"ONE OF THE BOYS HAD DARED HIM TO CARRY IT.""ONE OF THE BOYS HAD DARED HIM TO CARRY IT."
The doctor did not want her to read long at a time. The rain was pouring too hard for her to venture out-of-doors, and about the middle of the afternoon the silence and loneliness of the big house seemed more than she could endure.
"I could scream, I'm so nervous and ti'ahed of being by myself," she exclaimed. "If just a piece of a day is so hah'd to drag through as this has been, how can I stand all the rest of the wintah?"
She was counting up the weeks ahead of her on the big library calendar, when, through the window, she caught sight of Rob coming toward the house. The rain was running in streams from the bottom of his mackintosh, and from a huge umbrella that spread over him like a tent. It was an enormous advertising umbrella, taken from one of the delivery wagons at the store. One of the boys had dared him to carry it. "Groceries, Dry Goods,Boots and" appeared in black letters on the yellow side turned toward Lloyd. "Shoes. Jayne's Emporium," she called, supplying the rest of the familiar advertisement from memory.
"What on earth are you doing with that wagon-top ovah you?" she asked from the front door, where she stood watching his approach. He was striding along whistling as cheerily as if it were a midsummer day. He looked up and smiled in response to her call, and twirled the umbrella till the rain-drops flew in every direction in a fine spray. Lloyd felt as if the sun had suddenly come out from behind the clouds.
"I've come to finish my Christmas hunt," he said, as he stepped up on the porch and shook himself like a great water-spaniel.
"Oh," cried Lloyd, "I intended to ask Betty befoah she went away where she had hidden yoah present, and she left next mawning so early that I was still asleep. Maybe mothah knows."
But Mrs. Sherman, busy with her letters, shook her head. "I haven't the faintest idea," she answered. "But I remember she said something about Rob's being the hardest one of all to find, so you'll probably be kept busy the rest of the day. Don't you children bother either Mom Beck orCindy to help you hunt," she called after them. "They have all they can attend to to-day."
"Let's see that verse again, Rob," said Lloyd, as they went out of the library into the drawing-room. He fumbled in several pockets and finally produced the card.
"I know a bank where the wild thyme grows.Unseen it lies, unsung by bard.Something keeps watch there, no man knows,And over your gift it's standing guard."
As on Christmas Day, the only bank the verse suggested was in the conservatory, a long, narrow ledge of ferns and maidenhair, green with overhanging vines and graceful fronds. For nearly half an hour they poked around in it, lifting the ferns from the warm, moist earth to see if anything lay hidden at their roots. It was like April in the conservatory, steamy and warm, and the fragrance of hyacinths and white violets made it a delightful place in which to linger.
"Bank—bank—" repeated Lloyd, puzzling over the verse again, when they had given up the search in the conservatory and gone back to the drawing-room. "It might mean a savings-bank, but there hasn't been one in the house since that little red tin one of mine that you dropped into the well withmy three precious dimes in it. I've felt all these yeahs that you owed me thirty cents."
"Now, Lloyd Sherman, there's no use in bringing up that old quarrel again," he laughed. "You know we were playing that robbers were coming, and we had to lower our gold and jewels into the well, and you tied the fishing-line around the bank your own self. So I am not to blame if the knot came untied at the very first jerk. We've wasted enough breath arguing that point to start a small cyclone."
They laughed again over the recollection of their old quarrel, then Rob read the verse once more. Presently he stopped drumming on the table with his thumbs, and said, slowly, as if trying to recall something long forgotten: "Don't you remember,—it seems ages before we dropped your red bank in the well,—that I had a remarkable penny savings-bank? It was some sort of a slot machine in the shape of a little iron dog. Daddy brought it to me from New York. There was some kind of an indicator on the side of it that looked like the face of a watch. That was my introduction to puns, for Daddy said it was awatchdog, made to guard my pennies. Surely you haven't forgotten old Watch, for after the indicator was broken I broughtthe safe over here, and we kept it on the door-mat in front of your playhouse, to guard the premises."
"I should say I do remembah!" answered Lloyd. "Probably it's up in the attic now. But what has that to do with the rhyme?"
"Don't you see? That must be the 'bank' where the wild thyme grows. I don't know whether Betty refers to the wild time we used to have playing in the attic, or the wild time that the watch kept. But I'm certain that that is the bank she means."
"Come on, then," cried Lloyd. "Let's go up to the attic and hunt for it. I haven't been up there for ovah a yeah."
Rob led the way to the upper hall, and then up the attic stairs, taking the steep steps two at a time in long leaps.
"That isn't the way you used to climb these stairs," laughed Lloyd. "Don't you know you had to weah little long-sleeved aprons when you came ovah to play with me, to keep yoahself clean? You always stepped on the front of them and stumbled going up these steps."
A headless and tailless hobby-horse of Rob's, on which they had ridden many imaginary miles, stoodin one corner, and he crossed over to examine it, with an amused smile.
"It certainly didn't take much to amuse us in those days," he said, touching the rockers with his foot, and starting the disabled beast to bobbing back and forth. "How long has it been since we used to ride this thing? Is my hair white? I declare I never had anything make me feel so ancient as the sight of this old hobby-horse. I feel older than grandfather."
Lloyd had opened a dilapidated hair-covered trunk, and was bending over a family of dolls stowed away inside. "Heah is old Belinda!" she exclaimed. "And Carrie Belle May, and Rosalie, the Prairie Flowah! 'And, oh, Rob! Look at poah Nelly Bly, all wah-paint and feathahs, just as you fixed her up for a squaw that day we had an Indian massacre in the grape arbour. I had forgotten that we left her in such a fix!"
"I'll never forget that day," answered Rob. "Don't you remember how sore I made my arm, trying to tattoo an anchor on it with a darning-needle and clothes bluing? What else have you buried in that old trunk?"
Despite his six feet and seventeen years, Rob dropped down on a roll of carpet beside the trunk,and watched with interest as Lloyd lifted out one article after another over which they had quarrelled, or in whose pleasure they had shared in what now seemed a dim and far-away playtime. Don't you remember this? Don't you remember that? they asked each other, finding so many things to laugh over and recall that they quite forgot the object of their search.
