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"That new girl is perfectly lovely!" she declared to Sue Bell, as they moved off together. She repeated the opinion so often after she reached the orchard, and had so much to say about Ida Shane's hair and Ida Shane's dimple, and the stacks of rings she had, and the stylish clothes she wore, that some of the girls exchanged amused glances. Kitty Walton remarked in a teasing tone that she believed the new girl must have hoodooed Janie Clung, so that she couldn't do anything but sing her praises.
"You ought to be ashamed to talk that way, Kitty Walton," cried Janie, in angry defence of her new friend, "especially when she said such nice things about your family being celebrities, and that was one reason her aunt sent her to this school, because the daughters of such a famous general were pupils here. And she thinks Lloyd is so aristocratic-looking, and Betty awfully sweet, and so smart to write that play. And she said, even if you all are lots younger than herself, she'd rather have you for her friends than any of the seniors, because she could tell just by looking at you that you belong to the best old families in the place."
"What did she say about the rest of us?" cried Mittie Dupong, mockingly, winking at her nearest neighbour.
Janie, turning in time to see the wink, answered shortly, "Nothing. She doesn't intend to make friends with everybody."
It was an indiscreet speech, and the moment it was made she realized that it would be counted against Ida, instead of in her favour, as she had intended it to be. Significant glances passed among those who had not been included in Ida's classification of celebrities or first families, and Mittie Dupong retorted, with a shrug of her shoulders, "Hm! Miss Shane may find that there are people in the world as particular as herself. Who is she, anyway, that she should give herself such airs?"
No one answered the question, but there was sown at that moment in more than one girl's mind a little seed of dislike which took deep root as the days went by. But if Ida's thoughtlessly repeated speech worked her ill in one way, it had an opposite effect with those whose favour she wished most to gain. Allison and Kitty met her with especial friendliness when Janie stopped them at the swing, as they started home at noon. It was pleasant for them to feel that she had been drawn to the school partly on their account. It gave them a sense of importance they had never experienced before.
Lloyd, too, unconsciously influenced by the flattering recollection that she had been singled out from all the others as aristocratic-looking, took especial care to be gracious when she found herself seated across from Ida at the dinner-table. The old pupils had been given their usual places, but Betty and Lloyd were among the newcomers.
"Now I feel for the first time that I'm really away at bo'ding-school," Lloyd said, with a smile, which included Ida in the conversation, as she glanced down the long table, stretched the entire length of the dining-room. "It seems as if we might be hundreds of miles away from home instead of one. I can hardly believe that we are still in Lloydsboro Valley. Betty, isn't it time for us to begin to feel homesick?"
"Not till dark comes," answered Betty. "Twilight is the regulation time in boarding-school stories."
Lloyd smiled across at Ida. "Do you think you are going to be homesick?"
"Oh, no, indeed!" answered Ida, in her slow, sweet voice. The dimple which had charmed Janie flashed into sight. "This is the fourth boarding-school I have been sent to. I am used to going to new places."
"The fo'th!" exclaimed Lloyd, with surprised emphasis. A curious "Why?" almost slipped off her tongue, but she stopped it politely in the middle, and managed to stammer instead, as she salted her soup, "Wh-what fun you must have had!"
"I have," answered Ida, with a glance toward the end of the table where Miss Bina McCannister sat grim and watchful. "Sometime I'll tell you about some of my adventures."
As the dinner progressed, both Lloyd and Betty felt themselves yielding to the soft charm of manner which had won little Janie Clung's admiration, and by the time they had finished their dessert they were ready to join in Janie's most enthusiastic praises of the new girl.
"Do you know that my room is in the same wing with yours, just next door?" Ida asked, as they rose from the table. "At least, I think so, for as I came down to dinner I saw some trunks being carried in there, marked E. L. L. and L. S."
"I am so glad!" exclaimed Lloyd. "I wondered who we should have for neighbahs. Betty and I ran up there a few minutes this mawning, but the beds and things mothah wanted us to use hadn't been sent ovah from Locust, and it was so topsy-turvy we didn't stay."
