That early twilight hour just before the lamps were lit was the lonesomest one the Little Colonel had ever spent.
Her grandfather was asleep up-stairs. There was a cheery wood fire crackling on the hearth of the big fireplace in the hall, but the great house was so still. The corners were full of shadows.
She opened the front door with a wild longing to run away.
"Come, Fritz," she said, closing the door softly behind her, "let's go down to the gate."
The air was cold. She shivered as they raced along under the bare branches of the locusts. She leaned against the gate, peering out through the bars. The road stretched white through the gathering darkness in the direction of the little cottage.
"Oh, I want to go home so bad!" she sobbed. "I want to see my mothah."
She laid her hand irresolutely on the latch, pushed the gate ajar, and then hesitated.
"No, I promised the doctah I'd stay," she thought. "He said I could help mothah and Papa Jack, both of 'em, by stayin' heah, an' I'll do it."
Fritz, who had pushed himself through the partly opened gate to rustle around among the dead leaves outside, came bounding back with something in his mouth.
"Heah, suh!" she called. "Give it to me!" He dropped a small gray kid glove in her outstretched hand. "Oh, it's mothah's!" she cried. "I reckon she dropped it when she was tellin' me good-bye. Oh, you deah old dog fo' findin' it."
She laid the glove against her cheek as fondly as if it had been her mother's soft hand. There was something wonderfully comforting in the touch.
As they walked slowly back toward the house she rolled it up and put it lovingly away in her tiny apron pocket.
All that week it was a talisman whose touch helped the homesick little soul to be brave and womanly.
When Maria, the coloured housekeeper, went into the hall to light the lamps, the Little Colonel was sitting on the big fur rug in front of the fire, talking contentedly to Fritz, who lay with his curly head in her lap.
"You all's goin' to have tea in the Cun'ls room to-night," said Maria. "He tole me to tote it up soon as he rung the bell."
"There it goes now," cried the child, jumping up from the rug.
She followed Maria up the wide stairs. The Colonel was sitting in a large easy chair, wrapped in a gaily flowered dressing-gown, that made his hair look unusually white by contrast.
His dark eyes were intently watching the door. As it opened to let the Little Colonel pass through, a very tender smile lighted up his stern face.
"So you did come to see grandpa after all," he cried, triumphantly. "Come here and give me a kiss. Seems to me you've been staying away a mighty long time."
As she stood beside him with his arm around her, Walker came in with a tray full of dishes. "We're going to have a regular little tea-party," said the Colonel.
Lloyd watched with sparkling eyes as Walker set out the rare old-fashioned dishes. There was a fat little silver sugar-bowl with a butterfly perched on each side to form the handles, and there was a slim, graceful cream-pitcher shaped like a lily.
"They belonged to your great-great-grandmother," said the Colonel, "and they're going to be yours some day if you grow up and have a house of your own."
The expression on her beaming face was worth a fortune to the Colonel.
When Walker pushed her chair up to the table, she turned to her grandfather with shining eyes.
"Oh, it's just like a pink story," she cried, clapping her hands. "The shades on the can'les, the icin' on the cake, an' the posies in the bowl,--why, even the jelly is that colah, too. Oh, my darlin' little teacup! It's jus' like a pink rosebud. I'm so glad I came!"
The Colonel smiled at the success of his plan. In the depths of his satisfaction he even had a plate of quail and toast set down on the hearth for Fritz.
"This is the nicest pahty I evah was at," remarked the Little Colonel, as Walker helped her to jam the third time.
Her grandfather chuckled.
"Blackberry jam always makes me think of Tom," he said. "Did you ever hear what your Uncle Tom did when he was a little fellow in dresses?"
She shook her head gravely.
