thing's been crying," he
thought. "She wants Elizabeth. And so do I! And so do I!" his heart
cried out with bitter longing. "It's never been like home since she
left."

He laid the glove back on her pillow, and went to his room.

"If Jack Sherman should die," he said to himself many times that night,
"then she would come home again. Oh, little daughter, little daughter!
why did you ever leave me?"




CHAPTER VIII.


The first thing that greeted the Little Colonel's eyes when she opened
them next morning was her mother's old doll. Maria had laid it on the
pillow beside her.

It was beautifully dressed, although in a queer, old-fashioned style
that seemed very strange to the child.

She took it up with careful fingers, remembering its great age. Maria
had warned her not to waken her grandfather, so she admired it in
whispers.

"Jus' think, Fritz," she exclaimed, "this doll has seen my Gran'mothah
Amanthis, an' it's named for her. My mothah wasn't any bigger'n me when
she played with it. I think it is the loveliest doll I evah saw in my
whole life."

Fritz gave a jealous bark.

"Sh!" commanded his little mistress. "Didn't you heah M'ria say, 'Fo' de
Lawd's sake don't wake up ole Marse?' Why don't you mind?"

The Colonel was not in the best of humours after such a wakeful night,
but the sight of her happiness made him smile in spite of himself, when
she danced into his room with the doll.

She had eaten an early breakfast and gone back up-stairs to examine the
other toys that were spread out in her room.

The door between the two rooms was ajar. All the time he was dressing
and taking his coffee he could hear her talking to some one. He supposed
it was Maria. But as he glanced over his mail he heard the Little
Colonel saying, "May Lilly, do you know about Billy Goat Gruff? Do you
want me to tell you that story?"

He leaned forward until he could look through the narrow opening of the
door. Two heads were all he could see,--Lloyd's, soft-haired and golden,
May Lilly's, covered with dozens of tightly braided little black tails.

He was about to order May Lilly back to the cabin, when he remembered
the scene that followed the last time he had done so. He concluded to
keep quiet and listen.

"Billy Goat Gruff was so fat," the story went on, "jus' as fat as
gran'fathah."

The Colonel glanced up with an amused smile at the fine figure reflected
in an opposite mirror.

"Trip-trap, trip-trap, went Billy Goat Gruff's little feet ovah the
bridge to the giant's house."

Just at this point Walker, who was putting things in order, closed the
door between the rooms.

"Open that door, you black rascal!" called the Colonel, furious at the
interruption.

In his haste to obey, Walker knocked over a pitcher of water that had
been left on the floor beside the wash-stand.

Then the Colonel yelled at him to be quick about mopping it up, so that
by the time the door was finally opened, Lloyd was finishing her story.

The Colonel looked in just in time to see her put her hands to her
temples, with her forefingers protruding from her forehead like horns.
She said in a deep voice, as she brandished them at May Lilly, "With my
two long speahs I'll poke yo' eyeballs through yo' yeahs." The little
darky fell back giggling. "That sut'n'y was like a billy-goat. We had
one once that 'ud make a body step around mighty peart. It slip up
behine me one mawnin' on the poach, an' fo' awhile I thought my haid was
buss open suah. I got up toreckly, though, an' I cotch him, and when I
done got through, Mistah Billy-goat feel po'ly moah'n a week. He sut'n'y
did."

Walker grinned, for he had witnessed the scene.

Just then Maria put her head in at the door to say, "May Lilly, yo'
mammy's callin' you."

Lloyd and Fritz followed her noisily down-stairs. Then for nearly an
hour it was very quiet in the great house.

The Colonel, looking out of the window, could see Lloyd playing
hide-and-seek with Fritz under the bare locust-trees. When she came in
her cheeks were glowing from her run in the frosty air. Her eyes shone
like stars, and her face was radiant.

"See what I've found down in the dead leaves," she cried. "A little blue
violet, bloomin' all by itself."

She brought a tiny cup from the next room, that belonged to the set of
doll dishes, and put the violet in it.

"There!" she said, setting it on the table at her grandfather's elbow.
"Now I'll put Amanthis in this chair, where you can look at her, an' you
won't get lonesome while I'm playing outdoors."

He drew her toward him and kissed her.

"Why, how cold your hands are!" he exclaimed. "Staying in this warm room
all the time makes me forget it is so wintry outdoors. I don't believe
you are dressed warmly enough. You ought not to wear sunbonnets this
time of year."

