"'BUT WE CAUGHT THE CHICKENS AND BROUGHT THEM BACK.'"
"Oh, such a chase!" added Joyce. "Through barb-wire fences, over ploughed fields and into blackberry briers. That is how we got so scratched and torn. But we caught the chickens, and brought them back, with feathers flying, and with them squawking at the tops of their voices."
"What fun it must have been!" said Betty. "I wish I could have seen you then, and I wish I could see you now. You must be wrecks."
"They are not pretty sights, I can assure you," said Mrs. Sherman, laughing in spite of her disapproval. "I'm astonished that you would make such a commotion on a public road, and I'm afraid I would have to lecture you a little if I were not sure that you would never do it again. Run along now and make yourselves presentable for lunch, and first thing you do, look in your mirrors. You'll not be charmed, I'm sure."
"One little, two little, three little Indians," sang Betty, as they skipped out of the room, hand in hand, and Joyce whispered in the hall, "How can she be so cheerful? She's the bravest little thing I ever saw."
They learned the secret of her cheerfulness next time they went to her room. She turned to them with a wistful little smile, sadder, somehow, than tears, saying, "Godmother has helped me to find some stars in my long night, girls. She told me about Milton. I didn't know before that he was blind when he wrote 'Paradise Lost.' And she told me about Fanny Crosby, too, the blind hymnwriter, whose hymns have helped so many people and are sung all over the world.
"I've made up my mind that if the doctor can't save my sight I'll do as they did. It's like dropping the curtains on the outside darkness when night comes on, godmother says, and turning up the lights and stirring the fire, and making it so bright and cheerful and sweet inside that you forget how dark it is outdoors.
"And maybe if I can do that, and think all the time about the beautiful things I have seen and read, I can make up stories some day as they did their poems and hymns. I will write fairy tales that the children will love to listen to and ask to hear, over and over again. I know I can do it, for the ones I've made for Davy he likes best of all. I'd never hope to write stories that grown people would be interested in, and love as they love Tusitala's, but just to be the children's 'tale-teller,' and to write stories that they would listen to long after I am dead and gone—why that would be worth living for, even if I never saw the light again. And godmother thinks I can do it."
"I know you can," assented Lloyd, warmly, "and we'll copy them for you, and send them away to be put into books."
"Joyce," asked Betty, "would you mind reading that little newspaper clipping to the girls about the Road of the Loving Heart? I want them to know about it, too."
She did not know that they had already heard it, listening outside her door with heavy hearts and troubled faces, and when Joyce had found it and again read it aloud, she told them the story of the memory road that she was trying to leave behind her.
"It will be harder to do now that I am blind," she said, at the last, "for I can't help being a care and a trouble to everybody, everywhere I go now. But godmother says people won't mind that much if I'll only be pleasant and cheerful about my misfortune, and not let it cast its shadow on other lives any more than I can help. I haven't said anything about it yet to her, but if there is enough money in the bank that papa left to educate me with, I want to go to a school for the blind and learn to read those queer raised letters, and to do everything for myself. Then I'll not be such a trouble to everybody."
"But how can you be cheerful and pleasant, and go on that way for a whole lifetime?" asked Eugenia, with a shiver. "You may live to be an old, old woman."
"Oh, Eugenia!" exclaimed Joyce, in a shocked undertone. "Don't remind the poor little thing of of that."
"I know," answered Betty, her smile all gone now, and her lip trembling. "Sometimes when I think of that, it's so awful that I can hardly stand it. But it will be only a day at a time, and if I can manage to get through them one by one, and keep my courage up to the end, it will be all right afterward, you know, for there is no night there. The nurse read me that yesterday out of Revelation. That's the only thing that comforts me sometimes." She repeated it in a soft whisper, turning her face away: "There'll be no night there!"
CHAPTER XV.
"THE ROAD OF THE LOVING HEART."
Joyce sat with her elbows on her dressing-table and her chin in her hands, gazing thoughtfully into the mirror. She had just come from Betty's room, and the child's patient cheerfulness, in the face of the dark future that threatened her, had brought the tears to her eyes.
"Dear little Betty!" she said to her reflection in the mirror. "What a beautiful memory of her we will all carry away with us! There isn't a single thing I would want to forget about her. She will be leaving each one of us a Road of the Loving Heart to look back on. And it's like the work of the old Samoan chiefs, too! Built to last for ever. It frightens me to think that what I've done is going to be remembered for ever and ever and ever; but that is what Mrs. Sherman said: 'The memories we dig into our souls will go with us into eternity.'
