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"He has been talking about you all week, Betty. He couldn't eat any dinner to-day, he was so excited about your coming."
Betty smiled back at the beaming little face, as shining as yellow soap and perfect happiness could make it, and her conscience smote her that she had not missed him more, and written to him oftener while she was away from him. But however great his loneliness might have been, it was all forgotten at the sight of her, and his delight was unbounded when the hamper was unstrapped and Bob came tumbling out to frisk over his bare toes.
"Now Betty will have two shadows," laughed Mr. Appleton. "That boy follows her everywhere."
Betty led the way into the house. On the porch steps Lloyd stopped her to whisper: "Mercy, Betty! How many children are there?" Several tow heads like Davy's were peering around the corner of the house, and a two-year-old baby toddled across the porch, squeezing a kitten in his arms.
"There are six, altogether," answered Betty. "Scott is just Rob Moore's age, but he is so bashful that you'll not see much of him. Then there's Bradley. He is such a tease that we keep out of his way as much as possible. Davy comes next. He's the nicest in the bunch. Then Morgan is six, and Lee is four, and that's the baby over there. They haven't named him yet, so the boys just call him Pudding."
"And is that your cousin Hetty?" whispered Lloyd, as a tall, thin woman came out on the porch to greet her guests. In that greeting Betty forgot that Mrs. Appleton was only a fourth cousin, her welcome was so warm; she thought only how nice it was to have a family to come back to. Looking into the woman's tired face with eyes that had grown wiser in the summer's absence, the child saw that it was hard work and care that had made it grow old before its time, and realised that the tenderness she had longed for had been withheld only because her cousin Hetty had been too overworked to take time to show it.
"Maybe she might have been as bright and sweet as godmother, if she hadn't had to work so hard," thought Betty. "Still I can't imagine godmother saying snappy cross things, no matter how tired she might get."
"Supper's 'most ready," said Mrs. Appleton, ushering them into the house. "I reckon you'll want to tidy up a bit after that long ride on the dusty cars. Well, Molly didn't forget to fill the water-pitcher, after all, though she usually forgets everything, unless I'm at her heels every blessed minute to remind her."
"Molly!" repeated Betty, in surprise. "Who is she?"
"Oh, I forgot you didn't know. She is an orphan I took from the asylum soon after you left. It's been such a hard summer that I had to have somebody to help, so Mr. Appleton went to St. Joseph's orphan asylum and picked me out this girl. She's fourteen, and big for her age, but as wild as a Comanche Indian. So I can't say she's been as much help as I'd hoped for. But she's good to the baby, and she can wash dishes. They taught her that at the asylum. I tell you I've missed you, Betty. I didn't realise how many steps you saved me until you were gone. Now, if you'll excuse me, Mrs. Sherman, I'll go and see about supper. You'll find your room just as you left it, Betty."
As the door closed behind her and Betty, the Little Colonel turned to her mother with a puzzled face. "Did you evah see anything so queah in all yo' life?" she asked. "A bed in the pahlah! What if somebody should come to call aftah I've gone to sleep. Oh, I think this place is awful! I don't see how people can be happy, living in such an odd way."
"That is your first holiday lesson," said Mrs. Sherman, beginning to unpack her travelling bag. "You'll have to learn that our way of living is not the only way, and that people can be just as good and useful and happy in one place as another. Some people are so narrow-minded that they never learn that. They are like car-wheels that can move only when they have a certain kind of track to run on. You can be that kind of a person, or you can be like a bicycle, able to run on any road, from the narrowest path to the broadest avenue. I've found that people who can fit themselves to any road they may happen to be on are the happiest, and they are the easiest to live with. That is one of the greatest accomplishments any one can have, Lloyd. I'd rather have my little daughter able to adapt herself gracefully to all circumstances, than to sing or paint or model or embroider.
"You are going to find things very different here from what you have been accustomed to at home, but it wouldn't be polite or kind to appear to notice any difference. For instance, some of the best people I ever knew think it is silly to serve dinner in courses, as we do. They like to see everything on the table at once, – soup, salad, meats, and desserts."
