The Little Colonel at Boarding-School. Johnston Annie Fellows
girls laughed at his scowl of disgust, and Betty hastened to say, "But we'll have Aunt Cindy to fall back on if the fare gets too bad. That's the beauty of staying so near home. Mom Beck is to come every Monday to get our clothes to launder, and every Saturday to bring them back and see that we are all right, and you know she'll not let us starve. And there aren't any old cats in this school, Rob. Miss Edith is a dear. The girls fairly love the ground she walks on, and I'm sure that nobody could be nicer and more motherly than Mrs. Gelling."
"How about Miss Bina McCannister?" asked Rob, with a wry face. "She is cross enough to stop a clock, sober and prim and crabbed, with eyes like a fish. I went up there one day with a note from grandfather to Professor Fowler, and she gave me such a stony glare because I happened to let a door bang, that I had cold shivers down my spine for a week."
"Oh, Rob," laughed Lloyd. "Aren't you ashamed to talk so? Anyhow, Miss McCannister will not bother us, because we are not in any of her classes."
"But she'll take her turn in trotting you out to walk, just the same. Then think what a glad procession that will be. You'll feel like prisoners in a chain-gang."
"Talk all you want to, if it amuses you any," said Lloyd, passing the gingerbread around once more. "It won't keep us from having a good time at bo'ding-school."
"Well, I'm coming out again at Thanksgiving. There's to be a big family reunion at Oaklea this year, and if you've stood the storm and still think that boarding-school life is funny, I'll stand treat to a five-pound box of Huyler's best. You can let that thought buoy you up through all the hungry hours between that time and this."
"Mercy, Rob, don't throw cold water on all our bright hopes like that," cried Betty, springing up as she heard her name spoken in the hall. "Mom Beck wants me. She is ready to begin packing my trunk."
"I must go in a few minutes," said Rob, "so if you're disappearing now, I'll say good-bye till Thanksgiving."
Betty held out her warm little hand. "Good-bye. 'Be good, sweet child, and let who will be clever,'" she quoted, as Rob gave it an awkward shake.
"Practise what you preach, Grandma Betty," he said, in a severe tone, but his blue eyes were smiling into her brown ones with a softened light in them. She had been a merry little comrade in the summer just gone, and then there was something in the brown eyes that made everybody smile on Betty.
As she turned to go she saw that the last crumb of gingerbread had disappeared, and stooping, picked up the plate. She recognized it as her godmother's pet piece of Delft ware. "I'll take this in before anybody steps in it," she said.
"Thanks," said Lloyd, lazily, without looking around, but she turned to Rob as soon as they were alone. "Betty is always so thoughtful about such things. I wouldn't know how to get along without her now, and to think, when she first came heah to live, I wasn't suah that I wanted her! I had nevah had to divide with anybody befoah, and I was afraid I should be jealous. But nobody could be jealous of Betty. She seems like a real suah enough sistah now, and bo'ding-school will be twice the fun because she can go with me."
"Betty's a brick," agreed Rob emphatically, "the nicest girl I know, except you, but I can't imagine her planning scrapes. She's too much afraid of hurting somebody's feelings for that."
"She's not planning scrapes. Neithah of us want to do anything really bad. We only want to stir the seminary up a bit, and make it lively. We're growing up so fast that if we don't have some fun soon, it will be too late. In only a few moah yeahs I'll be through school, and then I'll have to be a débutante and settle down to be propah and young ladified. Mom Beck always used to be telling me to 'sit still and be a little lady,' and if there's anything I despised it was that."
"How fast the shadows grow long these afternoons," said Rob, presently, looking at his watch. "It's nearly time for me to go. Come on down to the measuring-tree. We mustn't forget our good-bye ceremony."
Seven Septembers were marked on the tall locust that they called their measuring-tree. It towered above a rustic seat half-way down the avenue. Lloyd laid one finger on the lowest notch and another on the next mark a few inches above it.
"There wasn't neahly so much difference in our heights when I was five and you six as there is now," she said, with a little sigh. "You're almost as tall as Papa Jack, and I'm only up to yoah shouldah. You're growing away from me so fast, Bobby."
Rob threw back his shoulders complacently. "Daddy says that is why I am so awkward; that my height is too much for a fourteen-year-old boy to manage gracefully. I'll soon be through growing at this rate. Maybe after a couple of years more I'll not have to change the mark on the tree."
"I should certainly hope so," cried Lloyd, "unless you want to be a giant in a side-show. Heah! Measuah me."
She stiffened herself against the trunk of the tree, standing as erect as possible, while he stuck the blade of his knife into the bark, so close to the top of her head that he almost pinned a lock of the light hair to the tree.
"You've grown a lot too, this last year, Lloyd," he said, looking down at her approvingly.
"Oh, Rob," she cried, with a quick, wistful look upward into his face. "I don't want to grow up. It would be so much nicah if we could stay children always."
"We have had a lot of fun under these old locusts, that's a fact," he admitted, as he began cutting the date opposite the measurements he had just taken. Then he became so absorbed in trying to make the figures neatly that he said nothing more until the task was done.
Lloyd, kneeling on the rustic bench to watch him, was silent also, and for a few minutes the only sound in all the late afternoon sunshine was the soft rustling of the leaves overhead.
"If they could only stay children always!" the locusts were repeating one to another. "Children always! That is the happiest time!" Rob, intent on his carving, never noticed the stirring of the leaves, but the Little Colonel, who in a vague way always seemed to understand the whisperings of these old family sentinels, looked up and listened. As if she were one of them, she began recalling with them the scenes they had looked upon. How long ago seemed those summer days when she measured up only to the first notch. Mom Beck and Rob's faithful old nurse, Dinah, sat on the bench where she was now kneeling, and watched the two children that the locusts were whispering about, romping up and down the avenue. How well she remembered the little blue shoes she wore, and the jingling of the bells on the gay knitted bridle, as they played horse, with Fritz barking wildly at their heels.
The locusts had watched them in all the playtimes that lay between the first and last of those seven notches, eight it would be when Rob had finished; for it was in their friendly shade they had rolled their hoops and spun their tops and played at marbles and made their kites. Here, too, they had set their target when he taught her to shoot with his air rifle, and up and down in the winter holidays they had passed with their skates over their shoulders, with their sleds dragging after them, or their arms piled high with Christmas greens. Here they had tramped, shoulder to shoulder, whistling like two boys; here they had raced their ponies; here they had strolled and played and sung together, the strong, deep friendship yearly growing stronger between them, as they yearly cut a higher notch in the bark of the old measuring-tree.
"If they could only stay children always!" whispered the locusts again, with something so like a sigh in the refrain, that Lloyd felt the tears spring to her eyes, she scarcely knew why.
"There," said Rob, closing his knife and slipping it into his pocket. "I must go now."
As usual, Lloyd walked down to the gate with him. He whistled as he went, a musical, rollicking negro chorus, and she joined in with an accompaniment of little trills and calls, in clever imitation of a mocking-bird. But just before they reached the gate her whistling stopped. Her quick eyes spied a four-leafed clover in the grass, and she sprang forward to get it.
"And heah's anothah!" she cried, triumphantly. "One for you too, Rob. That means good luck for both of us. Put it in yoah pocket."
Rob took the little charm she held out, with a skeptical smile, yet he had imbibed too great a belief in such omens from his old coloured nurse not to regard it with respect. "Thanks," he said, "I have a safer place than my pocket. I'll need all the luck this or anything else