"If I should die right now, what a lot of things I would want people to forget about me; especially the family. I've been so mean to Jack and so selfish with Mary. I'm going to begin the minute I get back to the little brown house to start to make a memory road for everybody, that I need not be ashamed of when I lie a-dying."
Then she gave a shamefaced little glance at her reflection in the mirror. "No, that's putting it off too long. That is one of my worst habits. I'll begin this minute and write that letter to mamma that I have been putting off all week. And I'll take time to make it interesting, and write all the little things that I know she wants to hear about. And I'll not be so snappish with Eugenia, and make her feel that she was most to blame about our getting the measles. I've taken a mean sort of pleasure in doing it before. Poor thing, she seems to feel dreadfully bad about it, and there's no use my adding anything to her distress." And Joyce, jumping up, took out her writing materials, and sat down at her desk.
At the same moment the Little Colonel was hanging around the door waiting for Mrs. Sherman, who sat in the room until Betty fell asleep. There was a lingering tenderness in Lloyd's kiss as she threw her arms around her mother's neck, and, though no word was spoken, Mrs. Sherman knew that Lloyd had taken Betty's little sermon to heart.
"Where is Eugenia, dear?" she asked.
"She has gone to her room, I think."
"I want to have a little talk with her. She has seemed so miserable and unhappy, since all this happened. The poor child has nearly made herself ill worrying about it."
Across the hall Eugenia had thrown herself down on her bed, and was staring out of the windows. She saw nothing of the summer skies outside, or any of all that outdoor brightness. Her gaze was turned inward on herself.
"I wish I could begin at the beginning and do it all over,—all my life!" she thought. "Somehow I've always thought it rather smart to say and do exactly as I pleased; to be the ringleader in all the mischief and make the teachers dread me, and have the girls afraid of me. But Betty makes you look at things so differently. I'd give anything I've got to have people remember me as they will her. What must papa think of me? I'm all he's got, and he is so good to me! Oh, it would have been better if I had never been born! Every day I've lived I've left a whole road full of stones for somebody to jolt over. Poor old Eliot can't think of me as anything else than an imp of selfishness, for I'm always making it hard for her, and she's a stranger in a strange land,' and I ought to have remembered that she has feelings as well as I have, even if she is a servant. And now Betty's eyes—"
She turned over on the bed, face downward, and began to cry. It was just then that Mrs. Sherman tapped at the door. For almost an hour Lloyd could hear the low murmur of voices going on inside the room, and knew that Eugenia was hearing now what she had always most sorely needed, a sympathetic, motherly talk. If she could have had that loving advice, those straightforward words of warning, long ago, how much they might have done for the motherless child. As it was, that hour opened Eugenia's eyes to many things, and awakened a desire to grow more like the gentle woman beside her, sweet and sincere, unselfish and helpful.
Great was Mr. Forbes's surprise one day, when he opened a letter from Eugenia in the dining-room at the Waldorf, to find that it covered eight pages, and was blistered in several places, as if she had dropped a tear or two as she wrote. Usually she had a favour to ask when she wrote, and scrawled only a page or two; but this told the story of Betty's blindness, her own part in the affair, and all that she had learned about the Road of the Loving Heart. The newspaper clipping that Betty had treasured was enclosed, that he might read for himself the story of Tusitala that had left such an impression on her.
The letter touched him as nothing had done for years, and he read it a second time while he was going up to his office on the elevated. Then at lunch-time, while he waited in his club-room, for lunch to be served, he took it out and read it again. All that busy day between the demands that business made on him, and once even in the midst of dictating to his typewriter, his thoughts kept turning to that far-away island in the Southern seas, where Tusitala's road gleams white under the tropic sun. He had met Robert Louis Stevenson once, the tale-teller of Eugenia's story, and he well understood the influence of that noble life over the old chiefs who called him "brother."
The words that Eugenia had quoted in her letter rang in his ears all day, every way he turned: "Fame dies and honours perish, but loving-kindness is immortal." He seemed to hear them when a poor woman came into his office, asking for a position for her son. They stopped the curt refusal on his lips, and caused him to take half an hour of his precious time to help her.
He heard them again when a case was reported to him of a man living in one of his tenement-houses, who could not pay his rent because he was too ill to work, and could not hope to recover in his present surroundings. The stifling heat of the crowded tenement was killing him. In his weakened condition he was slowly sinking under his burden of debt and worry, and the thought that his helpless family was almost starving and would be left uncared for when he died.
