The Little Colonel's Hero

by Annie F. Johnston

  CHAPTER IX.

  AT THE GATE OF THE GIANT SCISSORS

  Each of the girls answered Joyce's letter, but the Little Colonel's wasthe first to find its way to the little brown house in Plainsville,Kansas.

  "Dear Joyce," she wrote. "We were all dreadfully disappointed yesterdaymorning when mother and Papa Jack came back from Madame's villa, and toldus that she could not let us stay there. She has some English people inthe house, and could not give us rooms even for one night. She said thatwe must be disappointed also about seeing Jules, for his Uncle Martin hastaken him to Paris to stay a month. I could have cried, I was so sorry.

  "Ever since we left home I have been planning what we should do when wereached the Gate of the Giant Scissors. I wanted to do all the things thatyou did, as far as possible. I was going to have a barbecue for Jules,down in the garden by the pagoda, and to have some kind of a midsummerfete for the peasant children who came to your Christmas tree.

  "Madame was sorry, too, that she couldn't take us, when she found that wewere your friends, and she asked mother to bring us all out the next dayand have tea in the pagoda. As soon as mother and Papa Jack came back,they took us to see Sister Denisa at the home of the Little Sisters of thePoor. I wish you could have seen her face shine when we told her that wewere friends of yours. She said lovely things about you, and the tearscame into her eyes when she told us how much she missed your visits, afteryou went back to America.

  "Next day we went to Madame's, and she took us over to the Ciseaux placeto see Jules's great-aunt Desiree. She is a beautiful old lady. She talkedabout you as if you were an angel, or a saint with a halo around yourhead. She feels that if it hadn't been for you that she might still beonly 'Number Thirty-nine' among all those paupers, instead of being themistress of her brother's comfortable home.

  "After we left there, we passed the place where Madame's washerwomanlives. A little girl peeped out at us through the hedge. Madame told herto show the American ladies the doll that she had in her arms. She held itout, and then snatched it back as if she were jealous of our even lookingat it. Madame told us that it was the one you gave her at the Noel fete.It is the only doll the child ever had, and she has carried it ever since,even taking it to bed with her. She has named it for you.

  "Madame said in her funny broken English, 'Ah, it is a beautiful thing toleave such memories behind one as Mademoiselle Joyce has left.' I wouldhave told her about the Road of the Loving Heart, but it is so hard forher to understand anything I say. I think you began yours over here inFrance, long before Betty told us of the one in Samoa, or Eugenia gave usthe rings to help us remember.

  "We took Fidelia Sattawhite with us. She is the girl I wrote to you aboutwho was so rude to me, and who quarrelled so much with her brothers onshipboard. I thought it would spoil everything to have her along, butmother insisted on my inviting her. She feels sorry for her. Fidelia actedvery well until we went over to the Ciseaux place. But when we got to thegate she stood and looked up at the scissors over it, and refused to goin. Madame and mother both coaxed and coaxed her, but she was too queerfor anything. She wouldn't move a step. She just stood there in the road,saying, 'No'm, I won't go in. I don't want to. I'll stay out here and waitfor you. No'm, nothing anybody can say can make me go in.'

  "Down she sat on the grass as flat as Humpty Dumpty when he had his greatfall, and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't have madeher get up till she was ready. We couldn't understand why she should actso. She told Betty that night that she was afraid to go through the gate.She remembered that in the story where the old king and the brothers ofEthelried came riding up to the portal 'the scissors leaped from theirplace and snapped so angrily in their faces that they turned and fled.Only those who belong to the kingdom of loving hearts could enter in.' Shetold Betty that she knew she didn't belong to that kingdom, for nobodyloved her, and often she didn't love anybody for days. She was afraid togo through the gate for fear the scissors would leap down at her, and shewould be so ashamed to be driven back before us all. So she thought shewould pretend that she didn't want to go in. She had believed every wordof that fairy tale.

  "We had a beautiful time in the garden. We went down all the winding pathsbetween the high laurel hedges where you used to walk, and almost gotlost, they had so many unexpected twists and turns. The old statues ofAdam and Eve, grinning at each other across the fountain, are so funny. Wesaw the salad beds with the great glass bells over them, and we climbedinto the pear-tree and sat looking over the wall, wondering how you couldhave been homesick in such an interesting place.

  "Berthe served tea in the pagoda, and because we asked about Gabriel'smusic, Madame smiled and sent Berthe away with a message. Pretty soon weheard his old accordeon playing away, out of sight in the coach-house, andthen we knew what kind of music you had at the Noel fete. Sort of wheezy,wasn't it? Still it sounded sweet, too, at that distance.

  "We took Hero with us, and he was really the guest of honour at the party.When Madame saw the Red Cross on his collar and heard his history, shecouldn't do enough for him. She fed him cakes until I thought he surelywould be ill. It was a Red Cross nurse who wrote to Madame about herhusband. He was wounded in the Franco-Prussian war, too, just as was theMajor. Madame went on to get him and bring him home, and she says shenever can forget the kindness that was shown to her by every one whom shemet when she crossed the lines under the protection of the Red Cross.

  "She had met Clara Barton, too, and while we were talking about the goodshe has done, Madame said, 'The Duchess of Baden may have sent her theGold Cross of Remembrance, but the grateful hearts of many a French wifeand mother will for ever hold the rosary of her beautiful deeds!' Wasn'tthat a lovely thing to have said about one?

  "We start to London Thursday, and I'll write again from there. With muchlove from us all, Lloyd."

  The long letter which Lloyd folded and addressed after a carefulre-reading, had not been all written in one day. She had begun it whilewaiting for the others to finish dressing one morning, had added a fewpages that afternoon, and finished it the next evening at bedtime.