"I came yesterday," said Ida, as the three went up the stairs together, "so I've had time to investigate. I imagine we shall be able to do about as we please. You see, this wing of the house was added several years after the main part was built, so there are four rooms on this floor, nicely cut off by themselves."
She opened the door from the main corridor, and led the way into the narrow side-hall which separated the four rooms from the rest of the house.
"Several nights in the week the three of us will be here alone," she said. "This tiny room at the end belongs to that queer little Magnolia Budine whom everybody laughed at this morning. She lives near enough the seminary to go home every Friday night and stay till Monday morning. The three Clark sisters have this big room next to hers, and they go home to spend Sundays, too. By the way, wasn't it ridiculous the way Miss McCannister got their names all balled up this morning in the history division, trying to say Carrie Clark, Clara Clark, Cora Clark?"
"It was funny," laughed Lloyd. "Kitty Walton whispered to me that they ought to be called the triplets, because every one trips and stuttahs ovah their names. It's as bad as trying to say 'Six slim, slick, silvah saplings.'"
They had reached the third room by this time, the door of which stood open. "This is ours," said Lloyd. "The very same one mothah had one term when she was a girl."
She paused on the threshold, looking around the large, airy apartment, well pleased.
"I wonder if the outside stairway was built when she was here," said Ida. "I discovered it yesterday."
"I nevah heard her say anything about it," said Lloyd. "Where is it?"
"This way," answered Ida, leading them past her own room, which came next, and pushing aside a heavy portière which covered a door at the opposite end of the hall from Magnolia Budine's room.
"The matron told me that a slight fire in the school, one time, led to the building, of this extra means of escape, but the girls are forbidden to use the stairs for any other purpose."
"Let's open it," proposed Lloyd, daringly, fumbling with the bolt, which had lain so long unused that it had rusted in its socket. It moved stiffly with a grating sound as she pushed it back. The door swung open on to a small, uncovered landing, from which an open staircase descended to the rear of the kitchen.
"I've often seen these steps from the outside," said Lloyd, "but I didn't know where they led to. No, I nevah heard mothah speak of them. Isn't it fun to have a secret stairway of our own! Why do you suppose they have a curtain ovah the doah?"
"To hide it," said Betty, wisely, "so that the daily sight of it will not put it into our naughty heads to make use of it, and prowl around at nights. They evidently think 'How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done.' So they cover it up."
"That's from Shakespeare, isn't it?" asked Ida. "I'd give anything if I could make appropriate quotations like that, but I never think of the right thing till it's too late. But then, I suppose it comes easy to any one smart enough to write as you do. I am so anxious to read that play of yours, 'The Rescue of the Princess Winsome.' I was told that there is a copy in the library. Your room ought to be called 'Sweet Peas,' since it belongs to a princess and a poetess."
Betty blushed with pleasure. They had bolted the door again and were standing in front of their room, as Ida proposed the name of Sweet Peas.
"It is kind of you to give us such a sweet name for our room," said Lloyd. "Will you come in while we unpack?"
"No, thank you," was the answer. "I have some letters to write before four o'clock. That is the time, I believe, when we all have to turn out together for a walk." She turned away, but came back to ask, hesitatingly, "There's one thing I'd like to ask, Lloyd; do you mind if I call you Princess instead of Lloyd? The Princess Winsome? That name seems to suit you so well. The first thing I noticed about you was the proud little way you lift your head. You carry yourself like one."
A bright colour swept across Lloyd's face. "Of co'se I don't mind," she said, "and it is deah of you to care to call me that."
When Ida went back to her own room, it was with the comfortable feeling that she had left a very agreeable impression behind her.
"Isn't she a darling!" exclaimed Lloyd, enthusiastically, when she and Betty were alone, with their door closed. "She is pretty and stylish, and certainly has lovely mannahs. Besides, she is as sma'ht as can be, and mighty entahtaining. I've taken a great fancy to her."
