The Little Colonel's House Party

"ONE FLEW EAST."

The New York letter reached the hotel while Eugenia was out in the park with her maid, and the bell-boy brought it to her on a salver with several others, as she was stepping into the elevator to go up to her room.

"Here, take my gloves, Eliot!" she exclaimed, tossing them to the maid, and beginning to tear open the envelopes as soon as her hands were free. Eliot, a plain, middle-aged woman, with a patient face and slow gait, picked up the gloves, and followed her young mistress down the corridor.

In the great hotel where she was now, she saw her father only in the evenings, and during breakfast, and she always rebelled when she had to go back to it in vacation. There was so little she could do that she really enjoyed. There was a stupid round of drives and walks, shopping and piano practice, and after that nothing but to mope and fret and worry poor Eliot. At school there was always the excitement of evading some rule or breaking it without being caught; and if there was no joke in prospect to giggle over, there was the memory of one just passed to make them laugh. And then there were always Mollie and Fay and Kit Keller—dear old "Kell"—ready to laugh or cry or lark with her any hour of the day or night, as it suited her mood.

Only seven days of vacation had passed, but to Eugenia it seemed an age since the four had walked back and forth across the school campus, with their arms around each other, waiting for the 'bus that was to drive them to the station.

For Eugenia there was nothing in prospect but lonely days at the Waldorf, until her father could find time to take her down to the seashore for a few weeks. The tears were in her eyes when she laid down the three letters, after twice reading the one signed, "For ever your devoted old chum, Kell." It had been full of the good times she was having at home.

Eugenia looked around the elegantly furnished room with a discontented sigh. No girl in the school had as much spending money as herself, or as wealthy and as indulgent a father, and yet—just at that moment—she felt herself the poorest child in New York. There was one thing she lacked that even the poorest beggar had, she thought bitterly,—companionship. In a listless sort of way she picked up the remaining letter, postmarked Lloydsboro Valley, and began to read it.

"Dance! You giddy old thing!" cried Eugenia. "Whoop and make a noise and act as if you are glad! We are going to get out of our cage next week. I'm invited to a house party. We are to spend a whole month in a house, not a hotel. We're going to be part of a real live family in a real sure enough home,—in an old Southern mansion."

"Goodness gracious, Miss Eugenia," panted Eliot, as she staggered into a chair and settled her cap on her head. "You a'most scared me out of me five wits, you were that sudden in your movements. I thought for a bit as you had gone stark mad. You gave me quite a turn, you did."

Perching herself on the bed among piles of snowy linen, Eugenia clasped her hands around her knees and began to tell all she could remember of the Little Colonel. Because there was no one else to confide in, she confided in the maid. Patient old Eliot listened to much family history that did not interest her and which she immediately forgot, and to many girlish rhapsodies over "Cousin Elizabeth," whom Eugenia declared was the dearest thing that ever drew the breath of life.

As Eugenia talked on, idly rocking herself back and forth on the bed, Eliot sorted the linen with deft fingers, laying some of it away in drawers, sweet with dainty sachets, and putting some aside that needed a stitch or two. Presently, as she listened, she found herself taking more interest in the country place that Eugenia described than in anything she had heard of since she said good-bye to her dear little cottage home in England. She began to hope that Mr. Forbes would consent to Eugenia's accepting the invitation, and expressed that wish to Eugenia.

Bouncing off the bed, she went back to the sitting-room and sat down at her desk. When that letter was written, carefully, and in her best style, she dashed off three notes in an almost unreadable scrawl, to Mollie and Fay and Kell, telling them of her invitation and the delight it gave her. Then she wandered back to the bedroom where Eliot sat mending, and wandered restlessly around the room.

"How slow the time goes," she exclaimed, pausing in front of the mantel. "Two hours until papa will be here. I want to tell him about it, and ask for some more money. I need an extra allowance for this visit."

There was a little Dresden clock on the mantel; two cupids holding up a flower basket, from which swung a spray of roses that formed the pendulum.

"Two long hours," she fumed, scowling at the clock. "Hurry up, you old slow-poke," she cried, catching up the fragile little timepiece and shaking it until the pendulum rattled against the cupids' plump legs. "I can't bear to wait for things."

Eugenia put her hands over her ears with a little scream. "Stop talking like that, Eliot," she cried. "I won't listen, and I won't spend my life waiting in that way. You may if you want to."

Running back to her sitting-room, she banged the door behind her to shut out the sound of Eliot's voice. The next hour she spent by the window, looking down on the shifting scenes of the streets below,—the noisy New York streets, spread out like a giant picture-book before her. Then it began to grow dark, and lights twinkled here and there, and great letters of flame appeared as by magic across the fronts of buildings, and on the electric arches spanning the streets.

Eliot came and drew the curtains, and a glance at the little cupids told her it was time to dress for dinner.

"You are a young one to be noticing such things as that," said Eliot, under her breath. She wanted to say it aloud, but she only pursed her lips together as she got out the dress Eugenia had asked for. It was of some soft, clinging material, of the same sunny yellow that buttercups wear, and Eugenia knew very well how becoming it was to her brunette style of beauty. After she was dressed, she spun around before the pier-glass until she heard her father's step in the hall.

To her surprise, he made no objection to her accepting the invitation to the house party, except to say, half-laughingly, "Don't you think you are a little selfish to want to run off and leave me alone when I've scarcely seen you all winter?" Then he laughed outright as she made a saucy little grimace in answer. He would miss her very much when she was gone, for she was a bright little thing and amused him, but he had a feeling of relief as well to think that a month of her vacation would be pleasantly occupied. She had been so discontented away from her little friends.

After dinner they strolled into an alcove, screened from the hall by great pots of palms, and sat down to listen to the music, and watch the people passing back and forth. It was a gay scene. Ladies in elaborate evening gowns passed out with their escorts to the opera, or waited for the carriages that were to take them later to balls or receptions. Everywhere there was the gleam of white shoulders, the nodding of jewelled aigrettes, the flashing of diamond tiaras. Above it all rose the odour of flowers, the hum of voices, and the music of violins.

Mr. Forbes was proud of his handsome little daughter. He admired her ease of manner, and boasted that she was as self-possessed under all circumstances as any grown woman he knew. It pleased him to have his friends predict that she would be a brilliant social success. He was doing everything in his power to make her that, and yet—sometimes—a vague fear crossed his mind that she was growing cold and selfish. Sometimes she seemed far too old and worldly-wise for a child of her age. He sighed as he looked at her. They were sitting so near each other that his hand rested on the arm of her chair. Yet he felt that they had grown widely apart in their long absences.

"What are you thinking about, Eugenia?" he asked, suddenly. She turned with a little start.

"ONE FLEW WEST."

Out in the village of Plainsville, Kansas, the rain was running in torrents down the gables of the little brown house where the Ware family lived. It had rained all day, a cold, steady pour, until the world outside had taken on the appearance of early March, instead of late May.

Holland and Mary and the baby (they called him baby still, although he was nearly four) were playing menagerie in the corners of the dining-room. They had a tent made of the clothes-horse and some sheets, and the growling and roaring that went on inside was something terrific. It made no difference to the little mother, placidly sewing by the last rays of daylight at one of the western windows; but the noise grated on Joyce's mood.

It was not a cheerful outlook. Nothing was to be seen but the high board alley fence with a broken chicken-coop leaning against it, the weather-beaten old stable, and a scraggy, dripping peach-tree. The yard was full of puddles, and still the rain splashed on. The sight made Joyce want to cry.

"If I wasn't at home," she said to herself, "I should think that I am homesick, for I feel the way I did that day up in Monsieur Gréville's pear-tree in the old French garden. Then I was tired of France and everything foreign, and would have given all I owned to be back in America. Now I am here with mother and the children, but still I am as unhappy and dissatisfied as I was then. I wonder why!"

It had been less than a year since Joyce had had that wonderful winter in Touraine with her cousin Kate, but it seemed such a long, long time ago, in looking back upon it. She had settled down into the common humdrum round of duties so completely that sometimes it seemed to her that she had never been away at all; that she must have dreamed that year into her life, or read about it as happening to some other girl.

"I've roared till my throat is sore, and I'm hungry. Isn't supper most ready, sister?"

Joyce glanced at the clock. "It'll be ready in ten minutes," she answered, and returned to her survey of the back yard.

"I wish that we were going to have dumplings for supper to-night," said Holland, "and turkey and sausages. Don't you, Mary?" He snuffed hungrily at the saucepan on the stove.

"No," said Mary, pausing thoughtfully, as if considering a weighty matter. "I'd rather have ice cream and chocolate cake. If I had a witch with a wand that's what I'd wish for supper to-night. Wouldn't you, sister?"

Mary and Holland listened in flattering silence. They had great respect for their thirteen-year old sister, who had been across seas and visited old chateaux where kings and queens once lived. She was the only child in Plainsville who could boast the distinction of having been abroad, and there was a glamour about it that enchanted them. They were never tired of hearing of her adventures.