Then for the first time he noticed her outgrown cloak and shabby shoes.

"What are you wearing these old clothes for?" he said, impatiently. "Why
didn't they dress you up when you were going visiting? It isn't showing
proper respect to send you off in the oldest things you've got."

It was a sore point with the Little Colonel. It hurt her pride enough to
have to wear old clothes without being scolded for it. Besides, she
felt that in some way her mother was being blamed for what could not be
helped.

"They's the best I've got," she answered, proudly choking back the
tears. "I don't need any new ones, 'cause maybe we'll be goin' away
pretty soon."

"Going away!" he echoed, blankly, "Where?" She did not answer until he
repeated the question. Then she turned her back on him, and started
toward the door. The tears she was too proud to let him see were running
down her face.

"We's goin' to the poah-house," she exclaimed, defiantly, "jus' as soon
as the money in the pocketbook is used up. It was nearly gone when I
came away."

Here she began to sob, as she fumbled at the door she could not see to
open.

"I'm goin' home to my mothah right now. She loves me if my clothes are
old and ugly."

"Why, Lloyd," called the Colonel, amazed and distressed by her sudden
burst of grief. "Come here to grandpa. Why didn't you tell me so
before?"

The face, the tone, the outstretched arm, all drew her irresistibly
to him. It was a relief to lay her head on his shoulder, and unburden
herself of the fear that had haunted her so many days.

With her arms around his neck, and the precious little head held close
to his heart, the old Colonel was in such a softened mood that he would
have promised anything to comfort her.

"There, there," he said, soothingly, stroking her hair with a gentle
hand, when she had told him all her troubles. "Don't you worry about
that, my dear. Nobody is going to eat out of tin pans and sleep on
straw. Grandpa just won't let them."

She sat up and wiped her eyes on her apron. "But Papa Jack would die
befo' he'd take help from you," she wailed. "An' so would mothah. I
heard her tell the doctah so."

The tender expression on the Colonel's face changed to one like flint,
but he kept on stroking her hair. "People sometimes change their minds,"
he said, grimly. "I wouldn't worry over a little thing like that if I
were you. Don't you want to run down-stairs and tell M'ria to give you
a piece of cake?"

"Oh, yes," she exclaimed, smiling up at him. "I'll bring you some, too."

When the first train went into Louisville that afternoon, Walker was
on board with an order in his pocket to one of the largest dry goods
establishments in the city. When he came out again, that evening, he
carried a large box into the Colonel's room.

Lloyd's eyes shone as she looked into it. There was an elegant
fur-trimmed cloak, a pair of dainty shoes, and a muff that she caught up
with a shriek of delight.

"What kind of a thing is this?" grumbled the Colonel, as he took out a
hat that had been carefully packed in one corner of the box. "I
told them to send the most stylish thing they had. It looks like a
scarecrow," he continued, as he set it askew on the child's head.

She snatched it off to look at it herself. "Oh, it's jus' like Emma
Louise Wyfo'd's!" she exclaimed. "You didn't put it on straight. See!
This is the way it goes."

She climbed up in front of the mirror, and put it on as she had seen
Emma Louise wear hers.

"Well, it's a regular Napoleon hat," exclaimed the Colonel, much
pleased. "So little girls nowadays have taken to wearing soldier's caps,
have they? It's right becoming to you with your short hair. Grandpa is
real proud of his 'little Colonel.'"

She gave him the military salute he had taught her, and then ran to
throw her arms around him. "Oh, gran'fathah!" she exclaimed, between her
kisses, "you'se jus' as good as Santa Claus, every bit."

The Colonel's rheumatism was better next day; so much better that toward
evening he walked down-stairs into the long drawing-room. The room had
not been illuminated in years as it was that night.

Every wax taper was lighted in the silver candelabra, and the dim old
mirrors multiplied their lights on every side. A great wood fire threw a
cheerful glow over the portraits and the frescoed ceiling. All the linen
covers had been taken from the furniture.

Lloyd, who had never seen this room except with the chairs shrouded and
the blinds down, came running in presently. She was bewildered at first
by the change. Then she began walking softly around the room, examining
everything.

