It was one of the prettiest places in all Kentucky where the Little Colonel stood that morning. She was reaching up on tiptoes, her eager little face pressed close against the iron bars of the great entrance gate that led to a fine old estate known as "Locust."
A ragged little Scotch and Skye terrier stood on its hind feet beside her, thrusting his inquisitive nose between the bars, and wagging his tasselled tail in lively approval of the scene before them.
They were looking down a long avenue that stretched for nearly a quarter of a mile between rows of stately old locust-trees.
At the far end they could see the white pillars of a large stone house gleaming through the Virginia creeper that nearly covered it. But they could not see the old Colonel in his big chair on the porch behind the cool screen of vines.
At that very moment he had caught the rattle of wheels along the road, and had picked up his field-glass to see who was passing. It was only a coloured man jogging along in the heat and dust with a cart full of chicken-coops. The Colonel watched him drive up a lane that led to the back of the new hotel that had just been opened in this quiet country place. Then his glance fell on the two small strangers coming through his gate down the avenue toward him. One was the friskiest dog he had ever seen in his life. The other was a child he judged to be about five years old.
Her shoes were covered with dust, and her white sunbonnet had slipped off and was hanging over her shoulders. A bunch of wild flowers she had gathered on the way hung limp and faded in her little warm hand. Her soft, light hair was cut as short as a boy's.
There was something strangely familiar about the child, especially in the erect, graceful way she walked.
Old Colonel Lloyd was puzzled. He had lived all his life in Lloydsborough, and this was the first time he had ever failed to recognize one of the neighbours' children. He knew every dog and horse, too, by sight if not by name.
Living so far from the public road did not limit his knowledge of what was going on in the world. A powerful field-glass brought every passing object in plain view, while he was saved all annoyance of noise and dust.
"I ought to know that child as well as I know my own name," he said to himself. "But the dog is a stranger in these parts. Liveliest thing I ever set eyes on! They must have come from the hotel. Wonder what they want."
He carefully wiped the lens for a better view. When he looked again he saw that they evidently had not come to visit him.
They had stopped half-way down the avenue, and climbed up on a rustic seat to rest.
The dog sat motionless about two minutes, his red tongue hanging out as if he were completely exhausted.
Suddenly he gave a spring, and bounded away through the tall blue grass. He was back again in a moment, with a stick in his mouth. Standing up with his fore paws in the lap of his little mistress, he looked so wistfully into her face that she could not refuse this invitation for a romp.
The Colonel chuckled as they went tumbling about in the grass to find the stick which the child repeatedly tossed away.
He hitched his chair along to the other end of the porch as they kept getting farther away from the avenue.
It had been many a long year since those old locust-trees had seen a sight like that. Children never played any more under their dignified shadows.
Time had been (but they only whispered this among themselves on rare spring days like this) when the little feet chased each other up and down the long walk, as much at home as the pewees in the beeches.
Suddenly the little maid stood up straight, and began to sniff the air, as if some delicious odour had blown across the lawn.
"Fritz," she exclaimed, in delight, "I 'mell 'trawberries!"
The Colonel, who could not hear the remark, wondered at the abrupt pause in the game. He understood it, however, when he saw them wading through the tall grass, straight to his strawberry bed. It was the pride of his heart, and the finest for miles around. The first berries of the season had been picked only the day before. Those that now hung temptingly red on the vines he intended to send to his next neighbour, to prove his boasted claim of always raising the finest and earliest fruit.
He did not propose to have his plans spoiled by these stray guests. Laying the field-glass in its accustomed place on the little table beside his chair, he picked up his hat and strode down the walk.
Colonel Lloyd's friends all said he looked like Napoleon, or rather like Napoleon might have looked had he been born and bred a Kentuckian.
He made an imposing figure in his suit of white duck.
The Colonel always wore white from May till October.
There was a military precision about him, from his erect carriage to the cut of the little white goatee on his determined chin.
No one looking into the firm lines of his resolute face could imagine him ever abandoning a purpose or being turned aside when he once formed an opinion.
Most children were afraid of him. The darkies about the place shook in their shoes when he frowned. They had learned from experience that "ole Marse Lloyd had a tigah of a tempah in him."
As he passed down the walk there were two mute witnesses to his old soldier life. A spur gleamed on his boot heel, for he had just returned from his morning ride, and his right sleeve hung empty.
He had won his title bravely. He had given his only son and his strong right arm to the Southern cause. That had been nearly thirty years ago.
He did not charge down on the enemy with his usual force this time. The little head, gleaming like sunshine in the strawberry patch, reminded him so strongly of a little fellow who used to follow him everywhere,--Tom, the sturdiest, handsomest boy in the county,--Tom, whom he had been so proud of, whom he had so nearly worshipped.