"Well, the children were all playing hide-and-seek one day. They hunted high and they hunted low after everybody else had been caught, but they couldn't find Tom. At last they began to call, 'Home free! You can come home free!' but he did not come. When he had been hidden so long they were frightened about him, they went to their mother and told her he wasn't to be found anywhere. She looked down the well and behind the fire-boards in the fireplaces. They called and called till they were out of breath. Finally she thought of looking in the big dark pantry where she kept her fruit. There stood Mister Tom. He had opened a jar of blackberry jam, and was just going for it with both hands. The jam was all over his face and hair and little gingham apron, and even up his wrists. He was the funniest sight I ever saw."
The Little Colonel laughed heartily at his description, and begged for more stories. Before he knew it he was back in the past with his little Tom and Elizabeth.
Nothing could have entertained the child more than these scenes he recalled of her mother's childhood.
"All her old playthings are up in the garret," he said, as they rose from the table. "I'll have them brought down to-morrow. There's a doll I brought her from New Orleans once when she was about your size. No telling what it looks like now, but it was a beauty when it was new."
Lloyd clapped her hands and spun around the room like a top.
"Oh, I'm so glad I came!" she exclaimed for the third time. "What did she call the doll, gran'fathah, do you remembah?"
"I never paid much attention to such things," he answered, "but I do remember the name of this one, because she named it for her mother,--Amanthis."
"Amanthis," repeated the child, dreamily, as she leaned against his knee. "I think that is a lovely name, gran'fathah. I wish they had called me that." She repeated it softly several times. "It sounds like the wind a-blowin' through white clovah, doesn't it?"
"It is a beautiful name to me, my child," answered the old man, laying his hand tenderly on her soft hair, "but not so beautiful as the woman who bore it. She was the fairest flower of all Kentucky. There never was another lived as sweet and gentle as your Grandmother Amanthis."
He stroked her hair absently, and gazed into the fire. He scarcely noticed when she slipped away from him.
She buried her face a moment in the bowl of pink roses. Then she went to the window and drew back the curtain. Leaning her head against the window-sill, she began stringing on the thread of a tune the things that just then thrilled her with a sense of their beauty.
"Oh, the locus'-trees a-blowin'," she sang, softly. "An' the moon a-shinin' through them. An' the starlight an' pink roses; an' Amanthis--an' Amanthis!"
She hummed it over and over until Walker had finished carrying the dishes away.
It was a strange thing that the Colonel's unfrequent moods of tenderness were like those warm days that they call weather-breeders.
They were sure to be followed by a change of atmosphere. This time as the fierce rheumatic pain came back he stormed at Walker, and scolded him for everything he did and everything he left undone.
When Maria came up to put Lloyd to bed, Fritz was tearing around the room barking at his shadow.
"Put that dog out, M'ria!" roared the Colonel, almost crazy with its antics. "Take it down-stairs, and put it out of the house, I say! Nobody but a heathen would let a dog sleep in the house, anyway."
The homesick feeling began to creep over Lloyd again. She had expected to keep Fritz in her room at night for company. But for the touch of the little glove in her pocket, she would have said something ugly to her grandfather when he spoke so harshly.
His own ill humour was reflected in her scowl as she followed Maria down the stairs to drive Fritz out into the dark. They stood a moment in the open door, after Maria had slapped him with her apron to make him go off the porch.
"Oh, look at the new moon!" cried Lloyd, pointing to the slender crescent in the autumn sky.
"I'se feared to, honey," answered Maria, "less I should see it through the trees. That 'ud bring me bad luck for a month, suah. I'll go out on the lawn where it's open, an' look at it ovah my right shouldah."
While they were walking backward down the path, intent on reaching a place where they could have an uninterrupted view of the moon, Fritz sneaked around to the other end of the porch.
No one was watching. He slipped into the house as noiselessly as his four soft feet could carry him.
Maria, going through the dark upper hall, with a candle held high above her head and Lloyd clinging to her skirts, did not see a tasselled tail swinging along in front of her. It disappeared under the big bed when she led Lloyd into the room next the old Colonel's.
The child felt very sober while she was being put to bed.
