The Little Colonel's Hero

WITH BETTY AND EUGENIA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AT THE GATE OF THE GIANT SCISSORS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ON THE WING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"'Gay go up and gay go down
To ring the bells of London town,"

sang the Little Colonel. "I am having such a good time that I'd like to stay on right heah all the rest of the summah."

But she thought that about nearly every other place they visited, Windsor, and Warwick Castle, and Shakespeare's birthplace,—the quaint little village on the Avon; Ambleside, where they took the coach for long rides among the lakes made famous by the poets who lived among them and made them immortal with their songs.

From these English lakes to Scottish moors, from the land of hawthorne to the land of heather, from low green meadows where the larks sang, to the highlands where plaided shepherds watched their flocks, they went with enthusiasm that never waned. They found the "banks and braes o' Bonnie Doon," and wandered along the banks of more than one little river that they had loved for years in song and story.

"Haven't we learned a lot!" exclaimed Eugenia, as they journeyed back by rail to Liverpool, where the Shermans and Betty were to take the steamer. "I'm sure that I've learned ten times as much as I would in school, this last year."

"And had such a lovely time in the bargain," added Lloyd. "It's goin' to make a difference in the way I study this wintah, and in what I read. If we evah come ovah heah again, I intend to know something about English history. Then the places we visit will be so much moah interestin'. I'll not spend so much time on fairy tales and magazine stories. I'm goin' to make my reading count for something aftah this. It was dreadfully mawtifyin' to find out that I was so ignorant, and how much there is in the world to know, that I had nevah even heard of."

That afternoon, in the big Liverpool hotel, the trunks were packed for the last time.

"Seems something like the night befo' Christmas," said the Little Colonel, as she counted the packages piled on the floor beside her trunk. They were the presents that she had chosen for the friends at home.

"Nineteen, twenty," she went on counting, "and that music box for Mom Beck makes twenty-one, and the souvenir spoons for the Walton girls make twenty-five. Oh, I didn't show you these," she said.

"This is Allison's," she explained, opening a little box. "See the caldron and the bells on the handle? I got this in Denmark. That's from Andersen's tale of the swineherd's magic kettle, you know. Kitty's is from Tam O'Shanter's town. That's why there is a witch and a broomstick engraved on it. This spoon for Elise came from Berne. I think that's a darling little bear's head on the handle. What did you get, Betty?" she continued, turning to her suddenly. "You haven't shown me a single thing."

Betty laid down the spoons she was admiring. "You'll not think they are worth carrying home," she said, slowly. "I couldn't buy handsome presents like yours, you know, so I just picked up little things here and there, that wouldn't be worth anything at all if they hadn't come from famous places."

"Show them to me, anyhow," persisted Lloyd.

Betty untied a small box. "It's only a handful of lava," she explained, "that I picked up on Vesuvius. But Davy will like it because he thinks a volcano is such a wonderful thing. Here are some pebbles the boys will be interested in, because I found them on the field of Waterloo. They are making collections of such things, and Waterloo is a long way from the Cuckoo's Nest. They haven't any foreign things at all.

"I wanted to take something nice to Miss Allison, but I couldn't afford to buy anything fine enough. So I just pressed these buttercups that grew by the gate of Anne Hathaway's cottage. See how sunshiny and satiny they are? Cousin Carl gave me a photograph of the cottage, and I fastened the buttercups here on the side. I couldn't offer such a little gift to some people, but Miss Allison is the kind that appreciates the thought that prompts a gift more than the thing itself."

There were a few more photographs, a handkerchief for Mom Beck, and a string of cheap Venetian beads for May Lily. The most expensive article in the collection was a little mosaic pin for her Cousin Hetty. "I got that in Venice," said Betty. "Cousin Hetty hasn't a single piece of jewelry to her name, and she never gets any presents but plain, useful things, so I am sure she will be pleased."

Lloyd turned away, thinking of the great contrast between her gifts and Betty's, and wishing that she had not made such a display of hers.

