AT THE BEECHES
"Howgood it feels to be free!" exclaimed the Little Colonel, as she pushed open the high green picket gate in front of the seminary, and held it ajar for Ida to pass through.
"This is the first time that I have been out on the road without a teachah and a flock of girls, for a whole month. I despise the way we have to line up two by two and go mah'ching through the Valley as if we were pah't of a circus parade, or inmates of an asylum, out for an airing."
Ida laughed as they started down the path, along the road leading to The Beeches. It was one of those perfect days in mid-October when it is easy to laugh; when all outdoors seems filled to the brim with a great content, and even the woods and fields, all autumn-clad, are keeping holiday. Besides it was Saturday afternoon, and they were on their way to their first club meeting.
This was their first appearance together since thenight of their stolen visit to the apple orchard, a week ago. It had cost Lloyd many a pang to give up her intimacy with Ida, but she had never shown such unselfishness as she did in this devotion to her friend. Since Ida's interests demanded that she should go off with the other girls no matter how much she longed to stay, she went obediently. Although Ida no longer wore her violets, she kept her room sweet with fresh bunches of them. Although her name was constantly in her thoughts, she rarely mentioned it, even to Betty. A few whispered words in the hall, an adoring glance toward her now and then at the table, was all she could snatch in the daytime. She even allowed the school to surmise what it pleased; that Ida had quarrelled with her or had grown tired of her; for her love was of the kind that "endureth all things." But every night she lay awake, living over that scene in the moonlit orchard, happy in the consciousness that she was making Ida happy, and dreaming of the romance that she was helping on its way.
Betty had hurried on up the road to call by for Katie Mallard, with the agreement that the couple which reached the post-office first should wait there for the other.
"Let's cut through Clovercroft," suggested Lloyd.
"Mrs. Marks won't care, and it is much shortah that way. The path below her ice-house will bring us out at her woodland gate, just across the road from the depot."
"Anything to get to the post-office first," agreed Ida. "I'm sure that there'll be a letter in your box for me to-day. I can justfeelthat there's one there."
From the depot it was but a few steps to the post-office. One had only to cross the road, pass the country store, and stroll a short distance along the shady avenue. There it sat by the wayside, a little box of a room, that always made Lloyd think of a dove-cote; for the first time she had been taken there her grandfather had explained that all the little square places where Miss Mattie was putting the letters were pigeonholes. Presently when Miss Mattie opened the window and handed him a letter from one of those places, she cried out with a little squeal of delight which made every one smile, "Oh, white pigeon wing flied out fo' you, grandfathah!"
Afterward it grew to be a byword that they always used between themselves, when one carried home a letter for the other. "Pigeon wing for grandpa's baby," he would call fondly, even when she hadgrown to be a tall girl; and "White pigeon wing flied out fo' you, grandfathah deah," was the cry if she were the bearer of the missive.
From the post-office door, looking across the road to a grassy ridge beyond, one could see the big inn that the year before had been turned into a home for old Confederate soldiers. Farther on was the wide green slope of the churchyard, and the little stone church with its ivy-covered belfry. The manse stood just behind it. Next to that was the cottage with the high green gables and diamond-shaped window-panes, where the Waltons had lived one summer while their new house was being built. And next to the cottage was the new house itself, set away back in the great grove of trees which gave to the place the name of "The Beeches."
Ida stood outside the door while Lloyd went in for the mail. She was afraid that Miss Mattie might suspect that she had an interest in the letters if she went in too, so she busied herself in looking for four-leaf clovers along the path. She could not have seen one, however, had they been growing on every grass-blade, she was in such a nervous flutter of expectancy. When Lloyd came out with two letters in her hand, her face flushed crimsonat sight of the familiar handwriting on one envelope.
"This is mine," she exclaimed, in a low tone, snatching it eagerly. "Let's sit down here on the step while I read it."
"I'm mighty glad it wasn't the only one," said Lloyd, glancing back over her shoulder to see if Miss Mattie still stood at the delivery-window. Peeping through the glass which covered the partition wall of pigeonholes, Lloyd saw that she had gone back to her desk by the rear window. So she continued, in a low tone:
"Suppose that had been the only letter, and Betty had asked me if I got one?"
"You would have said no, of course," said Ida, looking up from the page, impatient at the interruption. "This is not for you."
"But it is addressed to me," persisted Lloyd. "Suppose Miss Mattie heard me say no to such a question, or that Betty saw me take it out of the box?"
Again Ida looked up impatiently, but seeing the distressed expression of Lloyd's face, said, soothingly, "I know what you are thinking, Princess. It has just occurred to you that your helping me to carry on this correspondence under cover of yourname seems a little bit underhanded. But if you could just read this letter you'd never be troubled by such a thought again. It makes me feel that I am carrying out the motto of our club in the very highest way possible.
"'Our shadow-selves—our influence—may fallWhere we can never be.'"
she quoted, softly, looking dreamily away toward the ivy-grown belfry.