"I hate everything all higgledy-piggledy!" muttered the Little Colonel, with her face in a towel. "I'll try not to show it, mothah, but I'm afraid I can't help it sometimes."
Meanwhile, Betty, with Davy tagging after her, and Bob frisking on ahead, had started up the steps to her own little room in the west gable. As she turned on the landing, the door at the foot of the stairs moved slightly, and she caught the gleam of a pair of sharp gray eyes peering at her through the crack.
"It's Molly!" whispered Davy, catching Betty's skirts, and scrambling after her as fast as his short fat legs would allow.
"Say, Betty, did you know that she's a witch? She says that she can go through keyholes, and that on dark nights she sails away over the chimney on a broomstick with a black cat on her shoulder. Even Scott and Bradley are afraid of her. They dasn't do anything she tells them not to."
"Sh!" whispered Betty, warningly, with a backward glance over her shoulder. The girl behind the door had stepped out on the landing for a better view, but she darted back to her hiding-place as Betty turned, and their eyes met.
"She looks like a gypsy," thought Betty, noticing her straight black hair hanging around her eyes. "And she seems ready to dodge at a word."
"She tells us ghost stories every night after supper," exclaimed Davy. They had reached the gable room, and, while Betty hung up her hat and unlocked her trunk, he curled himself up comfortably on the foot of her bed. "She can make you shiver no matter how hot a night it is."
Betty scarcely noticed what the boy was saying. At any other time she would have been surprised at his talking so much. Just now she was looking around her with a feeling of strangeness. Everything seemed so much smaller than when she had left the place. Her room had not seemed bare and cheerless before she went away, because she had seen no better. But now, remembering the pretty room that had been hers in the House Beautiful, the tears came into her eyes. For a moment the contrast made her homesick. Instead of the crystal candlesticks, here was a battered tin one. Here were no filmy curtains at the windows, no white fur rugs on a dark polished floor. Only a breadth of faded rag carpet, spread down on bare unpainted boards. Here was no white toilet-table with furnishings of gold and ivory; no polished mirror in which she could see herself from head to foot. She looked mournfully into the tiny looking-glass that was so small that she could see only one-half of her face at a time. Then from force of habit she stood on tiptoe to see the other half. The mouth was not smiling as it used to in the old days.
She was recalled from her homesick reverie by Davy's voice again.
"Molly didn't want you and that other girl to come here," he confided. "She said you'd be snobs; that all rich people were. Bradley asked Molly what a snob was, and said if it was anything bad that she shouldn't call you that, 'cause you wasn't one, and always tied his fingers up when he cut hisself, and helped him with his mul'plication tables and everything. And Molly said she'd call you what she pleased, and treat you just as mean as you deserved, and if we dared say a word she'd shut the first one that tried it up in the smoke-house in the dark; then she'd say abra-ca-dab-ra over us."
Davy's voice sank to a frightened whisper as he rolled the dread word over his tongue in unconscious imitation of Molly. He was quivering with excitement, and his cheeks were unusually red. He had talked more in the few minutes than he often did in days.
"Why, Davy, what's the matter?" cried Betty. "What do you mean by abracadabra?"
"Hush! Don't say it so loud," he begged earnestly. "It's Molly's hoodoo word. Bradley says she can conjure you with it, same as coloured folks when they put a rabbit's foot on you. I had to tell, 'cause I'm afraid Molly's going to do something mean to you."
"Does your mother know that she tells you those silly things?" demanded Betty, turning on him quickly. But Davy had lost his tongue, now that his confession was made, and only shook his head in reply.
"Then don't listen to her any more, Davy boy," she said, taking him by the ears and kissing him playfully, first on one dimpled cheek and then on the other. "Poor Molly doesn't know any better, and she must have lived with dreadful people before she went to the orphan asylum. You stay with Lloyd and me, after this, and don't have anything more to do with her when she tells you such stories."
"That's just what she said you'd do," said Davy, finding his voice again. "She said that you and that other girl would be stuck up and wouldn't play with her, or let us either, and that she'd always be left out of everything. But she'd get even with you for coming in with your high and mighty airs and fine clothes to turn us against her."
