"I shall do everything I can to keep any one from suspecting that he is sending letters to me through you," said Ida, as they strolled slowly back toward the house. "I can't let your friendship for me get you into trouble. They'll watch me very closely now, so maybe it will be as well for me not to appear so intimate with you as I have been. We'll not come off here alone any more at recess. By and by, when I feel that I can, I'll try to interest myself in the other girls. We'll still have our little confidential meetings just the same, but no one must suspect us.
"I wish Mrs. Walton would invite me to her house sometimes," she said, impulsively, when they had walked a few minutes in silence. "If I could fill up a long letter to aunt about that, it would make her feel that I was interested in something besides Edwardo, and would appease her wonderfully."
"I'll ask her to," said Lloyd, eagerly. "Mrs. Walton told mothah she intended to have Betty and me at The Beeches very often while she was away. The first time she invites us I'll ask her to have you too. She's so kind and sweet, that I'd as soon do it as not. All she seems to live for is just to make othah people happy."
"Oh, Princess, if you only would!" exclaimed Ida, giving her a delighted hug. "Aunt would be so pleased, for it would be in all the home papers that I had been entertained at the home of the late General Walton. She would consider it such an honour, and feel that in one way, at least, I was a credit to her. Aunt thinks so much of attentions from distinguished people. It is one of her hobbies. I would like to please her as much as possible in every way I can, as long as I have to disregard her wishes about – what I just told you, you know. Sh! We're too near the house to talk any more."
The rest of the way they slipped along in silence under the shadow of the trees. Up the creaking stairway they crept, pausing a moment before they opened the door. Then they shot the rusty bolt noiselessly back in place, dropped the portière, and listened again.
"It's all right," whispered Ida, giving Lloyd's hand a reassuring squeeze as they tiptoed down the hall. "Oh, you're such a comfort! You'll never know what a load you've taken off my mind. Good night!"
In those few moments of silence between the orchard and the house, Lloyd's thoughts travelled rapidly. Her quarrel with Betty had faded so far into the background, that it seemed ridiculously trivial now. She had forgotten her grievance in listening to the tale of larger trouble. And since Ida had made it clear to her that it would be to her interest to be friendly with all the girls, she was eager to enlist Betty's sympathies and help. She wished fervently that she could share her secret with her. She burst into the room, her eyes shining with excitement, and blinking as they met the bright lamplight.
Betty was standing in her nightgown, ready for bed. She saw at the first glance that Lloyd's anger was over, and she drew a great sigh of relief.
"Oh, Betty," began Lloyd, impetuously, "I'm awfully sorry I made such a mountain out of a mole-hill this mawning and got into a tempah about what you said. You were right, aftah all. Ida thinks just as you do, that we oughtn't to go off by ourselves all the time, and she wants to be friends with the othah girls if they'll let her. I'm going back to the old ways to-morrow, and try not to let anything spoil the good times you talked about. Ida is so unhappy. I wish I could tell you, but I haven't any right – what she told me was in confidence. But if you only knew, you'd do all you could to help make it easiah for her with the girls."
"I'll do anything on earth you want me to!" exclaimed Betty. "This has been the longest, miserablest day I ever spent."
"Oh," cried the Little Colonel, a look of distress in her face. "Then I've spoiled 'The Road of the Loving Heart' that I wanted to leave in yoah memory. I haven't been true to my ring." She looked down at the talisman on her finger, the little lover's knot of gold, and turned it around regretfully.
"No, you haven't spoiled anything!" cried Betty. "It was my fault too. You're the dearest girl in the world, and I'll always think of you that way. Let's don't say another word about to-day. That's the best way to forget."
Lloyd began undressing, and Betty knelt down to say her prayers. The gong rang presently for all lights to be put out. The seminary settled itself to silence, then to sleep. But long after Betty's soft, regular breathing showed that she was in dreamland, Lloyd lay with wide-open, wakeful eyes. The moonlight streaming through the open window lay in a white square on the floor by her bed. She heard the clock in the hall toll eleven, twelve, and one before she fell asleep. The spell of the orchard was still upon her; the moonlight, the faint strains of music, Ida's white face with the tears in the violet eyes, and the glimmer of the pearl on her white hand came again and again in her fitful dreams, all through the night.
CHAPTER IV
THE SHADOW CLUB
Lloyd's return to the old ways came about so naturally next morning, that no one seemed to notice her sudden desertion of Ida. Just after the morning recess began, little Elise Walton came running up to Allison, crying excitedly, "Oh, sister! Give me your handkerchief! Quick! Somebody has upset a bottle of ink on Magnolia Budine's hair, and it's running all over everything!"
Before Allison could fish her handkerchief from her sleeve, where she had thrust it during recitation, Lloyd seized a basin of water and hurried out to the back hall door. There stood Magnolia, her head craned forward like a turtle, as far as possible over the steps, to keep the ink from dripping on her dress. Half a dozen little girls were making excited passes at it with handkerchiefs, slate-rags, and sponges.
"Heah!" cried Lloyd, putting the basin down on the step. "Bend ovah, Magnolia, and dip yoah head in! Anna Louise, you run and get anothah basin in the hall, and Marguerite, ask some of the big girls to bring a bucket of watah. It'll take a tubful to soak this out."
Whatever the Little Colonel undertook was thoroughly done, and when Magnolia emerged from the last vigorous rinsing, only a faint green tinge remained on the flaxen hair. But that would not wash off, Lloyd declared. She had had a similar experience herself when she was in the primary grade. It would simply have to wear off, and that process might take days.
Kitty and Allison with all the girls of their set had crowded around to see the amusing sight, offering advice and laughing all the time the performance lasted. As she worked Lloyd related her own experience. Rob Moore had tipped the bottle of ink on her head one day, when they were writing letters to Santa Claus, and Mom Beck had washed her hair every day for a week to get it out.
Finally, turning her charge over to the primary girls with a couple of towels and directions to rub her dry and leave her in the sun to bleach, Lloyd led the way to the swing, where they sat laughing and joking over Magnolia's accident until the bell rang again.
The school had laughed at Magnolia from the first day, when an old carryall stopped in front of the seminary and she climbed out with a huge carpet-bag in her hand. It was the most old-fashioned of carpet-bags, an elaborate pattern of red roses on each side. And she was the most old-fashioned of little girls, buttoned up in a plain-waisted bright blue merino dress, with many gathers in the full skirt. It was such a dress as her grandmother might have worn when she was a child. Her light hair was drawn back tightly behind her ears, and braided in two little tails. She was fat and awkward and shy, and so awed by the strange surroundings that a sort of terror took possession of her when she found herself alone among so many unfamiliar faces.
It was Lloyd Sherman who came to the rescue when she saw tears of fright in the round, blue eyes. Lloyd had begun the school term with a resolution to keep true to the talisman she wore, the little ring that was to remind her constantly of the "Road of the Loving Heart" which she wanted to build in every one's memory. This was her first opportunity. She led the little stranger to the principal's room, and stayed beside her until she was delivered safely into the matron's hands. Later it was Lloyd who saw her in chapel looking around in bewilderment, uncertain where to go, and beckoned her to a seat near her own. And again at roll-call, when somebody tittered at the unusual name, and the child's face