Looking at this fair head bent over the vines, he could almost forget that Tom had ever outgrown his babyhood, that he had shouldered a rifle and followed him to camp, a mere boy, to be shot down by a Yankee bullet in his first battle.
The old Colonel could almost believe he had him back again, and that he stood in the midst of those old days the locusts sometimes whispered about.
He could not hear the happiest of little voices that was just then saying, "Oh, Fritz, isn't you glad we came? An' isn't you glad we've got a gran'fathah with such good 'trawberries?"
It was hard for her to put the "s" before her consonants.
As the Colonel came nearer she tossed another berry into the dog's mouth. A twig snapped, and she raised a startled face toward him.
"Suh?" she said, timidly, for it seemed to her that the stern, piercing eyes had spoken.
"What are you doing here, child?" he asked, in a voice so much kinder than his eyes that she regained her usual self-possession at once.
"Eatin' 'trawberries," she answered, coolly.
"Who are you, anyway?" he exclaimed, much puzzled. As he asked the question his gaze happened to rest on the dog, who was peering at him through the ragged, elfish wisps of hair nearly covering its face, with eyes that were startlingly human.
"'Peak when yo'ah 'poken to, Fritz," she said, severely, at the same time popping another luscious berry into her mouth. Fritz obediently gave a long yelp. The Colonel smiled grimly.
"What's your name?" he asked, this time looking directly at her.
"Mothah calls me her baby," was the soft-spoken reply, "but papa an' Mom Beck they calls me the Little Cun'l."
"What under the sun do they call you that for?" he roared.
"'Cause I'm so much like you," was the startling answer.
"Like me!" fairly gasped the Colonel. "How are you like me?"
"Oh, I'm got such a vile tempah, an' I stamps my foot when I gets mad, an' gets all red in the face. An' I hollahs at folks, an' looks jus' zis way."
She drew her face down and puckered her lips into such a sullen pout that it looked as if a thunder-storm had passed over it. The next instant she smiled up at him serenely. The Colonel laughed. "What makes you think I am like that?" he said. "You never saw me before."
"Yes, I have too," she persisted. "You's a-hangin' in a gold frame over ou' mantel."
Just then a clear, high voice was heard calling out in the road.
The child started up in alarm. "Oh, deah," she exclaimed in dismay, at sight of the stains on her white dress, where she had been kneeling on the fruit, "that's Mom Beck. Now I'll be tied up, and maybe put to bed for runnin' away again. But the berries is mighty nice," she added, politely. "Good mawnin', suh. Fritz, we mus' be goin' now."
The voice was coming nearer.
"I'll walk down to the gate with you," said the Colonel, anxious to learn something more about his little guest. "Oh, you'd bettah not, suh!" she cried in alarm. "Mom Beck doesn't like you a bit. She just hates you! She's goin' to give you a piece of her mind the next time she sees you. I heard her tell Aunt Nervy so."
There was as much real distress in the child's voice as if she were telling him of a promised flogging.
"Lloyd! Aw, Lloy-eed!" the call came again.
A neat-looking coloured woman glanced in at the gate as she was passing by, and then stood still in amazement. She had often found her little charge playing along the roadside or hiding behind trees, but she had never before known her to pass through any one's gate.
As the name came floating down to him through the clear air, a change came over the Colonel's stern face. He stooped over the child. His hand trembled as he put it under her soft chin and raised her eyes to his.
"Lloyd, Lloyd!" he repeated, in a puzzled way. "Can it be possible? There certainly is a wonderful resemblance. You have my little Tom's hair, and only my baby Elizabeth ever had such hazel eyes."
He caught her up in his one arm, and strode on to the gate, where the coloured woman stood.
"Why, Becky, is that you?" he cried, recognizing an old, trusted servant who had lived at Locust in his wife's lifetime.
Her only answer was a sullen nod.
"Whose child is this?" he asked, eagerly, without seeming to notice her defiant looks. "Tell me if you can."
"How can I tell you, suh," she demanded, indignantly, "when you have fo'bidden even her name to be spoken befo' you?"
A harsh look came into the Colonel's eyes. He put the child hastily down, and pressed his lips together.
"Don't tie my sunbonnet, Mom Beck," she begged. Then she waved her hand with an engaging smile.
"Good-bye, suh," she said, graciously. "We've had a mighty nice time!"
The Colonel took off his hat with his usual courtly bow, but he spoke no word in reply.
When the last flutter of her dress had disappeared around the bend of the road, he walked slowly back toward the house.