"That's the silliest thing I ever heard," answered Betty, indignantly. Then a puzzled look crept into her brown eyes, as she stood pouring out the water to wash her face. "I'll ask godmother about it," she said to herself. "She'll tell us how we ought to treat her."
But there was no opportunity that evening. Molly sat down to the supper-table with them, much to the surprise of the Little Colonel, unused to the primitive customs of farm life, where no social difference is made between those who are served and those who do the serving. Remembering her mother's little sermon, she did not show her surprise by the smallest change of expression.
After supper Betty offered to help with the dishes as usual, but her cousin Hetty sent her away, saying it would not do to soil her pretty travelling dress; that she was company now, and to run away and entertain Lloyd. So Betty, with a sigh of relief, went back to the porch, where Mr. Appleton, with Pudding in his lap, was talking with Mrs. Sherman.
Betty hated dish-washing, and after her long holiday at the house party it seemed doubly hard to go back to such unpleasant duties. She did not see the swift jealous look that followed her from Molly's keen eyes, or the sullen pout that settled on the older girl's lips, as, left to herself, she rattled the cups and plates recklessly, in her envious mood.
Out on the porch Betty sank into a comfortable rocking-chair, and sat looking up at the stars. "Isn't it sweet and still out here, godmother?" she asked, after awhile. "I love to hear that owl hooting away off in the woods, and listen to the pine-trees whispering that way, and the frogs croaking down in the meadow pond."
"Oh, I don't," cried the Little Colonel, with something like a sob in her voice, as she nestled her head closer against her mother's shoulder. "It makes me feel as lonesome as when Mom Beck sings 'Fa'well, my dyin' friends.' I think they're the most doleful sounds I evah heard."
Presently, when Mr. Appleton went in to carry the sleepy baby to bed, the Little Colonel put her arms around her mother's neck, whispering, "Oh, mothah, I wish we were back at Locust. I'm so homesick and disappointed in the place. Can't we go home in the mawnin'?"
"I think my little girl is so tired and sleepy that she doesn't know what she wants," whispered Mrs. Sherman, in reply. "Come, let me take you to bed. You'll think differently in the morning. Do you remember the old song?
"'Colours seen by candle-light
Never look the same by day.'"
CHAPTER IV
"TO BARLEY-BRIGHT."
The next few days went by happily for the Little Colonel, for Betty took her to all her favourite haunts, and kept her entertained from morning till night. Once they stayed all day in the woods below the barn, building a playhouse at the base of a great oak-tree, with carpets of moss, and cups and saucers made of acorns.
Scott and Bradley joined them, and for once played peaceably, building a furnace in the ravine with some flat stones and an old piece of stove pipe. There they cooked their dinner. Davy was sent to raid the garden and spring-house, and even Lee and Morgan were allowed a place at the feast, when one came in with a hatful of guinea eggs that he had found in the orchard, and the other loaned his new red wheelbarrow, to add to the housekeeping outfit.
"Isn't this fun!" exclaimed the Little Colonel, as she watched Betty, who stood over the furnace with a very red face, scrambling the eggs in an old pie-pan. "I bid to be the cook next time we play out here, and I'm going to make a furnace like this when I go back to Locust."
High above them, up the hill, on the back porch of the farmhouse, Molly stood ironing sheets and towels. Whenever she glanced down into the shady hollow, she could see Lloyd's pink dress fluttering along the ravine, or Betty's white sunbonnet bobbing up from behind the rocks. The laughing voices and the shouts of the boys came tantalisingly to her ears, and the old sullen pout settled on her face as she listened.
"It isn't fair that I should have to work all day long while they are off having a good time," she muttered, slapping an iron angrily down on the stove. "I s'pose they think that because I'm so big I oughtn't to care about playing; but I couldn't help growing so fast. If I am nearly as big as Mrs. Appleton, that doesn't keep me from feeling like a little girl inside. I'm only a year older than Scott. I hate them! I wish that little Sherman girl would fall into a brier patch and scratch her face, and that a hornet would sting Betty Lewis smack in the mouth!"
By and by a tear sizzled down on the hot iron in her hand. "It isn't fair!" she sobbed again, "for them to have everything and me nothing, not even to know where my poor little sister is. Maybe somebody's beating her this very minute, or she is shut up in a dark closet crying for me." With that thought, all the distressing scenes that had made her past life miserable began to crowd into her mind, and the tears sizzled faster and faster on the hot iron, as she jerked it back and forth over a long towel.
There had been beatings and dark closets for Molly many a time before she was rescued by the orphan asylum, and the great fear of her life was that there was still the same cruel treatment for the little sister who had not been rescued, but who had been hidden away by their drunken father when the Humane Society made its search for her.
Three years had passed since they were lost from each other. Molly was only eleven then, and Dot, although nearly seven, was such a tiny, half-starved little thing that she seemed only a baby in her sister's eyes. Many a night, when the wind moaned in the chimney, or the rats scampered in the walls, Molly had started up out of a sound sleep, staring fearfully into the darkness, thinking that she had heard Dot calling to her. Then suddenly remembering that Dot was too far away to make her hear, no matter how wildly she might call, she had buried her face in her pillow, and sobbed and sobbed until she fell asleep.
The matron of the asylum knew why she often came down in the morning with red eyes and swollen face, and the knowledge made her more patient with the wayward girl. Nobody taxed her patience more than Molly, with her unhappy moods, her outbursts of temper, and her suspicious, jealous disposition. She loved to play, and yelled and ran like some wild creature, whenever she had a chance, climbing the highest trees, making daring leaps from forbidden heights, and tearing her clothes into ribbons. But she rebelled at having to work, and in all the time she was at the asylum the matron had found only one lovable trait in her. It was her affection for the little lost sister that made her gentle to the smaller children on the place and kind to the animals.
She had been happier since coming to the Appleton farm, where there were no rules, and the boys accepted her leadership admiringly. She found great pleasure in inventing wild tales for their entertainment, in frightening them with stories of ghosts and hobgoblins, and in teaching them new games which she had played in alleys with boot-blacks and street gamins.
All that had stopped with the arrival of the visitors. Their coming brought her more work, and left her less time to play. The sight of Lloyd and Betty in their dainty dresses aroused her worst jealousy, and awoke the old bitterness that had grown up in her slum life, and that always raged within her whenever she saw people with whom fortune had dealt more kindly than with herself. All that day, while the seven happy children played and sang in the shady woodland, she went around at her work with a rebellious feeling against her lot. Everything she did was to the tune of a bitter refrain that kept echoing through her sore heart: "It isn't fair! It isn't fair!"
Late in the afternoon a boy came riding up from the railroad station with a telegram for Mrs. Sherman. It was the first one that had ever been sent to the farm, and Bradley, who had gone up to the house for a hatchet, waited to watch Mrs. Sherman tear open the yellow envelope.
"Take it to Lloyd, please," she said, after a hurried reading. "Tell her to hurry up to the house." Thrusting the message into his hand, she hurried out of the room, to find Mrs. Appleton. Bradley felt very important at being the bearer of a telegram, and ran down the hill as fast as his bare feet could carry him over the briers and dry stubble. He would have teased Lloyd awhile by making her guess what he had, before giving it to her, if it had not been for Mrs. Sherman's request to hurry.
Lloyd read the message aloud. "Aunt Jane alarmingly ill; wants to see you. Come immediately." "Oh, how provoking!" she exclaimed. "I s'pose we'll have to start right off. We always do. We nevah plan to go anywhere or do anything without Aunt Jane gets sick and thinks she's goin' to die. She's an old, old lady," she hastened to explain, seeing Betty's shocked face. "She's my great-aunt, you know, 'cause she's my grandmothah's sistah. I wouldn't have minded it so much when we first came," she confessed, "but I don't want to leave now, one bit. We've had a lovely time to-day, and I hate to go away befo' I've seen the cave you promised to take me to and the Glenrock watahfall, and all those places."
It never occurred to the Little Colonel that she might be left behind, until she reached the house and found her mother with her hat on, packing her satchel.
"I've barely time to catch the next train," she said, as Lloyd came running into the room. "It is a two-mile drive to the station, you know, and there's not time to get you and all your things ready to take with me. It wouldn't be wise, anyhow, for everything is always in confusion at Aunt Jane's when she is ill. Mrs. Appleton will take good care of you, and you can follow me next week if Aunt Jane is better. Betty will come with you, and we'll have a nice little visit in the city while she does her shopping and gets ready for her journey. I'll write to you as soon as I can decide when it will be best for you to come. Aunt Jane's illness is probably half scare, like all her others, but still I feel that I must never lose a moment when she sends for me, as she might be worse than we think."
Mrs. Sherman packed rapidly while she talked, and almost before Lloyd realised that she was really to be left behind, a light buckboard was at the door, and Mr. Appleton was standing beside the horse's head waiting. There was not even time for Lloyd to cling around her mother's neck and be petted and comforted for the sudden separation. There was a hasty hug, a loving kiss, and a whispered "Good-bye, little daughter. Mother's sorry to go without her little girl, but it can't be helped. The time will soon pass – only a week, and remember this is one of your school days, and the lesson set for you to learn is Patience."
Lloyd smiled bravely while she promised to be good and not give Mrs. Appleton any trouble. Her mother, looking back as they drove away, saw the two little girls standing with their arms around each other, waving their handkerchiefs, and thought thankfully, "I am glad that Lloyd is here with Betty instead of at Locust. She'll not have time to be lonesome with so many playmates."
It was hard for Lloyd to keep back the tears as the carriage passed out of sight around the corner of the graveyard. But Bradley challenged her to a race down-hill, and with a loud whoop they all started helter-skelter back to the ravine to play. She had been busy making some pine-cone chairs for the little parlour at the roots of the oak-tree, when the telegram called her away, and now she went back to that delightful occupation, working busily until the supper-horn blew to call the men from the field. It was always a pleasure to Lloyd to hear that horn, and several times she had puffed at it until she was red in the face, in her vain attempts to blow it herself. All the sound she could awaken was a short dismal toot. It was a cow's horn, carved and polished, that had been used for nearly forty years to call the men from the field. When Mrs. Appleton puckered her lips to blow it, her thin cheeks puffed out until they were as round and pink as the baby's, and the long mellow note went floating across the fields, clear and sweet, till the men at work in the farthest field heard it and answered with a far-away cheer.
"Let's get Molly to play Barley-bright with us to-night," said Bradley, as they trudged up the hill. "It is a fine game, and if we help her with the dishes, she'll get done in just a few minutes, and we'll have nearly an hour to play before it gets dark."
The same thought was in Molly's mind, for after supper she called the boys aside and whispered to them. She wanted to slip away from the girls and not allow them to join in the game; but Bradley would not listen to such an arrangement. He insisted that the game would not be any fun without them.
Then Molly, growing jealous, turned away with a pout, saying that she might have known it would be that way. They had had plenty of fun before the girls came, but to go ahead and do as they pleased. It didn't make any difference to her. She could get on very well by herself.
Lloyd had gone down to the spring-house with Mrs. Appleton, but Betty heard the dispute and put an end to it at once. "Here!" she cried, catching up a towel. "Everybody come and help, and we'll be through before you can say Jack Robinson. Pour out the hot water, Molly. Get another towel, Bradley. We'll wipe, and Davy can carry the dishes to the pantry. We'll be through before Scott has half filled the wood-box."
Molly could not keep her jealous mood and sulky frowns very long in the midst of the laughing chatter that followed, and in a very few minutes Betty had talked her into good humour with herself and all the world. Such light work did the many hands make of the dish-washing, that the sky was still pink with the sunset glow when they were ready to begin the game.
"We always go down to the hay-barn to play Barley-bright," said Bradley. "I never cared for it when we played it at school in the day-time, but when we play it Molly's way it is the most exciting game I know. We usually wait till it begins to get dark and the lightning-bugs are flying about.