"If I were in Betty's place," she said to herself, "I'd be so jealous of me that I could hardly stand it. She's just a little orphan alone in the world, and I have mothah and Papa Jack and Hero and Tarbaby for my very own."

But the Little Colonel need not have wasted any sympathy on Betty. While one stowed away her expensive presents in her trunk, the other wrapped up her little souvenirs, humming softly to herself. It would have been hard to find anywhere in the queen's dominion, a happier child than Betty, as she sat beside her trunk, thinking of the beautiful journey with Cousin Carl, just ending, and the life awaiting her at Locust with her godmother and the Little Colonel. There was only one cloud on her horizon, and that was the parting with Eugenia and her father.

That last evening they spent together in the private parlour adjoining Mrs. Sherman's room. Early after dinner Lloyd and her father went down to pay a visit to Hero, and see that he was properly cared for. He had had a hard time since reaching England, for the laws regarding the quarantining of dogs are strict, and it had taken many shillings on Mr. Sherman's part and some tears on the Little Colonel's to procure him the privileges he had.

"The whole party will be glad when he is safely landed in Kentucky, I am sure," said Mrs. Sherman, as the door closed after them. "I'd never consent to take another dog on such a journey, after all the trouble and expense this one has been. Lloyd is so devoted to him that she is heartbroken if he has to be tied up or made uncomfortable in any way. She'll probably come up-stairs in tears to-night because he wants to follow her, and must be kept a prisoner."

While they waited for her return, Mrs. Sherman drew Eugenia into her room for a last confidential talk, and Betty, nestling beside Cousin Carl on the sofa, tried to thank him for all his fatherly kindness to her on their long pilgrimage together. But he would not let her put her gratitude in words. His answer was the same that it had been that last night of the house party, when, looking down the locust avenue gleaming with its myriad of lights, like some road to the City of the Shining Ones, she had cried out: "Oh, why is everybody so good to me?"

The others came in presently, and the evening seemed to be on wings, it flew so swiftly, as they planned for another summer to be spent at Locust, when Eugenia should come home from her year in the Paris school. And never, it seemed, were good nights followed so quickly by good mornings, or good mornings by good-byes.

Almost before they realised that the parting time had actually come, the Little Colonel and Betty were leaning over the railing of the great steamer, waving their handkerchiefs to Eugenia and her father on the dock. Smaller and smaller grew the familiar outlines, wider and wider the distance between the ship and the shore, until at last even Eugenia's red jacket faded into a mere speck, and it was no longer of any use to wave good-bye.

HOMEWARD BOUND

On that long, homeward journey it was well for Hero that he wore the Red Cross on his collar. The little symbol was the open sesame to many a privilege that ordinary dogs are not allowed on shipboard. Instead of being confined to the hold, he was given the liberty of the ship, and when his story was known he received as much flattering attention as if he had been some titled nobleman.

The captain shook the big white paw, gravely put into his hand at the Little Colonel's bidding, and then stooped to stroke the dog's head. As he looked into the wistful, intelligent eyes his own grew tender.

"I have a son in the service," he said, "sent back from South Africa, covered with scars. I know what that Red Cross meant to him for a good many long weeks. Go where you like, old fellow! The ship is yours, so long as you make no trouble."

"Oh, thank you!" cried the Little Colonel, looking up at the big British captain with a beaming face. "I'd rathah be tied up myself than to have Hero kept down there in the hold. I'm suah he'll not bothah anybody."

Nor did he. No one from stoker to deck steward could make the slightest complaint against him, so dignified and well behaved was he. Lloyd was proud of him and his devotion. Wherever she went he followed her, lying at her feet when she sat in her steamer-chair, walking close beside her when she and Betty promenaded the deck.

Everybody stopped to speak to him, and to question Lloyd and Betty about him, so that it was not many days before the little girls and the great St. Bernard had made friends of all the passengers who were able to be on deck.