"It's horrid to be poor," she said again, clapping the lid on the kettle. "I hate to live in a little crowded-up house, and spoil my hands with dust and dish-water, and do the same things year in and year out."

"I am afraid my bird of passage will never be satisfied with the little home nest again," she said, sadly.

"Oh, mother, I didn't mean it as bad as it sounds; truly, I didn't," cried Joyce. "You know that usually I am as contented as a cricket; but I don't know what is the matter with me to-day. It must be the weather."

Just then there was a stamping on the porch outside, and the violent flapping of an umbrella to rid it of the raindrops clinging to it.

"Jack!" shouted Mary, rushing to the door, with Holland and the baby tagging at her heels. "A letter for Joyce!" they called in chorus the next instant, all straggling back after the oldest brother as he bore it triumphantly into the kitchen.

"From Lloydsboro Valley," announced Joyce, and Mrs. Ware's face lighted up with one of her rare smiles.

"Ah, I knew it was coming," she said, "and I am sure it will prove an antidote for your blues. I had a letter from the same place last week, and I've been in the secret ever since."

"That Joyce was to be invited to a house party in June, back in 'My old Kentucky home.' The invitation is from one of my old school friends. There were three of us," she went on, in answer to the look of eager interest in Mary's eyes. "Three girls who grew up together: Joyce Allen (your sister is named for her), Elizabeth Lloyd, and myself. And now our little daughters are to meet in the same dear old valley where we played together and grew up together and learned to love each other like sisters. I hope they will become as dear friends as we were."

Joyce looked up from her letter, her face aglow with joyful surprise. "Oh, mother!" she cried, "do you really mean it? Is it possible that I am to go? How can you afford it?"

Mrs. Ware motioned toward the envelope lying at Joyce's feet.

"Look again," she said, "and you will find that Mr. Sherman has sent a pass. As for the clothes, well, your 'witch with a wand' has come to the rescue again."

"Cousin Kate?" gasped Joyce.

Mary danced up and down, her hair ribbons bobbing over her shoulders, and her face ashine, as she cried, "Oh, sister, isn't it lovely? I'm so glad, I'm so glad, I'm so glad!"

But Joyce stood with her face suddenly grown serious and her lips trembling. Her little sister's unselfish delight made her conscience hurt. Putting her arms around her mother's neck, she hid her face against her shoulder. "Oh, mother," she sobbed, "I don't deserve it all! Here I've been so fretful and discontented all day, thinking there'd never be any good times any more, and that there was nothing but work ahead of me, and all the time this beautiful surprise was on its way. I don't deserve for it to be mine. It ought to be Mary's. She never frets over things."

Mary's hands came together ecstatically, with a long-drawn "Oh!" Then she clasped her mother around the knees, demanding, breathlessly:

"Anything for Holland in that box?"

"Yes."

"Anything for Jack?"

"Yes."

"Anything for the baby?"

Mrs. Ware nodded.

"And you?"

Another nod.

"Then there isn't a single word in the dictionary good enough to fit!" screamed Mary, excitedly, spinning around and around in the kitchen floor until the red ribbons stood out at right angles from her head. "There isn't a single word, Holland; we'll just have to squeal!"

At that she gave a long, ear-piercing shriek that seemed to go through the roof like a fine-pointed needle. Holland and the baby joined in, each trying to make a louder noise than the other. Their eyes were tightly shut, their mouths wide open, and their faces red to bursting.

"The kettle is boiling over!" cried Holland, and Joyce flew to the rescue. Jack went to change his wet clothes, and the three smaller children trotted back and forth, pushing chairs to the table, and helping to carry in the supper.

Many a bedraggled passer-by that evening looked out from under his dripping umbrella as he neared the little brown house, cheered by a babel of happy voices. The lamplight streaming across the wet pavement drew his gaze to a window whose blinds had not been closed, and the picture lingered pleasantly in his memory for many a day. It was the Ware family at supper. And afterward, when the dishes had been cleared away, there was another picture to shine out into the wet night: the children unpacking the box that Jack had dragged out of its hiding-place.

"You may take my new umbrella with you, if you want it, Joyce," said Jack. "I haven't used it half a dozen times since I got it Christmas, and you will want to put on style in Kentucky. Your old one is good enough for me to use out here in Plainsville."

"Do you want my blue spotted necktie, sister?" asked Holland, leaning against her and looking up into her face with an anxious little pucker on his forehead. "It's the best one I've got, but you may take it if you want to."