"Molly and I will stand the crowd, this time. Our base will be here at the persimmon-tree in front of the barn, and yours will be the pasture bars down yonder. The barn will be Barley-bright, and after we call out the questions and answers, you're to try to run around our base to the barn, and back again to yours, without being caught by a witch. There are six of you, so you can have six runs to Barley-bright and back, and if by that time we have caught half of you the game is ours. The witch has the right to hide and jump out at you from any place she chooses, but I can't touch you except when you pass my base. Now shut your eyes till I count one hundred, while the witch hides."
Six pairs of hands were clasped over six pairs of eyes, while Bradley slowly counted, and Molly, darting away from his side, hid behind the straw-stack.
"One – hun-dred – all eyes open!" he shouted. They looked around. The fireflies were flashing across the pasture and the dusk was beginning to deepen. Then six voices rang out in chorus, Bradley's shrill pipe answering them.
"How many miles to Barley-bright?"
"Three score and ten!"
"Can I get there by candle-light?"
"Yes, if your legs are long and light—
There and back again!
Look out! The witches will catch you!"
Molly was nowhere in sight, so with a delicious thrill of excitement, not knowing from what ambush they would be pounced upon, the six pilgrims to Barley-bright started off at the top of their speed. Across the pasture they rushed, around Bradley's base at the persimmon-tree, and up to the big barn door, which they were obliged to touch before they could turn and make a wild dash back to the pasture bars.
Just as they reached the barn door, Molly sprang out from behind the straw-stack; but they could not believe it was Molly, she was so changed. To their excited fancy she seemed a real witch. Her black hair was unbraided, and streamed out in elfish wisps from under a tall pointed black hat. A hideous mask covered her face, and she brandished the stump of an old broom with such effect that they ran from her, shrieking wildly.
Some heavy wrapping paper, a strip of white cotton cloth, and coal-soot from the bottom of a stove lid had changed an ordinary girl of fourteen into a nameless terror, from which they fled, shrieking at the top of their voices. The boys had been through the performance many times, but they enjoyed the cold thrill it gave them as much as Betty and Lloyd, who were feeling it for the first time.
Lee was caught in that first mad race, and Morgan in the second, and they had to go over to the enemy's base, where Bradley stood guard under the persimmon-tree. As they came in from the third run, Lloyd leaned against the pasture bars, out of breath.
"Oh, I believe I should drop dead," she panted, "if that awful thing should get me. I can't believe that it is only Molly. She seems like a real suah 'nuff witch." She glanced over her shoulder again with a little nervous shudder as the others began calling again:
"How many miles to Barley-bright?"
Betty was caught this time, and Lloyd, to whom the game was becoming a terrible reality, stood with her heart beating like a trip-hammer and her eyes peering in a startled way through the dusk. This time the witch popped up from behind the pasture bars, and Lloyd, giving a startled look over her shoulder as she flew, saw that the broomstick was flourished in her direction, and the hideous black and white mask was almost upon her. With an ear-splitting scream she redoubled her speed, racing around and around the barn, instead of touching the door and turning back, when she saw that she was followed.
Finally, with one sharp scream of terror after another, she darted into the great dark barn, in a blind frenzy to escape. She heard the voices of the children outside, the bang of the broomstick against the door, and then plunging forward, felt herself falling – falling!
There was just an instant in which she seemed to see the faces of her mother and Papa Jack. Then she remembered nothing more, for her head struck something hard, and she lay in a little heap on the floor below. She had fallen through a trap-door into an empty manger.
CHAPTER V
A TIME FOR PATIENCE
They thought at first that she was hiding in the barn, afraid to come out, lest Molly might be lying in wait to grab her. So they began calling: "Come on, Lloyd! King's X! King's excuse! Home free! You may come home free!" But there was no answer, and Betty, suddenly remembering the trap-door, grew white with fear.
The children played in the barn so much that Mr. Appleton's first order, when he hired a new man, was that the trap-door must always be closed and fastened the moment he finished pitching the hay down to the manger below. The children themselves had been cautioned time and again to keep away from it, but Lloyd, never having played in the barn before, was not aware of its existence.
