"Oh, Rob," exclaimed Lloyd, as he started down the avenue beside her and Betty. "It's like a bit of home to see you again. Talk fast and tell us everything. Do you think you'll pa.s.s in Latin? Is it decided whethah you're to go East to school aftah Christmas? Did you see that awful piece in the papah about our club?"

She poured out her questions so rapidly that they were half-way to the seminary before he could answer all her catechism, and then he had so many to ask her that she almost forgot to tell him about the box they had received from Locust that morning.

"A suah enough Thanksgiving-box!" she exclaimed gleefully. "Just as if we'd really been away off from home at school, with all the good things that Mom Beck could think of or Aunt Cindy could cook, from a turkey to a monstrous big fruit-cake. Mothah planned the surprise before she went away. Think of the gay midnight suppahs we could have if we hadn't turned ovah a new leaf and refawmed."

"So you've reformed!" he repeated. "Then boarding-school life can't seem as funny to you as you thought last September it was going to be."

"Yes, it does," protested Betty. "I'll be glad when the next four weeks are over so that we can go back to Locust, but excepting only two or three things that happened, I've enjoyed every minute that we've been at the seminary. I'll always be glad that we had this experience."

"And it wasn't at all like you said it would be," added Lloyd, laughingly, "'scorched oatmeal and dried apples and old cats watching at every keyhole.' There was some eavesdropping, but it wasn't the teachahs who did it, and we had moah fun getting even with the girl who did than I could tell in a week. I'll tell you about our playing ghost, and all the rest, when you come out Christmas."

"Then I'll have to hand over the candy," he said. "You've earned it, if you've stood the strain this long and kept as hale and hearty as you look."

They had reached the high green picket gate by this time, and, delivering the box to the girls, with a few more words he left them.

Dinner was to be early at Oaklea, he said, as they were all going home on the five o'clock train.

"Oh, it was just like having a piece of home to see him again,"

exclaimed Lloyd, looking after him wistfully as he lifted his cap and walked rapidly away. "I can hardly wait to get back now. Wouldn't you like to walk up to Locust aftah dinnah, Betty?"

"No, I believe not," was the hesitating reply. "It would make me feel more homesick than if I stayed away altogether. Mom Beck will be off keeping holiday somewhere, and everything will be shut up and desolate-looking. Probably all we'd see would be Lad and Tarbaby out in the pasture. Let's walk over to Rollington instead, after dinner, and take a lot of things to that poor little Mrs. Crisp out of our box from home."

"How funny for you to think of the same thing that I did this mawning in church!" exclaimed Lloyd. "The text made me think of it, and when I looked across at her in that pitiful old wispy c.r.a.pe veil, and thought of the washing she has to do, and the baby with the fits, I was so thankful that I was not in her place that I felt as if I ought to give her every penny I possess."

It was a very quiet day. A better dinner than usual, and the long walk over to Rollington late in the afternoon was all that made it differ from the Sundays that they had spent at the seminary. But as the two little Good Samaritans trudged homeward over the frozen pike, swinging their empty basket between them, Lloyd exclaimed, "I've had a good time to-day, aftah all, and I would have been perfectly misah'ble if I'd gone on the way I stah'ted out to do--thinking about the one thing I wanted and couldn't have. I just _made_ myself stop, and go to thinking of the things I did have, and then I forgot to feel homesick. Counting yoah blessings and carrying turkey to poah folks doesn't sound like a very exciting way to spend yoah holidays, but it makes you feel mighty good inside, doesn't it! Especially when you think how pleased Mrs. Crisp was."

"Yes," answered Betty. "I don't know how to express the way the day has made me feel. Not happy, exactly, for when I'm that way I always want to sing." She held her m.u.f.f against her cold face. "It's more like a big, soft, furry kind of contentment. If I were a cat I'd be purring."

CHAPTER XVI.

CHRISTMAS GREENS AND WATCH-NIGHT EMBERS

THERE is a chapter in Betty's Good Times book which tells all about that last day at the seminary, before the Christmas vacation; of the hurried packing and leave-taking; of her trip to town with Lloyd to meet Papa Jack and come out home with him on the five o'clock train, laden with Christmas packages like all the other suburban pa.s.sengers; of the carriage waiting for them at the depot, just as if they had been away at some school a long distance from the Valley, and then the crowning joy of seeing her G.o.dmother on the platform, waving her handkerchief as the train stopped in front of the depot.