Mr. Forbes turned away with an impatient frown from his collector's report, but that voice from far Samoa seemed to speak again. It was Tusitala's, and again he saw the road dug to last for ever, in the white light of the tropic skies. He sat with his head on his hand a moment, and then, slowly reaching for his check-book filled out a blank, signed it, and sealed it in an envelope.
Pushing it toward his astonished collector, he said: "Here, Miller, take that down to Wiggins, and tell him I said to pick up himself and family, and go down to the seashore for a couple of weeks. It will put them all on their feet again to get out of that place into the salt air, and, wait a minute, Miller,"—as the collector moved off,—"take him a receipt for two months' rent."
Miller walked away, speechless with astonishment, but he had found his tongue by the time he got back. He went into the private office, hat in hand, and waited patiently until Mr. Forbes looked up.
"Well?"
"Wiggins says to tell you, sir, that he will write to you to-morrow, but if you'll excuse me, sir, for meddling in what is none of my business, I'd like you to know before then what a little heaven on earth you have made in that tenement-house. Wiggins was so weak he could hardly sit up, and he cried for pure joy, at the thought of getting away. He says he knows it will save his life. He kept wringing my hand, over and over, and saying, 'It isn't just the money and all that it will do for me in the way of unloading me of that debt and getting my strength back, but it's the kindness of it, Miller, the heavenly kindness of it! Doing all this for me as if he had been my brother!'"
"Thank you, Miller," said Mr. Forbes, waving him hastily aside and turning again to his letters. He seemed impatient, but there was a glow in his heart that made the world seem pleasanter all day.
On his way home he stopped at a jeweller's, and selected a little ring. It was only a simple twist of gold tied in a lover's knot, but inside he had them engrave the word, "Tusitala," and ordered it sent to the hotel that evening.
Late that night it was brought up to his room, where he sat writing a letter to Eugenia. He had just finished the paragraph: "I am sending you by this mail a sort of talisman. Maybe the daily sight of it on your finger will be a helpful reminder of that noble life that shall never be forgotten, while the Road of the Loving Heart endures. It is so easy to forget to take time to be kind. I find it so in my daily rush of business. I shall carry your letter with me as a reminder. Tell your little friend Betty so. The ripple she started will circle farther than she ever dreamed."
"How queer for me to be saying anything like that to Eugenia," he thought. "How much she must have changed to be able to write me the letter she did." He opened the box and took out the little ring. As he turned it around on the tip of his finger, he remembered that it was almost time for her to be coming home. The house party would soon be at an end.
"Hardly worth while to send it to her," he thought. "She will be coming home so soon. When we are down at the seashore, I will give it to her."
The letter she had written him lay open on the table before him. That letter, blotted with penitent tears, had brought a new tenderness into his heart for her. It had revealed a different Eugenia from the one he had been accustomed to thinking of as his little daughter. Somehow she seemed nearer and dearer than she had ever done before, and he wanted to take her in his arms and tell her so. The next instant the thought flashed across his mind, "Well, why not? This is the time I have arranged to take my vacation, and there is nothing to hinder my going down to Kentucky after her. Jack Sherman is always urging me to visit Locust, and I'll give the child a surprise. She dislikes to travel with only Eliot."
Eugenia knew nothing of the telegram her Cousin Elizabeth received next morning, so several days later she could hardly believe her eyes, when she saw her father spring out of the carriage in front of the house, and come bounding up the steps, between the white pillars of the vine-covered porch. Tall, handsome, smiling, he came toward her, his arms outstretched, and, after one amazed glance, she ran into them, crying, "Oh, papa! papa! I'm so glad!"
"I couldn't do without my little girl any longer," he said. "I had to come for her."
Mrs. Sherman came out just then with the warmest of welcomes, and Eugenia rushed up-stairs for a moment, to tell Betty about her surprise and to hurry Joyce and Lloyd down to greet her father.
"I am going to begin all over again now," she said to herself, as she went up the stairs. "I'll be as good, and sweet to him as he deserves. I'll let him see how proud I am of him, too. It's queer, but somehow I really love him better since I have thought so much about Betty's Memory roads. Well, I shall certainly try my best from now on to leave a happy one behind for him."
He gave her the ring that night, the little golden lover's knot with the name of Tusitala engraved inside, to remind her always of the Road of the Loving Heart, that she might leave in the world after her. With her head on his shoulder and his arm around her, they talked long, and freely together, as they had never done before.
Once he looked at her with a quizzical little smile. "I never realised until to-night," he said, "how old you are, or how companionable you can be. But we'll always be good chums after this, won't we?"
