The Little Colonel's House Party Part 7

"But the beads that had rolled away into the darkness buried themselves in the earth, and took root and sprang up. There at the castle gate they bloomed, a strange, strange flower, for on every stem hung a row of little bleeding hearts.

"One day the Princess Olga, seeing them from her window, went down to them in wonderment. 'What do you here?' she cried, for in her lonely forest life she had learned all speech of bird and beast and plant.

"'We bloom for love's sweet sake,' they answered. 'We have sprung from the old flax-spinner's gift,--the necklace thou didst break and scatter.

From her heart's best blood she gave it, and her heart still bleeds to think she is forgotten.'

"Then they began to tell the story of the old dame's sacrifices, all the seventy times seven that she had made for the sake of the maiden, and Olga grieved as she listened, that she could have been so ungrateful.

Then she brought the prince to listen to the story of the strange, strange flowers, and when he had heard, together they went to the lowly cottage and fetched the old flax-spinner to the castle, there to live out all her days.

"And still the flowers that we call bleeding hearts bloom on by cottage walls and castle gardens, reminding us how often 'tis through hearts that bleed for love's sweet sake we reach our happiness."

Betty came to the end of the story and paused, smiling, while the Little Colonel, who had listened with one arm around her mother's neck, waited for what was to follow.

Mrs. Sherman took up a little box that had been lying in her lap under the sewing, and lifted something out of the jeweller's cotton it contained.

"Elizabeth," she asked, motioning the child toward her, "do you suppose the Princess Olga's necklace was anything like this?" What she held up was a string of little gold beads.

"Oh, they are almost like mine," cried Lloyd, fingering them admiringly.

Before Betty realised what was coming, she found them clasped on her neck, and Mrs. Sherman was saying: "It isn't made out of my heart's blood by any means, and it will not lead you to any Prince Charming, but it is my privilege as G.o.dmother to lay a spell on them. Let's see how it will work. Go over to that little trunk of yours in the corner, dear, and lay your hand on it. Now shut your eyes while you repeat Olga's charm, and see what will happen."

Delighted by this dramatising of the old tale, Betty scrambled to her feet, ran across the room, and laid her hand on top of the shabby little leather trunk. Shutting her eyes so tight that her nose wrinkled up like a kitten's, while her mouth smiled broadly, she repeated the rhyme:

"For love's sweet sake, in my hour of need, Blossom and deck me, little seed!"

As she opened her eyes, Lloyd, obeying a whisper from her mother, threw back the lid of the trunk. All that Betty could utter, as she looked within, was a long-drawn cry of surprise: "Oh-oo-oo!"

There, inside, lay a pile of light summer dresses, some white, and the rest in as many tints of pale pinks and blues and buffs and lilacs as could be found in a bunch of fresh sweet peas. Below were glimpses of linen and lace and embroidery, and in the top tray two pretty hats. One trimmed simply with rosettes of ribbon, the other a broad-brimmed leghorn with a wreath of forget-me-nots.

One look into Betty's face was enough reward for Mrs. Sherman. It was ample return for all the trouble she had taken. What was the money expended and the discomforts of that tiresome morning that she shopped in town, or the many trips to the dressmaker's, compared to the rapture in Betty's s.h.i.+ning eyes? Mrs. Sherman had never seen such happiness, or heard such a gladness in a voice as when Betty cried out, "Oh, G.o.dmother! Are you a witch? It is too good to be true. I thought I was coming to an ordinary house party, and I've walked straight into a real, live fairy tale! Oh, I can never thank you enough! Never, never, never."

She threw her arms around her G.o.dmother's neck and kissed her again and again.

Presently leaving Betty to gloat over her treasures by herself, Lloyd followed Mrs. Sherman out of the room. "Now I see what you meant, mothah," she said, "about the different ways of givin' things. It can't hurt anybody's pride if you make them feel that you give it for love's sweet sake. That was a beautiful way you did it, mothah, and I'll never fo'get it."

CHAPTER VII.

BITS FROM BETTY'S DIARY.

"THE LOCUSTS," June 4, 1900.

This morning when I sat down at my writing-desk to finish a letter to Davy, I found this little blank book, bound in white kid, with my initials on the back in gold letters. When I first came, G.o.dmother heard me wis.h.i.+ng that I could put a slice of my good times away in a box every day, and save it to take home and enjoy afterward, as people do fruit-cake sometimes, after Christmases and weddings. So she has given me this pretty white book, and every day while I am in this House Beautiful I shall write something in it with this darling little pearl-handled pen.

Even if I should live to be a grandmother, I am sure I shall never be too old to enjoy reading the account of what we did at this house party.

So far I am the only guest. The others will be here in a few days. They have so much farther to travel than I had.

Cousin Hetty would say that I "am eating my white bread now," for it is nothing but play from morning until night.

At first it seemed so strange,--no beds to make, no dishes to wash, no churning to do. I like the evenings best of all. Then we sit on the porch in the twilight, and G.o.dmother talks about mamma. I never knew anything about her before, for I was so little when she died; but now she seems so real to me and so sweet.

Then we go into the long drawing-room, and the wax tapers are lighted.

G.o.dmother says she always intends to use candle-light in that room, because it would spoil some of its quaint old-time charm to use modern lights. And she plays on the piano, and Lloyd on the harp. Lloyd is only learning, and G.o.dmother doesn't seem to think much of her playing, but to me the music they make seems almost heavenly. They forget that the only music that I am used to hearing, except what the birds make, is pumped out of the wheezy little organ at church.