They had not expected her back from Hot Springs until the next day, and all the way out on the train had been discussing the reception they intended to give her. There had been a twinkle in Mr. Sherman's eyes as he listened, for he knew of this surprise in store for them, and had had a hand in planning it.

It is all in Betty's Good Times book, even to the way they rolled down the steps and fell over each other in their haste to reach her, and the welcome that made it seem more than ever as if they were coming home from a long journey to spend their Christmas vacation, just as thousands of other schoolgirls were doing all over the country. Then the drive homeward in the frosty, starlit dusk to find Locust all a-twinkle, a light in every window and a fire on every hearth; the great front door swinging wide on its hospitable hinges to send a stream of light down the avenue to meet them, and the spirit of Christmas cheer and expectancy falling warm upon them as they crossed the threshold.

The memory of it would be something to be glad for always, Betty thought, as she danced into the long drawing-room after Lloyd, and saw the old Colonel start up from his chair before the fire and come forward to meet them, the candle-light falling softly on his silver hair and smiling face.

Although Betty had laid aside her unfinished romance of Gladys and Eugene, she could no more help writing than a fish can keep from swimming, and that is why her Good Times book held so many interesting pages. All the energy and time that would have been put into the silly little novel went instead to the description of real scenes and real people, which in after years made the little white books the most precious volumes in all her library. As fast as one was filled she began another. The one now on her desk had the number IV. stamped in gold on the white kid cover, under her initials.

There were few pages in this fourth volume more interesting than the ones she found time to write on Christmas Eve. She had gone with Lloyd and Allison and Kitty that afternoon in search for Christmas greens with which to decorate the house.

Malcolm and Keith Maclntyre, Rob Moore, and Ra.n.a.ld Walton had met them in Tanglewood, their guns over their shoulders, and had joined them in their quest. The mistletoe they wanted grew too high to be climbed for or to be dislodged by throwing at, but Ra.n.a.ld, an expert marksman, volunteered to shoot down all they could carry. He was just home from military school on his vacation, and Rob Moore had been out for two days hunting with him. Malcolm and Keith had been at their grandmother's several days, tramping long distances over the frosty fields, and coming in well satisfied each evening with the contents of their game-bags.

Malcolm and Rob were to leave for the same college-preparatory school after the holidays, and as they were going back to town on the five o'clock train they had but a short time left to spend in the Valley. So the party, after some discussion, divided into three groups, agreeing to meet at the depot.

Ra.n.a.ld strode away across the woods as fast as his long legs would carry him to the trees where the mistletoe hung. Kitty and Katie kept close in his wake, swinging the baskets between them that he was to fill. Keith and Betty hurried on to the place where the bittersweet grew thickest, while Rob and Allison, Malcolm and Lloyd strolled along, filling their baskets from the occasional trees of hemlock, spruce, and cedar they found on their way among the bare oaks and beeches. Now and then they found a pine with the brown cones clinging to the spicy boughs.

Only Betty's part of that quest is in the little white record; how they ran along through Tanglewood that afternoon, she and Keith, in the late December sunshine, breathing in the woodsy odour of the fallen leaves and the crisp frostiness of the air, until the blood tingled in their finger-tips and their cheeks grew red as rosy apples.

It was a pretty picture she left on the page, of the winter woods, of the old stile leading into the adjoining churchyard, where in almost a thicket of bare dogwood-trees and lilac-bushes stood the little Episcopal church, built like the one next the manse, of picturesque gray stone. The walls were aglow with the brilliant red and orange berries of the bittersweet, which hung even from the eaves and cornices, and from every place where the graceful vines could trail and twist and clamber.

Lloyd kept no record of that afternoon, but she never forgot it. She walked along, her eyes shining like stars, her cheeks glowing. Her dark blue cap and jacket made her hair seem all the fairer by contrast, and there was a glint of gold in it, wherever the sun touched it through the trees.

