The Little Colonel's Hero

by Annie F. Johnston

  CHAPTER X.

  ON THE WING

  "Who is going away?" asked Lloyd, one afternoon, of the girls who weresitting in her room, manicuring their nails. "There goes a pile of trunksout to the baggage wagon."

  As she spoke, a carriage drove up to the door of the hotel, and Fanchettewent out with the poodle in her arms.

  "The Sattawhites," answered Eugenia. "There's Howl and Henny climbing intothe carriage, and, oh, look, girls! There comes Mrs. Sattawhite herself. Ihaven't had many glimpses of her. Isn't she gorgeous! You know they had toleave," she continued, turning to the girls. "I forgot to tell you whathappened early this morning while you were down-town.

  "I was up in my room writing to Joyce, when I heard a rumble and a runningdown in the back hall. Somebody called 'Fire! Fire!' Then somebody elsetook it up, and the old gentleman at the end of the hall, who neverappears in public until noon, came bursting out of his room in his bathrobe, his shoes in one hand and his false teeth in the other. It was thefunniest sight! There was wild excitement for a few minutes. One womanbegan throwing things out of the window, and another stood and shriekedand wrung her hands.

  "The waiter with the long black side-whiskers tore up-stairs and grabbedhis arms full of those bottles in the racks--you know--thosefire-extinguishing bottles that have some kind of chemical stuff in them.There was a strong smell of smoke and a little puff of it curling up fromunder the stairs. He threw all those bottles down into the lower hall. Youcan imagine the smash there was when they struck the stone floor.

  "Papa rushed down to investigate, at the first alarm. He found that it wasonly Howl and Henny playing hook-and-ladder with a little red wagon. Theyhad taken an old flannel blouse of Kenny's and set fire to it. Howlexplained that they did it because woollen rags make such a nice thicksmoke, and last a long time, and when they yelled fire they were not toblame, he said, if other people didn't know that they were 'jes'a-playin', and went and yelled in earnest.'

  "Papa took their part, and said that two boys with as much energy as theyhave must find an outlet somewhere, and that it was no wonder that theywere restless, cooped up in a hotel day after day, with no amusement buttheir prim walks with the maid and the poodle. But the old gentleman whohad been so frightened that he ran out in public without his teeth, andthe woman who had thrown her toilet bottles out of the window and brokenthem, were furious. They complained to the landlord, and said that it wasnot the first offence. The boys were always annoying them.

  "So the landlord had to go to Mrs. Sattawhite. She found out what the oldgentleman said, that a mother who had to go travelling around all overEurope, giving her time and attention to society and a miserable poodle,had better put her children in an orphan asylum before she started. Shewas so indignant that I could hear her talking away down in the office.She said that she would leave the instant that Fanchette could get thetrunks packed. So there they go."

  Mrs. Sattawhite had sailed back to the office during the telling ofEugenia's story, so their departure was delayed a moment. When she cameout again, Fidelia followed her sulkily. Just as they drove off, shelooked up at the open window, and saw the girls, who were waving good-bye.Then a smile flickered across her sorry little face, for, moved by somesudden impulse, the Little Colonel leaned out and threw her a kiss.

  "I suppose I'll nevah see her again," she said, thoughtfully, as thecarriage rolled around a corner, out of sight. "I wish now that I had beenniceah to her. We may both change evah so much by the time we are grown,yet if I live to be a hundred I'll always think of her as the girl who wasso quarrelsome that the English lady groaned, 'Oh, those dreadful Americanchildren!' And I suppose she'll remembah me for the high and mighty way Itried to snub her whenevah I had a chance."

  As she spoke there was a knock at the door, and a maid brought in apackage for Lloyd. "Oh, look, girls!" she exclaimed, holding up a tinypair of silver embroidery scissors, Fidelia's parting gift They wereevidently something that had been given her, for the little silver sheathinto which they were thrust was beautifully engraved in old Englishletters with the name "_Fidelia_." Around them was wrapped a strip ofrumpled paper on which was scrawled: "For you to remember me by. That dayyou took me to the Gate of the Giant Scissors was the best time I everhad."

  "Poor little thing!" exclaimed Betty. "To think that she was afraid to goin, for fear that she didn't belong to the kingdom, and that the scissorsmight leap down and drive her back."

  "Oh, if I had only known!" sighed Lloyd, remorsefully. "I feel too meanfor anything! If I'd only believed that it was because she hadn't beenbrought up to know any bettah that she acted so horrid, and that all thetime she really wanted to be liked! Mothah told me I ought to put myselfin her place, and make allowances for her, but I didn't want to even try,and I nevah was nice to her but once--that time I gave her the candy. ThenI was only pretendin' I cared for her, just for fun. I didn't want her togo with us to the Scissahs gate that day. Mothah made me invite her. Ifussed about it. I'm goin' to write to her the minute I finish polishin'my nails, and tell her how sorry I am that I didn't leave a kindah memorybehind me."