Lloyd was sitting with her back against the warm chimney, which ran up through the middle of the attic, but presently she began to feel chilly, and sent Rob over to a chest, away back under the eaves, for something to put around her. It was packed full of old finery they had used on various occasions for tableaux and plays. The first thing he pulled out was a gorgeous red velvet cloak covered with spangles.
"That will do," she said, as he held it up inquiringly. "It's good and warm."
He pushed the chest back into place. Then, straightening up, his glance fell on the discarded playhouse, standing back in a dim corner. With a whoop he pounced upon it.
"Here's old Watch!" he exclaimed, holding up the little iron dog. "And he is the bank where the wild time grows, for here is the gift he is standingguard over." Throwing the spangled cloak over Lloyd's shoulders, he seated himself again on the roll of carpet, and began to untie the little package fastened to the dog's neck with a bit of ribbon. Inside many layers of tissue-paper, he came at last to a memorandum-book, small enough to fit in his vest-pocket. It was bound in soft gray kid, and on the back Betty had burned in old English letters, with her pyrography-needle, the motto of Warwick Hall: "I keep the tryst." Over it was the crest, a heart, out of which rose a mailed arm, grasping a spear.
"Betty did that," said Lloyd. "She traced the letters on first with tracing-papah, and then burnt them. I remembah now, she made it a few days befoah we came home. She thought we would have our usual tree, and she intended to hang this on it for you. Then when we had the hunt instead of a tree, she took this way of giving it to you. That is an appropriate motto for a memorandum-book, isn't it? You'll appreciate it moah when she tells you the story about it. Miss Chilton read it to the English class one day, and had us write it from memory for the next lesson."
"Then what's the matter with your telling it to me?" asked Rob, eying the mailed hand andthe spear with interest. "I'll be gone before Betty gets back. Go on and tell it. This is an ideal time and place for story-telling."
He leaned comfortably back against the warm chimney and half-closed his eyes. The patter of the rain on the roof made him drowsy.
"Well," assented Lloyd, "I can't tell it with as many frills and flourishes as Betty could, but I remembah it bettah than most stories, because I had to write it from memory." Drawing the glittering cloak closer around her, she began as if she were reading it, in the very words of the green and gold volume:
"'Now there was a troubadour in the kingdom of Arthur, who, strolling through the land with only his minstrelsy to win him a way, found in every baron's hall and cotter's hut a ready welcome.'"
"'Now there was a troubadour in the kingdom of Arthur, who, strolling through the land with only his minstrelsy to win him a way, found in every baron's hall and cotter's hut a ready welcome.'"
Here and there she stumbled over some part of it, or told it hesitatingly in her own words, but at last she ended it as well as Betty herself could have done:
"So Ederyn won his sovereign's favour, and, by his sovereign's grace permitted, went back towoo the maiden and win her for his bride. Then henceforth blazoned on his shield and helmet he bore the crest, a heart with hand that grasped a spear, and, underneath, the words, 'I keep the tryst.'"
"So Ederyn won his sovereign's favour, and, by his sovereign's grace permitted, went back towoo the maiden and win her for his bride. Then henceforth blazoned on his shield and helmet he bore the crest, a heart with hand that grasped a spear, and, underneath, the words, 'I keep the tryst.'"
"That's a corking good motto," said Rob as she paused. "I like that story, Lloyd, and I'll remember it when I keep the engagements that I put down in this little book."
He sat a moment, flipping the leaves and whistling a bar from "The Old Oaken Bucket."
"Stop!" commanded Lloyd, suddenly, clapping her hands over her ears, and making a wry face. "You're off the key. Haven't I told you a thousand times that it doesn't go that way? This is it."
Puckering up her lips, she whistled the tune correctly, and he joined in. At the end of the chorus he looked at his watch.
"It's been like old times this afternoon," he said. "I'll tell you what, Lloyd, let's come up here once a year after this, just to keep tryst with our old playtimes. I'll put that down as the first engagement in my memorandum-book. A year from to-day we'll take another look at these things."
"All right," assented Lloyd, cheerfully. Then a wistful expression crept into her eyes as she peered through the tiny attic window. Twilight was falling early on account of the rain. A deep gloom began to settle over her spirits also.
"Rob," she said, slowly, "I haven't told you yet. I didn't want to spoil our aftahnoon by thinking about it any moah than I could help, and you made me almost forget it for a little while. I couldn't talk about it when you first came without crying,—this yeah is going to besucha long, hah'd one. They aren't going to let me go back to school aftah the holidays. The doctah says I am not strong enough, and it is such an awful Dungeon of Disappointment that it just breaks my hah't to think about it."
To Rob's consternation she laid her head down on old Belinda, who still lay limply across her lap, and began to sob. He sat in embarrassed silence for a moment, scarcely knowing her for the same little companion whom he had taught to meet hurts like a boy. He remembered the many times she had winked back the tears over the bruises and bumps and cuts she had encountered in following his lead. He was bewildered by the unfamiliar mood, and it hurt him to see her so grieved.
"There! there! Don't cry, Lloyd!" he begged, hurt by the sight of the fair head bowed so dismally over the old doll. "I know how it would knock me out to have to stop now, just when I've got into the swing of things, so I know just how you feel. I'm mighty sorry."
Then, as the sobs continued: "I'd go off and whip somebody if it would do any good, but it won't. You'll have to brace up as Ederyn did, and you'll get out of your dungeon all right."
There was no answer. School was so very dear, and the disappointment so very bitter. It had all surged over her again in a great wave. He tried again.
"It's tough, I know, but it will be easier if you take it as all the Lloyds have taken their troubles, with your teeth set and your head up. Somehow, that's the way I've always thought you would take things. Don't cry, Lloyd. Don't! It breaks me all up to see you this way, when you've always been so game."
She straightened up and wiped her eyes, announcing suddenly: "And I'm going to be game now. If there's one thing I nevah could beah, it was for you to think I was a coward, and I can't have you thinking it now. It's a sawt of tryst I've kept allthese yeahs, unconsciously, I suppose. Ever since I was a little thing, if I thought 'Bobby expects it of me,' I'd do it, no mattah what it was, from jumping a fence to climbing on the chimney. I've lived up to yoah expectations many a time at the risk of killing myself."
"Indeed you have," he answered, in a tone of hearty admiration. There was a tender light in his gray eyes which she did not see, she was so busy wiping her own.