The hours are long at sea, and people gladly welcome anything that provides entertainment, so Lloyd and Betty were often called aside as they walked, and invited to join some group, and tell to a knot of interested listeners all they knew of Hero and the Major, and the training of the French ambulance dogs.

In return Lloyd's stories nearly always called forth some anecdote from her listeners about the Red Cross work in America, and to her great surprise she found five persons among them who had met Clara Barton in some great national calamity of fire, flood, or pestilence.

One was a portly man with a gruff voice, who had passed through the experiences of the forest fires that swept through Michigan, over twenty years ago. As he told his story, he made the scenes so real that the children forgot where they were. They could almost smell the thick, stifling smoke of the burning forest, hear the terrible crackling of the flames, feel the scorching heat in their faces, and see the frightened cattle driven into the lakes and streams by the pursuing fire.

They listened with startled eyes as he described the wall of flame, hemming in the peaceful home where his little son played around the door-step. They held their breath while he told of their mad flight from it, when, lashing his horses into a gallop, he looked back to see it licking up everything in the world he held dear except the frightened little family huddled at his feet. He had worked hard to build the cottage. It was furnished with family heirlooms brought West with them from the old homestead in Vermont. It was hard to see those great red tongues devouring it in a mouthful.

In the morning, although they had reached a place of safety, they were out in a charred, blackened wilderness, without a roof to shelter them, a chair to sit on, or a crust to eat. "The hardest thing to bear," he said, "was to hear my little three-year-old Bertie begging for his breakfast, and to know that there was nothing within miles of us to satisfy his hunger, and that the next day it would be the same, and the next, and the next.

"We were powerless to help ourselves. But while we sat there in utter despair, a neighbour rode by and hailed us. He told us that Red Cross committees had started out from Milwaukee and Chicago at first tidings of the fire, with car-loads of supplies, and that if we could go to the place where they were distributing we could get whatever we needed.

"I wish you could have seen what they were handing out when we got there: tools and lumber to put up cabins, food and beds and clothes and coal-oil. They'd thought of everything and provided everything, and they went about the distributing in a systematic, businesslike way that somehow put heart and cheer into us all.

"They didn't make us feel as if they were handing out alms to paupers, but as if they were helping some of their own family on to their feet again, and putting them in shape to help themselves. Even my little Bertie felt it. Young as he was, he never forgot that awful night when we fled from the fire, nor the hungry day that followed, nor the fact that the arm that carried him food, when he got it at last, wore a brassard marked like that." He touched the Red Cross on Hero's collar.

"And when the chance came to show the same brotherly spirit to some one else in trouble and pass the help along, he was as ready as the rest of us to do his share.

"Three years afterward I read in the papers of the floods that had swept through the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and of the thousands that were homeless. Bertie,—he was six then,—he listened to the account of the children walking the streets, crying because they hadn't a roof over them or anything to eat. He didn't say a word, but he climbed up to the mantel and took down his little red savings-bank.

"We were pretty near on our feet again by that time, although we were still living in a cabin. The crops had been good, and we had been able to save a little. He poured out all the pennies and nickels in his bank,—ninety-three cents they came to,—and then he got his only store toy, a box of tin soldiers that had been sent to him Christmas, and put that on the table beside the money. We didn't appear to notice what he was doing. Presently he brought the mittens his grandmother up in Vermont had knit for him. Then he waited a bit, and seemed to be weighing something in his mind. By and by he slipped away to the chest where his Sunday clothes were kept and took them out, new suit, shoes, cap and all, and laid them on the table with the money and the tin soldiers.

"'There, daddy,' he said, 'tell the Red Cross people to send them to some little boy like me, that's been washed out of his home and hasn't anything of toys left, or his clothes.'

"I tell you it made a lump come up in my throat to see that the little fellow had taken his very best to pay his debt of gratitude. Nothing was too great for him to sacrifice. Even his tin soldiers went when he remembered what the Red Cross had done for him."

"My experience with the Red Cross was in the Mississippi floods of '82," said a gentleman who had joined the party. "One winter day we were attracted by screams out in the river, and found that they came from some people who were floating down on a house that had been washed away. There they were, that freezing weather, out in the middle of the river, their clothes frozen on them, ill from fright and exposure. I went out in one of the boats that was sent to their rescue, and helped bring them to shore. I was so impressed by the tales of suffering they told that I went up the river to investigate.

"At every town, and nearly every steamboat landing, I found men from the relief committees already at work, distributing supplies. They didn't stop when they had provided food and clothing. They furnished seed by the car-load to the farmers, just as in the Galveston disaster, a few years ago, they furnished thousands of strawberry plants to the people who were wholly dependent on their crops for their next year's food."

"Where did they get all those stores?" asked Lloyd. "And the seeds and the strawberry plants?"

"Most of it was donated," answered the gentleman. "Many contributions come pouring in after such a disaster, just as little Bertie's did. But the society is busy all the time, collecting and storing away the things that may be needed at a moment's notice. People would contribute, of course, even if there were no society to take charge of their donations, but without its wise hands to distribute, much would be lost.

"A number of years ago a physician in Bedford, Indiana, gave a tract of land to the American National Red Cross; more than a square mile, I believe, a beautiful farm with buildings and fruit-trees, a place where material can be accumulated and stored. By the terms of the treaty of Geneva, forty nations are pledged to hold it sacred for ever against all invading armies, to the use of the Red Cross. It is the only spot on earth pledged to perpetual peace."

It was from a sad-faced lady in black, who had had two sons drowned in the Johnstown flood, that Lloyd and Betty heard the description of Clara Barton's five months' labour there. A doctor's wife who had been in the Mt. Vernon cyclone, and a newspaper man who had visited the South Carolina islands after the tidal wave, and Charleston after the earthquake, piled up their accounts of those scenes of suffering, some of them even greater than the horrors of war, so that Lloyd could not sleep that night, for thinking of them.

"Betty," she whispered, across the stateroom, turning over in her berth. "Betty, are you awake?"

"Yes. Do you want anything?"

"I can't sleep. That's all. Every time I shut my eyes I see all those awful things they told about: cities in ruins, and dead people lying around in piles, and the yellow fevah camps, and floods and fiah. It is a dreadful world, Betty. No one knows what awful thing is goin' to happen next."

"Don't think about the dreadful part," urged Betty. "Think of the funny things Mrs. Brown told, of the time the levee broke at Shawneetown. The table all set for supper, and the water pouring in until the table floated up to the ceiling, and went bobbing around like a fish."

"That doesn't help any," said Lloyd, after a moment. "I see the watah crawlin' highah and highah up the walls, above the piano and pictuahs, till I feel as if it is crawlin' aftah me, and will be all ovah the bed in a minute. Did you evah think how solemn it is, Betty Lewis, to be away out in the middle of the ocean, with nothing but a few planks between us and drownin'? Seems to me the ship pitches around moah than usual, to-night, and the engine makes a mighty strange, creakin' noise."

"Do you remember the night I put you to sleep at the Cuckoo's Nest?" asked Betty. "The night after you fell down the barn stairs, playing barley-bright? Shut your eyes and let me try it again."

It was no nursery legend or border ballad that Betty crooned this time, but some peaceful lines of the old Quaker poet, and the quiet comfort of them stole into Lloyd's throbbing brain and soothed her excited fancy. Long after Betty was asleep she went on repeating to herself the last lines:

"I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air,
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care."

She did dream of fires and floods that night, but the horror of the scenes was less, because a baby voice called cheerfully through them, "Here, daddy, give these to the poor little boys that are cold and homesick?" and a great St. Bernard, with a Red Cross on his back, ran around distributing mittens and tin soldiers.