"I cannot be with Edwardo, but at least half of this letter is taken up with telling me how much my letters have helped and influenced him. That the thought of me off here, true to him in spite of all that has been done to separate us, is keeping him straight as nothing else could do. Somehow it seems a good omen for the club that I should get such a letter on my way to the first meeting."
Ida's manner was convincing, and Lloyd's face brightened as she listened, but she breathed more freely when she saw the envelope bearing her name torn into little bits too small to tell tales, and dropped down the crack behind the doorstep.
Betty and Katie joined them presently, and two by two they rustled along through the fallen leaves which filled the path, to The Beeches. Long beforethree o'clock the six members of the Shadow Club were assembled around the big table in the dining-room, with their materials spread out for Mrs. Walton's inspection. Piles of brightly coloured tissue-paper, embroidery silks, zephyr, and ribbon, made a gay showing. Mrs. Walton entered into their plans for the fair enthusiastically, as she helped wind a skein of Iceland wool for Katie's crocheting.
"The beauty of this club," remarked Kitty, as she opened her paint-box and carefully selected a brush, "is that there's no fuss and feathers about it. No election of officers, no dues, no rules, no tiresome minutes to read. All we have to do when we begin is to begin."
"And to remember our motto," suggested Betty, to whom the purpose of the club appealed strongly.
"Ida has made something to help us do that," said Lloyd. "Give them to us now, Ida, while Mrs. Walton is here to see them, please," she urged.
Ida, who had delayed showing them for that very reason, glanced shyly toward her hostess, and then hesitatingly opened the case which held her pyrography outfit.
"It's only some little blotting-pads for your writing-desks," she said, with a blush. "It seems to me that the verse is especially appropriate atletter-writing time, when we consciously cast our shadow-selves where we cannot be."
There was a chorus of delighted exclamations as she passed the packages around. Only two narrow slips of white blotting-paper held together by a white silken cord, but the cover was of soft gray kid, on which she had burned with her pyrography needle the club's motto in old English letters. Mrs. Walton leaned over the table to read the one on Allison's:
"This learned I from the shadow of a treeThat to and fro did sway upon a wall,Our shadow-selves—our influence—may fallWhere we can never be."
"It is beautifully done, my dear," she exclaimed, smiling down into the shy violet eyes raised gratefully to hers in acknowledgment of her lavish praise. "The club is certainly to be congratulated on having a member who can not only make such pretty things, but who can think of such sweet, suggestive ways in which to keep its purpose always in view."
Lloyd's hand, groping along under the table, found Ida's and gave it a squeeze of sympathetic delight.
"There's something to write to your aunt," she whispered. While the girls were still admiring theirblotters, the maid came in to announce a visitor for Mrs. Walton in the library.
Several minutes after she had left them to themselves, Kitty exclaimed, "Oh, mamma forgot to give me those little brass clamps to fasten the candle-shades, and now she has company, and I haven't the faintest idea where to look for them."
"They may be in the hat-rack drawer in the hall," suggested Allison. "I think I saw them in there this morning, but I am not sure."
Kitty skipped out of the room to look for them, and a few minutes later came back, her black eyes shining teasingly.
"I have a trade-last for you, Ida," she said. "Mrs. Mallard is in the library, discussing our club, and I heard mother say something awfully nice about you."
"Tell it!" demanded Lloyd.
"No, I said a trade-last."
"Oh, fishing for a compliment!" sang Katie. "Don't tell her, Ida, even if you have heard one. It will make her vain."
"Besides," put in Allison, "Miss Bina McCannister said it was common and silly to play trade-last."
"Oh, bother old Miss Bina!" said the disrespectful Kitty. "Well, I'll tell you, anyhow. I heardmother tell Mrs. Mallard that she thought you were a charming girl, one of the sweetest that she had met in a long time. She said she was glad we had chosen you in the club instead of a younger girl, for she thought you would have a quieting, refining influence on us, especiallyme! Think of that now! Me! And she said on that account she would like to have you here often."
Again Lloyd's hand met Ida's under the table in a quick squeeze. "Something else to write to your aunt," she whispered.
Several pretty candle-shades, two doll tam-o'-shanter caps, and three calendars in water-colours were laid aside finished, as the result of that afternoon's work. Besides, Lloyd and Betty had each made considerable progress on the centrepieces they had undertaken to embroider, and the magazine-cover Ida was burning in an elaborate design of dragons was half-done. Allison packed the finished articles away in a hat-box after supper, and put them up on a shelf in her closet.
"Our first meeting has surely been a success," she exclaimed. "At this rate we'll have enough things made by Easter to hold a splendid big fair. We ought to be able to cast our shadows quitea distance with the money we'll make, if we do this well every time."
"Come cast your shadows on this sheet, girls," called Mrs. Walton from the next room, where she had pinned some strips of white paper to a sheet hung on the wall, and placed a lamp at the proper distance for making silhouettes. "The name of your club suggested an old amusement of ours. Come, see how clever you are at drawing each other's shadows."
It proved to be an amusing undertaking, for whenever they laughed during the process, it changed their profiles into all sorts of ridiculous outlines. But finally some very creditable silhouettes were made, and each member of the club carried home her own shadow as a souvenir of the first meeting.