Rob and Malcolm were full of their plans for the coming term, and talked of little else all the way through the woods, but as they reached the stile, over which Keith and Betty had pa.s.sed some time before, Rob exclaimed:

"I forgot to tell you, Lloyd! When we were out hunting yesterday we stopped at a cabin ever so far from here, to rest and warm. And what do you suppose we saw on the pendulum of an old clock, swinging away on the mantel as big as life? _Your picture!_ The one of the Princess, you know, with the dove. I couldn't believe my eyes at first. The old man told us it had been given to his daughter, and when he found out who Ra.n.a.ld was he sent a message to Mrs. Walton about her. She's in a hospital and will soon be well enough to come home. Mrs. Walton told us all about it last night, how the girl imagined every time the clock ticked that you were saying, 'For love will find the way.' It made quite a pretty story, but you can't imagine how queer it was to stumble across your picture in such an out-of-the-way place, and fixed up in such odd shape, on a pendulum, of all things!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MALCOLM, LEANING ON HIS GUN, STOOD WATCHING HER."]

"It helped Corono ever so much, mother said," remarked Allison. "That's one good thing our Shadow Club led to, if nothing else." She climbed up on the stile and stood looking over, exclaiming at the beauty of the old gray walls, draped in the ma.s.ses of brilliant bittersweet; then, springing down, ran across the churchyard to join Betty and Keith on the other side and make her own selection of vines.

Rob leaned his gun against the fence and took out his watch. "Only half an hour longer," he announced. Then, opening the back of his watch-case, he held it out toward Lloyd.

"Do you remember that?" he asked, nodding toward a little four-leaf clover which lay flat and green inside. "Your good-luck charm worked wonders, Lloyd. It helped me through my Latin in such fine shape that I intend to carry it through college with me all the way. It's like the picture on the pendulum, isn't it? only this says, 'For _luck_ will find the way.'"

As Lloyd began some laughing reply about his being superst.i.tious, Betty's voice called from the vestry door, "Oh, Rob! Come around here a minute, please! Here's the loveliest bunch of berries you ever saw, and it's too high for any one but you to reach!"

With one leap Rob was over the stile hurrying to Betty's a.s.sistance.

Lloyd had filled both pockets of her jacket with hickory-nuts on her way through Tanglewood, and, seating herself on the top step of the stile, she began cracking them with a round stone which she had picked up near the fence. Malcolm, leaning on his gun, stood watching her.

"You never gave _me_ any four-leaf clover, Lloyd," he said, in a low tone, as Rob strode away.

"You nevah happened to be around when I found any," answered Lloyd, carelessly. "Have a nut instead." She nodded toward the pile on the step beside her.

Malcolm flushed a trifle. He was nearly sixteen, tall and broad-shouldered, but the colour came as easily to his handsome face now as when a little fellow of ten he had begged her to keep his silver arrow "to remember him by."

"No, thanks," he answered, stiffly. There was a jealous note in his voice as he added, "And you wouldn't let me keep the little heart of gold that night after the play."

"Of co'se not! Papa Jack gave me that. I think everything of it."

"You wouldn't even lend it to me," he continued.

"Because we'd come to the end of the play. You were not Sir Feal any longah, and you didn't have any shield to bind it on, so what good would it have done?"

"But we haven't come to the end of the play," he insisted. "I've thought of you ever since as my Princess Winsome, and it has been more than a year since that night. Yesterday, when I saw your picture on the pendulum, and heard how it had influenced that girl in the cabin, I wished that I could make you understand how much more your influence means to me; and I made up my mind to ask you for something. Will you give it to me, Lloyd? It's just the tip of that little curl behind your ear. It shines like gold, and I want to put it in the back of my watch as a talisman, like they used to carry in old times, you know--a token that I am your knight, and that I may do as it says in the song, come back to you 'on some glad morrow.' I want to carry it with me always, as I shall always carry your shadow-self wherever I go."

Lloyd bent her head so far over the nuts as she chose one with great deliberation that her hair fell across the cheek nearest him, and he could not see how red her face grew. How handsome he was, she thought.

How deep and clear his eyes looked as they smiled into hers. If she had never known of Ida's mistake--if she had never heard the Hildegarde story--there might have crept into her girlish fancy, young though she was, the thought that this was the love written for her in the stars.

But like a flash came the recollection of old Hildgardmar's warning:

"_And many youths will come to thee, each begging, 'Give me the royal mantle, Hildegarde. I am the prince the stars have destined for thee!'_"

And then his words of blessing: