Mrs. Sherman had advised taking few furnishings to the seminary, but Lloyd insisted that they could not feel that they were really away at boarding-school unless they had all that goes to equip a modern college girl's room. So pictures and posters, sofa-pillows and book-racks were crowded into the overflowing trunks. A chafing-dish, a well-furnished tea-basket, a dainty chocolate-pot, and a mandolin were brought over in the carriage that took Mrs. Sherman to the depot. Both girls were kept busy until four o'clock, finding places to put their numerous possessions. Neither one realized how far she had pa.s.sed under the spell of the new pupil, but unconsciously every picture they hung and every article they unpacked was located with a thought of her approval.

Once as Lloyd pa.s.sed the mirror, when Betty's back was turned, she paused to look at her reflection with the pleased consciousness that Ida had spoken the truth; that she did hold her head proudly and carry herself well. And Betty several times pa.s.sed her hand up over the brown curls on her forehead, recalling the graceful gesture of the white, heavily ringed hand. While she tacked up posters and put away clothes, she chattered busily with Lloyd, but through her thoughts, like an undercurrent to their conversation, ran a few musical lines suggested by the white hands and low voice. An "Ode to Ida" had already begun to weave itself into shape in her busy little brain.

A few minutes before the gong sounded, summoning the girls to the first of their daily walks, Ida tapped on the door. She had only stopped to ask a question about the rules, she said, and must run back and put on her hat; but catching sight of a picture of the long avenue at Locust, which hung over Lloyd's bed, she crossed the room to examine it.

"You've made a perfect love of a room with all these handsome things,"

she said, looking around admiringly. "But"--she scanned the few photographs on the mantel, and the two on the dressing-table in their frames of beaten silver--"it seems so queer, you know. You haven't the picture of a single boy. Didn't you bring any?"

"No!" answered Lloyd, in surprise. "Why should I?"

"But you have some at home, haven't you?" persisted Ida.

"Yes, I have lovely ones of Allison Walton's cousins, Malcolm and Keith MacIntyre, taken in the costumes they wore as 'two little knights of Kentucky.' And I have one of Ra.n.a.ld Walton taken in his captain's uniform, and nearly a dozen of Rob Moore. He's given me one whenevah he's had them taken, from the time he wore kilts and curls."

"My _dear_!" exclaimed Ida. "Why didn't you bring them? They would have been such an addition."

"Because I don't want any boy's pictuah stuck up on my dressing-table. I like to have them, because they've been my playmates always, and when we're grown up I'd like to remembah just how they looked, but that's no reason I want my walls plastahed with them now."

"What an original little thing you are, Princess," exclaimed Ida, with a laugh, which would have nettled Lloyd had not the compliment and the t.i.tle taken away its sting. "Come into my room and see how my walls are plastered, as you call it."

Lloyd stared around in astonishment when Ida threw open her door. Boyish faces looked back at her from every side. Handsome ones, homely ones, in groups, in pairs, framed and unframed, strung together with ribbons, or stuck in behind j.a.panese fans. Added to all the other pictures of girls she had known in the three boarding-schools which she had attended, it gave the room the appearance of a photograph gallery.

"Well!" exclaimed Lloyd, at length, after a long, slow survey, "I don't see what you want them for." Unconsciously her head took the haughty uplift which Ida had admired.

"For the same reason that an Indian hangs up all the scalp-locks he takes, I suppose," drawled Ida, sweetly. "Of course, you're young yet.

You don't understand. But you'll look at things differently when you are as near 'sweet sixteen' as I am, Princess."

Again that flattering t.i.tle took the sting out of the patronizing manner which Lloyd otherwise would have resented. Was it only the afternoon before, she wondered, that she had cried out to the friendly old locusts her longing to be a child always?

As Ida crossed the room with a graceful sweep of long skirts, and settled her hat with its cl.u.s.ters of violets jauntily over her fluffy pompadour, there stole into the Little Colonel's heart, for the first time, a vague desire; a half-defined wish that she, too, were as near the borders of grown-up land as "sweet sixteen."

CHAPTER III.

IDA'S SECRET

"BETTY," said Lloyd, one morning, the third week of school, as she sat on the edge of her bed lacing her shoes, "you know that little glove-case you embroidered for my birthday present; would you feel hurt if I were to give it away?"

"No," answered Betty, slowly, turning from the mirror, brush in hand. "I made it to please you, and if you can find more pleasure in giving it away than in keeping it, I'd be glad for you to give it away."

"Honestly, Betty?"

"Yes, honestly." The brown eyes turned with truthful directness toward Lloyd.

"Oh, you are such a comfortable sort of person to live with, Betty Lewis," exclaimed the Little Colonel, with a sigh of relief. "Most girls would think that I didn't appreciate all those fine st.i.tches you put into it, and didn't care for eithah the gift or the givah if I was willing to part with it; but I was suah you would undahstand. You see, the violets on it make it such a perfect match for everything on Ida's dressing-table, that it seems as if it ought to belong to her. I can't look at a violet now without thinking of her. She is so much like one, don't you think? Refined and sweet, and her eyes are such a dark blue, and have such a shy, appealing way of looking out from undah those long lashes. And have you evah noticed what delicious sachet she uses? So faint it's not much moah than the whispah of a smell, but there's always a touch of it about everything belonging to her. I call her Violet all the time now."

Only the mirror saw the bored expression that shaded Betty's face for an instant. For the last week, morning, noon, and night, she had heard nothing from Lloyd but Ida's praises. A sudden intimacy had sprung up between the two which threatened to eclipse all Lloyd's other friendships. Betty began brushing her hair vigorously. "Will you promise not to feel hurt if I give you a piece of advice?" she asked.