Katie's father called for her at half-past eight, and escorted the seminary girls as far as the high green gate.
"What a perfectly lovely time we've had!" exclaimed Betty, as she and Lloyd and Ida strolled slowly on toward the house, when they had bidden Katie and Mr. Mallard good night.
"And what a delicious suppah we had!" sighed Lloyd. "Oh, if we could only have shaded candles, and pretty silvah, and flowahs at bo'ding-school!I'm so tiahed of that long bare table. Everything tasted so good to-night. Those deah little beaten biscuit made me homesick. I haven't had any since I left Locust."
"The club is certainly an inspiration to do something and be something worth while," said Betty. "What Mrs. Walton said at supper, and afterward when she was showing us the general's sword, made me feel that way. Somehow, to-night, the world seems so much lovelier to be in than ever it did before; so full of opportunities, when one little person can cast such a tremendously long shadow." She looked back at hers, stretching down the path behind her, in the light from the hall lamp, till it seemed the length of a giant.
They passed on into the house, and up the stairs together. As Betty went ahead to light the lamp in their room, Ida caught Lloyd impetuously around the waist and gave her a grateful hug.
"Oh, Princess," she exclaimed, "I've had such a happy day, and I owe it all to you! If it hadn't been for you I'd have had neither the visit to The Beeches nor Edwardo's letter. You'resucha comfort!"
UNINVITED GUESTS
"Thisis the last day of October," announced Betty, one morning, tearing a leaf from the calendar, as was her habit as soon as she finished dressing. "To-night will be Hallowe'en."
"Do you realize," answered Lloyd, "that we have been at school six whole weeks without doing a single thing we had planned? We have been painfully good. Yestahday when I passed the music-room where Professah Steinwig was giving a violin lesson, I heard him say, 'Ach, you must let down der strings when you have feenish playing. If you keep him keyed to von high pitch alway, some day bif! He go break!' That's just the way I feel this morning; that I've been thinking so much about my shadow-self, and the work we've undehtaken for the mountain people, that it's kept me keyed up to too high a pitch of goodness. I've got to let down and get into some sort of mischief, or bif! I'll go break!"
Betty laughed. "Maybe the changes in the atmosphere affect people as well as fiddle-strings, and it is because it's Hallowe'en, and witches are in the air, that you feel so."
It may have been that the faculty were of Betty's opinion, and felt the spell lurking in the atmosphere. Warned by some mysterious "pricking of the thumbs" of coming wickedness, they sought to avert it. It was announced at breakfast that the usual rules would be suspended that night, and that from seven until eleven the resident pupils would be at liberty to observe the customs of Hallowe'en anywhere in the building, and that a spread of nuts, gingerbread, and apples would be furnished in the gymnasium.
"Headed off again!" exclaimed one of the larger girls who sat near Lloyd. "It's good of them to grant us such privileges, but we won't have half the fun that we could have had if they hadn't put us on our honour this way. I had planned to slip out and go over to Julia Ferris's to-night. Some of the cadets from the Lyndon military school are coming up. I wouldn't have hesitated a moment if they had shut down on our having some fun here, but now they've treated us so handsomely, even to furnishing a spread, of course I can't go. Hallowe'enis stupid with just a lot of girls—the same old set we've been going with straight along."
"We might have a masquerade," suggested Susie Figgs. "That would make us feel as if we were meeting strangers."
The suggestion ran along the table like wild-fire, and was so enthusiastically received that Susie felt herself a public benefactor, and beamed with importance the rest of the day.
"Oh, what shallIgo as?" was the despairing question immediately heard in every quarter, for the time was short in which to improvise costumes. The matron was besieged by distracted borrowers with requests for everything, from a blanket for Pocahontas, to a sunshade and watering-pot for "Mistress Mary, quite contrary."
Lloyd's costume cost her little trouble aside from borrowing a horn from one of the children in the neighbourhood; for Mom Beck, coming in with the laundry before school, volunteered her services. In an old chest in the linen-room at Locust were many odds and ends left over from private theatricals and fancy-dress occasions. Mom Beck remembered an old blue velvet skirt that she thought could be made into a suit for Little Boy Blue before night, if Aunt Cindy's daughter would help her with theknickerbockers, and hurried away to begin, carrying Lloyd's measure and a Zouave jacket belonging to one of her summer suits, for a pattern.
From that same chest came a dress and hat which Mrs. Sherman had worn in a tableau years before as a Dresden shepherdess, which transformed Betty into the prettiest little Bo-Peep that could be imagined.
Allison and Kitty, taking advantage of the relaxed rules, slipped up the stairs before going home after school, to look at the costumes lying spread out on Lloyd's bed.
"I think it's a shame that day pupils can't come, too," said Allison, wrathfully. "We're left out all around, for we're not old enough to be invited to Julia Ferris's party. We were going to have a party at our house, but mother and auntie had to go to town to stay all night. Aunt Elise is entertaining some old army officer's wife. So we can't have any fun."