"So have I," admitted Betty. "I love to sit and watch her. The least thing she says in that soft, slow way sounds sweet. I am so glad that her room is next to ours."
Mrs. Sherman had advised taking few furnishings to the seminary, but Lloyd insisted that they could not feel that they were really away at boarding-school unless they had all that goes to equip a modern college girl's room. So pictures and posters, sofa-pillows and book-racks were crowded into the overflowing trunks. A chafing-dish, a well-furnished tea-basket, a dainty chocolate-pot, and a mandolin were brought over in the carriage that took Mrs. Sherman to the depot. Both girls were kept busy until four o'clock, finding places to put their numerous possessions. Neither one realized how far she had passed under the spell of the new pupil, but unconsciously every picture they hung and every article they unpacked was located with a thought of her approval.
Once as Lloyd passed the mirror, when Betty's back was turned, she paused to look at her reflection with the pleased consciousness that Ida had spoken the truth; that she did hold her head proudly and carry herself well. And Betty several times passed her hand up over the brown curls on her forehead, recalling the graceful gesture of the white, heavily ringed hand. While she tacked up posters and put away clothes, she chattered busily with Lloyd, but through her thoughts, like an undercurrent to their conversation, ran a few musical lines suggested by the white hands and low voice. An "Ode to Ida" had already begun to weave itself into shape in her busy little brain.
A few minutes before the gong sounded, summoning the girls to the first of their daily walks, Ida tapped on the door. She had only stopped to ask a question about the rules, she said, and must run back and put on her hat; but catching sight of a picture of the long avenue at Locust, which hung over Lloyd's bed, she crossed the room to examine it.
"You've made a perfect love of a room with all these handsome things," she said, looking around admiringly. "But" – she scanned the few photographs on the mantel, and the two on the dressing-table in their frames of beaten silver – "it seems so queer, you know. You haven't the picture of a single boy. Didn't you bring any?"
"No!" answered Lloyd, in surprise. "Why should I?"
"But you have some at home, haven't you?" persisted Ida.
"Yes, I have lovely ones of Allison Walton's cousins, Malcolm and Keith MacIntyre, taken in the costumes they wore as 'two little knights of Kentucky.' And I have one of Ranald Walton taken in his captain's uniform, and nearly a dozen of Rob Moore. He's given me one whenevah he's had them taken, from the time he wore kilts and curls."
"My dear!" exclaimed Ida. "Why didn't you bring them? They would have been such an addition."
"Because I don't want any boy's pictuah stuck up on my dressing-table. I like to have them, because they've been my playmates always, and when we're grown up I'd like to remembah just how they looked, but that's no reason I want my walls plastahed with them now."
"What an original little thing you are, Princess," exclaimed Ida, with a laugh, which would have nettled Lloyd had not the compliment and the title taken away its sting. "Come into my room and see how my walls are plastered, as you call it."
Lloyd stared around in astonishment when Ida threw open her door. Boyish faces looked back at her from every side. Handsome ones, homely ones, in groups, in pairs, framed and unframed, strung together with ribbons, or stuck in behind Japanese fans. Added to all the other pictures of girls she had known in the three boarding-schools which she had attended, it gave the room the appearance of a photograph gallery.
"Well!" exclaimed Lloyd, at length, after a long, slow survey, "I don't see what you want them for." Unconsciously her head took the haughty uplift which Ida had admired.
"For the same reason that an Indian hangs up all the scalp-locks he takes, I suppose," drawled Ida, sweetly. "Of course, you're young yet. You don't understand. But you'll look at things differently when you are as near 'sweet sixteen' as I am, Princess."
Again that flattering title took the sting out of the patronizing manner which Lloyd otherwise would have resented. Was it only the afternoon before, she wondered, that she had cried out to the friendly old locusts her longing to be a child always?