  They rubbed away in silence for a few minutes, then Lloyd spoke again. "Isuahly have enough things now to remind me about the memory roads I amtryin' to leave behind me for everybody. Every time I look at this littlering it says 'A Road of the Loving Heart.' And the scissahs will recallthe fairy tale. It was only unselfish service that kept them bright andshining, and only those who belonged to the kingdom of loving hearts couldgo in at the gate. Then there's the Red Cross of Geneva on Hero'scollah--there couldn't be a moah beautiful memory than the one left by allwho have wo'n that Red Cross."

  "Yes," said Betty, holding up a hand to inspect the pink finger nails nowpolished to her satisfaction. "And there is the white flower that the twolittle Knights of Kentucky wear. Keith said that his badge meant the samething to him that my ring does to me. Their motto is 'Right the wrong.'That's what the Giant Scissors always did, and that's what Robert LouisStevenson tried to do for the Samoan chiefs. That is why they loved himand built the road."

  "Funny, how they all sing the same song," said Eugenia. "It's just thesame, only they sing it in different keys."

  After Betty and Eugenia had gone to their rooms, Lloyd sat a long timetoying with the silver scissors, before writing her note ofacknowledgment. The sheath was of hammered silver, and around the name wasa beautifully wrought design of tiny clustered grapes.

  "It is one of the prettiest things that my wondah-ball has unrolled," shesaid to herself, "and it has certainly taught me a lesson. Poah littleFidelia! If I'd only known that she cared, there were lots of times thatshe could have gone with us, and it would have made her so happy. If I hadonly put myself in her place when mothah told me! But I was so cross andhateful I enjoyed bein' selfish. Now all the bein' sorry in the worldwon't change things!"

  It would be too much like a guide-book if this story were to give a recordof the next two weeks. Betty's good-times book was filled, down to thelast line on the last page, and the partnership diary had to have severalextra leaves pasted inside the cover. From morning until night there was aconstant round of sightseeing. The shops and streets of London first, theAbbey and the Tower, a hundred places that they had read about and longedto see, and after they had seen, longed to come back to for another visit.

  "We can only take a bird's-eye view now and hurry on, but we mustcertainly come back some other summer," said Mr. Sherman, when Lloydwanted to linger in the Tower of London among the armour and weapons thathad been worn by the old knights, centuries ago. He repeated it when Bettylooked back longingly at the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, wherethe great organ was echoing down the solemn aisles, and again when Eugeniabegged for another coach ride out to Hampton Court.

  "'Gay go up and gay go down To ring the bells of London town,"

  sang the Little Colonel. "I am having such a good time that I'd like tostay on right heah all the rest of the summah."

  But she thought t
hat about nearly every other place they visited, Windsor,and Warwick Castle, and Shakespeare's birthplace,--the quaint littlevillage on the Avon; Ambleside, where they took the coach for long ridesamong the lakes made famous by the poets who lived among them and madethem immortal with their songs.

  From these English lakes to Scottish moors, from the land of hawthorne tothe land of heather, from low green meadows where the larks sang, to thehighlands where plaided shepherds watched their flocks, they went withenthusiasm that never waned. They found the "banks and braes o' BonnieDoon," and wandered along the banks of more than one little river thatthey had loved for years in song and story.

  "Haven't we learned a lot!" exclaimed Eugenia, as they journeyed back byrail to Liverpool, where the Shermans and Betty were to take the steamer."I'm sure that I've learned ten times as much as I would in school, thislast year."

  "And had such a lovely time in the bargain," added Lloyd. "It's goin' tomake a difference in the way I study this wintah, and in what I read. Ifwe evah come ovah heah again, I intend to know something about Englishhistory. Then the places we visit will be so much moah interestin'. I'llnot spend so much time on fairy tales and magazine stories. I'm goin' tomake my reading count for something aftah this. It was dreadfullymawtifyin' to find out that I was so ignorant, and how much there is inthe world to know, that I had nevah even heard of."

  That afternoon, in the big Liverpool hotel, the trunks were packed for thelast time.

  "Seems something like the night befo' Christmas," said the Little Colonel,as she counted the packages piled on the floor beside her trunk. They werethe presents that she had chosen for the friends at home.

  "Nineteen, twenty," she went on counting, "and that music box for Mom Beckmakes twenty-one, and the souvenir spoons for the Walton girls maketwenty-five. Oh, I didn't show you these," she said.