"Don't you think that for a moment!" exclaimed Kitty. "Mrs. Mallard said that Katie might come and stay all night with us. Mother telephoned to her just before she started to town."
A daring thought popped into Lloyd's mind. "Why don't you come to-night? It's a masquerade.You could slip in heah to our room befoah they unmask, and nobody would evah find out who you were. It couldn't be moah fortunately arranged. Little Elise is in town with yoah mothah, and you could easily slip away from Barbry and the cook. You could sleep in heah with us, and run home early in the mawning befoah anybody was up. I'll unlock the doah at the head of the outside stairs, and you can sneak in back way while we are at suppah."
"Oh, how I'd love to!" began Allison, "but I'm sure that mother and Mrs. Mallard wouldn't like it, and—"
"Now, Allison," interrupted Kitty, "you know that nobody ever told usnotto come, did they? It wouldn't be disobeying unless we'd been forbidden."
"All sorts of larks are allowed on Hallowe'en," urged Lloyd. "Not a soul outside of the Shadow Club will know who you are, and it will be such fun to set everybody to guessing who you are and where you've gone, when you suddenly disappear."
"Yes, we'll come," said Kitty, seizing Allison by the waist and dancing her toward the door. "I'll take the blame if there is any. Hurry up, old Grandma Prim, we'll have to hustle. We've barelytime to run home and eat our supper and get dressed and back here before the affair begins."
Kitty's enthusiasm, like an energetic young whirlwind, swept away every objection her sister could offer, and a few minutes later they were on their way home, eagerly discussing with Katie Mallard what costumes they could get ready in an hour.
Lloyd, who had followed them to the head of the stairs, turned back to her room with a naughty thrill of enjoyment. This escapade would add a spice of excitement to the evening, and she already tingled with the anticipation of it. There was a mischievous smile on her face as she walked down the hall. But it disappeared as she caught the muffled sound of some one sobbing. She stood still to listen. It seemed to come from Magnolia Budine's room, the door of which stood ajar.
Since the day that the old autograph-album had been put into her hands, Lloyd had felt a peculiar interest in the child who prayed every night that some day she might "grow nice enough for the Princess to like her." She had showed this interest by many little attentions which kept Magnolia in a flutter of happiness for hours afterward. Although she still coloured with embarrassment to the roots of her flaxen hair when the Princess stooped tospeak to her, she no longer choked and swallowed her chewing-gum. In fact, she no longer chewed, since she noticed that the Princess disdained the habit.
It was Elise who confided this fact to Lloyd, and many other things which not only flattered her vanity, but aroused a real affection for the ardent little soul who showed her admiration by copying her in every way possible.
"She looks up to me as I look up to Ida," thought Lloyd. "I ought to be good to the poor little thing."
As she paused an instant in the hall, wondering whether it would be kinder to go in and offer comfort or to go away showing no sign of having overheard her sobs, it suddenly occurred to her what was the cause of Magnolia's grief. Probably she had no costume for the masquerade. Nothing the huge carpet-bag held could be made into one. There was no one to help her, and she felt left out of the Hallowe'en frolic. Lloyd hesitated no longer. The next moment she was wiping Magnolia's eyes, and restoring her to her usual blushing cheerfulness.
"I'll tell you what we'll do," she said. "We'll run over to Clovercroft, and ask Miss Katherine to lend us something. I have to go, anyhow, to borrowa horn. Mrs. Marks told me that I could have one that Buddy left there last summah. He's one of her grandchildren. Miss Katherine is an artist. She has a great big camera in her studio, and takes bettah pictuahs than any professional photographah could, because she thinks of all sorts of beautiful things to pose people for. She gets a medal or a prize every time she places a pictuah on exhibition, and I'm suah she can think of something for you to be."
In such a state of rapture that she felt she must be dreaming, Magnolia followed Lloyd down-stairs to ask the principal's permission to go over to Clovercroft.
"I know a place where there are two pickets loose," said Lloyd, as they hurried across the lawn. "If you can squeeze through the fence we'll save time. Every minute is precious now."
Breathless and panting from their run, the children reached the side door just as the coloured man opened it on his way out for an armful of wood.
"Frazer, we want to see Miss Katherine," announced Lloyd, who was enough at home at Clovercroft to know all the servants.
"She's in the music-room, Miss Lloyd," he answered. "You all kin walk right in."
"Is there any company there? We want to seeher alone," said Lloyd, with a dignified air that made Magnolia look at her admiringly.
"No'm, jes' she an' her maw, listenin' to Miss Flora play." He held the door open for them to enter, and motioned toward the music-room door, which stood ajar. A bright fire blazed on the white tiled hearth. On one side sat a gentle, sweet-faced lady in black; "Buddy's grandmother," thought Magnolia, as she noticed her gray hair. On the other side, on a low stool, with her hands clasped over her knees, sat Miss Katherine, looking into the embers. The firelight shone on her red dress, and cast a rosy glow to every part of the cheerful room. Both were listening so intently to the soft nocturne that Miss Flora was playing, that Lloyd's knock made them start with surprise.