As Ida crossed the room with a graceful sweep of long skirts, and settled her hat with its clusters of violets jauntily over her fluffy pompadour, there stole into the Little Colonel's heart, for the first time, a vague desire; a half-defined wish that she, too, were as near the borders of grown-up land as "sweet sixteen."
CHAPTER III
IDA'S SECRET
"Betty," said Lloyd, one morning, the third week of school, as she sat on the edge of her bed lacing her shoes, "you know that little glove-case you embroidered for my birthday present; would you feel hurt if I were to give it away?"
"No," answered Betty, slowly, turning from the mirror, brush in hand. "I made it to please you, and if you can find more pleasure in giving it away than in keeping it, I'd be glad for you to give it away."
"Honestly, Betty?"
"Yes, honestly." The brown eyes turned with truthful directness toward Lloyd.
"Oh, you are such a comfortable sort of person to live with, Betty Lewis," exclaimed the Little Colonel, with a sigh of relief. "Most girls would think that I didn't appreciate all those fine stitches you put into it, and didn't care for eithah the gift or the givah if I was willing to part with it; but I was suah you would undahstand. You see, the violets on it make it such a perfect match for everything on Ida's dressing-table, that it seems as if it ought to belong to her. I can't look at a violet now without thinking of her. She is so much like one, don't you think? Refined and sweet, and her eyes are such a dark blue, and have such a shy, appealing way of looking out from undah those long lashes. And have you evah noticed what delicious sachet she uses? So faint it's not much moah than the whispah of a smell, but there's always a touch of it about everything belonging to her. I call her Violet all the time now."
Only the mirror saw the bored expression that shaded Betty's face for an instant. For the last week, morning, noon, and night, she had heard nothing from Lloyd but Ida's praises. A sudden intimacy had sprung up between the two which threatened to eclipse all Lloyd's other friendships. Betty began brushing her hair vigorously. "Will you promise not to feel hurt if I give you a piece of advice?" she asked.
Lloyd nodded, lazily wondering what was coming, as she reached down to pick up her other shoe. She did not put it on, however, but sat with it in her hand, staring at Betty, scarcely believing that she heard aright, the advice was so different from anything she had expected.
"Then don't call her Violet before the other girls. And if I were in your place I don't believe I'd talk about her to them, quite as much as you do. You see," she hurried on, noticing the quick flush of displeasure on Lloyd's face, "I don't suppose you realize how much you do talk about her, or how you have changed lately. Last year you were good friends with all the girls, ready for any fun they proposed. They liked that independent, bossy little way you had of deciding things for them. That was one thing that made you so popular. But now you always wait to find out what Ida thinks, and what Ida wants, and they feel that you've not only dropped your old friends for a stranger whom you've known only three weeks, but that in some sort of a way – I can't explain it – you've dropped your old self too. Really, I believe that they are as jealous of the influence she has over you, as of the way she monopolizes you."
Betty did not see the gathering storm in the Little Colonel's face, and went serenely on brushing her hair. "You know she's so much older than you. They always smile so significantly when she calls you Princess, as if they thought she was doing it to flatter you. While they wouldn't say it openly to me, of course, I've heard them whispering among themselves that Ida had hoodooed you as she had Janie Clung, so that all you live for nowadays is to wait on her and buy her candy and violets."
Bang! went Lloyd's shoe against the wall. She had sent it spinning across the room with all her force. Betty, turning in dismay, saw that the advice which she had given with the kindest of motives, had aroused the Little Colonel's temper to white heat.
"The mean, hateful things!" she cried. "They've no right to talk about Ida that way! The idea of her stooping to such a thing as to flatter any one for what she could get out of them! It's an outrageous – "
"But Lloyd, dear," interrupted Betty. "Listen a minute. You promised that you wouldn't get mad, or I wouldn't have said a word."
"I'm not mad with you, but Mittie Dupong and some of the rest of them have been hateful to Ida from the very first." There was something like a sob in her voice. "And she's so alone in the world, too. She's told me things about her life that almost made me cry. Her aunt doesn't undahstand her at all, and she has a misa'ble time at home."