"Yes," she answered, giving his ear a playful tweak, and mischievously imitating his tone and manner. "And I never realised until to-night how young you are, or how companionable you can be. I believe that if you'd been at this house party from the beginning, you'd have been playing with us by this time, like Bobby and the other boys.
"I must show this ring to the girls," she said, presently, when they heard Mrs. Sherman coming back. Then she hesitated, her eyes sparkling with the pleasure of a sudden thought.
"Oh, papa, I'd like to give Lloyd and Joyce and Betty each a ring like mine, to help them remember, you know, and as a souvenir of the house party. Don't you think that would be nice? I have scarcely touched my allowance this month. Couldn't we go to the city to-morrow and get them?"
"Yes, I think so," answered her father. "We'll ask Cousin Elizabeth about the trains."
Early next morning Mr. Forbes and Eugenia went into the city on their little excursion, and scarcely had they gone when a telegram arrived from Mr. Sherman, saying he would be home on the noon train. The Little Colonel went dashing around the house, from one room to another, calling out the news in the greatest excitement.
"Have you heard it? Papa Jack's comin'! Grandfathah is goin' to stay several weeks longah, but Papa Jack's comin' on the noon train to-day!"
Some one else came on that noon train, some one whom Doctor Fuller met in his buggy and took immediately up to Locust. It was the oculist who had been there before. Lloyd was so excited over her father's arrival that she scarcely noticed they were in the house, and she never knew when they gravely made their examination of Betty's eyes and as gravely went away again.
But late that afternoon, Eugenia and her father, driving up from the station, were surprised to see a cloud of dust whirling rapidly down the road toward them. As they came nearer they saw that Tarbaby was in the centre of it, and on his bare back perched the Little Colonel, the hot June sun beating down on her bare head and red face. As she came within calling distance, she waved her arms frantically to stop the carriage, and shrieked out, at the top of her voice: "Papa Jack's home, and, oh, Eugenia, Betty can see!"
The carriage stopped, and Eugenia leaned out eagerly.
"I couldn't wait for you to get home," cried the Little Colonel. "As soon as I heard the train whistle I jumped on Tarbaby without a saddle or anything, and just toah down heah to tell you. Of co'se she can't use her eyes much fo' a long time, and will have to weah a shade fo' weeks, but when they tested her eyes she saw! And she isn't goin' to be blind!"
Eugenia gave a great, deep sigh of thankfulness, and leaned limply back in the carriage. "Oh, papa," she exclaimed, "you can't imagine what a relief it is to hear that! I felt so much to blame, that now it seems as if a great weight had been lifted off from me."
They were having a jubilee in Betty's room when Eugenia and her father reached the house. Mrs. Sherman told them so, from the head of the stairs and called them to come on up and join in it.
It was a very quiet jubilee. The doctor had insisted on that; but the unspoken joy of the little face on the pillow made happiness in every heart. It was the first time that Mr. Forbes had seen Betty. She was lying with her brown curls tossed back on the pillows, her eyes still bandaged; but the smile on the little mouth was one of the sweetest, gladdest things he had ever seen. Involuntarily he stooped and kissed her softly on the forehead.
"Who is it?" asked Betty, reaching out a wondering little hand, "Eugenia's father?"
"Lloyd calls me Cousin Carl," answered Mr. Forbes, taking the groping fingers in his, "and I think that the little Betty that everybody is so fond of might call me that, too."
"I'll be glad to—Cousin Carl," said the child, bashfully, and that was the beginning of a warm and steadfast friendship.
Eugenia waited until later, when her father and Mrs. Sherman had left the room, before she opened her packages.
"Hold fast all I give you!" she exclaimed, gaily, tossing a tiny white box into Joyce's lap and another into Lloyd's. But the third one she opened, and, taking out the ring it held, slipped it on Betty's finger.
"They are all like the one papa gave me," she said, "and have Tusitala's name inside to help me remember the Memory roads that Betty told us about."
"It will remind me of more than that," said Betty gratefully, when she and the girls had expressed their thanks in a chorus of delighted exclamations. "It will remind me of the happiest day in my life. This is the first ring I ever owned," she added, turning it proudly on her finger. "I wish I could see it." Then, with a gladness in her voice that thrilled her listeners,—"But I shall see it some day! Oh, girls, you couldn't know, you couldn't possibly imagine how much that means to me, unless you'd been shut up as I have in this awful darkness."