  "Heah is my lettah to Joyce, mothah," she said, as she kissed her goodnight. "Won't you look ovah it, please, and see if all the words arespelled right? I want to send it in the mawnin."

  Mrs. Sherman laid the letter aside to attend to later, and forgot it untillong after Lloyd was asleep, and Mr. Sherman had come up-stairs. Then,seeing it on the table, she glanced rapidly over the neatly written pages.

  "I want you to look at this, Jack," she said, presently, handing him theletter. "It is one of the results of the house party for which I am mostthankful. You remember what a task it always was for Lloyd to write aletter. She groaned for days whenever she received one, because it had tobe answered. But when Joyce went away she said, 'Now, Lloyd, I know Ishall be homesick for Locust, and I want to hear every single thing thathappens. Don't you dare send me a stingy two-page letter, half of itapologising for not writing sooner, and half of it promising to do betternext time.

  "'Just prop my picture up in front of you and look me in the eyes andbegin to talk. Tell me all the little things that most people leave out;what he said and she said on the way to the picnic, and how Betty lookedin her daffodil dress, with the sun shining on her brown curls. Write asif you were making pictures for me, so that when I read I can seeeverything you are doing.'

  "It was excellent advice, and as Joyce's letters were written in that way,Lloyd had a good model to copy. Joyce, being an artist, naturally makespictures even of her letters. When Betty went away and began sending homesuch well-written accounts of her journey, I found that Lloyd's styleimproved constantly. She wrote a dear little letter to the Major, lastweek, telling all about Hero. I was surprised to see how prettily sheexpressed her appreciation of his gift."

  Mr. Sherman took the letter and began to read. In two places he correcteda misspelled word, and here and there supplied missing commas andquotation marks. There was a gratified smile on his face
when he finished."That is certainly a lengthy letter for a twelve-year-old girl to write,"he said, in a pleased tone, "and cannot fail to be interesting to Joyce.The letters she wrote me from the Cuckoo's Nest were stiff, short scrawlscompared to this. I must tell my Little Colonel how proud I am of herimprovement."

  His words of praise were not spoken, however. He expressed hisappreciation, later, by leaving on her table a box of foreigncorrespondence paper. It was of the best quality he could find in Tours,and to Lloyd's delight the monogram engraved on it was even prettier thanEugenia's.

  "Why did Papa Jack write this on the first sheet in the box, mothah?" sheasked, coming to her with a sentence written in her father's big,businesslike hand: '_There is no surer way to build a Road of the LovingHeart in the memory of absent friends, than to bridge the space betweenwith the cheer and sympathy and good-will of friendly letters._'

  "Why did Papa Jack write that?" she repeated.

  "Because he saw your last letter to Joyce, and was so pleased with theimprovement you have made," answered Mrs. Sherman. "He has given you agood text for your writing-desk."

  "I'll paste it in the top," said Lloyd. "Then I can't lose it." "'There isno surer way,'" she repeated to herself as she carried the box back to herroom, "'to bridge the space between ... with the cheer and sympathy andgood-will.'"

  There flashed across her mind the thought of some one who needed cheer andsympathy far more than Joyce did, and who would welcome a friendly letterfrom her with its foreign stamp, as eagerly as if it were some realtreasure. Jessie Nolan was the girl she thought of, an invalid with acrippled spine, to whom the dull days in her wheeled chair by the windowseemed endless, and who had so little to brighten her monotonous life.

  "I'll write her a note this minute," thought Lloyd, with a warm glow inher heart. "I'll describe some of the sights we have seen, and send herthat fo' leafed clovah that I found at the chateau yestahday, undah awindow of the great hall where Anne of Brittany was married ovah fo'hundred yeahs ago. I don't suppose Jessie gets a lettah once a yeah."

  When that note was written, Lloyd thought of Mom Beck and the pride thatwould shine in the face of her old black nurse if she should receive aletter from Europe, and how proudly it would be carried around anddisplayed to all the coloured people in the Valley. So with the kindlyimpulse of her father's text still upon her, she dashed off a note to her,telling her of some of her visits to the palaces of bygone kings andqueens.

  Eugenia came in as she finished, but before she closed her desk she jottedtwo names on a slip of paper. Mrs. Waters's was one. She was a little oldEnglishwoman, who did fine laundry work in the Valley, and who was alwaystalking about the 'awthorne' edges in her old English home.

  "I'll write to her from London," Lloyd thought. "If we should get a sightof any of the royal family, how tickled she would be to hear it."

  The other name was Janet McDonald. She was a sad, sweet-faced youngteacher whom Miss Allison always called her "Scotch lassie Jane." "I don'tsuppose she'd care to get a letter from a little girl like me," thoughtLloyd, "but I know she'd love to have a piece of heather from the hillsnear her home. I'll send her a piece when we get up in Scotland."

  The letter that Eugenia sent to Joyce was only a short outline of herplans. She knew that the other girls had sent long accounts of their tripthrough Touraine, so hers was much shorter than usual.

  "Papa has decided to send me to a school just outside of Paris this year," she wrote, "instead of the one in New York, so it will be a long time before I see my native land again. He will have to be over here several months, and can spend Christmas and Easter with me, so I can see him fully as often as I used to at home.

  "It is a very select school. Madame recommends it highly, and I am simply delighted. A New York girl whom I know very well is to be there too, and we are looking forward to all sorts of larks. Thursday we are to start to London for a short tour of England and Scotland. Then the others are going home and papa and I shall go by Chester for my maid. Poor old Eliot has had a glorious vacation at home, she writes. She is to stay at the school with me. We shall be so busy until I get settled that I shall not have time to write soon; but no matter how far my letters may be apart, I am always your devoted EUGENIA."