"But she needn't feel alone in the world here," insisted Betty. "Every girl in school would have been her friend, if she hadn't said at the start that she didn't care for anybody but us and the Walton girls. They'd be only too glad to take her in, even now, for the sake of having you back again. Oh, it was so much nicer last year."
Lloyd faced her indignantly. "Betty Lewis!" she exclaimed. "You're against her too, or you wouldn't say that."
"No, I'm not," insisted Betty. "I like her now just as much as I did the first day I saw her. I think she is sweet and lovable, and I don't wonder that you are very fond of her; but I must say that I'm sorry that she's in the school, for you don't seem to care for anything now but being with her, and that spoils all the good times we had planned to have."
Dead silence followed Betty's speech. The Little Colonel walked across the room, picked up her shoe and put it on, jerking the laces savagely. It was the first time that she had ever been angry with Betty, and her wrath was more than Betty could endure.
"Please don't feel hurt, Lloyd," she begged. "I can't bear to have you angry with me. I wouldn't have said a word, only I thought that if it was explained to you how we all felt, you'd be willing to spend a little more time with the others, and gradually they'd get interested in Ida and be nice to her for your sake, and things would go on as they used to, when we all had such good times together."
Again the painful silence, so deep that Betty felt as if a wall had risen between them.
"Please, Lloyd," she begged, with tears in her eyes. But Lloyd, with an air of injured dignity, went on dressing, without a word, until the last bow was tied, and the last pin in place.
"And she knew all the time that Ida is my dearest friend," Lloyd kept saying angrily to herself, as she moved about the room. "I could have forgiven her saying mean things about me, but for her to stand up and say to my very face that she is sorry Ida is in the school, and that her being here spoils all the good times, when she knows what I think of Ida, that is simply a plain insult, and I can nevah feel the same to Betty Lewis again!"
By the time the breakfast-bell rang, both the girls were almost in tears; for the longer Betty's speech rankled in Lloyd's mind the worse it hurt, and the longer the angry silence continued the worse Betty felt.
"It is not like Lloyd to be so unfair," thought Betty. "She's just so blinded by her infatuation for Ida that she can't see my side of the matter at all."
It was on the point of her tongue to speak her thought, but realizing that it would only add fuel to the flame, she checked the impulse, and in the same uncomfortable silence they marched stiffly down the stairs to breakfast.
It was a miserable day for both. To peace-loving Betty it seemed endless. She could hardly keep the tears back when she stood up to recite, and instead of joining the other girls at recess she wandered off with a pencil and note-book. Sitting in one of the swings she wrote some verses about broken friendships that made her cry. They began:
"Dead are the snowy daisies!
Dead are the flowers of May!
The winds are hoarse and voiceless,
The skies are cold and gray!"
And yet a more gloriously golden October day had never shone in the Valley. The sun on the sumach bushes and sweet gum-trees turned their leaves to a flaming red that the heart of a ruby might have envied, and the dogwood berries, redder than any rose, glowed like living fire in the depths of the woods.
For the last week Lloyd and Ida had spent every recess together, wandering off by themselves to a far corner of the apple orchard, where the trunk of a fallen tree provided them with a seat, and its twisted branches with a rustic screen; but this day when Lloyd needed sympathy and companionship more than on any other, it was suddenly denied her.
Ida had a worried, absent-minded air when she came out at recess after the distribution of the morning mail. She came up to Lloyd in the hall with a grave face. "I am in trouble, Princess," she said, in a low tone. "I'll explain sometime before long, but I must go to my room now. I have an important letter to write."
With heavy forebodings Lloyd wandered back to her desk and sat looking listlessly out of the open window. She could hear laughter and merry voices in conversation outside. Nuts rattled down from the old hickory-tree by the well, and an odour of wild grapes floated in from the vine that trailed over it, where some belated bunches hung too high for any fingers but the frost's to touch. She took no interest in anything.