There was silence for a moment, and then Eugenia stooped over and gave her a quick, impulsive kiss. "Well, your blindness did some good, Betty," she said, speaking hurriedly and with very red cheeks. "It made me see how hateful and selfish I've always been, and I'm never going to be so mean again to anybody as I was to you. I'm trying to dig a road like Tusitala's and I never would have thought of it, if it hadn't been for you."
With that she turned hastily, and, running across the hall to her own room, shut the door behind her with a bang.
CHAPTER XVI.
A FEAST OF LANTERNS.
The first week of July had come to an end, and with it came the end of the house party.
"Oh, deah," croaked the Little Colonel like a dismal raven, as she waited at the head of the stairs for the girls to finish dressing. "This is the la-st mawnin' well all go racin' down to breakfast togethah! I'm glad that Betty isn't goin' away for a while longah. If you all had to leave at the same time, it would be so lonesome that I couldn't stand it."
"I am glad, too," said Betty, groping her way slowly out of her room with a green shade over her eyes. Her long night was nearly over now, although it would be several months before she would be allowed to read. Her godmother had written to Mrs. Appleton, saying that she wanted to keep Betty with her until her eyes were stronger, and the child had clapped her hands with delight when she received permission to stay, never dreaming how long it would be before she ever saw the Cuckoo's Nest again.
"This is the la-st time we'll ever ride together," sighed Joyce, as she mounted Calico after breakfast. "Oh, it has been such fun, Lloyd, and I've enjoyed this little clown pony more than I can ever tell. He is the dearest, ugliest little beast that ever wore a halter, and I'll never forget him as long as I live."
"And this is the last time we can go galloping out of this gate together, and see the boys coming up the road to meet us," cried Eugenia. "There they are, all three of them. Oh, they haven't heard the news yet! I'm going to dash on ahead and tell them."
Eugenia's news was that she was going abroad with her father in the fall. It had all been arranged since he came to Locust. Finding that business required one of the members of his firm to spend a month in England, he telegraphed back to the office that he would go.
"I don't know which is the most excited over the prospect, myself, or my maid," said Eugenia to the boys. "Poor old Eliot is simply wild with delight at the thought of seeing her home and family again, and I am nearly as much upset as she is. We're to be gone five or six months. Papa says that while we are over there we might as well go the rounds, so maybe we'll spend Christmas in France, in the same place that Joyce did."
"What time do you leave Locust to-night?" asked Malcolm.
"On the ten o'clock train, I think. Joyce is going with us, part of the way, as papa has to make a trip to St. Louis before we go back to New York."
"And which way are you all going now?" asked Keith. The others had joined them, and the seven ponies were standing in a ring in the middle of the road, their noses almost touching.
"We're going down to your house," answered Joyce, "to bid your Grandmother MacIntyre and Miss Allison good-bye. They have been so good to us all the time we have been here. Your Aunt Allison has done so much to entertain us, and as for your grandmother, I couldn't begin to tell you how she cheered us up when we had the measles. There was something from her every day, fruit and flowers and wine jellies and messages. One of my sweetest memories of Kentucky will be of your beautiful grandmother."
Instantly both the boys lifted their hats in acknowledgment, but Keith exclaimed in boyish impatience, "Oh, pshaw! I thought we were all going over to the mill this morning. The last time, you know. There's no need of your going down to bid them good-bye when we'll see you at—"
But Lloyd stopped him with a finger on her lip and a threatening shake of her head. "Come on!" she cried, starting Tarbaby down the road at full gallop. "We can't stand heah in the road all day."
Keith dashed after her, laying a detaining hand on her bridle when he reached her side. "What's the matter, Miss Savage?" he asked. "What do you mean, by shaking your head at me in that way?"
"Can't you keep a secret?" she demanded, crossly. "You know well enough we want to surprise the girls to-night."
"Oh, I forgot!" he exclaimed, clapping a hand over his mouth.
"They are not to know a thing about it until time to light the lanterns," she said, severely. "And I think it would be very rude indeed for them not to make a good-bye call at yo' house this mawnin', even if you all are comin' up to-night."
"Oh, I say, Lloyd, leave a little piece of me, please ma'am," he begged, in a meek voice. "At least enough to help wind up the house party, to-night. Say you'll forgive me!" he insisted, clasping his hands together and looking at her cross-eyed, with such a comical expression that she could not help laughing.
The last time! It's the last time! They said it as they stopped once more for the mail at the little post-office; as they turned regretfully homeward; as they went down the long avenue in the shade of the friendly old locusts. They said it again when they wandered four abreast, and arm in arm about the place, for a farewell glance at every nook and corner, where they had romped and played in the five weeks just gone. Even when the words were not wailed out disconsolately by one of them and echoed by the others, the thought that each thing they were doing was for the last time, went with them like a mournful undercurrent.
"Did you ever have a day fly by as fast as this one?" asked Joyce that afternoon, looking up from the trunk that Mom Beck was helping her to pack. "Here it is nearly six o'clock, and I haven't been down to the mulberry-tree. I wanted one more swing on the grape-vine swing before I dressed for dinner. It's like flying to go sailing through the air, across the ravine, on that grape-vine that covers the mulberry-tree."
"There won't be time now," said the Little Colonel, casting an anxious look toward the front windows. If the girls had not been so busily occupied, they might have noticed how she had been manoeuvring for some time to keep them away from the front windows. She even took them down the back stairs when they were ready for dinner, with the excuse that she wanted them to see the hamper in which Joyce's puppy was to travel. Eugenia's Bob was to be left at Locust until after she had made her trip abroad.
Joyce had a fresh blue satin ribbon packed away in her satchel to tie around her Bob's neck just before reaching home. "Oh, girls!" she exclaimed, "don't you know that those children are going to be delighted when this fat little dumpling comes rolling out of the hamper? They will all grab for him at once, and Mary will be so tickled she will squeal. She always does when she is excited, and it is so funny. I wish I could hear her do it this blessed minute. Somehow I can hardly wait to see them all now, although I don't want to leave Locust one bit. I have had such a good time!"
Mom Beck came out just then to tell them that dinner was waiting, and Lloyd hurried them through the back hall again, although she herself ran to the front door and looked out, before she took her seat at the table. It was a merry meal, for Papa Jack told his best stories, and Cousin Carl, as they all called Mr. Forbes now, recalled his funniest jokes to make the children forget how near they had come to the parting hour. And when the dessert was brought on they sang a duet they had learned when school-boys together, at which every one laughed until the tears stood in their eyes.
While they lingered at the table, Alec and Walker and Mom Beck, and all the servants on the place who could lend a hand, were turning the lawn into fairy-land. They had been busy for several hours putting up strings of lanterns, and now they were lighting them, row after row. Big lanterns, and little lanterns, round ones and square, of every size, colour, and shape, lit up the darkness of the summer night. Huge red dragons swung between the white, vine-covered pillars of the porch. Luminous fish and beasts and birds, hanging from the shrubs and trees on the lawn, set every bough a-twinkle, while all through the grass and all through the flower beds the flashing of hundreds of tiny fairy lamps made it seem as if the glow-worms were holding carnival.
There were tents pitched on the lawn and tables set out here and there, and every tent was brilliant with festoons of light and every table had a canopy fringed with flaming balls of ruby and emerald and amber. But the most beautiful part of the whole dazzling scene was the old locust avenue, strung from top to bottom with lights. The trees seemed suddenly to have burst into bloom with stars, when all down that long arch, from entrance gate to mansion, shone the soft glow of a myriad welcoming lanterns.
"LET'S ALL SIT DOWN ON THE STEPS."
"Let's all sit down on the steps and enjoy it before the people begin to come," said the Little Colonel, after the first burst of surprise and enthusiastic admiration was over.
"Everybody in the Valley will be heah in a little bit to say good-bye to you all, and we told 'em to come early, because your train leaves so soon."
Even as she spoke there was a sound of wheels turning in at the gate, and the band in the honey-suckle arbour began tuning their violins. It was not long before the place was gay with many voices, and people were streaming back and forth over the lawn and porches. Grown people as well as children were there. All who had been at the pillow-case party; all who had entertained the girls in any way, and all who had been friends of Betty's mother and Joyce's in their girlhood.
After awhile, when the guests were being served with refreshments, under the lantern-hung canopies on the lawn, Mr. Forbes looked around for Betty. She was nowhere to be found at first, but presently he stumbled over her in a dark corner of the porch, with her shade pulled over her eyes.
"It's too bad you can't enjoy it like the rest of us," he said, sympathetically.
"I am enjoying it with all my heart, Cousin Carl," protested Betty. "I have raised my shade half a dozen times and taken a quick glance around, and the music is so sweet, and everybody comes up and says nice things to me. I would be perfectly happy if I didn't keep thinking that this is the last of our good times together, and in a little while I shall have to say good-bye to Eugenia and Joyce. You know I never knew any girls before," she added, confidentially, "and you can't imagine how much I have enjoyed them."
"Come, walk down to the gate with me," said Mr. Forbes, presently; "I have something to tell you." She lifted her shade an instant as they started down the long arch of light, and gave one quick glance down the entire way. "Isn't it glorious!" she exclaimed. "It looks as if it might be the road to the City of the Shining Ones!"