"I'm done crying now," she announced, springing to her feet and thrusting Belinda back into the trunk. "Come on, let's go down and pop some cawn ovah the library fiah. Put this cloak away first."
He pushed the chest back to its place under the eaves and started after her, pulling out his handkerchief as he went, to wipe away a stray cobweb into which he had thrust his hand. It reminded him of the story.
"You know," he suggested, consolingly, "there's bound to be some way out of your dungeon. I'll spend all the rest of the vacation helping you twist cobwebs for your rope, if you like."
She made no answer then to his offer of assistance. She felt that she could not steady her voiceif she tried to speak her appreciation of his sympathy.
So she called out, as she dashed past him: "As Joyce used to say at the house pah'ty, 'the last one down is a jibbering Ornithorhynchus!'"
Away they went in a mad race, whose noisy clatter made it seem to the old Colonel in his den that the rafters were falling in. But on the landing she paused an instant.
"It—it helps a lot, Rob," she said, wistfully, "to have you undahstand,—to know that you know how it hurts."
"I wish I could really help you," he answered, earnestly. "You're a game little chum!"
She flashed back a grateful smile from under her wet eyelashes, and led the race on down the next flight of stairs.
Allthrough the rest of that week, and through New Year's Day, Lloyd managed to keep her resolution bravely. Even when the time came for the girls to go back to school without her, she went through the farewells like a little Spartan, driving down to the station with tearful Betty, who grieved over Lloyd's disappointment as if it had been her own.
When the train pulled out, with the four girls on the rear platform, she stood waving her handkerchief cheerily as long as she could see an answering flutter. Then she turned away, catching her breath in a deep indrawn sob, that might have been followed by others if Rob had not been with her. He saw her clench her hands and set her teeth together hard, and knew what a fight she was making to choke back the tears, but he wisely gave no sign that he saw and sympathized. He onlyproposed a walk over to the blacksmith shop to see the red fox that Billy Kerr had trapped and caged. But a little later, when she had regained her self-control and was poking a stick between the slats of the coop where the fox was confined, to make it stretch itself, he said, suddenly:
"By cricky, you were game, Lloyd! If it had been me, I couldn't have gone to the station and watched the fellows go off without me, and joke about it the way you did."
Lloyd went on rattling the stick between the slats and made no answer, but Rob's approval brightened her spirits wonderfully. It was not until the next day, when he, too, went back to school, that she fully realized how lonely her winter was going to be. She strolled into her mother's room, and threw herself listlessly into a chair by the window.
"What can I do, mothah? I mustn't read long, I mustn't study, Tarbaby is lame, so I can't ride, and I've walked as far as I care to this mawning."
"What would you like to do?" asked Mrs. Sherman, who was dressing to go out.
"Nothing but things that I can't do," was the fretful answer. "It would be lots of fun if I could go out in the kitchen and beat eggs, and make custah'd pies and biscuits and things. I'd love to cook.I haven't had a chance since I was at Ware's Wigwam. But Aunt Cindy scolds and grumbles if anybody so much as looks into the kitchen. She says she won't have me messing around in her way."
"I know," sighed Mrs. Sherman. "Cindy is getting more fussy and exacting every year. But she has cooked for the family so long that she seems to think the kitchen is hers. If she were not such a superior cook, I wouldn't put up with her whims, but in these days, when everybody is having so much trouble with servants, we'll have to humour her. She's a faithful old creature. You might cook on the chafing-dish in the dining-room. There are all sorts of things you could make on that."
Lloyd shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "But not bread and pies and things you do with a rolling-pin. That's the pah't I like."
She sat a moment, swinging her foot in silence, and then broke out:
"If I were a girl in a story-book, this disappointment would turn me into such a saintly, helpful creatuah that I'd be called 'The Angel of the Home.' I've read about such girls. They keep things in ordah, and mend and dust and put flowahs about, and make the house so bright and cheerful that people wondah how they evah got along withoutthem. Every time they turn around, there are lovely, helpful things for them to do. But what canIdo in a big house like this moah than I've always tried to do? I've tried to be considerate of everybody's comfo't evah since I stah'ted out to build a road of the loving hah't in everybody's memory. The servants do everything heah, and don't want to be interfered with. I wish we were dead poah, and lived in a plain little cottage and did our own work. Then I wouldn't have time to get lonesome. I'd be lots happiah.
"One day, when Miss Gilmer and I were talking about Ederyn in his Dungeon of Disappointment, she said that we could always get out of our troubles the same way that he did; that the cobwebs he twisted into ropes were disagreeable to touch. Nobody likes to put their hands into dusty cobwebs, and that they represent the disagreeable little tasks that lie in wait for everybody. She said that, if we'll just grapple the things that we dislike most to do, the little homely every-day duties, and busy ourselves with them, they'll help us to rise above our discontent. I've been trying all mawning to think of some such cobwebs for me to take hold of, and there isn't a single one."
Mrs. Sherman smiled at the wobegone faceturned toward her. "Fancy any one being miserable over such a state of affairs as that!" she laughed. "Actually complaining because there's nothing disagreeable for her to do! Well, we'll have to look for some cobwebs to occupy you. Maybe if you can't find them at home, you can do like the old woman who was tossed up in a basket, seventy times as high as the moon. Don't you remember how Mom Beck used to sing it to you?
"'Old woman! Old woman! Old woman, said I,O whither, O whither, O whither so high?To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky,But I'll be back again, by and by.'"
She trilled it gaily as she fastened her belt, and took out her hat and gloves.
"Fate must have given her just such a cobwebless home as you have, and she had to soar high to rise above her troubles. Come on, little girl, get your hat and coat, and we'll go in search of something disagreeable for you to do; but I hope your quest won't take you seventy times as high as the moon."
They drove down to the store to attend to the day's marketing. While Mrs. Sherman was ordering her groceries, Lloyd went to the back of thestore, where one of the clerks was teaching tricks to a bright little fox-terrier. She was so interested in the performance that she did not know when Miss Allison came in, or how long she and her mother stood discussing her.
"Yes," said Mrs. Sherman, "she has been brave about it. She never complained but once, and that to me this morning. But we know how unhappy she is. Jack and papa worry about her all the time. They want me to take her to Florida. They think she must be given some pleasure that will compensate in a way for this disappointment. But it is not at all convenient for me to leave home now, and I feel that for her own good she should learn to meet such things for herself. It would be far easier, I acknowledge, if there was anything at home to occupy her, but I cannot allow her to interfere with Mom Beck's work, or Cindy's. They resent her doing anything." She repeated the conversation they had had that morning.