"Well, well! It's the Little Colonel!" exclaimed the lady in black, holding out her hand to welcome her. "Come up to the fire, my dear. Both of you." She smiled reassuringly at Magnolia, who leaned against a chair by the door, staring around her with big blue eyes, like a frightened kitten.
Lloyd plunged into her story at once, for the time was too short to stand on ceremony. At the mention of costumes Miss Katherine was all attention, and turned to Magnolia with critical interest.
"Suppose you take her hair out of those tight little tails," she suggested "and let me see how long it is."
Lloyd obeyed instantly, and the soft, light hair, released from its plaits, stood out in a short, frizzy crop, reaching only a little below her collar. It was very becoming. Lloyd was amazed at the change it made in the child's appearance.
"The very thing I want for my Knave of Hearts!" cried Miss Katherine, clasping her hands enthusiastically, and turning toward her mother. "I am illustrating that old jingle about the Queen of Hearts who made some tarts upon a summer day. I've a lovely picture for the queen, but I haven't been able to find a suitable boy for the knave 'who spied those tarts and stole them all away.' But there she stands. Her hair is exactly the right length, and she's so fat and cute that if I can just get her to roll those round blue eyes the way I want them, it will make a perfect love of a picture."
"But the costume," suggested Mrs. Marks. "It is so elaborate, and the time is short."
Miss Katherine looked at the clock. "One can do wonders in an hour," she said, and burying her face in her hands a moment, she thought intently.
"Genius burns," she announced in a moment, looking up at her sister. "Where's that little white duck suit that Lucien outgrew and left here one summer? I saved it for just such an emergency. I'm sure it will fit her."
"Packed away in the tower-room," answered Miss Flora. "I know just where to put my hand on it, though. Is there anything else you want while I am up there?"
"Yes, some scraps of red velvet if there are any left in the piece-bag. I have everything else we'll need, in the studio. That red canton flannel I sometimes use for draping backgrounds, will make a long flowing cape to hang from the back of his neck and sweep the ground behind him."
Magnolia felt as if she were a big doll as she was handed around from one to another in the trying on process, when Miss Flora came back with the suit. It did fit her passably well, and she and Lloyd were set to work at once, cutting out dozens of red velvet hearts.
"Makes me think of the time that I was the Queen of Hearts at Gingah's valentine pah'ty, and the old bear that the boys tied to the bedpost frightened us neahly to death," said Lloyd.
Snip, snip went both pair of scissors, and as fastas the hearts were cut, Miss Katherine and Miss Flora sewed them on to the little white duck blouse and knickerbockers. Even Mrs. Marks helped, fastening frills of black ribbon and great gilt buckles on some old red house-slippers of Buddy's. It grew dark while they worked. Frazer lighted the lamps and piled more wood on the fire, and Lloyd began to think uneasily that the supper-bell would be ringing at the seminary soon.
But in shorter time than seemed possible, everything was done. When Magnolia was led to the long hall mirror to look at herself, she was unable to believe that what she saw was her own reflection. It looked like some bright-coloured illustration taken from a lovely picture-book.
Red hearts dotted the white duck suit, and white hearts the long red cape which trailed gracefully from her shoulders. A funny little crown copied in red and white pasteboard from the one they found on the Jack of Hearts in a deck of cards, rested on the short, light hair, curling up around her ears. There were lace ruffles at her wrists, and a tin sword at her side, and in her outstretched hands a little pie-tin, borrowed from the cook.
"Turn your head to one side, as if you were looking over your shoulder," commanded MissKatherine, "and hold the tart up high in front. Now lift your feet and sway back as if you were cake-walking. There, mamma, isn't that a perfect reproduction of the picture in our old Mother Goose? I'm charmed!"
The dropping of the tight-waisted, old-fashioned blue dress for this story-book attire changed the child's appearance so completely that she looked into the mirror half-frightened, feeling that her old self had run away from her. But there were Mrs. Marks and Miss Flora exclaiming "How pretty!" and the Princess clapping her hands and fluttering around her, calling out that she was perfectly lovely, and made the darlingest little Knave of Hearts that ever was seen, and Miss Katherine saying that if she would come over the next day at noon she would take her photograph.
No one had even called her pretty before, and she had never had her picture taken. Her eyes sparkled and her face lighted up as she turned again to the mirror.
"You and Betty come over to-morrow, too," said Miss Katherine to Lloyd, as she buttoned up the blue dress again, so that Magnolia could go back to supper. "I'd like to add Boy Blue and Bo-Peep to my Mother Goose gallery."
It was dark when Lloyd and Magnolia squeezed through the fence again and ran up the stairs to the room. As Lloyd passed the portière at the end of the hall she pushed it aside and drew back the bolt, as she had promised Kitty to do. They had barely time to lay their bundles on Magnolia's bed when the supper-bell rang, and they ran down to the dining-room. Lloyd was all aglow with excitement and pleasure over the success of the last hour's work, but Magnolia had shrunk back into the same timid little creature she was before her transformation. She had put her hair back into the tight little tails again before leaving Clovercroft, so that her disguise would be the more complete when she unloosed it and appeared as the little knave.