Then with a sigh she dropped her shade, and, slipping her hand into his, let him lead her, as she walked along with closed eyes.
"You are an appreciative little puss," he said, smiling.
As they walked on under the glowing arch, hand in hand, he told her that he was coming back for her in the fall; that Eugenia wanted her to go abroad with them, and that he thought such an arrangement would be good for both the girls. Good for Eugenia, because otherwise she would often be left for days at a time with only Eliot for a companion, when he was away on business. Good for Betty, since she could be enjoying the advantages of travel at a time when she could not be using her eyes to study.
"You shall see Abbotsford," he said, "and Burns's country, and go to Shakespeare's home. And you shall coach among the English lakes where Wordsworth learned to write. Then there is Rome, on her seven hills, you know, and the canals of Venice and the Dutch windmills and the Black Forest. You shall hear the legends of all the historic rivers you cross and mountains you climb, and listen to the music of the Norwegian waterfalls. Don't you think it will help you to be a better tale-teller for the children, some day, my little 'Tusitala?'
"You see your godmother has been telling me some of your secrets and showing me some of your poems and stories. What do you say, Betty? Will you go?"
"Will I go?" cried Betty, joyfully, holding his hand tight in both her own and pressing it lovingly to her cheek. "Oh, Cousin Carl! You might as well ask me if I would go to heaven if a big strong angel had come down on purpose to carry me up! Oh, why is everybody so good to me? I can't understand it."
They had reached the gate, and were turning to walk back to the house. Mr. Forbes laid his hand on the brown curly head with a fatherly touch.
"I'll tell you some day," he said, "when there is more time. It is all because of that road you discovered, little one, that Road of the Loving Heart. I don't wear a ring as Eugenia does, to remind me of it, but I've been carrying the inspiration of it in my memory, ever since she wrote me all that you had taught her about it."
They walked slowly back to the house together under the locusts that arched their star-blossomed boughs above them. The band was playing softly, and Betty, uplifted by the music, the lights, and the good fortune in store for her, could hardly believe that her feet were touching the earth. She seemed to be floating along in some sort of dreamland. The old feeling swept over her that always came with the music of the harp. It was as if she were away off from everything, her head among the stars, and strange, beautiful thoughts that she had no words for danced on ahead like shining will-o'-the-wisps.
Joyce was the first to share her good fortune, and while she was telling it Eugenia came up with another joyful announcement.
"We are going to Tours," she cried, "and across the Loire to St. Symphorien, where Joyce stayed all winter. And we'll see the Gate of the Giant Scissors, and little Jules who lives there."
"I am so glad," said Joyce. "You must get Madame Greville to show you everything; the kiosk in the old garden where we had our Thanksgiving barbecue; the coach-house where we shut up the goats that day when they chewed the cushions of the pony-cart to pieces; and the room where we had the Christmas tree, and the laurel hedges in bloom—oh, I'm so glad you're going to see them all."
"What's that?" asked the Little Colonel, coming up behind them; and then Betty told her, too.
"Only think! Lloyd Sherman," she added, giving her a rapturous hug, "if it hadn't been for you it never would have happened. It's all because you had this delightful house party and invited me to come."
"Here comes Mrs. MacIntyre," interrupted Joyce, in a low tone. "Did you ever see anything so fine and soft and fluffy as that beautiful white hair of hers? It looks like a crimped snow-drift. I wouldn't mind being a grandmother to-morrow if I could look like that."
She came up smiling, and beckoned the girls to follow her. "I want to show you something comical," she said. "I just discovered it." She led the way to the end of the porch, and there, standing in a row, were six little darkies, so black that their faces scarcely showed against the black background of the night. Only their rolling white eyeballs and gleaming teeth could be seen distinctly.
"They are Allison's protégés," she said. "Sylvia Gibbs's children, you know. They are always on the outskirts of all the festivities when they think they can pick up any crumbs in the way of refreshments. But they'll have some good excuse to give for coming, you may be sure."
"Oh, they are the children who acted the charades at the old mill picnic," said Eugenia, drawing nearer. "Get them to talk if you can, Mrs. MacIntyre. Please do."
Except for a broader grin in token that they heard Mrs. MacIntyre's questions, they were as unresponsive as six little black kittens, and Keith, coming up just then, was sent to find Miss Allison. "They always talk for auntie," he said. "She is over in one of the tents, and I'll go get her."
Keith was right. Miss Allison proved the key that unlocked every little red tongue, and they answered her questions glibly.