"Loan her to me for the rest of the day," said Miss Allison. "I can show her plenty of cobwebs, the kind she is pining for."
So it happened that a little later, when Miss Allison crossed the road to the post-office, and started up the path toward home, Lloyd was withher, smiling happily over the prospect of spending the day with the patron saint of all the Valley's merrymakings. From Lloyd's earliest recollection, Miss Allison had been the life of every party and picnic in the neighbourhood. She was everybody's confidante. Like Shapur, who gathered something from the heart of every rose to fill his crystal vase, so she had distilled from all these disclosures the precious attar of sympathy, whose sweetness won for her a way, and gained for her a welcome, wherever she went.
As they turned in at the gate, Lloyd looked wistfully across at The Beeches, and her eyes filled with tears. Miss Allison slipped her arm around her and drew her close with a sympathetic clasp, as they walked around the circle of the driveway leading to the house.
"I know just how you feel, dear. Like the little lame boy in that story of the 'Pied Piper of Hamelin.' Because he couldn't keep up with the others when they followed the piper's tune, he had to sit and watch them dance away without him, and disappear into the mountainside. He was the only child left in the whole town of Hamelin. Itislonely for you, I know, with all the boys and girls of your own age away at school. But think howmuch lonelier Hamelin would have been without that child. You'll find out that old people can play, too, though, if you'll take a hand in their games. I want to teach you one after awhile, which I used to enjoy very much, and still take pleasure in."
Miss Allison led the way up-stairs to her own room. As they passed the door leading to the north wing, Lloyd exclaimed: "I'll nevah forget that time, the night of the Valentine pah'ty, when Gingah and I went into the blue room, and the beah that Malcolm and Keith had tied to the bed-post rose up out of the dah'k and frightened us neahly to death."
"We had some lively times that winter with Virginia and the boys," answered Miss Allison. "I kept a record of some of their sorriest mishaps. Wait a minute until I speak to the housemaid, and I'll see if I can find it."
Miss Allison had been wondering how she could best entertain Lloyd, but the problem was solved when she found the journal, in which she had written the history of the eventful winter when her sister's little daughter Virginia and her brother's two boys had been left in her charge. Lloyd had taken part in many of the mischievous adventures, and she sat smiling over the novelty of hearing herself describedwith all the imperious ways, naughty temper, and winning charm that had been hers at the age of eight.
"It is like looking at an old photograph of oneself," she said, after awhile. "It seems so strange to be one of the characters in a book, and listen to stories about oneself."
"That reminds me of the game I spoke of," said Miss Allison. "I invented it when I was about your age. I had just read 'Cranford,' and the story of life in that simple little village seemed so charming to me that I wished with all my heart I could step into the book and be one of the characters, and meet all the people that lived between its covers. Then I heard some one say that there were more interesting happenings and queer characters in Lloydsboro Valley than in Cranford. So I began to look around for them. I pretended that I was the heroine of a book called 'Lloydsboro Valley,' and all that summer I looked upon the people I met as characters in the same story.
"It happened that all my young friends were away that summer, and it would have been very lonely but for my new game. The organist went away, and, although I was only fifteen, I took her place and played the little cabinet organ we usedthen in church and Sunday school. That threw me much with the older people, for I had to go to choir-practice to play the organ, and also attend the missionary teas. Gradually they drew me into a sewing-circle that was in existence then, and a reading club. I found it was true that my own little village really had far more interesting people in it than any I had read about, and I learned to love all the dear, cranky, gossipy old characters in it, because I studied them so closely that I found how good at heart they were despite their peculiarities and foibles.
"That's what I want you to do this winter, Lloyd. Join the little choir, and meet with the King's Daughters, and learn to know these interesting neighbours of yours. And," she added, smiling, "I promise you that you'll find all the cobwebs you need to help haul you out of your dungeon."
"Oh, Miss Allison!" exclaimed Lloyd, looking horrified at the thought. "Icouldn't sing in the choir and join the King's Daughtahs and all that. They're all at least twice as old as I am, and some of them even moah."
"Yes, you can," insisted Miss Allison. "We need your voice in the choir, and you need the newinterest these things would bring into your life. So don't say no until after you've given my game a trial. The King's Daughters' Circle is to meet here this afternoon, and I want you to help me. I'm going to serve hot chocolate and wafers, and, as long as it is such a cold, blowy day, I believe I'll add some nut sandwiches to make the refreshments a little more substantial."
Privately, Lloyd looked forward to the afternoon as something stupid which she must face cheerfully for Miss Allison's sake, but she found her interest aroused with the first arrival. It was Libbie Simms, whom she had known all her life, in a way, for she could scarcely recall a Sabbath when she had not looked across at the dull, homely face in the opposite pew, and pitied her because of her queer nose and mouse-coloured hair. In the same way she had known Miss McGill, who came with Libbie. She had simply been one of the congregation who had claimed her attention for a moment each week, as she minced down the aisle like an animated rainbow. All she knew about Miss McGill was that she usually wore so many shades of purple and pink and blue that the clashing colours set one's teeth on edge.
But in five minutes Lloyd had forgotten theirpeculiarities of feature and dress, and was listening with interest to their account of a call they had just made in Rollington. They had been to see a poor washerwoman who had five children to support. The youngest, a baby who had fits, was very ill, about to die. At the mention of Mrs. Crisp, Lloyd recalled the forlorn little woman in a wispy crêpe veil, who had enlisted her sympathy to such an extent one Thanksgiving Day that she and Betty had walked over to Rollington from the Seminary to carry the greater part of the turkey and fruit that had been sent them in their box of Thanksgiving goodies.
There was so little poverty in the Valley that, when any real case of suffering was discovered, it was taken up with enthusiasm. Lloyd wondered how she could have thought Libbie Simms so hopelessly ugly, when she saw her face light up with unselfish interest in her poor neighbours, and heard her suggestions for their relief. And her conscience pricked her for making fun of Miss McGill's taste when she saw how generous she was, and listened to her humourous description of several things that had happened in the Valley. She was certainly entertaining, and looked at life through spectacles as rose-coloured as her necktie.