Meantime, Allison and Kitty, hurrying home with their guest, had delighted Norah by a demand for early supper. She and Barbry were expecting some friends from Rollington, a little Irish village near the Valley, and would be glad to be through with their work an hour earlier than usual.
"And you needn't light up for us down-stairs, except in the dining-room," said Allison, "for we're going straight to our rooms after supper, and we don't want to be disturbed till to-morrow morning."
"Very well, miss," answered Barbry, who,a middle-aged woman, was the most trustworthy of well-trained maids. Mrs. Walton never felt any hesitancy in leaving the children in her care.
"And—oh, Barbry," said Allison, as she turned to leave the room. "To-night is Hallowe'en, and they say the witches are out and ghosts rise out of their graves. What is that tale they tell about a ghost that used to be seen about the seminary grounds?"
"Sure, an' your mother would be afther gettin' angry if I filled your heads with such nonsense. Who said there was ever a ghost at all in the Valley?"
But after much teasing Barbry allowed herself to be persuaded into telling a tale that had been afloat for years, of the little woman in gray who had once owned the land on which the seminary was built. She lived all alone, and was an odd character. Her peculiar mode of living, and the mystery surrounding her death, gave rise to the rumour that her spirit still haunted the seminary grounds. It was said that the little woman never appeared in public without a gray veil, and her wraith was recognized by the long gauzy covering floating loosely back from its face, not gray but white, as more becoming a spirit.
No sooner had Barbry finished her tale than Allison beckoned the girls to follow, and led the way up-stairs to the sewing-room. "I thought at first I'd just put a pillow-case over my head and wrap up in a sheet, but I'm going to make the girls think I'm the real article. How will this do?"
Taking a roll of cotton from one of the shelves, she pinned it over her hair to make a short white wig, powdered her face till it was as white as the cotton, and over it all threw a long piece of tulle, which she brought from a bureau drawer in her room. "Aunt Elise gave it to me last time I was in town," she said. "She had yards and yards of it that had been used some way in decorating with lilies for a luncheon. Wait till I wrap a sheet around me. Now how do I look?"
"Perfectly awful!" exclaimed Kitty, gazing at her in fascinated wonder that flesh and blood could look so truly ghost-like. Katie hid her eyes with a little scream.
"Don't look at me that way," she begged. "If you are this terrifying in daylight to people who know who you are, what will you be at night?"
Well satisfied with the effect she had produced, Allison folded up the veil, carefully removed the wig, and washed the powder from her face, whileKitty and Katie rummaged in the drawers for some old, long-sleeved gingham aprons that had been discarded long ago. They had decided to go as rag dolls, as that would be the most complete disguise they could think of. Even their hair would be covered, and they would not need to speak.
"It will be terribly hot with all that cotton stuffed about our heads and necks," said Katie. "But we'll looksofunny. And we must hold ourselves limp and lean up against things or flop over, just as real rag dolls do."
"Here are the aprons," cried Kitty, at last. "See? They'll fit up close around the neck and hide the place where the muslin that covers our head is tied on."
"I'll paint the faces on you the last thing before we start," said Allison.
"Mercy me! Allison!" exclaimed Katie. "We can't walk down past the depot and the store rigged up that way, even if it is dark. Somebody might think we were escaped freaks, and chase us. We ought to wait till we get to the seminary before we dress."
"No, there won't be time then, and everybody will know it's only a Hallowe'en frolic. If Kitty wears her golf-cape and you wear mine, and pullthe hoods away over your faces, nobody will notice. I'll not dress till afterward, for I'm not going to appear till the middle of the evening. I'm not going to go up to the gymnasium at all, but just glide around on the outskirts and lay a cold finger on some one now and then. I'll get a lump of ice out of the cooler if I can manage to slip into the dining-room. Now if you'll bring me the scissors I'll cut the muslin and fit it over your heads."
Mrs. Walton, sorry that her absence would deprive the girls of their anticipated Hallowe'en party, compensated for their disappointment as far as possible by ordering an unusually delicious little supper for them and their guest.
"Isn't it too tantalizing!" exclaimed Kitty, when Barbry had left the room for some hot biscuits. "Here's everything I like best, and I'm in such a hurry and so excited that I can hardly choke down a mouthful."
"Don't talk, then," commanded Allison. "Justeat!"
The meal proceeded in silence for a few moments, but the silence itself grew funny as they thought of the ludicrous figures they would soon present, and they began to giggle.
The giggles grew into shrieks of laughter a littlelater, when they had gone up-stairs, and the two rag dolls, all stuffed, painted, and dressed, leaned limply against the wall and leered at each other. Even their hands looked comical, covered in white woollen gloves, each finger held stiffly out from the other. After one glance Allison rolled on the bed, holding her sides, laughing and gasping in turn.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, finally, sitting up and wiping her eyes and then going off into a fresh paroxysm of laughter as she looked at them again. "I never saw anything so funny in my life. The girls will simply shriek when they see you."