In one corner stood a tall, gilded harp that her grandmother had played
in her girlhood. The heavy cover had kept it fair and untarnished
through all the years it had stood unused. To the child's beauty-loving
eyes it seemed the loveliest thing she had ever seen.

She stood with her hands clasped behind her as her gaze wandered from
its pedals to the graceful curves of its tall frame. It shone like
burnished gold in the soft firelight.

"Oh, gran'fathah!" she asked at last in a low, reverent tone, "where did
you get it? Did an angel leave it heah fo' you?"

He did not answer for a moment. Then he said, huskily, as he looked up
at a portrait over the mantel, "Yes, my darling, an angel did leave it
here. She always was one. Come here to grandpa."

He took her on his knee, and pointed up to the portrait. The same harp
was in the picture. Standing beside it, with one hand resting on its
shining strings, was a young girl all in white.

"That's the way she looked the first time I ever saw her," said the
Colonel, dreamily. "A June rose in her hair, and another at her throat;
and her soul looked right out through those great, dark eyes--the
purest, sweetest soul God ever made! My beautiful Amanthis!"

"My bu'ful Amanthis!" repeated the child, in an awed whisper.

She sat gazing into the lovely young face for a long time, while the old
man seemed lost in dreams.

"Gran'fathah," she said at length, patting his cheek to attract his
attention, and then nodding toward the portrait, "did she love my
mothah like my mothah loves me?"

"Certainly, my dear," was the gentle reply.

It was the twilight hour, when the homesick feeling always came back
strongest to Lloyd.

"Then I jus' know that if my bu'ful gran'mothah Amanthis could come down
out of that frame, she'd go straight and put her arms around my mothah
an' kiss away all her sorry feelin's."

The Colonel fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair a moment. Then to his
great relief the tea-bell rang.




CHAPTER IX.


Every evening after that during Lloyd's visit the fire burned on the
hearth of the long drawing-room. All the wax candles were lighted, and
the vases were kept full of flowers, fresh from the conservatory.

She loved to steal into the room before her grandfather came down, and
carry on imaginary conversations with the old portraits.

Tom's handsome, boyish face had the greatest attraction for her.
His eyes looked down so smilingly into hers that she felt he surely
understood every word she said to him. Once Walker overheard her saying,
"Uncle Tom, I'm goin' to tell you a story 'bout Billy Goat Gruff."

Peeping into the room, he saw the child looking earnestly up at the
picture, with her hands clasped behind her, as she began to repeat her
favourite story. "It do beat all," he said to himself, "how one little
chile like that can wake up a whole house. She's the life of the place."

The last evening of her visit, as the Colonel was coming down-stairs he
heard the faint vibration of a harp-string. It was the first time Lloyd
had ever ventured to touch one. He paused on the steps opposite the
door, and looked in.

"Heah, Fritz," she was saying, "you get up on the sofa, an' be the
company, an' I'll sing fo' you."

Fritz, on the rug before the fire, opened one sleepy eye and closed
it again. She stamped her foot and repeated her order. He paid no
attention. Then she picked him up bodily, and, with much puffing and
pulling, lifted him into a chair.

He waited until she had gone back to the harp, and then, with one
spring, disappeared under the sofa.

"N'm min'," she said, in a disgusted tone. "I'll pay you back, mistah."
Then she looked up at the portrait. "Uncle Tom," she said, "you be the
company, an' I'll play fo' you."

Her fingers touched the strings so lightly that there was no discord in
the random tones. Her voice carried the air clear and true, and the
faint trembling of the harp-strings interfered with the harmony no more
than if a wandering breeze had been tangled in them as it passed.

 "Sing me the songs that to me were so deah
  Long, long ago, long ago.
  Tell me the tales I delighted to heah
  Long, long ago, long ago."

The sweet little voice sang it to the end without missing a word. It was
the lullaby her mother oftenest sang to her.

The Colonel, who had sat down on the steps to listen, wiped his eyes.

"My 'long ago' is all that I have left to me," he thought, bitterly,
"for to-morrow this little one, who brings back my past with every word
and gesture, will leave me, too. Why can't that Jack Sherman die while
he's about it, and let me have my own back again?"

That question recurred to him many times during the week after Lloyd's
departure. He missed her happy voice at every turn. He missed her bright
face at the table. The house seemed so big and desolate without her. He
ordered all the covers put back on the drawing-room furniture, and
the door locked as before.