The furniture was heavy and dark. An ugly portrait of a cross old man in a wig frowned at her from over the mantel. The dancing firelight made his eyes frightfully lifelike.
The bed was so high she had to climb on a chair to get in. She heard Maria's heavy feet go shuffling down the stairs. A door banged. Then it was so still she could hear the clock tick in the next room.
It was the first time in all her life that her mother had not come to kiss her good night. Her lips quivered, and a big tear rolled down on the pillow.
She reached out to the chair beside her bed, where her clothes were hanging, and felt in her apron pocket for the little glove. She sat up in bed, and looked at it in the dim firelight. Then she held it against her face. "Oh, I want my mothah! I want my mothah!" she sobbed, in a heart-broken whisper.
Laying her head on her knees, she began to cry quietly, but with great sobs that nearly choked her.
There was a rustling under the bed. She lifted her wet face in alarm. Then she smiled through her tears, for there was Fritz, her own dear dog, and not an unknown horror waiting to grab her.
He stood on his hind legs, eagerly trying to lap away her tears with his friendly red tongue.
She clasped him in her arms with an ecstatic hug. "Oh, you're such a comfort!" she whispered. "I can go to sleep now."
She spread her apron on the bed, and motioned him to jump. With one spring he was beside her.
It was nearly midnight when the door from the Colonel's room was noiselessly opened.
The old man stirred the fire gently until it burst into a bright flame. Then he turned to the bed. "You rascal!" he whispered, looking at Fritz, who raised his head quickly with a threatening look in his wicked eyes.
Lloyd lay with one hand stretched out, holding the dog's protecting paw. The other held something against her tear-stained cheek.
"What under the sun!" he thought, as he drew it gently from her fingers. The little glove lay across his hand, slim and aristocratic-looking. He knew instinctively whose it was. "Poor little thing's been crying," he thought. "She wants Elizabeth. And so do I! And so do I!" his heart cried out with bitter longing. "It's never been like home since she left."
He laid the glove back on her pillow, and went to his room.
"If Jack Sherman should die," he said to himself many times that night, "then she would come home again. Oh, little daughter, little daughter! why did you ever leave me?"
The first thing that greeted the Little Colonel's eyes when she opened them next morning was her mother's old doll. Maria had laid it on the pillow beside her.
It was beautifully dressed, although in a queer, old-fashioned style that seemed very strange to the child.
She took it up with careful fingers, remembering its great age. Maria had warned her not to waken her grandfather, so she admired it in whispers.
"Jus' think, Fritz," she exclaimed, "this doll has seen my Gran'mothah Amanthis, an' it's named for her. My mothah wasn't any bigger'n me when she played with it. I think it is the loveliest doll I evah saw in my whole life."
Fritz gave a jealous bark.
"Sh!" commanded his little mistress. "Didn't you heah M'ria say, 'Fo' de Lawd's sake don't wake up ole Marse?' Why don't you mind?"
The Colonel was not in the best of humours after such a wakeful night, but the sight of her happiness made him smile in spite of himself, when she danced into his room with the doll.
She had eaten an early breakfast and gone back up-stairs to examine the other toys that were spread out in her room.
The door between the two rooms was ajar. All the time he was dressing and taking his coffee he could hear her talking to some one. He supposed it was Maria. But as he glanced over his mail he heard the Little Colonel saying, "May Lilly, do you know about Billy Goat Gruff? Do you want me to tell you that story?"
He leaned forward until he could look through the narrow opening of the door. Two heads were all he could see,--Lloyd's, soft-haired and golden, May Lilly's, covered with dozens of tightly braided little black tails.
He was about to order May Lilly back to the cabin, when he remembered the scene that followed the last time he had done so. He concluded to keep quiet and listen.
"Billy Goat Gruff was so fat," the story went on, "jus' as fat as gran'fathah."
The Colonel glanced up with an amused smile at the fine figure reflected in an opposite mirror.