"Now that we are half-way across the ocean," said Mrs. Sherman, next morning, "I may give you Allison Walton's letter. She enclosed it in one her mother wrote, and asked me not to give it to you until we were in mid-ocean. I suppose her experience in coming over from Manila taught her that letters are more appreciated then than at the beginning of the voyage."

The Little Colonel unfolded it, exclaiming in surprise, "It is dated 'The Beeches.' I thought that they were in Lloydsboro Valley all summah, in the cottage next to the churchyard. That one you used to like," she added, turning to Betty. "The one with the high green roof and deah little diamond-shaped window-panes."

"So they are in the Valley," answered her mother. "But their new house is finished now, and they have moved into that. As they have left all the beautiful beech grove standing around it, they have decided to call the place The Beeches, as ours is called Locust, on account of the trees in front of it."

Beckoning to Betty to come and listen, Lloyd sat down to read the letter, and Mrs. Sherman turned to an acquaintance next her. "It is General Walton's family of whom we were speaking," she explained. "Since his death in Manila they have been living in Louisville, until recently. We are so delighted to think that they have now come to the Valley to live. It was Mrs. Walton's home in her girlhood, and her mother's place, Edgewood, is just across the avenue from The Beeches. Lloyd and the little girls are the best of friends, and we are all interested in Ranald, the only son. He was the youngest captain in the army, you know. He received his appointment and was under fire before he was twelve years old."

"Oh, mothah," spoke up Lloyd, so eagerly that she did not notice that she had interrupted the conversation. "Listen to this, please. You know I wrote to Allison about Hero, and this lettah is neahly all about him. She said her fathah knew Clara Barton, and that in Cuba and Manila the games and books that the Red Cross sent to the hospitals were appreciated by the soldiahs almost as much as the delicacies. And she says her mothah thinks it would be fine for us all to start a fund for the Red Cross. They wanted to get up a play because they're always havin' tableaux and such things.

"They've been readin' 'Little Women' again, and Jo's Christmas play made them want to do something like that. They can have all the shields and knights' costumes that the MacIntyre boys had when they gave Jonesy's benefit. They were going to have an entahtainment last week, but couldn't agree. Allison wanted to play 'Cinda'ella,' because there are such pretty costumes in that, but Kitty wanted to make up one all about witches and spooks and robbah-dens, and call it 'The One-Eyed Ghost of Cocklin Tower.'

"She wanted to be the ghost. They've decided to wait till we get home befo' they do anything."

"There's your opportunity, Betty," said Mrs. Sherman, turning to her goddaughter with a smile. "Why can't you distinguish yourself by writing a play that will make us all proud of you, and at the same time swell the funds of the Red Cross?"

"Oh, do you really think I could, godmother? Are you in earnest?" cried Betty, her face shining with pleasure.

"Entirely so," answered Mrs. Sherman, running her hand caressingly over Betty's brown hair. "This little curly head is full of all sorts of tales of goblins and ogres and witches and fairy folk. String them together, dear, in some sort of shape, and I'll help with the costumes."

The suggestion was made playfully, but Betty looked dreamily out to sea, her face radiant. The longing to do something to please her godmother and make her proud of her was the first impulse that thrilled her, but as she began to search her brain for a plot, the joy of the work itself made her forget everything else, even the passing of time. She was amazed when Lloyd called to her that they were going down to lunch. She had sat the entire morning wrapped in her steamer-rug, looking out across the water with far-seeing eyes. As the blue waves rose and fell, her thoughts had risen and swayed to their rhythmic motion, and begun to shape themselves into rhyme. Line after line was taking form, and she wished impatiently that Lloyd had not called her. How could one be hungry when some inward power, past understanding, was making music in one's soul?

She followed Lloyd down to the table like one in a trance, but the spell was broken for awhile by Lloyd's persistent chatter.

"You know there's all sort of things you could have," she suggested, "if you wanted to use them in the piece. Tarbaby and the Filipino pony, and we could even borrow the beah from Fairchance if you wanted anything like Beauty and the Beast. We had that once though, at Jonesy's benefit, so maybe you wouldn't want to use it again."