Lloyd nodded, lazily wondering what was coming, as she reached down to pick up her other shoe. She did not put it on, however, but sat with it in her hand, staring at Betty, scarcely believing that she heard aright, the advice was so different from anything she had expected.

"Then don't call her Violet before the other girls. And if I were in your place I don't believe I'd talk about her to them, quite as much as you do. You see," she hurried on, noticing the quick flush of displeasure on Lloyd's face, "I don't suppose you realize how much you do talk about her, or how you have changed lately. Last year you were good friends with all the girls, ready for any fun they proposed. They liked that independent, bossy little way you had of deciding things for them. That was one thing that made you so popular. But now you always wait to find out what Ida thinks, and what Ida wants, and they feel that you've not only dropped your old friends for a stranger whom you've known only three weeks, but that in some sort of a way--I can't explain it--you've dropped your old self too. Really, I believe that they are as jealous of the influence she has over you, as of the way she monopolizes you."

Betty did not see the gathering storm in the Little Colonel's face, and went serenely on brushing her hair. "You know she's so much older than you. They always smile so significantly when she calls you Princess, as if they thought she was doing it to flatter you. While they wouldn't say it openly to me, of course, I've heard them whispering among themselves that Ida had hoodooed you as she had Janie Clung, so that all you live for nowadays is to wait on her and buy her candy and violets."

Bang! went Lloyd's shoe against the wall. She had sent it spinning across the room with all her force. Betty, turning in dismay, saw that the advice which she had given with the kindest of motives, had aroused the Little Colonel's temper to white heat.

"The mean, hateful things!" she cried. "They've no right to talk about Ida that way! The idea of her stooping to such a thing as to flatter any one for what she could get out of them! It's an outrageous--"

"But Lloyd, dear," interrupted Betty. "Listen a minute. You promised that you wouldn't get mad, or I wouldn't have said a word."

"I'm not mad with you, but Mittie Dupong and some of the rest of them have been hateful to Ida from the very first." There was something like a sob in her voice. "And she's so alone in the world, too. She's told me things about her life that almost made me cry. Her aunt doesn't undahstand her at all, and she has a misa'ble time at home."

"But she needn't feel alone in the world here," insisted Betty. "Every girl in school would have been her friend, if she hadn't said at the start that she didn't care for anybody but us and the Walton girls.

They'd be only too glad to take her in, even now, for the sake of having you back again. Oh, it was so much nicer last year."

Lloyd faced her indignantly. "Betty Lewis!" she exclaimed. "You're against her too, or you wouldn't say that."

"No, I'm not," insisted Betty. "I like her now just as much as I did the first day I saw her. I think she is sweet and lovable, and I don't wonder that you are very fond of her; but I must say that I'm sorry that she's in the school, for you don't seem to care for anything now but being with her, and that spoils all the good times we had planned to have."

Dead silence followed Betty's speech. The Little Colonel walked across the room, picked up her shoe and put it on, jerking the laces savagely.

It was the first time that she had ever been angry with Betty, and her wrath was more than Betty could endure.

"Please don't feel hurt, Lloyd," she begged. "I can't bear to have you angry with me. I wouldn't have said a word, only I thought that if it was explained to you how we all felt, you'd be willing to spend a little more time with the others, and gradually they'd get interested in Ida and be nice to her for your sake, and things would go on as they used to, when we all had such good times together."

Again the painful silence, so deep that Betty felt as if a wall had risen between them.

"Please, Lloyd," she begged, with tears in her eyes. But Lloyd, with an air of injured dignity, went on dressing, without a word, until the last bow was tied, and the last pin in place.

"And she knew all the time that Ida is my dearest friend," Lloyd kept saying angrily to herself, as she moved about the room. "I could have forgiven her saying mean things about _me_, but for her to stand up and say to my very face that she is sorry Ida is in the school, and that her being here spoils all the good times, when she _knows_ what I think of Ida, that is simply a plain insult, and I can nevah feel the same to Betty Lewis again!"

By the time the breakfast-bell rang, both the girls were almost in tears; for the longer Betty's speech rankled in Lloyd's mind the worse it hurt, and the longer the angry silence continued the worse Betty felt.

"It is not like Lloyd to be so unfair," thought Betty. "She's just so blinded by her infatuation for Ida that she can't see my side of the matter at all."

It was on the point of her tongue to speak her thought, but realizing that it would only add fuel to the flame, she checked the impulse, and in the same uncomfortable silence they marched stiffly down the stairs to breakfast.

It was a miserable day for both. To peace-loving Betty it seemed endless. She could hardly keep the tears back when she stood up to recite, and instead of joining the other girls at recess she wandered off with a pencil and note-book. Sitting in one of the swings she wrote some verses about broken friendships that made her cry. They began:

"Dead are the snowy daisies!

Dead are the flowers of May!

The winds are hoa.r.s.e and voiceless, The skies are cold and gray!"

And yet a more gloriously golden October day had never shone in the Valley. The sun on the sumach bushes and sweet gum-trees turned their leaves to a flaming red that the heart of a ruby might have envied, and the dogwood berries, redder than any rose, glowed like living fire in the depths of the woods.

For the last week Lloyd and Ida had spent every recess together, wandering off by themselves to a far corner of the apple orchard, where the trunk of a fallen tree provided them with a seat, and its twisted branches with a rustic screen; but this day when Lloyd needed sympathy and companionship more than on any other, it was suddenly denied her.