  "This is Allison's," she explained, opening a little box. "See the caldronand the bells on the handle? I got this in Denmark. That's from Andersen'stale of the swineherd's magic kettle, you know. Kitty's is from TamO'Shanter's town. That's why there is a witch and a broomstick engraved onit. This spoon for Elise came from Berne. I think that's a darling littlebear's head on the handle. What did you get, Betty?" she continued,turning to her suddenly. "You haven't shown me a single thing."

  Betty laid down the spoons she was admiring. "You'll not think they areworth carrying home," she said, slowly. "I couldn't buy handsome presentslike yours, you know, so I just picked up little things here and there,that wouldn't be worth anything at all if they hadn't come from famousplaces."

  "Show them to me, anyhow," persisted Lloyd.

  Betty untied a small box. "It's only a handful of lava," she explained,"that I picked up on Vesuvius. But Davy will like it because he thinks avolcano is such a wonderful thing. Here are some pebbles the boys will beinterested in, because I found them on the field of Waterloo. They aremaking collections of such things, and Waterloo is a long way from theCuckoo's Nest. They haven't any foreign things at all.

  "I wanted to take something nice to Miss Allison, but I couldn't afford tobuy anything fine enough. So I just pressed these buttercups that grew bythe gate of Anne Hathaway's cottage. See how sunshiny and satiny they are?Cousin Carl gave me a photograph of the cottage, and I fastened thebuttercups here on the side. I couldn't offer such a little gift to somepeople, but Miss Allison is the kind that appreciates the thought thatprompts a gift more than the thing itself."

  There were a few more photographs, a handkerchief for Mom Beck, and astring of cheap Venetian beads for May Lily. The most expensive article inthe collection was a little mosaic pin for her Cousin Hetty. "I got thatin Venice," said Betty. "Cousin Hetty hasn't a single piece of jewelry toher name, and she never gets any presents but plain, useful things, so Iam sure she will be pleased."

  Lloyd turned away, thinking of the great contrast between her gifts andBetty's, and wishing that she had not made such a display of hers.

  "If I were in Betty's place," she said to herself, "I'd be so jealous ofme that I could hardly stand it. She's just a little orphan alone in theworld, and I have mothah and Papa Jack and Hero and Tarbaby for my veryown."

  But the Little Colonel need not have wasted any sympathy on Betty. Whileone stowed away her expensive presents in her trunk, the other wrapped upher little souvenirs, humming softly to herself. It would have been hardto find anywhere in the queen's dominion, a happier child than Betty, asshe sat beside her trunk, thinking of the beautiful journey with CousinCarl, just ending, and the life awaiting her at Locust with her godmotherand the Little Colonel. There was only one cloud on her horizon, and thatwas the parting with Eugenia and her father.

  That last evening they spent together in the private parlour adjoiningMrs. Sherman's room. Early after dinner Lloyd and her father went down topay a visit to Hero, and see that he was properly cared for. He had had ahard time since reaching England, for the laws regarding the quarantiningof dogs are strict, and it had taken many shillings on Mr. Sherman's partand some tears on the Little Colonel's to procure him the privileges hehad.

  "The whole party will be glad when he is safely landed in Kentucky, I amsure," said Mrs. Sherman, as the door closed after them. "I'd neverconsent to take another dog on such a journey, after all the trouble andexpense this one has been. Lloyd is so devoted to him that she isheartbroken if he has to be tied up or made uncomfortable in any way.She'll probably come up-stairs in tears to-night because he wants tofollow her, and must be kept a prisoner."

  While they waited for her return, Mrs. Sherman drew Eugenia into her roomfor a last confidential talk, and Betty, nestling beside Cousin Carl onthe sofa, tried to thank him for all his fatherly kindness to her on theirlong pilgrimage together. But he would not let her put her gratitude inwords. His answer was the same that it had been that last night of thehouse party, when, looking down the locust avenue gleaming with its myriadof lights, like some road to the City of the Shining Ones, she had criedout: "Oh, _why_ is everybody so good to me?"

  The others came in presently, and the evening seemed to be on wings, itflew so swiftly, as they planned for another summer to be spent at Locust,when Eugenia should come home from her year in the Paris school. Andnever, it seemed, were good nights followed so quickly by good mornings,or good mornings by good-byes.

  Almost before they realised that the parting time had actually come, theLittle Colonel and Betty were leaning over the railing of the greatsteamer, waving their handkerchiefs to Eugenia and her father on thedock. Smaller and smaller grew the familiar outlines, wider and wider thedistance between the ship and the shore, until at last even Eugenia's redjacket faded into a mere speck, and it was no longer of any use to wavegood-bye.