It was a happy moment for the Little Colonel when she was lifted down
from Maggie Boy at the cottage gate.

She went dancing into the house, so glad to find herself in her mother's
arms that she forgot all about the new cloak and muff that had made her
so proud and happy.

She found her father propped up among the pillows, his fever all gone,
and the old mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

He admired her new clothes extravagantly, paying her joking compliments
until her face beamed; but when she had danced off to find Mom Beck,
he turned to his wife. "Elizabeth," he said, wonderingly, "what do you
suppose the old fellow gave her clothes for? I don't like it. I'm no
beggar if I have lost lots of money. After all that's passed between us
I don't feel like taking anything from his hands, or letting my child do
it, either."

To his great surprise she laid her head down on his pillow beside his
and burst into tears.

"Oh, Jack," she sobbed, "I spent the last dollar this morning. I wasn't
going to tell you, but I don't know what is to become of us. He gave
Lloyd those things because she was just in rags, and I couldn't afford
to get anything new."

He looked perplexed. "Why, I brought home so much," he said, in a
distressed tone. "I knew I was in for a long siege of sickness, but I
was sure there was enough to tide us over that."

She raised her head. "You brought money home!" she replied, in surprise.
"I hoped you had, and looked through all your things, but there was only
a little change in one of your pockets. You must have imagined it when
you were delirious."

"What!" he cried, sitting bolt upright, and then sinking weakly back
among the pillows. "You poor child! You don't mean to tell me you have
been skimping along all these weeks on just that check I sent you before
starting home?"

"Yes," she sobbed, her face still buried in the pillow. She had borne
the strain of continued anxiety so long that she could not stop her
tears, now they had once started.

It was with a very thankful heart she watched him take a pack of
letters from the coat she brought to his bedside, and draw out a sealed
envelope.

"Well, I never once thought of looking among those letters for money,"
she exclaimed, as he held it up with a smile.

His investments of the summer before had prospered beyond his greatest
hopes, he told her. "Brother Rob is looking after my interests out West,
as well as his own," he explained, "and as his father-in-law is the
grand mogul of the place, I have the inside track. Then that firm I went
security for in New York is nearly on its feet again, and I'll have back
every dollar I ever paid out for them. Nobody ever lost anything by
those men in the long run. We'll be on top again by this time next year,
little wife; so don't borrow any more trouble on that score."

The doctor made his last visit that afternoon. It really seemed as if
there would never be any more dark days at the little cottage.

"The clouds have all blown away and left us their silver linings," said
Mrs. Sherman the day her husband was able to go out-of-doors for the
first time. He walked down to the post-office, and brought back a letter
from the West. It had such encouraging reports of his business that
he was impatient to get back to it. He wrote a reply early in the
afternoon, and insisted on going to mail it himself.

"I'll never get my strength back," he protested, "unless I have more
exercise."

It was a cold, gray November day. A few flakes of snow were falling when
he started.

"I'll stop and rest at the Tylers'," he called back, "so don't be uneasy
if I'm out some time."

After he left the post-office the fresh air tempted him to go farther
than he had intended. At a long distance from his home his strength
seemed suddenly to desert him. The snow began to fall in earnest. Numb
with cold, he groped his way back to the house, almost fainting from
exhaustion.

Lloyd was blowing soap-bubbles when she saw him come in and fall heavily
across the couch. The ghastly pallor of his face and his closed eyes
frightened her so that she dropped the little clay pipe she was using.
As she stooped to pick up the broken pieces, her mother's cry startled
her still more. "Lloyd, run call Becky, quick, quick! Oh, he's dying!"

Lloyd gave one more terrified look and ran to the kitchen, screaming for
Mom Beck. No one was there.

The next instant she was running bareheaded as fast as she could go,
up the road to Locust. She was confident of finding help there. The
snowflakes clung to her hair and blew against her soft cheeks. All she
could see was her mother wringing her hands, and her father's white
face. When she burst into the house where the Colonel sat reading by the
fire, she was so breathless at first that she could only gasp when she
tried to speak.

"Come quick!" she cried. "Papa Jack's a-dyin'! Come stop him!"

At her first impetuous words the Colonel was on his feet. She caught him
by the hand and led him to the door before he fully realized what she
wanted. Then he drew back. She was impatient at the slightest delay, and
only half answered his questions.