The library filled rapidly, and soon a score of needles were at work on the flannel garments intended for the Crisp family. Lloyd, on a stool between Katherine Marks and Mrs. Walton, sewed industriously, interested in the buzz of conversation all around her.
"This is not malicious gossip," explained Mrs. Walton, in an amused undertone, smiling with Lloyd and Katherine at a remark which unintentionally reached their ears. "But in a little community like this, where little happens, and our interests are bound so closely together, the smallest details of our neighbours' affairs necessarily entertain us. Itisinteresting to know that Mr. Rawles and his great-aunt are not on speaking terms, and it is positively exciting to hear that Mr. Wolf and Mrs. Cayne quarrelled over the leaflets used in Sunday school, and that she told him to his face that he was a hypocrite and no better than an infidel. It doesn't make us love these good people any the less to know that they are human like ourselves, and have their tempers and their spites and feuds. We know their good side, too. Wait till calamity or sickness touches some one of us, and, see how kind and sympathetic and tender they all are; every one of them."
"'I NEARLY FAINTED WHEN I HAPPENED TO LOOK UP'""'I NEARLY FAINTED WHEN I HAPPENED TO LOOK UP'"
"You'll hear more gossip here in one afternoon than at all the Cranford tea-tables put together," said Katherine Marks. "But it is a mild sort, like the kind going on behind us."
Miss McGill, with her head close to Abby Carter's, was saying: "Oh, but, my dear, he gets more suspicious and foxy every day of his life. I don't see how Emma Belle puts up with such a cranky old father."
"I know," responded Abby. "They say he drives the cook nearly distracted, going into the kitchen every day and lifting the lids off all the pots and pans to smell what's cooking for dinner. Then he makes a fuss if it's not to his liking."
"Yes," responded Miss McGill, "but that isn't a circumstance to some of his ways. I ran in there last night a few minutes, to show Emma Belle a pattern she wanted. He got it into his head we were hiding something from him, and he actually climbed up on the dining-room table and peeped through the transom at us. I nearly fainted when I happened to look up and saw that old monkey-like face, with its dense, gloomy whiskers, looking down at me. I just screamed and sat jibbering and pointing at the transom. I couldn't help it. He gave me such a turn, I didn't get over it all night.Emma Belle was so mortified she didn't know what to do. It isn't as if he was crazy. He's just mean. That girl has the patience of a saint."
Before the afternoon was over, Lloyd decided that Miss Allison was right. The Valley held a number of interesting characters, whose acquaintance was well worth cultivating if she wanted to be entertained. Part of the time, while the needles were flying, Mrs. MacIntyre read aloud. Miss Allison called Lloyd into the dining-room when it was time to serve the refreshments.
"I'm going to ask a favour of you, dear," she said. "I want you to sing for us presently. No, wait a minute," she added, hurriedly, as Lloyd drew back with an exclamation of dismay. "Don't refuse till you have heard why I ask it. It is on account of Agnes Waring. These meetings are the great social events of the winter to her. She never gets to go anywhere else except to church. She's passionately fond of music, and I always make it a point to prepare a regular programme when the Circle meets here. But all my musicians failed me this time, and I cannot bear to disappoint her. I know you are timid about singing before older people, but this is one of the cobwebs I promised to find for you. It will be disagreeable, but I havea good reason for thinking that you will find it the first strand of the rope that is to lift you out of your dungeon. I'll tell you some things about Agnes after awhile that will make you glad you have had such an opportunity."
When Lloyd went back to the library, bearing a pile of snowy napkins, she stole several glances at Agnes Waring in her journey around the room to distribute them. All that she knew of her was that she was the youngest of three sisters who sewed for their living. She was almost as slim and girlish in figure as Lloyd, although she was nearly twice as old. She had kept the timid, shrinking manner that she had when a child. That and her appealing big blue eyes, and almost babyish complexion, made her seem much younger than she was. It was a sensitive, refined face that Lloyd kept glancing at, one that would have been remarkably pretty had it not been so sad.
Lloyd had sung in public several times, but always in some play, when the costume which she wore seemed to change her to the character she personated. That made it easier. It was one of the hardest things she had ever done, to stand up before these twenty ladies who had been exchanging criticisms so freely all afternoon, on every subjectmentioned, and sing the songs which Miss Allison chose for her from the Princess play: The Dove Song, with its high, sweet trills of "Flutter and fly," and the one beginning:
"My godmother bids me spin,That my heart may not be sad.Sing and spin for my brother's sake,And the spinning makes me glad."
It was with a very red face that she slipped into her seat after it was over, surprised and pleased by the applause she received. They were all so cordial in their appreciation, that presently she was persuaded into doing what Miss Allison had suggested. When the circle broke up she had consented to join the choir, and to meet with them the next Friday night, when they went to the Mallards' to practise.
The carriage came for her soon after the last guest departed, and Miss Allison stepped in beside her to take the finished garments over to Rollington. It was the quaintest of little villages, settled entirely by Irish families. Only one lone street straggled over the hill, but it was a long one with little whitewashed cabins and cottages thickly set along each side. Mrs. Crisp's was the first one on the street, after they left the Lloydsboro pike. Itwas clean, but not half so large or comfortable as the negro servants' quarters at Locust.
It was so late that Miss Allison did not go in, only stopped at the door to leave the bundle and inquire about the baby, promising to come again next morning. Lloyd had a glimpse of the two children next in age to the baby. They were playing on the floor with a doll made of a corn-cob wrapped in a towel, and a box of empty spools.
"Just think!" she exclaimed as she climbed into the carriage again. "A cawn-cob doll! And the attic at home is full of toys that I don't care for! I'm going to pick out a basketful to-morrow and bring them down to these children. And did you see that poah little Minnie Crisp? Only eight yeahs old, and doing the work of a grown woman. She was getting suppah while her mothah tended to the sick baby. Oh, I wondah," she cried, her face lighting up with the thought. "I wondah if Mrs. Crisp would mind if I'd come down to-morrow and cook dinnah for them. That's what I've been crazy to do,—to cook. I could bring eggs and sugah and all the materials, and make lemon pie and oystah soup and potato croquettes. I know how to make lots of things. Oh, do you suppose she would be offended?"