"There's to be a knight in it," answered Betty, "and he'll be mounted in one scene. So we may need one of the ponies." Then she turned to her godmother. "Do you suppose there is a spinning-wheel anywhere in the neighbourhood that we could borrow?"

"Yes, I have one of my great-grandmother's stored away in the trunk-room. You may have that."

The Little Colonel shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "Oh, I can't wait to know what you're goin' to do with a spinnin'-wheel in the play. Tell me now, Betty."

But the little playwright only shook her head "I'm not sure myself yet. But I keep thinking of the humming of the wheel, and a sort of spinning-song keeps running through my head. I thought, too, it would help to make a pretty scene."

"You're goin' to put Hero in it, aren't you?" was the Little Colonel's question.

"Oh, Lloyd! I can't," cried Betty, in dismay. "A dog couldn't have a part with princes and witches and fairies."

"I don't see why not," persisted Lloyd. "I sha'n't take half the interest if he isn't in it. I think you might put him in, Betty," she urged. "I'd do as much for you, if it was something you had set your heart on. Please, Betty!" she begged.

"But he won't fit anywhere!" said Betty, in a distressed tone. "I'd put him in, gladly, if he'd only go, but, don't you see, Lloyd, he isn't appropriate. It would spoil the whole thing to drag him in."

"I don't see why," said Lloyd, a trifle sharply. "Isn't it going to be a Red Cross entahtainment, and isn't Hero a Red Cross dog? I think it's very appropriate for him to have a part, even one of the principal ones."

"I can't think of a single thing for him to do—" began Betty.

"You can if you try hard enough," insisted Lloyd.

Betty sighed hopelessly, and turned to her lunch in silence. She wanted to please the Little Colonel, but it seemed impossible to her to give Hero a part without spoiling the entertainment.

"Maybe some of the books in the ship's library might help you," said Mr. Sherman, who had been an amused listener. "I'll look over some of them for you."

Later in the day he came up to Betty where she stood leaning against the deck railing. He laid a book upon it, open at a picture of seven white swans, "Do you remember this?" he asked. "The seven brothers who were changed to swans, and the good sister who wove a coat for each one out of flax she spun from the churchyard nettles? The magic coats gave them back their human forms. Maybe you can use the same idea, and have your prince changed into a dog for awhile."

"Oh, thank you!" she cried. "I'd forgotten that story. I am sure it will help."

He walked away, leaving her poring over the picture, but presently, as he paced the deck, he felt her light touch on his arm, and turned to see her glowing little face looking up into his.

"I've got it!" she cried. "The picture made me think of the very thing. I had been fumbling with a tangled skein, trying to find a place to begin unwinding. Now you have given me the starting thread, and it all begins to smooth out beautifully. I'm going for pencil and paper now, to write it all down before I forget."

That pencil and note-book were her constant companions the rest of the voyage. Sometimes Lloyd, coming upon her suddenly, would hear her whispering a list of rhymes such as more, core, pour, store, shore, before, or creature, teacher, feature, at which they would both laugh and Betty exclaim, hopelessly, "I can't find a word to fit that place." At other times Lloyd passed her in respectful silence, for she knew by the rapt look on Betty's face that the mysterious business of verse-making was proceeding satisfactorily, and she dared not interrupt.

The day they sighted land, Lloyd exclaimed: "Oh, I can hardly wait to get home! I've had a perfectly lovely summah, and I've enjoyed every mile of the journey, but the closah I get to Locust the moah it seems to me that the very nicest thing my wondah-ball can unroll (except givin' me Hero, of co'se) is the goin' back home."

"Your wonder-ball," repeated Betty, who knew the birthday story. "That gives me an idea. The princess shall have a wonder-ball in the play."

Lloyd laughed. "I believe that's all you think about nowadays, Betty. Put up yoah scribblin' for awhile and come and watch them swing the trunks up out of the hold. We're almost home, Betty Lewis, almost home!"