"And maybe—" began Mary, hesitatingly. She stopped an instant, a little struggle evidently going on in her mind. Then she began again, bravely: "Yes, I'll lend it to you if you want it. You may take my new rosebud sash. There!"

A queer little lump came into Joyce's throat as she thanked the children for their generous offers. She accepted the umbrella, but refused the spotted tie and rosebud sash, to the evident relief of their owners, who wanted to be generous, but were glad to be able to Keep the part of their wardrobes they most admired.

"I doubt it," answered Mrs. Ware. "Elizabeth is an orphan, you know, and Eugenia Forbes, with all her wealth, is practically homeless, for there is little home-life in either a boarding-school or a big hotel."

BETTY REACHES THE "HOUSE BEAUTIFUL."

It was very early in the morning, while the dew was still on the meadows, that Betty fared forth on her pilgrimage. The old farm wagon that was to take her to the railroad station, two miles away, was drawn up to the door before five o'clock. Davy proudly held the reins while his father carried Betty's trunk down-stairs.

Poor, shabby, little, old leather trunk! It was not half full, for there had been small preparation for this visit. Betty had carefully folded the few gingham dresses she possessed, and the new blue and white lawn bought for her to wear to church. There were several stitches to be taken in her plain cotton under-wear, and a button to be sewed on her only white ruffled apron.

And the handkerchiefs—well, six of them were plain and white, and two had pictures stamped in the corners. One told the story of Red Ridinghood and the other had scenes from Cinderella outlined in blue. They had been Davy's present to her the Christmas before, and he had bought them at Squire Jaynes's store with his own precious pennies.

That was all that Betty had intended to put into her trunk, but when they were in, there was still so much room that she decided to take her books and several of her chief treasures. "They will be safer," she said to herself, and she filled a box with cotton in which to pack some of her breakable keepsakes. She had hesitated some time about taking her scrap-book, an old ledger on whose blank pages she had written many verses. She hardly dared call them poetry, and yet they were dear to her, because they were the outpourings of her lonely little heart.

"I'll take it," she decided at last, slipping some loose pages in between the covers. "I may want to write something at Locust."

She paused long at the foot of her bed, trying to make up her mind about her godmother's picture, that hung there in a little frame of pine cones.

"I don't know whether to take it or not," she said to Davy, looking up lovingly at the Madonna of her dreams, whose sweet face had been her last greeting at night, and first welcome on waking, for several years. "I hate to leave it behind, but I'll have my real godmother to look at while I'm gone, and it'll seem so nice to have this picture here to smile at me when I get back, as if she was glad I'd come home. I believe I'll leave it."

Betty herself could not remember having been on a longer trip than to Livermore, a village ten miles away. There was an excited flutter in her throat as the wagon started forward with a jolt, and she realised that now she was looking her last on safe familiar scenes, and breaking loose from all safe familiar landmarks.

"Good-bye!" she cried again, looking back at the little group on the porch with tears in her eyes.

"Good-bye! Good-bye!" they called, in a noisy chorus, repeating the call like a brood of clacking guineas, until the wagon passed out of sight down the lane. The road turned at the church. Betty leaned forward for one more look at the window, on whose sill she had passed so many happy afternoons reading to Davy. The board was still leaning against the house, where she had propped it.

They drove around the corner of the little neglected graveyard, where the headstones gleamed white in the morning sunshine, above the dark, glossy green of the myrtle vines. How peaceful and quiet it seemed. The dew still shone in tiny beads on the cobwebs, spun across the grass, a spicy smell of cedar boughs floated across the road to them, and a dove called somewhere in the distant woodlands. As they passed, a wild rose hung over the gray pickets of the straggling old fence, and waved a spray of pale pink blossoms to them.

"Good-bye," she whispered, turning for one more look at the familiar headstones. They were like old friends; she had wandered among them so often. One held her gaze an instant, with its well-known marble hand, pointing the place in a marble book in which was carved one text. How often she had spelled the words, pointing out the deeply carven letters to Davy: "Be ye also ready."

There was no time to spare at the station. Mr. Appleton tied the horses and hurried to have Betty's trunk checked. The shriek of the locomotive coming down the track made Betty turn cold. It was like a great demon thundering toward her. Davy edged closer to her, moved by the strange surroundings to ask a question.

"Say, Betty, ain't you afraid?"