"Not in the least," responded Miss Allison, heartily. "She is a very sensible little woman who is nearly worn out in her struggle with poverty and sickness. She has been too proud and brave to accept help before, when she was able to stagger along under her own burden, but now she will be very grateful. And the children will look upon you as a wonderful mixture of Santa Claus, fairy godmother, and Aladdin's lamp."
Then she turned to peer into the happy face beside her.
"Here are your cobwebs!" she exclaimed, gaily. "A whole skyful, and you can sweep away to your heart's content. You need have no more humdrum days unless you choose."
Lloyd looked back at the cottage where four towheads at the window watched the departing carriage. Then with a smile she leaned out and waved her hand.
Lloydhurried down the road to the post-office, her cheeks almost as red as her coat from her brisk walk in the wintry air. It was too cold to saunter, or she would have made the errand last as long as possible. There would be nothing to do after she had called for the mail. The day before she had had her visit to Mrs. Crisp to fill the morning. It brought a pleasant thrill now to think of the little woman's gratitude and the children's pleasure in the dinner she had cooked in the clean bare kitchen. She wished she could go every day and repeat the performance, but her family would not allow it. They said it was just as injurious for her to waste her strength in charity as it was in study, and she must be more temperate in her enthusiasms.
She wished that Miss Mattie would invite her into the tiny office behind the rows of pigeonholes and letter-boxes, and let her sit by the windowawhile. Just watching people pass would be some amusement, more than she could find at home.
She was passing the Bisbee place as she made the wish. It was a white frame house standing near the road, and commanding a view of both station and store, as well as the approach to the post-office. To her surprise, some one tapped on the pane of an up-stairs window. Then the sash flew up, and Mrs. Bisbee called in her thin, fluttering voice: "Lloyd! Lloyd Sherman! If you're going to the post-office, I wish you'd ask if there is anything for me. I don't dare set foot out-of-doors this cold weather."
Then, fearful of draughts, she banged the window down without waiting for a reply. Lloyd smiled and nodded, glad of an opportunity to be of service. As she hurried on, she remembered that Miss Allison had spoken of this gentle little old lady, with her fluttering voice and placid smile, as one of the most interesting and "Cranfordy" characters in the Valley, and that, while she never went out in the winter, and seldom in the summer, except to church, she kept such a sharp eye on the neighbourhood happenings from the watch-tower of her window that Mrs. Walton laughingly called it the "Window in Thrums."
It was with the feeling that she was stepping into a story that Lloyd opened the gate five minutes later and started up the path. A vigorous tapping on the window above, and a beckoning hand motioned her to come up-stairs. Hesitating an instant on the porch, she opened the front door and stepped into the hall.
"Do come up!" called the old lady, plaintively, from the head of the stairs. "I've been wishing so hard for company that I believe my wishing must have drawn you. Now that daughter is married and gone, I get so lonesome, with Mr. Bisbee in town all day, that I often find myself talking to myself just for the sake of sociability. Not a soul has been in for the last two days, and usually I have callers from morning till night. This is such a good dropping-in place, you know. So central that I see and hear everything."
She ushered Lloyd into a room, gay with big-flowered chintz curtains, and quaint with old-fashioned carved furniture. There was a high four-poster bed in one corner, with a chintz valance around it, and pink silk quilled into the tester. The only modern thing in the room was a tiled grate, piled full of blazing coals. It threw out such a summer-like heat that Lloydalmostgasped. Shewas glad to accept Mrs. Bisbee's invitation to take off her coat and gloves. She moved her chair back as far as possible into the bay-window.
"I reckon you feel it's pretty warm in here," said Mrs. Bisbee. "I have to keep it that way so that I can sit over here against the window without catching cold. I couldn't afford to miss all that's going on in the street. It's my only amusement."
She drew her work-basket toward her and picked up the quilt pieces she had laid down when she went to welcome Lloyd. She was making a silk quilt of the tea-chest pattern, and the basket was full of bright silk scraps and pieces of ribbon.
"It's like a panorama, I tell Mr. Bisbee. Oh, by the way, I've been aching to find out. Where did you all go that day just before Christmas when you started off, a whole party of you, traipsing down the road with a new saucepan and baskets and things? I heard you had a picnic in the snow. Is that so?"
Lloyd really gasped this time, but not from the heat. She was so surprised that Mrs. Bisbee should have taken such an interest in her affairs, or in any of the unimportant doings of their set, as to remember them longer than the passing moment.Mrs. Bisbee was associated in Lloyd's mind with solemn churchly things, like the Gothic-backed pulpit chairs or the sombre brown pews. Lloyd had never seen her before, except when she was singing hymns, or sitting with meekly folded hands through sermon-time. It was almost as surprising to find that she was inquisitive and interested in human happenings as it would have been to discover that the ivy-covered belfry kept an eye on her.
In the midst of her description of the picnic, Mrs. Bisbee leaned forward and peered eagerly out of the window over her spectacles.
"I don't want to interrupt you," she said; "I just wanted to make sure that that was Caleb Coburn out again. He has been house-bound with rheumatism ever since Thanksgiving."
Lloyd looked out in time to see a tall, stoop-shouldered man with a bushy beard go slowly across the road. He was buttoned up in a heavy overcoat, and limped along with the aid of two canes.
"He's the queerest old fellow," commented Mrs. Bisbee, looking after him, with a gentle shake of the head. "Lately he has taken to knitting, to pass the time."
"To knitting!" echoed Lloyd, in amazement. "That big man?"
"Yes. He calls it hooking. He has a needle made out of a ham bone. Fancy now! Daughter said it was the funniest thing in life to see him propped up in bed with a striped skull-cap on, hooking his wife a shawl."
Lloyd laughed, but she followed the stooped figure with a glance of sympathy. She knew from experience how hard it was to spend the time in enforced idleness. Old Mr. Coburn had always been a familiar figure to her. She recognized him on the road as she did the trees and the houses which she passed daily, but he had never aroused her interest any more than they. Now the knowledge that he was lonely like herself, so lonely that, big, bearded man as he was, he had learned to knit in order to occupy the dull days, seemed to put them on a common footing.
Lloyd took a long step forward out of her childhood that morning when she wakened to the fact that some things are as hard to bear at fifty as at fifteen. With a dawning interest she watched the people of the Valley go by, one by one,—people whom she had passed heretofore as she had passed the fence-posts on the road. It could never be soagain, for henceforth she would see them in a new light,—the light of understanding and sympathy shed on them by Mrs. Bisbee's choice bits of gossip or scraps of personal history.