"Oh, come, gran'fathah!" she pleaded. "Don't wait to talk!" But he held
her until he had learned all the circumstances. He was convinced by what
she told him that both Lloyd and her mother were unduly alarmed. When he
found that no one had sent for him, but that the child had come of her
own accord, he refused to go.

He did not believe that the man was dying, and he did not intend to step
aside one inch from the position he had taken. For seven years he had
kept the vow he made when he swore to be a stranger to his daughter. He
would keep it for seventy times seven years if need be.

She looked at him perfectly bewildered. She had been so accustomed to
his humouring her slightest whims, that it had never occurred to her he
would fail to help in a time of such distress.

"Why, gran'fathah," she began, her lips trembling piteously. Then her
whole expression changed. Her face grew startlingly white, and her eyes
seemed so big and black. The Colonel looked at her in surprise. He had
never seen a child in such a passion before. "I hate you! I hate you!"
she exclaimed, all in a tremble. "You's a cruel, wicked man. I'll nevah
come heah again, nevah! nevah! nevah!"

The tears rolled down her cheeks as she banged the door behind her
and ran down the avenue, her little heart so full of grief and
disappointment that she felt she could not possibly bear it.

For more than an hour the Colonel walked up and down the room, unable to
shut out the anger and disappointment of that little face.

He knew she was too much like himself ever to retract her words. She
would never come back. He never knew until that hour how much he
loved her, or how much she had come to mean in his life. She was
gone hopelessly beyond recall, unless--He unlocked the door of the
drawing-room and went in. A faint breath of dried rose-leaves greeted
him. He walked over to the empty fireplace and looked up at the sweet
face of the portrait a long time. Then he leaned his arm on the mantel
and bowed his head on it. "Oh, Amanthis," he groaned, "tell me what to
do."

Lloyd's own words came back to him. "She'd go right straight an' put her
arms around my mothah an' kiss away all the sorry feelin's."

It was a long time he stood there. The battle between his love and pride
was a hard one. At last he raised his head and saw that the short winter
day was almost over. Without waiting to order his horse he started off
in the falling snow toward the cottage.




CHAPTER X.


A good many forebodings crowded into the Colonel's mind as he walked
hurriedly on. He wondered how he would be received. What if Jack Sherman
had died after all? What if Elizabeth should refuse to see him? A dozen
times before he reached the gate he pictured to himself the probable
scene of their meeting.

He was out of breath and decidedly disturbed in mind when he walked up
the path. As he paused on the porch steps, Lloyd came running around the
house carrying her parrot on a broom. Her hair was blowing around her
rosy face under the Napoleon hat she wore, and she was singing.

The last two hours had made a vast change in her feelings. Her father
had only fainted from exhaustion.

When she came running back from Locust, she was afraid to go in the
house, lest what she dreaded most had happened while she was gone. She
opened the door timidly and peeped in. Her father's eyes were open. Then
she heard him speak. She ran into the room, and, burying her head in her
mother's lap, sobbed out the story of her visit to Locust.

To her great surprise her father began to laugh, and laughed so heartily
as she repeated her saucy speech to her grandfather, that it took the
worst sting out of her disappointment.

All the time the Colonel had been fighting his pride among the memories
of the dim old drawing-room, Lloyd had been playing with Fritz and Polly.

Now as she came suddenly face to face with her grandfather, she dropped
the disgusted bird in the snow, and stood staring at him with startled
eyes. If he had fallen out of the sky she could not have been more
astonished.

"Where is your mother, child?" he asked, trying to speak calmly. With
a backward look, as if she could not believe the evidence of her own
sight, she led the way into the hall.

"Mothah! Mothah!" she called, pushing open the parlour door. "Come heah,
quick!"

The Colonel, taking the hat from his white head, and dropping it on the
floor, took an expectant step forward. There was a slight rustle, and
Elizabeth stood in the doorway. For just a moment they looked into each
other's faces. Then the Colonel held out his arm.

"Little daughter," he said, in a tremulous voice. The love of a lifetime
seemed to tremble in those two words.

In an instant her arms were around his neck, and he was "kissing away
the sorry feelin's" as tenderly as the lost Amanthis could have done.

As soon as Lloyd began to realize what was happening, her face grew
radiant. She danced around in such excitement that Fritz barked wildly.

"Come an' see Papa Jack, too," she cried, leading him into the next
room.