Norah and Barbry, sitting over their own supper, heard the laughing far down in the kitchen. They looked at each other and smiled, and then, as the contagious sound continued, laughed themselves. The merriment was irresistible. But a little later, busy with their preparations for their coming friends, they did not notice that the house grew strangely still, and that not another sound came from the rooms above all that evening.
Kitty's room adjoined Allison's. Bolting the door which opened into her mother's, on the inside, she passed through Allison's with Katie, and out into the hall. Then Allison locked her door on theoutside and hid the key under the hall rug. Creeping down the stairs, they stole out at the side door, locked it after them, and hid the key inside a large flower-pot on the porch.
"That's safer than carrying it," said Allison. "We'd be sure to lose it, and then we would be in a pretty pickle."
The moon, overcast by shifting clouds, was just beginning to throw a faint, ghostly glimmer over the Valley as the girls hurried out.
"Let's go back way until we are past grandmother's gate," said Kitty. Edgewood, Mrs. MacIntyre's place, was just across from The Beeches, and some one was strolling up the avenue toward it. "Uncle Harry," whispered Allison, crouching down in the shadow of a tree until he had gone in.
Rustling along in the dry leaves, they passed the rear of the cottage next door, the manse, and the little stone church. That brought them out into the wide, open space below the ridge, where the lights gleamed from every window in the Soldiers' Home. The girls drew their hoods closer over their faces as they hurried across the churchyard, out through the iron gate into the road.
"It makes me think of the night we had a Hallowe'en party at the haunted house of Hartwell Hollow,"said Katie, looking up at the bare branches overhead, which were beginning to toss in the rising wind. Then she clapped a white-gloved hand over her rag mouth to choke back a giggle. Kitty had begun holding her arms in the aimless fashion peculiar to rag dolls, and was walking along as if she had no bones.
"For goodness' sake, behave yourself," begged Allison. "Don't get us to laughing out here on the road!"
Kitty straightened up as they passed the deserted post-office, and they quickened their pace until they were safely beyond the store and the depot. A moment later they had passed through the woodland gate of Clovercroft, raced along the path below the ice-house, and were squeezing through the gap in the picket fence to the seminary grounds.
"They must be almost through supper," whispered Katie, peeping in at one of the dining-room windows, over which the blind had not been entirely drawn. "With all that laughing and talking they'll never hear us go up the stairs. We can make as much noise as we please."
A dim light burned in the upper hall, but no lamp was lighted in Betty and Lloyd's room.
"Let's not make any," suggested Allison."They'll think we haven't come. Let's hide and see what they do when they suddenly discover us."
As she spoke there was a sound of many feet in the lower hall, then on the stairs, and an unusual buzz of voices. The girls were scattering to their rooms to dress for the masquerade.
"Hurry!" gasped Allison, stooping down behind a tall rocking-chair. Kitty rolled under one bed and Katie under the other, and there they lay waiting, trying to stifle the giggles which nearly choked them.
THE HALLOWE'EN MASQUERADE
"I'llmake a light," said Betty, groping across the room with a handful of matches which she had taken from the box in the hall. Lloyd started to follow, but, stumbling over a footstool, felt her way to the bed and sat down on the edge of it to wait for a light. On the way up from supper she had started to repeat a funny story which she had heard at Clovercroft that afternoon, and she kept on with it as Betty, having found her way to the table, struck a match. But she stopped again, as the match went out with a sudden puff, as if a strong draught had blown it.
"There! It never fails to do that when I'm in a hurry," exclaimed Betty, striking another match as she spoke. It was extinguished as suddenly as the first. She tried another and another with the same result.
"How strange!" she said, wonderingly. "There isn't a window open anywhere, is there?"
"It's the witches," declared Lloyd, laughing. "There must be one standing there by yoah elbow."
The laugh ended in a piercing shriek as she felt something clutch her ankle. "Murdah! Murdah!" she yelled. "Ow! There's something awful undah the bed! It grabbed me by the foot! Ow! Ow!"
"Hush up, goosey!" commanded a familiar voice, and as Betty struck her fifth and last match, which burned steadily, they saw Allison dashing to the door to lock it. Doors were opening all along the corridors, and footsteps hurrying from every direction in response to Lloyd's terrified cry.
"Tell them that it's all right! That it's only a Hallowe'en scare," demanded Allison, in a stage whisper. "Don't let them in. I blew out the matches, and it's only Kitty and Katie under the beds."
"It's all right," called Lloyd, in a quavering tone, but the matron's knock was imperative, and Betty, beckoning the girls frantically toward the closet, fumbled with the bolt until they had whisked into hiding. The one brief glimpse of the rag dolls, falling over each other in their mad haste to escape, was so comical that both Lloyd and Betty were choking with laughter when the matron entered. They could hardly control their voices while theytried to tell her how the matches had gone out and Lloyd had imagined that there were witches in the room.
Smiling indulgently at their foolishness, which she attributed to the excitement of the occasion, the matron withdrew. She could hear them still laughing when she passed through the hall again, several minutes later, for the rag dolls, coming out of the closet as soon as she disappeared, began taking one ridiculous pose after another, in the middle of the floor. The solemn silence in which they struck their limp, boneless attitudes, made the scene all the funnier, and as the girls looked at the surprised expressions Allison had painted on the flat muslin faces, they went into such hysterical laughter that the tears streamed down their faces.
"Oh, girls,dostop!" begged Lloyd, finally, wiping her eyes. "I've laughed till I ache, and it's time for me to dress, for I promised Magnolia to help her into her costume."
Katie and Kitty subsided into a heap on the divan. "Could you have told who we were if you hadn't known we were coming?" asked Katie.
"Never in the world," answered Betty. "I couldn't tell which is which now, if it were not for your voices."
"We're not going to say a word to any one," said Katie. "We oughtn't to talk, you know, if we carry out our part as it should be. We'll slip up into the gymnasium pretty soon, and be sitting on the floor in a corner when the others come up. We'll lop around and watch the fun till the unmasking begins, then we'll come down here and wait for the rest of you."
All the time they had been performing, Allison had been busy before the mirror, and now turned around in her spectral attire.
"The ghost of the veiled lady!" cried Lloyd. "Oh, Allison, yoah make-up is splendid. You're enough to freeze the blood in one's veins. There couldn't be anything moah spooky-looking than that thin tulle veil. I wish Mom Beck could see you. I've heard her talking about that queah little woman whose house used to stand where the seminary cellah is dug now, till I couldn't close my eyes at night. All the darkies believe she still haunts the place."
Betty had never heard the story, so Allison repeated it while she dressed, adding, "You two must do all you can to spread the report that I'm lurking around. You have seen me yourself, you know. If I had my lump of ice, you'd soon feel the touch of my clammy fingers. I wish you'd give me apiece of newspaper to wrap it in, Betty. Then it won't drip."
"I wish we could carry a lump of ice around with us," gasped Kitty. "All this cotton packed around my head and neck makes me so hot I can scarcely breathe."
Miss Edith and Mrs. Clelling, putting the finishing touches to the decorations in the gymnasium, looked around, well pleased. A score of jack-o'-lanterns grinned sociably from the brackets between the windows. Two more kept guard on each side of the piano, and at least a dozen lighted the long table stretched across one end of the room, on which the spread was arranged. Graceful sprays of bittersweet-vine trailed their bright berries over the white cloth. A huge pumpkin-bowl piled with grapes formed the centrepiece. A pitcher of sweet cider stood at each end, and nuts, persimmons, pop-corn balls, gingerbread, and apples filled all the space between.
"It is well worth the trouble," said Miss Edith, lighting the last candle. "The girls will enjoy it thoroughly."
Some one called both teachers from the room just then, and in their absence two uninvited guests,who had been waiting behind the door, hurried in and seated themselves on the floor in the dimmest corner.
"I should say itisworth the trouble," whispered one rag doll to the other, as they looked around the room at the fantastic decorations. "It's lots more fun coming here this way, than having the party at home, and it's more fun than if we'd been invited."
"I'm nearly roasted," panted the other one, "but I'm glad I'm here. Oh, how pretty!"
It was the entrance of one of the older girls in court train and powdered hair that caused the exclamation, and while they were trying to guess who it could be, the others began to arrive. Old King Cole and Pocahontas came in arm in arm, followed by Red Riding Hood and a brownie, while Puss in Boots proudly escorted Aladdin with his lamp.
Little Bo-Peep and Boy Blue were soon recognized, for Betty had made no attempt to hide the brown curls which helped to make her such a pretty little Dresden shepherdess; and while Lloyd had gathered up her long, light hair under the wide-brimmed hat with its blue ribbon, every graceful gesture and every step she took, holding herselferect with a proud lifting of the head, proclaimed the Little Colonel.
For once in her short life, little Magnolia Budine tasted the sweets of social success, for no one there was more popular or more admired than the saucy Knave of Hearts. With the putting on of the costume she had put on a courage and self-possession that never could have been assumed with the old-fashioned tight-waisted blue merino and the stiff short tails of hair. Grasping the stolen tart firmly in her chubby hands, and lifting the little slippers with their huge bows and buckles in the high, mincing step Miss Katherine had taught her, she swaggered coquettishly up and down the room, her red mantle sweeping behind her. Wherever she went a flock of admiring girls crowded around her.
For many a month afterward her red and white crown hung over her mirror, not only as a souvenir of the jolly revel, but as a token that for one night, at least, she had found favour in the eyes of the Princess. Not only had Lloyd circled around her when she was dressed, exclaiming again that she looked perfectly lovely, but when they chose partners for the ghost-walk, to march solemnly through the halls to the slow music of the Dead March, the Princess had chosen her. Lloyd had looked aroundfor Ida, who had come as a Puritan Maid; but the cap and kerchief were nowhere to be seen. She had evidently grown tired of the affair and gone to her room.