She had watched the procession for nearly an hour, when Agnes Waring suddenly turned the corner, and went into the store with a bundle in her arms. Mrs. Bisbee, pausing in the act of threading a needle, looked out again over her spectacles.
"There goes a girl I'm certainly sorry for. She is a born lady, and comes of as good a family as anybody in the Valley, but she has to work harder than any darkey in Lloydsboro. She's up at four o'clock these winter mornings, milks the cow, chops wood, gets breakfast, and maybe walks two or three miles with a big bundle like that, taking home sewing, or going out to fit a dress for somebody."
Miss Allison had already awakened Lloyd's interest in Agnes, and she leaned forward to watch her, while Mrs. Bisbee went on.
"She's never had any of the pleasures that most girls have. To my certain knowledge she's never had a beau or been to a big party or travelled farther than Louisville. I suppose you could count on the fingers of one hand the times she has beenon a train. She's wild about music, but she's never had any advantages. By the way, she was in here the day after the King's Daughters met at Allison MacIntyre's, to fit a wrapper on me. Knowing how few outings she has, I encouraged her to talk it all over, as I knew she was glad to do. I declare she made as much of it as if it had been the governor's ball. She told me how much she enjoyed your singing. She said that, if there was any one person in the world whom she envied more than another, it was Lloyd Sherman. Not for your looks or the handsome things you have (for the Valley is full of pretty girls, and many of them are wealthy), but for the advantages you have had in the way of music and travel.
"They have an old piano, about all that was saved out of the wreck when their father lost his fortune. She'd give her eyes to be able to play on it. But she wasn't much more than a baby when her father died, so she missed the advantages the older girls had. You see she is twenty years younger than Marietta, and nearly twenty-five years younger than Sarah. Poor Agnes! I suppose she will never know anything but work and poverty. It's too bad,—such a sweet, refined girl, and as proud as she is poor."
Lloyd echoed Mrs. Bisbee's sympathetic sigh, as she looked after the hurrying figure in its worn jacket and shabby shoes. She was just coming out of the store again.
"I feel so sorry for her sistahs, too," she ventured. "I nevah knew till the othah day that Miss Marietta has been an invalid so long. Miss Allison told me she had been in bed for fifteen yeahs! It's awful! Why, that is as long as my whole lifetime has been."
"She was to have been married," began Mrs. Bisbee, pouring out the romance at which Miss Allison had only hinted. "She was engaged to Murray Cathright, one of the finest young lawyers I ever knew, steady as a meeting-house. He had the respect and confidence of everybody. Well, Marietta had her trousseau all ready, and a beautiful one it was. Her father had sent to Paris for the wedding-gown, and all her linen was hand-embroidered by the nuns in some French convent.
"They certainly had all that heart could wish in those days. It is a pity that Agnes was too young to enjoy her share of luxuries. Well, just a week before the time set for the wedding, Murray Cathright mysteriously disappeared. He had gone away on a short business trip. His family tracedhim to a hotel in Pittsburg, and then lost all clue, except that just before leaving the hotel he had asked the clerk for the time-tables of an Eastern railroad. There was a terrible wreck on that road that same night. The entire train went through a bridge into the river, and they thought he must have been swept away with the unidentified dead. But it was months before Marietta would believe it.
"She acted as if her mind were a little touched all that summer. Used to dress up every evening in the clothes he had liked best, with a flower in her hair, and go down to the honeysuckle arbour to wait for him. She'd sit there and wait and wait all alone, until her father'd go down and lead her in. The next day she'd go through the same performance. It ended in a spell of brain fever. She came out of that with her mind all right, but she never was strong again. After all the rest of their troubles came, she had a stroke of paralysis. It's left her so she can't walk. But she can lie there and make buttonholes and pull basting threads. She's a perfect marvel, she's so patient and cheerful. People like to go there just on that account. You'd never know she had a trouble to hear her talk. But I know what she's suffered, and I know that shestill keeps the wedding-gown. It's laid away in rose leaves for her to be buried in."
Mrs. Bisbee paused and spread out the finished quilt-piece on her knee, patting it approvingly before choosing the scraps for another block. Then she wiped her spectacles. "Sometimes I don't know which I'm the sorriest for, Marietta, who had such a good man for a lover as Murray Cathright was, and lost him, or Agnes, who's never had anything."
"Why don't people invite her out and give her a good time?" asked Lloyd. "Her being a seamstress oughtn't to make any difference to old family friends, when she's such a lady."
"It doesn't," answered Mrs. Bisbee. "People used to be nice to those girls, and they were always invited everywhere at first. But after awhile there was Marietta always in bed, and Agnes a mere baby, and poor Miss Sarah with the burden of their support. She had only her needle to keep the wolf from the door. She couldn't accept invitations then. There was no time. Gradually people stopped asking her. She dropped out of the social life of the Valley so completely that Agnes grew up without any knowledge of it. All she has known has been hard work. Miss Allison has triedto draw her into things, but the older sisters are proud, as I said. Agnes cannot dress suitably, and they can make no return of hospitalities, so she has never ventured into anything more than the King's Daughters' Circle."
"There's Alec with the carriage!" exclaimed Lloyd. "He's stopping at the stoah. If I hurry, I can ride back home. I've stayed so long that mothah will wondah what has become of me."
"Don't go!" begged Mrs. Bisbee, as Lloyd began drawing on her coat. "I don't know when I've enjoyed a morning so much. Since daughter's married and gone I miss her young friends so much. She used to have the house full of them from morning till night. Now I fairly pine for the sight of a fresh young face sometimes. You've livened me up more than you can know.Docome again!"
Lloyd went away highly pleased by her cordial reception. She had enjoyed being talked to as if she were grown, and these glimpses into the lives of her neighbours were more interesting than any her books could give her. When she passed the lane leading up to the house where the three sisters lived, she wished that she could turn over a leaf and read more about them. She wonderedif Miss Marietta ever took out the beautiful wedding-dress that was to be her shroud. She mused over the newly discovered romance all the way home.