"Trip-trap, trip-trap, went Billy Goat Gruff's little feet ovah the bridge to the giant's house."
Just at this point Walker, who was putting things in order, closed the door between the rooms.
"Open that door, you black rascal!" called the Colonel, furious at the interruption.
In his haste to obey, Walker knocked over a pitcher of water that had been left on the floor beside the wash-stand.
Then the Colonel yelled at him to be quick about mopping it up, so that by the time the door was finally opened, Lloyd was finishing her story.
The Colonel looked in just in time to see her put her hands to her temples, with her forefingers protruding from her forehead like horns. She said in a deep voice, as she brandished them at May Lilly, "With my two long speahs I'll poke yo' eyeballs through yo' yeahs." The little darky fell back giggling. "That sut'n'y was like a billy-goat. We had one once that 'ud make a body step around mighty peart. It slip up behine me one mawnin' on the poach, an' fo' awhile I thought my haid was buss open suah. I got up toreckly, though, an' I cotch him, and when I done got through, Mistah Billy-goat feel po'ly moah'n a week. He sut'n'y did."
Walker grinned, for he had witnessed the scene.
Just then Maria put her head in at the door to say, "May Lilly, yo' mammy's callin' you."
Lloyd and Fritz followed her noisily down-stairs. Then for nearly an hour it was very quiet in the great house.
The Colonel, looking out of the window, could see Lloyd playing hide-and-seek with Fritz under the bare locust-trees. When she came in her cheeks were glowing from her run in the frosty air. Her eyes shone like stars, and her face was radiant.
"See what I've found down in the dead leaves," she cried. "A little blue violet, bloomin' all by itself."
She brought a tiny cup from the next room, that belonged to the set of doll dishes, and put the violet in it.
"There!" she said, setting it on the table at her grandfather's elbow. "Now I'll put Amanthis in this chair, where you can look at her, an' you won't get lonesome while I'm playing outdoors."
He drew her toward him and kissed her.
"Why, how cold your hands are!" he exclaimed. "Staying in this warm room all the time makes me forget it is so wintry outdoors. I don't believe you are dressed warmly enough. You ought not to wear sunbonnets this time of year."
Then for the first time he noticed her outgrown cloak and shabby shoes.
"What are you wearing these old clothes for?" he said, impatiently. "Why didn't they dress you up when you were going visiting? It isn't showing proper respect to send you off in the oldest things you've got."
It was a sore point with the Little Colonel. It hurt her pride enough to have to wear old clothes without being scolded for it. Besides, she felt that in some way her mother was being blamed for what could not be helped.
"They's the best I've got," she answered, proudly choking back the tears. "I don't need any new ones, 'cause maybe we'll be goin' away pretty soon."
"Going away!" he echoed, blankly, "Where?" She did not answer until he repeated the question. Then she turned her back on him, and started toward the door. The tears she was too proud to let him see were running down her face.
"We's goin' to the poah-house," she exclaimed, defiantly, "jus' as soon as the money in the pocketbook is used up. It was nearly gone when I came away."
Here she began to sob, as she fumbled at the door she could not see to open.
"I'm goin' home to my mothah right now. She loves me if my clothes are old and ugly."
"Why, Lloyd," called the Colonel, amazed and distressed by her sudden burst of grief. "Come here to grandpa. Why didn't you tell me so before?"
The face, the tone, the outstretched arm, all drew her irresistibly to him. It was a relief to lay her head on his shoulder, and unburden herself of the fear that had haunted her so many days.
With her arms around his neck, and the precious little head held close to his heart, the old Colonel was in such a softened mood that he would have promised anything to comfort her.
"There, there," he said, soothingly, stroking her hair with a gentle hand, when she had told him all her troubles. "Don't you worry about that, my dear. Nobody is going to eat out of tin pans and sleep on straw. Grandpa just won't let them."
She sat up and wiped her eyes on her apron. "But Papa Jack would die befo' he'd take help from you," she wailed. "An' so would mothah. I heard her tell the doctah so."