"Lloyd, Lloyd!" called Betty, hurrying into the twilight of the big barn. There was no answer, and peering anxiously ahead, Betty saw that the trap-door was open, and on the floor below was the gleam of the Little Colonel's light pink dress, shining white through the dusk.
Betty's startled cry brought the other children, who clattered down the barn stairs after her, into the straw-covered circle where the young calves were kept. They met Mr. Appleton, coming in from the corn-crib with a basket on his shoulder, and all began to talk at once. The words "Lloyd" and "trap-door" were all he could distinguish in the jumble of excited exclamations, but they told the whole story.
Hastily dropping his basket, he strode across to the manger that Betty pointed out, with a look of grave concern on his face. They all crowded breathlessly around him as he bent over the quiet little figure, lifting it gently in his arms. It was a solemn-faced little company that followed him up the hill with his unconscious burden. A cold fear seized Betty as she walked along, glancing at the Little Colonel's closed eyes, and the tiny stream of blood trickling across the still white face.
"Oh, if godmother were only here!" she groaned.
"There's no telling how badly Lloyd is hurt. Maybe she'll be a cripple for life. Oh, I wish I'd never heard of such a game as Barley-bright."
If the accident had happened at Locust, a doctor would have been summoned to the spot, as fast as telephones and swift horses could bring him, and the whole household would have held its breath in anxiety. But very little fuss was made over accidents at the Cuckoo's Nest. It was a weekly occurrence for some of the children to be brought in limp and bleeding from various falls. Bradley had once sprained his neck turning somersaults down the hay-mow, so that he had not been able to look over his shoulder for two weeks. Scott had been picked up senseless twice, once from falling out of the top of a walnut-tree, and the other time because a high ladder broke under him. Every one of the boys but Pudding had at some time or another left a trail of blood behind him from barn to house as he went weeping homeward with some part of his body to be bandaged. So Lloyd's fall did not cause the commotion it might have done in a less adventurous family.
"Oh, she's coming around all right," said Mr. Appleton, cheerfully, as her head stirred a little on his shoulder, and she half opened her eyes.
"Here you are," he added a moment later, laying her on the bed in the parlour. "Scott, run call your mother. Bring a light, Molly. We'll soon see what is the matter."
There were no bones broken, and in a little while Lloyd sat up, white and dizzy. Then she walked across the room, and looked at herself in the little mirror hanging over a shelf, on which stood a bouquet of stiff wax flowers. It was hung so high and tilted forward so much, and the wax flowers were in the way, so that she could not get a very satisfactory view of her wounds, but she saw enough to make her feel like an old soldier home from the wars, with the marks of many battles upon her.
A bandage wet with arnica was tied around her head, over a large knot that was rapidly swelling larger. Several strips of court-plaster covered the cut on her temple. One cheek was scratched, and she was stiff and sore from many bruises.
"But not half so stiff as you'll be in the morning," Mrs. Appleton assured her, cheerfully. "All that side of your body that struck against the manger is black and blue."
"I think I'll go to bed," said the Little Colonel, faintly. "This day has been long enough, and I don't want anything else to happen to me. Fallin' through a trap-doah and havin' my mothah leave me is enough fo' one while. I think I need her moah than Aunt Jane does. You'll have to sleep with me to-night, Betty. I wouldn't stay down heah alone fo' anything."
It was very early to go to bed, scarcely more than half-past seven, when Betty blew out the candle and climbed in beside the Little Colonel. She lay for a long time, listening to the croaking of the frogs, thinking that Lloyd had forgotten her troubles in dreamland, until a mournful little voice whispered, "Say, Betty, are you asleep?"
"No; but I thought you were."
"I was, for a few minutes, but that dreadful false face of Molly's woke me up. I dreamed it was chasing me, and I seemed to be falling and falling, and somebody screamed at me 'Look out! The witches will catch you!' It frightened me so that I woke up all a tremble. I know I am safe, here in bed with you, but I'm shaking so hard that I can't go to sleep again. Oh, Betty, you don't know how much I want my mothah! I'll nevah leave her again as long as I live. My head aches, and I'm so stiff and soah I can't tu'n ovah!"