Whatever deep-rooted prejudices Jack Sherman may have had, they were
unselfishly put aside after one look into his wife's happy face.

He raised himself on his elbow as the dignified old soldier crossed the
room. The white hair, the empty sleeve, the remembrance of all the old
man had lost, and the thought that after all he was Elizabeth's father,
sent a very tender feeling through the younger man's heart.

"Will you take my hand, sir?" he asked, sitting up and offering it in
his straightforward way.

"Of co'se he will!" exclaimed Lloyd, who still clung to her
grandfather's arm. "Of co'se he will!"

"I have been too near death to harbour ill will any longer," said the
younger man, as their hands met in a strong, forgiving clasp.

The old Colonel smiled grimly.

"I had thought that even death itself could not make me give in," he
said, "but I've had to make a complete surrender to the Little Colonel."
That Christmas there was such a celebration at Locust that May Lilly
and Henry Clay nearly went wild in the general excitement of the
preparation. Walker hung up cedar and holly and mistletoe till the
big house looked like a bower. Maria bustled about, airing rooms and
bringing out stores of linen and silver.

The Colonel himself filled the great punch-bowl that his grandfather had
brought from Virginia.

"I'm glad we're goin' to stay heah to-night," said Lloyd, as she hung up
her stocking Christmas Eve. "It will be so much easiah fo' Santa Claus
to get down these big chimneys."

In the morning when she found four tiny stockings hanging beside her
own, overflowing with candy for Fritz, her happiness was complete.

That night there was a tree in the drawing-room that reached to the
frescoed ceiling. When May Lilly came in to admire it and get her share
from its loaded branches, Lloyd came skipping up to her. "Oh, I'm goin'
to live heah all wintah," she cried. "Mom Beck's goin' to stay heah with
me, too, while mothah an' Papa Jack go down South where the alligatahs
live. Then when they get well an' come back, Papa Jack is goin' to build
a house on the othah side of the lawn. I'm to live in both places at
once; mothah said so."

There were music and light, laughing voices and happy hearts in the old
home that night. It seemed as if the old place had awakened from a long
dream and found itself young again.

The plan the Little Colonel unfolded to May Lilly was carried out in
every detail. It seemed a long winter to the child, but it was a happy
one. There were not so many displays of temper now that she was growing
older, but the letters that went southward every week were full of her
odd speeches and mischievous pranks. The old Colonel found it hard to
refuse her anything. If it had not been for Mom Beck's decided ways, the
child would have been sadly spoiled.

At last the spring came again. The pewees sang in the cedars. The
dandelions sprinkled the roadsides like stars. The locust-trees tossed
up the white spray of their fragrant blossoms with every wave of their
green boughs.

"They'll soon be heah! They'll soon be heah!" chanted the Little Colonel
every day.

The morning they came she had been down the avenue a dozen times to look
for them before the carriage had even started to meet them. "Walkah,"
she called, "cut me a big locus' bough. I want to wave it fo' a flag!"

Just as he dropped a branch down at her feet, she caught the sound of
wheels. "Hurry, gran'fathah," she called; "they's comin'." But the
old Colonel had already started on toward the gate to meet them. The
carriage stopped, and in a moment more Papa Jack was tossing Lloyd up in
his arms, while the old Colonel was helping Elizabeth to alight.

"Isn't this a happy mawnin'?" exclaimed the Little Colonel, as she
leaned from her seat on her father's shoulder to kiss his sunburned
cheek.

"A very happy morning," echoed her grandfather, as he walked on toward
the house with Elizabeth's hand clasped close in his own.

Long after they had passed up the steps the old locusts kept echoing
the Little Colonel's words. Years ago they had showered their fragrant
blossoms in this same path to make a sweet white way for Amanthis's
little feet to tread when the Colonel brought home his bride.

They had dropped their tribute on the coffin-lid when Tom was carried
home under their drooping branches. The soldier-boy had loved them so,
that a little cluster had been laid on the breast of the gray coat he
wore.

Night and day they had guarded this old home like silent sentinels that
loved it well.

Now, as they looked down on the united family, a thrill passed through
them to their remotest bloom-tipped branches.

It sounded only like a faint rustling of leaves, but it was the locusts
whispering together. "The children have come home at last," they
kept repeating. "What a happy morning! Oh, what a happy morning!"




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