If it had not been for that morning's call, and the interest it aroused in her neighbours, several things might not have happened, which afterward followed each other like links in a chain. Probably Miss Sarah would have walked up to Locust just the same, to take home a wrapper she had finished, and not finding Mrs. Sherman at home would have stepped inside the door a moment to warm by the dining-room fire; and Lloyd, with the courtesy that never failed her, would have been as graciously polite as her mother could have been. But if it had not been for the interest in her that Mrs. Bisbee's story gave, several other happenings might not have followed.
As Lloyd looked at the gray-haired woman on whom toil and poverty and care had left their marks, and remembered there had been a time when Miss Sarah had been as tenderly cared for as herself, a sudden pity surged up into her heart. She longed to lighten her load in some way, and to give back to her for a moment at least the comforts she had lost. With a quick gesture she motionedher away from the dining-room door. "No, come in heah!" she exclaimed, leading the way into the drawing-room, and pushing a big armchair toward the fire.
Blue and cold from her long walk against the wind, Miss Sarah sank down among the soft cushions and leaned back luxuriously.
"It's so ti'ahsome walking against the wind," exclaimed the Little Colonel. "When I came in awhile ago, I was puffing and blowing. I'm going to make you a cup of hot tea. That's what mothah always takes. No! It won't be anytrouble," she exclaimed, as Miss Sarah protested. "It will be the biggest kind of a pleasuah. It will give me a chance to use mothah's little tea-ball. I deahly love to wiggle it around in the cup and see the watah po'ah out of all the little holes. I've been wishing somebody would come, or that I had something to do. Now you have granted both wishes. I can have a regulah little tea-pah'ty. Excuse me just a minute, please."
Left to herself, Miss Sarah sat looking around at the handsome furnishings: the thick Persian rugs, the old portraits, the tall, burnished harp in the corner, the bowl of hothouse violets on the table at her elbow, until Lloyd returned, bearing atoasting fork and a plate of thinly sliced bread. Miss Sarah turned toward her with wistful eyes.
"I have always loved this old room," she said. "This is the first time I have been in it for twenty years. It is an old friend. I have spent many happy hours here in your grandmother's day. She was always entertaining the young people of the Valley. Sometimes that time seems so far away that I wonder if it was not all a dream. It was a very beautiful dream, at any rate. I often wish Agnes could have had a share in it. She has missed so much in not havingherfriendship."
She nodded toward the portrait over the mantel. "Amanthis Lloyd was my ideal woman when I was a young girl like yourself," she added, softly, with her eyes on the beautiful features above her.
"I have missed so much, too," said Lloyd, following Miss Sarah's gaze. "And yet it seems to me I must have known her. The portrait has always seemed alive to me. I used to talk to it sometimes when I was a little thing, and I nevah could beah to look at it when I had been naughty. I wish you would tell me about her."
She knelt on the hearth-rug as she spoke, and held the long toasting-fork toward the fire. "Mothah and grandfathah often talk about her,but they don't tell the same things that one outside of the family might."
By the time the toast was delicately browned and buttered, Mom Beck came in with the tea-tray, and placed it on the table beside the bowl of violets.
"Good!" exclaimed Lloyd, seating herself on the other side of the table as the old woman left the room. "I didn't think to tell her to bring cold turkey and strawberry preserves and fruit cake, but she remembered that I didn't eat much lunch, and she is always trying to tempt my appetite. She's the best old soul that evah was. Oh, Miss Sarah, I'm so glad you came. I haven't had a pah'ty like this for ages. Heah! I'll let you wiggle the tea-ball in yoah own cup, so that you can make it as strong as you like, because you're company."
The dimples deepened playfully in her cheeks as she passed the tea-ball across the table. Miss Sarah smiled, although her eyes felt misty. "You dear child!" she exclaimed. "That was Amanthis Lloyd all over again. She never reached out and gave pleasure to other people as if she were bestowing a favour. She always made it seem as if it were only her own pleasure which you were enhancing by sharing. You don't know what an interestI have taken in you for her sake, as I've watched you growing up here in the Valley. I used to hear remarks about your temper and your imperious ways, and day after day, as I've watched you ride past the house beside your grandfather, sitting up in the same straight, haughty way, I've thought she's well named. She's the Colonel over again.
"But to-day, in this old room, you are startlingly like her in some way, I can hardly tell what." She glanced up again at the portrait. "Your eyes look at me in the same understanding sort of way. They almost unseal the silence of twenty years. I have never said this to any one else. But I used to look at her sometimes and think that George Eliot must have meant her when she wrote in her 'Choir Invisible' of one who could 'be to other souls the cup of strength in some great agony.' She was that to me. People always used to go to her with their troubles."
Lloyd bent over her cup, her face flushing. "Then I'm so glad you think I'm even a little bit like her," she said, softly. "Nobody evah told me that befoah. I've always wanted to be."
The thought gave her a glow of pleasure all through the meal. Long after Miss Sarah went away, warmed and quickened in heart as well asbody, it lingered with her. Afterward it prompted her to pause before the portrait with a questioning glance into the clear eyes above her.
"'The cup of strength to other souls in some great agony,'" she repeated. "And you were that! Oh, I would love to be, too, if I didn't have to suffer too much first to learn how to sympathize and comfort. Maybe that is what I am to learn from this wintah's disappointment,—a way to help othah people beah their disappointments. If I could do that," she whispered, looking wistfully at the face above her, "if only one person in the world could remembah me as Miss Sarah remembahsyou, you beautiful Grandmothah Amanthis, it would be worth all the misahable time I have had."
Then she turned suddenly and went into the library to look for the poem Miss Sarah had quoted. She had never taken the volume from the shelves before. She did not care for poetry as Betty did, and it took her some time to find the lines she was looking for. But when she found them, she took the book back to the drawing-room, and read the page again and again, with a quick bounding of the pulses as she realized that here in words was the ambition which she had often felt vaguely stirringwithin her. Even if she could not reach the highest ones, and be "the cup of strength," or "make undying music in the world," she could at least attempt the other aims it held forth. She could at least try "to ease the burden of the world." She could live "in scorn for miserable aims that end with self."
With the book open on her lap, and her hands clasped around her knees, she sat looking steadily into the fire. She did not know what a long, long step she was taking out of childhood that afternoon, nor that the sweet seriousness of her new purpose shone in her upturned face. But when the old Colonel came into the room and found her sitting there in the firelight, he paused and then glanced up at the portrait. He was almost startled by the striking resemblance,—a likeness of expression that he had never noticed before.