"We don brought sumpin to Miss 'Genia," stammered Tildy, shyly. "M'haley, she got a chicken in dis yere box wot she gwine to give to Miss 'Genia to take away wid her on de kyars."
"A chicken!" repeated Miss Allison, laughing, "What did M'haley bring Miss Eugenia a chicken for?"
"'Cause Miss 'Genia, she give M'haley her hat wid roses on it ovah to the ole mill picnic, when it fell in de spring an' got wet, and we brought her a chicken to take away on de kyars fo' a pet."
An old bandbox tied with brown twine was promptly hoisted up from the outer darkness into the light of the red dragon lanterns on the porch. The sides had been pricked with a nail to admit air, and the lid was cut in slits. Through these slits they could discover a half-grown chicken, cowering sleepily on the bottom of the box. It was a mottled brown one, with its wing feathers growing awkwardly in the wrong direction.
"Imagine me carrying this into the Waldorf," laughed Eugenia, when she had expressed her thanks, and Mom Beck had been called to take the children away and give them cake and cream in the background.
"But you'll have to take it," said Miss Allison, "at least to the station, for you may be sure they'll be on hand to see you start, and their feelings would be sadly hurt if you didn't take it, at any rate out of their sight."
It was time for the leave-takings to begin. Joyce and Eugenia put on their hats, and Eliot hurried out with the satchels as the carriage drove up. At the last moment Mom Beck waylaid them in the hall with two huge bundles.
"I couldn't do nothin' else fo' you chillun," she said, as she offered them. "Ole Becky ain't got much to give but her blessing but I can cook yit, and I done made you a big spice cake apiece, and icened it with icin' an inch thick."
The girls thanked her till her black face beamed, but they looked at each other ruefully when they were in the carriage.
"How I am ever to reach New York with a big frosted cake in my arms is more than I know," said Eugenia. "I'll have to cut it up and pass it around on the train."
"But think of me," groaned Joyce. "I have my cake and Bob, too, and nobody to carry my satchel and umbrella."
The kissing and hand-shaking began, and a cross-fire of good-byes. "Give my love to your mother, Joyce." "Write to me first thing, Eugenia." "Good-bye, Betty." "Good-bye, Lloyd." "Keith and I won't make our adieux now; we'll follow you to the station and see you off on the train." "Good-bye! Good-bye, everybody!"
At last the carriage started on, but was brought to a halt by a shrill call from Rob. They looked back to see him standing on the porch beside the Little Colonel, who was excitedly waving a bunch of flowers which she had been carrying all evening. The light from the red lantern above her threw a rosy glow over the graceful little figure, the soft light hair, and smiling, upturned face. That is the picture they carried away with them.
"Wait!" she cried, a smile dimpling her cheeks, and shining with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. "Wait! You've forgotten something! Eugenia's chicken!"
Little Jim Gibbs came running after them with it, and Mr. Forbes lifted it up beside the hamper that held Joyce's puppy.
"Oh, I've sat on my cake and mashed it," moaned Joyce, as she moved over to make a place for the dilapidated old bandbox. "How do you suppose we're ever going to get home with such a mixture of frosted cakes and puppies and chickens, and all the keepsakes that those boys piled on to us at the last moment."
It was amid much laughter that the carriage moved on again. Down the long avenue they went, under that glowing arch, spangled as if with stars, and every friendly old locust held up all its twinkling lanterns to light them on their way. Half-way down the path the band began to play "My Old Kentucky Home," and, leaning far out of the carriage, Eugenia and Joyce looked back once more to wave a loving good-bye to the Little Colonel.
BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
THE LITTLE COLONEL™; BOOKS
By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
Each, 1 vol. large, 12mo, cloth decorative, per vol., $1.50
The Little Colonel™; Stories.
Illustrated.
Being three "Little Colonel" stories in the Cosy Corner Series, "The Little Colonel," "Two Little Knights of Kentucky," and "The Giant Scissors," put into a single volume.
The Little Colonel's™; House Party.
Illustrated by Louis Meynell.
The Little Colonel's™; Holidays.
Illustrated by L.J. Bridgman.
The Little Colonel's™; Hero.
Illustrated by E.B. Barry.
The Little Colonel™; at Boarding School.
Illustrated by E.B. Barry.
The Little Colonel™ in Arizona.
Illustrated by E.B. Barry.
The Little Colonel's™ Christmas Vacation.
Illustrated by E.B. Barry.
The Little Colonel™, Maid of Honour.
Illustrated by E.B. Barry.