The Little Colonel at Boarding-School. Johnston Annie Fellows
afire with embarrassment, Lloyd's friendly smile flashed across to her was like a rope thrown to a drowning man, and she could never forget to be grateful for it.
As she was in the primary department, she could only worship Lloyd from afar during the day, but as rooms were assigned irrespective of classes, and hers was in the same wing and on the same floor with Lloyd's, she often left her door ajar in the evening, in the hope of seeing her pass, or hearing her voice in the hall. Once she heard Ida call her Princess. The name struck her fancy, and as "The Princess" Lloyd was henceforth enshrined in her adoring little heart. Lloyd often caught her admiring glances in chapel, and several times found little offerings in her desk on Monday mornings, when the old carryall came back from the Budine farm with the little girl and the huge carpet-bag.
There was an enormous red apple one time, polished to the highest degree of shininess; several ears of pop-corn at another, and once a stiff little bunch of magenta zinnias and yellow chrysanthemums. There was never any name left with them. Lloyd guessed the giver, but she did not realize what a large place she occupied in Magnolia's affections, or how the child choked with embarrassment till she almost swallowed her chewing-gum, whenever Lloyd chanced to meet her in the hall with a friendly good morning.
"Let's go down to the playhouses and see if the green is bleaching out of Magnolia's hair," proposed Lloyd at the afternoon recess, with all her old-time heartiness; and again the girls forgot to wonder why she stayed with them instead of wandering off with Ida to the orchard.
Just as they reached the spring a shout went up from the circle of little girls gathered around Magnolia. She was facing them defiantly, her fat little face red with mortification.
"What's the matter, Elise?" asked Allison, in a big-sister tone. "Why are you all teasing Magnolia?"
"I'm not teasing her," cried Elise, indignantly. "I told her just now not to mind anything they said, and I'd lend her my paper-doll bride to play with till next Friday afternoon."
"She said that she learned to read in a graveyard, off of the tombstones," giggled Anna Louise, "and it seemed so funny that we couldn't help laughing."
Magnolia hung her head, twisting a corner of her apron in her fat little fingers, and wishing that the earth would open and swallow her. She had seen the amusement in the Little Colonel's face, and it hurt worse than the ridicule of all the others combined. She felt that she must die of shame.
"That's nothing to laugh at," said Betty, seeing the distress in her face, and divining what the child was suffering. "I used to have lovely times in the old graveyard at the Cuckoo's Nest. Don't you remember how peaceful and sweet it was, Lloyd?" she asked, turning to the Little Colonel, who nodded assent. "Davy and I used to walk up there every afternoon in summer to smell the pinks and the lilies, and read what was carved on the old stones. And we'd sit there in the grass and listen to the redbirds in the cedars, and make up stories about all the people lying there asleep. And Davy learned most of his letters there."
"That's the way it was at Loretta, wasn't it, Maggie!" exclaimed Elise, encouragingly. "Tell them about it."
But Maggie hung her head and twisted the toes of her stubby shoes around in the dust, unable to say a word.
"I'll tell them, then," said Elise, turning to the larger girls. "They used to live near the convent at Loretta, and one of their neighbours, a girl lots older than Maggie, used to take her up to the graveyard nearly every day. There wasn't any place else to go, you know, and it was lonesome out there in the country. This girl was named Corono, after one of the Sisters who was dead. She had been awfully good to both their families, when they were sick, and Corono and Maggie used to make daisy-chains and crowns out of the honeysuckles and roses, 'cause Corono means crown, and put them on her grave. And every time they would go, Maggie would learn a new letter off one of the tombstones, and after awhile she got so she could read."
"How interesting!" exclaimed Lloyd, all unconscious of the way her words set Maggie's heart to beating with pleasure. Elise turned toward her with a motherly air that seemed very funny considering that she was smaller than the child whom she was championing so valiantly. "I'm going to ask them about that album right now, Maggie. You run back to school and get it."
Glad of any excuse to make her escape, Maggie started off to the house as fast as her fat little legs would carry her. Deprived of their sport, the smaller girls returned to their playhouses and the older ones strolled leisurely back toward the seminary. Elise tagged along beside Lloyd and Allison.
"Maggie has gone to get her autograph-album," she explained. "It used to be her mother's when she went to school at the convent, but now it's Maggie's. Not more than half the leaves are written on, and her mother said she could use it if she'd be very careful. She wants you girls to write in it. She has had it in her desk for two weeks, trying to get up her courage to ask you, Lloyd, but she was afraid you would laugh. I told her I wasn't afraid. I'd ask you. She wants all the big girls to write in it, but she said 'specially 'The Princess.'"
"The Princess!" echoed Lloyd, in surprise.
"Yes, that's what she calls you all the time. 'Cause you were that in the play, I suppose. She thinks you are the loveliest person she ever saw, and says if she could just look like you and be like you for one day, she'd die happy. And once" – Elise lowered her voice confidentially – "she told me that when she says her prayers every night, she always prays that some day she'll grow nice enough for you to like her."
"The poor little thing!" cried Lloyd, much touched. "To think of her caring like that! You tell her, Elise, that of co'se we'll all write in it. I shall be glad to."
Elise ran on after Maggie, happy in the accomplishment of her kindly assumed mission, and presently came back with the book which she left in Lloyd's hands.
"Look, girls, what a funny old-fashioned thing it is!" cried Lloyd, turning to Katie Mallard, who with Betty and Kitty were just behind them. All the others came crowding around also.
"Heah is 'Album of the Heart' in gilt lettahs on the back, with such funny plump little cupids sitting in the rose-wreath around it."
"And, oh, see!" cried Betty, glancing over her shoulder at the delicately traced names of the gentle nuns, and the girls who had been playmates of Maggie's mother in a far-away past. "They are all dated over forty years ago."
"Of course," answered Katie. "Nobody is old-fashioned enough nowadays to have an autograph-album. They are so old-timey and out of date."
"Wait a minute, please," said Betty, as Lloyd slowly turned the leaves. "What is that verse signed Sister Corono? Oh, it is an acrostic. See? The initial letters of each line, read downward, spell Martha. That must be Mrs. Budine's name."
Several voices read the verse in unison:
"May thy life be ever led
Along the path of duty,
Rich in deeds of helpfulness,
That fill sad hearts with beauty.
Happiness shall then attend thee,
And all the blessed saints befriend thee."
"Isn't that sweet?" cried Betty. "I'm going to write one for Magnolia. There's something pathetic about that child to me. She looks so wistful sometimes. She's dreadfully odd, but it's mean of the girls to laugh at her."
"I'll do something extra nice, too," said Lloyd. "I can't write poetry, but I'll copy a bar of music from one of the Princess Winsome songs. I think notes look so pretty copied in pen and ink."
"I'll paint a magnolia blossom in water-colours," said Allison, not to be outdone by the others.
"And I – oh, I'll draw a kitten for her to remember my name by," said Kitty, laughing.
As both Allison and Kitty had real talent for drawing, the girls who saw the pages they decorated were moved to envy; and when Betty added an acrostic on the name Magnolia, nobody had a word of ridicule for the little Album of the Heart, that was serving two generations as a storehouse of sentiment. Betty's verse was passed around the school:
"May our friendship be as sweet
As