The tender expression on the Colonel's face changed to one like flint, but he kept on stroking her hair. "People sometimes change their minds," he said, grimly. "I wouldn't worry over a little thing like that if I were you. Don't you want to run down-stairs and tell M'ria to give you a piece of cake?"
"Oh, yes," she exclaimed, smiling up at him. "I'll bring you some, too."
When the first train went into Louisville that afternoon, Walker was on board with an order in his pocket to one of the largest dry goods establishments in the city. When he came out again, that evening, he carried a large box into the Colonel's room.
Lloyd's eyes shone as she looked into it. There was an elegant fur-trimmed cloak, a pair of dainty shoes, and a muff that she caught up with a shriek of delight.
"What kind of a thing is this?" grumbled the Colonel, as he took out a hat that had been carefully packed in one corner of the box. "I told them to send the most stylish thing they had. It looks like a scarecrow," he continued, as he set it askew on the child's head.
She snatched it off to look at it herself. "Oh, it's jus' like Emma Louise Wyfo'd's!" she exclaimed. "You didn't put it on straight. See! This is the way it goes."
She climbed up in front of the mirror, and put it on as she had seen Emma Louise wear hers.
"Well, it's a regular Napoleon hat," exclaimed the Colonel, much pleased. "So little girls nowadays have taken to wearing soldier's caps, have they? It's right becoming to you with your short hair. Grandpa is real proud of his 'little Colonel.'"
She gave him the military salute he had taught her, and then ran to throw her arms around him. "Oh, gran'fathah!" she exclaimed, between her kisses, "you'se jus' as good as Santa Claus, every bit."
The Colonel's rheumatism was better next day; so much better that toward evening he walked down-stairs into the long drawing-room. The room had not been illuminated in years as it was that night.
Every wax taper was lighted in the silver candelabra, and the dim old mirrors multiplied their lights on every side. A great wood fire threw a cheerful glow over the portraits and the frescoed ceiling. All the linen covers had been taken from the furniture.
Lloyd, who had never seen this room except with the chairs shrouded and the blinds down, came running in presently. She was bewildered at first by the change. Then she began walking softly around the room, examining everything.
In one corner stood a tall, gilded harp that her grandmother had played in her girlhood. The heavy cover had kept it fair and untarnished through all the years it had stood unused. To the child's beauty-loving eyes it seemed the loveliest thing she had ever seen.
She stood with her hands clasped behind her as her gaze wandered from its pedals to the graceful curves of its tall frame. It shone like burnished gold in the soft firelight.
"Oh, gran'fathah!" she asked at last in a low, reverent tone, "where did you get it? Did an angel leave it heah fo' you?"
He did not answer for a moment. Then he said, huskily, as he looked up at a portrait over the mantel, "Yes, my darling, an angel did leave it here. She always was one. Come here to grandpa."
He took her on his knee, and pointed up to the portrait. The same harp was in the picture. Standing beside it, with one hand resting on its shining strings, was a young girl all in white.
"That's the way she looked the first time I ever saw her," said the Colonel, dreamily. "A June rose in her hair, and another at her throat; and her soul looked right out through those great, dark eyes--the purest, sweetest soul God ever made! My beautiful Amanthis!"
"My bu'ful Amanthis!" repeated the child, in an awed whisper.
She sat gazing into the lovely young face for a long time, while the old man seemed lost in dreams.
"Gran'fathah," she said at length, patting his cheek to attract his attention, and then nodding toward the portrait, "did she love my mothah like my mothah loves me?"
"Certainly, my dear," was the gentle reply.
It was the twilight hour, when the homesick feeling always came back strongest to Lloyd.
"Then I jus' know that if my bu'ful gran'mothah Amanthis could come down out of that frame, she'd go straight and put her arms around my mothah an' kiss away all her sorry feelin's."
The Colonel fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair a moment. Then to his great relief the tea-bell rang.
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