Half-way down the long avenue where she had stopped to rest, he sat down on the same rustic seat. He could feel her soft little fingers resting on his neck, where they had lain when he carried her to the gate.
A very un-Napoleonlike mist blurred his sight for a moment. It had been so long since such a touch had thrilled him, so long since any caress had been given him.
More than a score of years had gone by since Tom had been laid in a soldier's grave, and the years that Elizabeth had been lost to him seemed almost a lifetime.
And this was Elizabeth's little daughter. Something very warm and sweet seemed to surge across his heart as he thought of the Little Colonel. He was glad, for a moment, that they called her that; glad that his only grandchild looked enough like himself for others to see the resemblance.
But the feeling passed as he remembered that his daughter had married against his wishes, and he had closed his doors for ever against her.
The old bitterness came back redoubled in its force.
The next instant he was stamping down the avenue, roaring for Walker, his body-servant, in such a tone that the cook's advice was speedily taken: "Bettah hump yo'self outen dis heah kitchen befo' de ole tigah gits to lashin' roun' any pearter."
Mom Beck carried the ironing-board out of the hot kitchen, set the irons off the stove, and then tiptoed out to the side porch of the little cottage.
"Is yo' head feelin' any bettah, honey?" she said to the pretty, girlish-looking woman lying in the hammock. "I promised to step up to the hotel this evenin' to see one of the chambah-maids. I thought I'd take the Little Cun'l along with me if you was willin'. She's always wild to play with Mrs. Wyford's children up there."
"Yes, I'm better, Becky," was the languid reply. "Put a clean dress on Lloyd if you are going to take her out."
Mrs. Sherman closed her eyes again, thinking gratefully, "Dear, faithful old Becky! What a comfort she has been all my life, first as my nurse, and now as Lloyd's! She is worth her weight in gold!"
The afternoon shadows were stretching long across the grass when Mom Beck led the child up the green slope in front of the hotel.
The Little Colonel had danced along so gaily with Fritz that her cheeks glowed like wild roses. She made a quaint little picture with such short sunny hair and dark eyes shining out from under the broad-brimmed white hat she wore.
Several ladies who were sitting on the shady piazza, busy with their embroidery, noticed her admiringly. "It's Elizabeth Lloyd's little daughter," one of them explained. "Don't you remember what a scene there was some years ago when she married a New York man? Sherman, I believe, his name was, Jack Sherman. He was a splendid fellow, and enormously wealthy. Nobody could say a word against him, except that he was a Northerner. That was enough for the old Colonel, though. He hates Yankees like poison. He stormed and swore, and forbade Elizabeth ever coming in his sight again. He had her room locked up, and not a soul on the place ever dares mention her name in his hearing."
The Little Colonel sat down demurely on the piazza steps to wait for the children. The nurse had not finished dressing them for the evening.
She amused herself by showing Fritz the pictures in an illustrated weekly. It was not long until she began to feel that the ladies were talking about her. She had lived among older people so entirely that her thoughts were much deeper than her baby speeches would lead one to suppose.
She understood dimly, from what she had heard the servants say, that there was some trouble between her mother and grandfather. Now she heard it rehearsed from beginning to end. She could not understand what they meant by "bank failures" and "unfortunate investments," but she understood enough to know that her father had lost nearly all his money, and had gone West to make more.
Mrs. Sherman had moved from their elegant New York home two weeks ago to this little cottage in Lloydsborough that her mother had left her. Instead of the houseful of servants they used to have, there was only faithful Mom Beck to do everything.
There was something magnetic in the child's eyes.
Mrs. Wyford shrugged her shoulders uneasily as she caught their piercing gaze fixed on her.
"I do believe that little witch understood every word I said," she exclaimed.
"Oh, certainly not," was the reassuring answer. "She's such a little thing."
But she had heard it all, and understood enough to make her vaguely unhappy. Going home she did not frisk along with Fritz, but walked soberly by Mom Beck's side, holding tight to the friendly black hand.
"We'll go through the woods," said Mom Beck, lifting her over the fence. "It's not so long that way."
As they followed the narrow, straggling path into the cool dusk of the woods, she began to sing. The crooning chant was as mournful as a funeral dirge.
"The clouds hang heavy, an' it's gwine to rain.
Fa'well, my dyin' friends.
I'm gwine to lie in the silent tomb.
Fa'well, my dyin' friends."
A muffled little sob made her stop and look down in surprise.
"Why, what's the mattah, honey?" she exclaimed. "Did Emma Louise make you mad? Or is you cryin' 'cause you're so ti'ed? Come! Ole Becky'll tote her baby the rest of the way."
She picked the light form up in her arms, and, pressing the troubled little face against her shoulder, resumed her walk and her song.