"Yes," she confessed, squeezing the warm little hand in her own, which had suddenly seemed to turn to ice. "My heart is going bump-bump-bump like a scared wild rabbit's; but I keep saying over and over to myself what the python said. Don't you remember in Kaa's hunting? 'A brave heart and a courteous tongue, said he, they shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling.' It can't be such a very big jungle that I'm going into, and godmother will meet me in a few hours. Don't forget me, Davy, while I'm gone."

"You can let that be a sort of warning to you," said Mrs. Appleton, at parting, "not to get into conversation with strangers. Red Ridinghood never would have got into trouble if she hadn't stopped to tell the Wolf all she knew."

Remembering this warning, Betty sat up very straight at first, and held the basket handles in such a tight grasp that her fingers ached. But after the conductor had looked at her pass and smiled kindly into the appealing little face under the white sunbonnet, she felt more at ease and began to look shyly about her.

Somebody's grandmother was in the seat in front of her, such a fat, comfortable-looking old lady, that Betty felt sure she could not be a Wolf in disguise, and watched her with neighbourly interest. She fell to wondering about her, where she lived and where she was going, and what she had in her many bags, boxes, shawl-straps, and satchels.

Even the people who came on the cars at the stations along the way looked like the people she saw at church every week, and Betty soon began to feel very much at home. After awhile the train stopped at a junction where she had to wait several hours to make connection with the Louisville train. But even that did not turn out to be a bad experience, as she had feared, for the old lady waited too, and she was as anxious to find a friend as Betty was. So it was not long until the two were talking together as sociably as two old neighbours, and they ate their lunch together with so many exchanges of confidences that they were both surprised when Betty's train came puffing along. They had not imagined the time could fly so fast.

"It was silly of me to have been so frightened," she thought. "The world isn't a jungle, after all, and we are just as apt to meet the grandmothers as the wolves when we go travelling."

She was mixing Kaa's experience with Red Riding-hood's in her thought, but it made no difference. The conclusion she reached was a comfortable one. So she leaned back in her seat to enjoy the rest of the journey without any foolish fears.

Little by little the motion of the train had its effect. The white sunbonnet nodded nearer and nearer toward the cushioned back of the seat; the brown eyes drooped drowsily, and in a few minutes Betty was sound asleep. That was the last she knew of the trip that she had settled herself to enjoy, for when she awoke the brakeman was calling "Louisville!" at the top of his voice, and people were beginning to reach up to the racks overhead for their bundles.

Betty stood looking around her helplessly in the middle of the overpowering din of whistles and bells and the thunder of wheels on the cobblestones outside. That moment she would have given anything she owned to be safely back on the quiet farm. The big brown eyes in the depths of the sunbonnet filled with tears, but she resolutely winked them back, whispering the python's words: "A brave heart and a courteous tongue, manling."

But she could not stop the frightened thumping in her breast, and of what use was a courteous tongue, when nobody would stop to listen? She wondered what had happened to make a whole city full of people in such a desperate hurry.

With a glad little cry of recognition she sprang forward, catching one slim gray-gloved hand in hers. The white sunbonnet fell back, the brown eyes looked out from a tangle of dusky curls with a world of loving admiration in their depths, and the next instant Betty was folded in Mrs. Sherman's arms.

"Joyce Allen," she exclaimed, "all over again! Joyce's own little daughter! I would have known you anywhere, dear, I think, even—" She did not finish the sentence. Even in such an outlandish costume, was what she had started to say. She had seen Betty as the child stepped off the train, but had not given her a second glance, as it never occurred to her that the little guest she had come to meet would travel in a sunbonnet.

The Little Colonel was waiting in the carriage at the depot when Mrs. Sherman and Betty stepped off the train at Lloydsboro Valley. Rob Moore had come down, too, curious for a glimpse at the first arrival. He grinned at the expression of surprise and dismay on the Little Colonel's face as her glance fell on Betty. Was it that her little guest had no hat, she wondered, or was it because no one in the cuckoo's nest had ever taught her any better than to go travelling in such style? And carrying a little old-fashioned willow basket, too! How odd and countrified she looked!

But Lloyd was too ladylike to show her disappointment. She climbed out of the carriage and greeted Betty as graciously as her mother had done. Then straightway she forgot her annoyance, for the sweet friendliness of the little face smiling up into hers was irresistible.

"No," said Betty, hesitatingly. "You see I thought you lived in the country, and I suppose it is a sort of country, but not the kind that I live in. Here everything is pruned and raked until it looks as if it had just had its hair parted smoothly in the middle, and its shoe-strings tied. At home there is so much underbrush, and such a tangle of weeds and high grass and briers, that the yards look as if they'd forgotten to comb their hair when they got up, and had gone around all day with it hanging down their backs in snarls."