The afternoon recess passed in the same way. Miss Bina McCannister led the procession when they went for their afternoon walk. Ida had been excused from joining them, so Lloyd walked beside Janie Clung, in stony silence. Betty was in front of them, and Lloyd, almost stepping on her heels, could think of nothing but the remark that had changed her whole day to gall and wormwood. She resented it doubly, now that poor Ida was in some mysterious trouble.
Betty occasionally cast an anxious glance backward. "She'll surely make up before the sun goes down," she thought. But the sun went down as they strolled homeward, the moon came up, and lights twinkled from all the seminary windows. The supper-bell rang, and a horde of hungry girls poured into the dining-room, but through all the cheerful clatter of dishes and hum of voices, Lloyd kept her dignified silence toward Betty unbroken. Ida had evidently been crying, and had little to say. She left the table before the others were through.
When Betty went to her room for the study hour, she found Lloyd sitting with her elbows on the table before the lamp, seemingly so absorbed in her history lesson that she did not notice the opening of the door. With a sigh Betty sank into a chair on the opposite side of the table, and drew her arithmetic toward her, but she could not fix her mind on the next day's problems. She was rehearsing a dozen different ways in which to open a conversation, and trying to screw her courage to the point of beginning.
While she hesitated there was a slight tap at the door and Miss Edith looked in. It was her evening to make the round of inspection. Seeing both girls apparently absorbed in their books, she closed the door and passed on. Five minutes went by, in which Betty kept glancing at Lloyd, almost on the point of speaking. There was another tap at the door, and before either could call Come, Ida opened it and beckoned. With an answering nod as if she understood, Lloyd gathered up her books and joined her in the hall. There was a whispered consultation, then Betty heard them go into Ida's room and close the door.
Feeling that the breach between them was growing wider every hour, and that Lloyd never intended to be friendly with her again, Betty laid her head down on her arms and began to cry. Not since she had lain ill and neglected in the bare little room at the Cuckoo's Nest, the time she had the fever, had she felt so miserable and lonely. Not once in all the time since she had been at Locust had she cried like that, with choking sobs that shook her whole body, and seemed to come from the depths of her poor little aching heart.
She was crying so bitterly that she did not hear Ida's door open again or light footsteps go cautiously down to the end of the hall. Somebody slowly and carefully slipped back the bolt that barred the door leading to the outside stairway. Then the knob turned, and two muffled figures stood outside in the moonlight.
"Hurry!" whispered Ida, catching Lloyd by the hand. Like two shadows they tiptoed down the stairs and across a little open space in the rear of the kitchen, till they reached the cover of heavier shadows, under the protecting trees. Then they ran on as if pursued, keeping close to the high picket fence.
Down in the old apple orchard, in the far corner where the fallen tree lay, they stopped at last, and Ida dropped breathlessly to a seat on the log, and leaned back among the twisted branches.
"There!" she exclaimed, throwing off the heavy golf-cape in which she had muffled herself. "Now I can breathe. Oh, I've been so upset all day, Princess. I felt as if I should choke if I stayed in that old building another minute. Besides, walls do have ears sometimes, and I wouldn't have anybody find out what I am going to tell you for worlds! It would get me into no end of trouble, and aunt would take me out of school again."
She paused a moment, and Lloyd, waiting expectantly, felt the witchery of the moonlighted night stealing over her. She had been Ida's confidante often of late. She knew the history of each friendship represented by each boy's photograph in Ida's collection, and she had found them all interesting, even when told in prosaic daylight. Beyond the shadowy old orchard a row of yellow-leaved maples gleamed a ghostly silver in the moonlight, and from the direction of Clovercroft stole the music of a violin. Some one was playing Schubert's Serenade. It stirred her strangely.
"Will you promise that you'll never tell a living, breathing soul?" asked Ida, finally, in a low voice.
"Of co'se I wouldn't tell," said Lloyd. "You know that perfectly well, Violet."
"Well, I'm engaged."
"You're what?" exclaimed Lloyd, with such a start of astonishment that she nearly slipped off the log.