I could sit up all night to listen to them. It makes me feel so strange that I hardly know how to describe it,--as if I were away off from everything, and high up, where it is wide and open, and where the stars are. It makes me want to write. All sorts of beautiful thoughts come to me, that I can _almost_ put into words. But they are like will-o'-the-wisps. When I get to the place with my rhyme, where I saw them s.h.i.+ning, they are still beyond my reach.

JUNE 5th.

Rob Moore came over to-day, and he and Lloyd and I went fis.h.i.+ng.

We carried our lunch with us, and ate it on a big rock that sticks up like a sort of island in the middle of the creek. We had to take off our shoes and stockings to wade out to it, and after we got there the rock was hardly big enough to hold the basket and all of us comfortably. We had to hold fast with one hand and grab for our sandwiches with the other.

It was lots of fun, for Rob and Lloyd kept saying such funny things that we laughed all the time. I don't know how it happened, but we got to laughing so hard that Lloyd choked on a piece of chicken. We began pounding her on the back to help her get her breath, and all of a sudden off we went from the rock into the creek--kersplas.h.!.+

It wasn't deep enough to hurt us, but we did look so funny when we stood up as wet as three frogs, and wiped the water out of our eyes. We laughed so hard we could scarcely fish the basket out of the creek and wade to sh.o.r.e. The basket was the only thing we caught except a turtle; Rob got that, and Lloyd made him let it go again.

Of course our tumble into the water ended the fis.h.i.+ng for to-day, for we all had to hurry home for dry clothes. But Rob came back again in the afternoon, and he and Lloyd have been giving me my first lesson in lawn-tennis.

JUNE 6th.

Joyce came to-day on the noon train. She has the blue room across the hall from mine. It suits her, for she is a blonde like Lloyd, but her hair doesn't curl any. It is just soft and wavy, and hangs in two long braids below her waist. Her eyes are gray, with long dark lashes, and while she isn't exactly pretty, she has a face that you like to keep looking at. It is so bright and jolly, as if she was always thinking funny things, and having a good time all to herself.

She came all the way alone, and didn't mind it a bit, although she had to change cars twice, and was all night on the sleeping-car. She brought a sketch-book in her satchel that is almost full of pictures she drew on the train. There is one that is so funny. It is the head of an old man, gone to sleep with his mouth open. She wrote under that one, "As others see us." Then she drew two cunning babies playing peek-a-boo in the aisle. She called that "Innocence abroad." There are ever so many more that G.o.dmother says are really clever, and remarkably well done for a girl of thirteen. I thought they were perfect.

It didn't take long to get acquainted with Joyce. She has been here only a part of a day, and already I feel as if I had known her always.

JUNE 7th.

It was nearly six o'clock yesterday when Eugenia came. G.o.dmother and Lloyd drove down to the station to meet her, but Joyce and I walked up and down under the locusts, wondering what she would be like.

We could hardly wait for the carriage to come, we were so eager to know.

I couldn't tell what it was about her, but somehow, when she stepped out of the carriage and shook hands with us, she made me feel awkward and shy and out of place. Maybe it was because she had such a grown-up manner and seemed so young-ladified, although she is only Joyce's age.

Then she spoke in such a superior sort of way to her maid, when she ordered her to follow up-stairs with the satchels.

They went straight to the green room to dress for dinner, and Joyce and I locked arms again, and strolled down to the gate. Joyce asked me what I thought of her. I told her that I would be thankful to the end of time that I got here first. Seeing her arrive in such a stylish travelling suit, gloves, and Knox hat, and carrying such a handsome leather bag, opened my eyes to the way I must have looked when I came. It tickled Joyce, the way I described myself, travelling in a sunbonnet and carrying my belongings in an old-fas.h.i.+oned willow basket.

She gave my chin a soft nip and kissed rue on each cheek, and said, "You funny little Bettykins! As if it made any difference to your friends what you wore."

I told her I believed it would make a difference to Eugenia, and she thought, too, that maybe it might. Then I told her I believed that was why G.o.dmother gave me the enchanted necklace before she came, so that I wouldn't feel uncomfortable. Joyce had not heard about the necklace, so I showed her my gold beads and told her their story. She thought it was lovely of G.o.dmother to make the fairy tale come true, but she advised me not to tell Eugenia. Girls who always travel in private cars and have everything they wish for, she said, can't understand what it means to be poor. Then she told me about a box that her Cousin Kate had sent her, and how good it made everybody in the little brown house feel, when it came.

JUNE 8th.

We had the grandest surprise this morning. Lloyd came up to the house soon after breakfast, on Tarbaby, leading her mother's riding horse, a graceful little bay mare. Behind her came one of the coloured men leading two ponies, so that we could all have a ride. The bay mare was for Eugenia, who is a fine horsewoman. She learned in a New York riding-school. The ponies were for Joyce and me. Mr. Sherman had them sent out from Louisville after he went away, for us to use all the time we are here.

One of the ponies is named Calico, because he is marked so queerly. His hair grows in such funny little streaks and stripes and patches that he looks as if he had been painted that way on purpose. He was a clown pony in a circus one time, and is supposed to know a lot of tricks. Joyce wanted him because he is so gentle, and she had never ridden any before.

She didn't mind his ridiculous looks. So Lad fell to my share,--a pretty brown one that is as easy as a rocking-horse after the stiff-jointed old farm-horses that I am used to bouncing around on at home.

They were all ready to start, so we went galloping down to Judge Moore's after Rob, and the five of us raced all over the valley till nearly lunch-time. It was grand. The dust flew, and people ran to the windows when we went by, as if we had been a circus.