The Little Colonel laughed. The newcomer had amusing fancies, at any rate.

She looked shyly up at the face above her with such a winning smile that Mrs. Sherman drew her toward her with a quick hug and kiss. Lloyd gave a little wriggle of satisfaction. "I'm so glad you've come!" she cried, so completely won by Betty's artlessness that she forgot her first impression.

"Heah we are at Locust," she said, as they drove into the long avenue. "I wish you could have seen the trees when they were all in bloom. It was like a picture."

"It is like a picture now, I think," said Betty, gazing up at the giant branches overheard that seemed to be waving a welcome. There was a listening expression on her face, as if she understood their leafy whisperings. Lloyd and her mother exchanged glances, and after that she was disturbed by no word until the carriage stopped. They understood her silent pleasure in the great trees that they themselves had learned to look upon as old friends.

"What odd fancies you have!" exclaimed Lloyd, stepping out of the carriage as she spoke. "But it is dear of you to give the place such a sweet name. Come on up and see your room. After you have rested awhile I'll take you all over the house."

As they went down the wide, airy hall, Betty had a glimpse of the drawing-room through the open doors. In a confused way she noticed mirrors and statuary and portraits, handsome old furniture and rare pieces of bric-a-brac; but one thing caught her attention so that she stood a moment in round-eyed admiration. It was a large harp, whose gracefully curving frame gleamed through the shadowy room like burnished gold. Fair and tall it stood, as if its strings had just been swept by some of the Shining Ones beyond, who were a part of the Pilgrim's dream.

At the landing where the stairs turned, Betty stopped again, for there was a great casement window looking out into a beech-grove, and under it a cosy cushioned window-seat, where some one had evidently been reading. There were books and magazines scattered all among the pillows.

"Heah is yo' room!" cried Lloyd, throwing open a door at the head of the stairs, and leading the way in. Betty followed, her sunbonnet in her hand, and looked around her like one in a dream. She had never imagined a room could be so beautiful. If Lloyd could have known what a contrast it was to the bare little west gable at the cuckoo's nest, she could have better understood the wonder in Betty's face.

"My room is pink, and Eugenia's green, and Joyce's blue," explained Lloyd. "Mothah thought you would like this white and gold one best, 'cause it's like a daisy field."

Left to herself, Betty undressed and lay down as she had been bidden. Her eyes were tired and she closed them sleepily, but they would not stay shut. She was obliged to open them for another peep at the dear little white dressing-table with its crystal candlesticks, that looked like twisted icicles. And she must see that darling little heart-shaped pin-cushion again, and all the dainty toilet articles of gold and ivory. Then she could not resist another glance at the white Angora rugs lying on the dark, polished floor, and the white screen before her wash-stand with sprays of goldenrod painted across it, looking as natural as if they had grown there.

While she slept she dreamed that she was back in the cuckoo's nest again, in her bare little room in the gable, and that a great white and yellow daisy stood over her, shaking her by the shoulder and telling her that it was time to go down and wash the breakfast dishes. Then the broad white petals began to fall off one by one, and it was Davy's face in the centre. No, whose was it? She rubbed her eyes and looked again, to find her godmother standing in the door.

"It is time to dress for dinner, little girl," she called, gaily. "Do you need any help?"

"No, thank you," answered Betty, sitting up and catching a glimpse of Lloyd going past the door in a fresh white muslin and pink ribbons.

"Shall I wear my best dress, godmother?" asked Betty, "or would it be better to save it for Sunday?"

"Let me see it," said Mrs. Sherman, helping her to take it out of the little half-filled trunk. "Oh, you'd better wear it, I think. We may have company." What she saw in that trunk set her to thinking her most godmotherly thoughts.

"That's my grandmothah, Amanthis," said Lloyd, pausing in her song, "and that's the way she looked the first time grandfathah evah saw her. And heah's Uncle Tom in his soldier clothes, and this is mothah's great-great-aunt that was such a belle in the days of Clay and Webstah."

She led the way around the room, introducing Betty to all the old family portraits, with interesting tales about each one. Then she went back to her harp, and Betty sat down in front of the first picture again. "You belong to me, too, in a way," thought Betty, looking up at it. "If you are my godmother's mother, then you are my great-godmother, Amanthis, and I love you because you are so beautiful."

THE ENCHANTED NECKLACE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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