"It's a world of trouble we're travellin' through,
Fa'well, my dyin' friends."
"Oh, don't, Mom Beck," sobbed the child, throwing her arms around the woman's neck, and crying as though her heart would break.
"Land sakes, what is the mattah?" she asked, in alarm. She sat down on a mossy log, took off the white hat, and looked into the flushed, tearful face.
"Oh, it makes me so lonesome when you sing that way," wailed the Little Colonel. "I just can't 'tand it! Mom Beck, is my mothah's heart all broken? Is that why she is sick so much, and will it kill her suah 'nuff?"
"Who's been tellin' you such nonsense?" asked the woman, sharply.
"Some ladies at the hotel were talkin' about it. They said that gran'fathah didn't love her any moah, an' it was just a-killin' her." Mom Beck frowned fiercely.
The child's grief was so deep and intense that she did not know just how to quiet her. Then she said, decidedly, "Well, if that's all that's a-troublin' you, you can jus' get down an' walk home on yo' own laigs. Yo' mamma's a-grievin' 'cause yo' papa has to be away all the time. She's all wo'n out, too, with the work of movin', when she's nevah been used to doin' anything. But her heart isn't broke any moah'n my neck is."
The positive words and the decided toss Mom Beck gave her head settled the matter for the Little Colonel. She wiped her eyes and stood up much relieved.
"Don't you nevah go to worryin' 'bout what you heahs," continued the woman. "I tell you p'intedly you cyarnt nevah b'lieve what you heahs."
"Why doesn't gran'fathah love my mothah?" asked the child, as they came in sight of the cottage. She had puzzled over the knotty problem all the way home. "How can papas not love their little girls?"
"'Cause he's stubbo'n," was the unsatisfactory answer. "All the Lloyds is. Yo' mamma's stubbo'n, an' you's stubbo'n--"
"I'm not!" shrieked the Little Colonel, stamping her foot. "You sha'n't call me names!"
Then she saw a familiar white hand waving to her from the hammock, and she broke away from Mom Beck with very red cheeks and very bright eyes.
Cuddled close in her mother's arms, she had a queer feeling that she had grown a great deal older in that short afternoon.
Maybe she had. For the first time in her little life she kept her troubles to herself, and did not once mention the thought that was uppermost in her mind.
"Yo' great-aunt Sally Tylah is comin' this mawnin'," said Mom Beck, the day after their visit to the hotel. "Do fo' goodness' sake keep yo'self clean. I'se got too many spring chickens to dress to think 'bout dressin' you up again."
"Did I evah see her befo'?" questioned the Little Colonel.
"Why, yes, the day we moved heah. Don't you know she came and stayed so long, and the rockah broke off the little white rockin'-chair when she sat down in it?"
"Oh, now I know!" laughed the child. "She's the big fat one with curls hangin' round her yeahs like shavin's. I don't like her, Mom Beck. She keeps a-kissin' me all the time, an' a-'queezin' me, an' tellin' me to sit on her lap an' be a little lady. Mom Beck, I de'pise to be a little lady."
There was no answer to her last remark. Mom Beck had stepped into the pantry for more eggs for the cake she was making.
"Fritz," said the Little Colonel, "yo' great-aunt Sally Tylah's comin' this mawnin', an' if you don't want to say 'howdy' to her you'll have to come with me."
A few minutes later a resolute little figure squeezed between the palings of the garden fence down by the gooseberry bushes.
"Now walk on your tiptoes, Fritz!" commanded the Little Colonel, "else somebody will call us back."
Mom Beck, busy with her extra baking, supposed she was with her mother on the shady, vine-covered porch.
She would not have been singing quite so gaily if she could have seen half a mile up the road.
The Little Colonel was sitting in the weeds by the railroad track, deliberately taking off her shoes and stockings.
"Just like a little niggah," she said, delightedly, as she stretched out her bare feet. "Mom Beck says I ought to know bettah. But it does feel so good!"
No telling how long she might have sat there enjoying the forbidden pleasure of dragging her rosy toes through the warm dust, if she had not heard a horse's hoof-beats coming rapidly along.
"Fritz, it's gran'fathah," she whispered, in alarm, recognizing the erect figure of the rider in its spotless suit of white duck.
"Sh! lie down in the weeds, quick! Lie down, I say!" They both made themselves as flat as possible, and lay there panting with the exertion of keeping still.
Presently the Little Colonel raised her head cautiously.
"Oh, he's gone down that lane!" she exclaimed. "Now you can get up." After a moment's deliberation she asked, "Fritz, would you rathah have some 'trawberries an' be tied up fo' runnin' away, or not be tied up and not have any of those nice tas'en 'trawberries?"
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