The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding. Johnston Annie Fellows
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and rocked herself back and forth on the floor.
"I'm glad she's sensible enough to wait a year," she declared. "I don't see why girls are in such a hurry to tie themselves up in a knot. I suppose it's perfectly fascinating to be engaged and to have the choosing of a lovely trousseau, and the opening of all the wedding presents. Everybody takes so much interest in a prospective bride. But the fun comes to an end so quickly. It's like Fourth of July fire works. There's a big blaze and excitement while it lasts. Then it's all over and they settle down to be just prosy common-place married people. I should think that the reaction would be deadly, and that if a girl could see past the time of the rocket's shooting up, and realize that it can't stay among the stars, but must fall to earth again with a dull thud, she'd profit by other people's experiences, and not give up all the good times of her girlhood before she'd half enjoyed them."
Gay spoke so feelingly that her two listeners exchanged glances of surprise. This was not the way Gay had been wont to talk a year ago, and each wondered to herself if Lucy's marriage had caused this radical change in her opinion.
Suddenly she changed the subject, with the unexpectedness of a grasshopper's leap. "Which one of you girls is going to stay all night with me?"
Kitty answered first. "Neither of us ought to, for we've only just returned to the bosom of our families. You could hardly call us entirely arrived yet, for our trunks haven't come."
Lloyd started up, and looked at her watch in alarm. "It's a good thing you reminded me that I have a home," she laughed. "I told mothah I'd just stroll down to the post-office and be right back, and when I met Kitty with yoah lettah it drove everything else out of my head. She'll be wondering what has happened to me. I'll come some night next week and be glad to."
"No, one of you has to come back and stay with me to-night," Gay insisted. "So settle it between yourselves. You may as well draw straws to decide which is to be my victim." Then, glancing around the room – "I don't happen to see any straws at hand, but you might pull hairs for the honour. Here! My head is at your service, ladies."
Dropping to her knees she made a profound salaam, and waited for them to draw. "The one who pulls the shortest hair comes back."
Laughing over the absurd manner of deciding such a matter, each girl reached out and plucked a hair by its roots, so vigorously that the pull was followed by a long drawn "ouch!"
"Mine's the shortest," giggled Lloyd, comparing it with the one that Kitty held up. "But I'm suah my family will object if I propose leaving them the very first night of my arrival, aftah I've been away at school all yeah."
"Don't leave them then," said Gay. "Bring them all over here to spend the evening. I'm wild for Lucy and brother Jameson to meet them as soon as possible. Then when bedtime comes let them leave you. Tell them that Kitty is going to bring all her family, and that everybody in the valley who is anybody is coming to the Harcourt's Housewarming to-night at the 'Cabin in the Wood.'" Kitty began unfurling her red parasol. "That certainly sounds alluring. You can count on all my family, especially Ranald, and I'll go straight home and telephone to Alex Shelby."
"Who may he be?" inquired Gay, scrambling up from the floor, to follow her guests down stairs.
Kitty began an enthusiastic description of him, which Lloyd cut short with the laughing remark, "Go look in your little Dutch mirror. I'm not positive, but I think he's yoah first 'Knight of the Looking-glass.'"
CHAPTER II
BED-TIME CONFIDENCES
That night a series of interesting shadows trooped across the little Dutch mirror, in the moonlight, but nobody watched beside it to see how faithfully it reflected the procession of guests, straggling up the path below. After the first pleased glance Gay had flown down-stairs to throw open the front door and bid them welcome. It was almost more than she had dared to hope that the old Colonel would come, and "Papa Jack" and Kitty's Grandmother MacIntyre. But they had needed no urging. Gay was reaping the aftermath now, of her first visit to the Valley. They had not forgotten the obliging little guest who had entertained them with her violin playing, amused them with her quaint unexpected speeches, and charmed old and young alike with her enthusiastic interest in everything and everybody.
Ranald had more than that to remember, for he had carried on a vigorous correspondence with Gay for the last six months, started by a "dare" from Allison. Alex Shelby's memory of her dated back only to that morning, but the picture of a sunny little head up among the roses, and that line "Sandalphon the angel of glory" had been in his thoughts all day.
Their effort to show the newcomers how cordial a Lloydsboro welcome could be, was met by a hospitality which held them in its spell till after midnight. Lucy was in her element. As the popular daughter of a popular army officer, she had played gracious hostess ever since she had learned to talk. As for Gay, so anxious was she that her friends should be pleased with her family and her family with her friends, that she threw herself with all her might into the task of making each show off to the other.
An outside fire-place on the broad front porch was one of the features of the Cabin. The June night was cool enough to make the blaze on its hearth acceptable, and Lucy turned the picturesque old kettle, bubbling on the crane, to practical use, making coffee to serve with the marsh-mallows, which Jameson handed around on long sticks, that each one might toast his own over the glowing coals.
The informality of it all, and the good cheer, made every one relax into his jolliest mood, and Gay, hearing the old Colonel's laugh, as stretched out on the settle by the fire, he told stories and toasted marsh-mallows with a zest, felt that they had struck the right key-note in this first evening's entertainment. It was the harbinger of many others that would follow during the summer.
It was her violin that held them longest. Standing just inside the door where Kitty could accompany her on the piano, she played one after another of the favourite tunes that were called for in turn, till the fire burned low on the porch hearth, and even the voices of the night were stilled in the dense beech woods around the Cabin.
It was later than any one had supposed when Mrs. Sherman made the discovery that the hall clock had stopped.
"She didn't know that I stopped it on purpose," confessed Gay, when the last carriage had driven away, and Lloyd was following her sleepily up-stairs. She paused to bolt the bed-room door behind them.
"This has been a lovely evening for me. It gives one such a comfortable I-told-you-so sort of feeling to have everything turn out as you prophesied it would. Of course I knew that Lucy would feel the charm of the Valley, and like it a thousand times better than the mountains or seashore or anywhere else, but I wasn't so sure of Jameson. Now my mind is completely at rest for the summer. I stopped worrying when I saw him hobnobbing with the Colonel and your father about those Lexington horses he wants to buy. He was so tickled over those letters of introduction they gave him. And he was so charmed to air his knowledge of the Philippines to Mrs. Walton. He spent a month there you know. I fairly patted myself on the back all the time he was talking. Somehow I feel so responsible for this household. There! I forgot to remind them to bring that bothersome old silver pitcher upstairs!"
Hastily unbolting the door she called out in sepulchral tones that echoed through the dark house, "Remember the Maine!"
There was a laugh in the room across the hall, then her brother-in-law who had just come up-stairs, shuffled down again in his slippers.
"I suppose I'll have to remind them every night this summer," continued Gay. "I don't like to call out 'remember the silver pitcher that was our great-great-grandmother Melville's, and the soup ladle that some old Spanish grandee gave to one of Jameson's Castilian ancestors,' for if a burglar were prowling around he would be all the more anxious to break in. So the month I visited them, before we came here, I adopted that slogan for my war-cry: '"Remember the main" thing in life to be saved from burglars!' It always sends one or the other of them skipping, for they feel the responsibility of preserving such heirlooms for posterity. I used to wish that I were the oldest daughter, so that that pitcher would be handed down to me on my wedding day. I didn't realize what a bore it would be to be tied for life to such a responsibility. I asked Jameson why he didn't put it and the ladle in a safety vault and be done with it, and he read me