Kitty, Katie, Allison, Betty, and Lloyd all pounced upon Miss Edith one morning before school, each with an alb.u.m in her hand. Miss Edith clutched her hair in mock despair. "These make the seventh dozen I have been asked to write in this week," she declared. "Life is too short to hunt up a different sentiment for each one. I must use the same verse for everybody."

The girls perched on the desks around the rostrum, as she spread out the books before her and began to write. They always loved the few moments they could s.n.a.t.c.h in Miss Edith's room before school, and felt that her autograph would be one of the most valuable in the collection.

"This is one of my favourite verses," said Miss Edith, as she pa.s.sed the blotter over the last page, and read it aloud:

"This learned I from the shadow of a tree That to and fro did sway upon the wall: Our shadow-selves--our influence--may fall Where we can never be."

"I want to tell you a little incident that fastened it in my memory. I have a friend teaching in one of the mountain schools of Kentucky, who told me of two girls who came to the door one day, asking to be admitted as students. Each carried a bundle of clothes wrapped in a newspaper.

That was all they had--no money to pay their tuition, no way of paying their board unless they were allowed to work for it. They had walked forty miles to get to that school. Their home was twice the distance away, but their uncle, who was a tin pedlar, took them half-way in his wagon. They were a week on the road after they left him, where his route branched off from theirs. They stopped at night in some village or farmhouse to which he directed them.

"n.o.body had the heart to tell them that there was no room for students who could not pay their way, neither could any one turn away such ambition. But the school was poor. It is kept up by donations from benevolent people, and it was only by great self-sacrifice that the teachers could take them at all.

"The following vacation, while I was at the sea-sh.o.r.e, I had a letter from this friend, and happened to speak of it and the two girls to a wealthy lady whom I met there. She seemed so interested that I read her my friend's letters. They were so full of the struggles and hardships of those mountain people that she was greatly interested and touched, and began corresponding with the princ.i.p.al of the school herself. The outcome of it was that she sent a check for ten thousand dollars to endow scholarships. Of course these two girls were the first to be benefited by the gift, and next June they will be graduated from the school with honour, fitted to become teachers themselves, far in advance of the time it would have taken had they been obliged to work their way through. Instead of plodding along, using the greater part of their time and strength in laundry work or sewing, they could go on with the college course uninterrupted. They are going to start a school themselves in the mountains, nearer their own home.

"Now that lady never saw those girls, and they were as unconscious that their influence was touching a life a thousand miles away as that tree out yonder, throwing its shadow across on the Clovercroft lawn. They simply stood in their places and reached out as far as they possibly could after what was good and high and worthy in life; but for years and years to come, students who profit by that endowment will be grateful for the shadow cast by those two ambitious girls."

Miss Edith never preached. She did not go on to tell them, as Miss McCannister would have done, that they were responsible not only for the influence of their daily living upon others, but for the effect their shadow-selves might cast on others far beyond their reach. She only pointed to the flaming red leaves of a gum-tree outside the window, and the shadow swaying partly on the high picket fence, and partly across the Clovercroft lawn, then pa.s.sed the alb.u.ms back with a smile. Then the girls filed slowly out to chapel.

It was a warm October day, and as Allison took her seat by an open window in the history cla.s.s an hour later, she found it hard to fix her thoughts on the old French and Indian wars. It was so much pleasanter to look with dreamy eyes through the haze of the Indian summer, which Mom Beck said was the ghost-smoke from the peace-pipes of old dead and gone chieftains.

She watched the slow fluttering to earth of the pale yellow maple leaves, and listened to the soft rustling of the gorgeous red leaves on the gum-tree to which Miss Edith had pointed. Once or twice she started, recalling her thoughts to the history lesson with an effort as she remembered the girls who were hungry enough for an education to walk forty miles for it and work for their board. She thought vaguely how eagerly they would have improved their opportunities had they been in her place. They would have taken a lively interest in the old wars, instead of sitting in idle day-dreams.

All at once, as Allison watched the swaying of the gum-tree's shadow on the fence and lawn, a thought came to her that made her seize a pencil and a piece of paper. Writing notes was forbidden in Miss McCannister's cla.s.ses, but Allison could not wait until recess to share her brilliant thought with Lloyd. With her big eyes fixed innocently on Miss Bina's fishy ones, she scribbled slowly on the paper without once looking down: "_Let's form a Shadow Club, with Miss Edith's verse for a motto. A. W._"

It took much manoeuvring to succeed in pa.s.sing the slip of paper to Lloyd, who sat several seats in front. When it finally reached her she did not dare turn round to nod a pleased a.s.sent, but Allison knew that her suggestion was received favourably, for Lloyd's hand at once went up to readjust the bow at the back of her hair, and two fingers wagged violently for an instant out of Miss Bina's sight. Had it been her thumb, Allison would have interpreted the signal to mean no; but from the rapid wagging of the two fingers she knew that Lloyd was much pleased with the idea.

Allison's plan, as she outlined it to Betty, Lloyd, and Kitty at recess, in one of the swings, was to form a club that should be not only fun for themselves, but of some real benefit to the girls of the mountain districts. The Christmas before, the little circle of Busy Bees, to which Elise belonged, had sent two barrels of clothes and toys to them, under Mrs. Clelling's supervision. She had organized the circle, and was deeply interested in the work. Now Allison proposed that the club should earn money for the same purpose. She grew quite enthusiastic planning the fair they could hold in the spring. "Kitty and I could paint calendars and sachets and paper dolls, you know, Lloyd, and you and Betty could embroider things."

"Katie Mallard crochets the cunningest little doll-caps you ever saw,"

suggested Kitty. "Of course we'll have her in it."

A warm glow came into the Little Colonel's heart. Here was her chance to do something for Ida. "Let's have just a little bit of a club," she urged; "not more than half a dozen. If we begin to invite generally, it's impossible to draw the line where we can stop. We can't ask all the school, for if we have refreshments, for so many, each meeting will be like giving a big pa'hty. But half a dozen of us could get together whenever we felt like it, and have the cosiest kind of a time with our chafing-dishes, without the rest finding it out. Then n.o.body would feel hurt."

"Here's four of us to begin with," said Kitty, "and if we have Katie there's five. Shall you ask Corinne?"

"I wish we could," said Betty, "but that would leave Margery out, and it would never do to ask them and not have Anna Louise and Marguerite. It must be all or none in that crowd."

"I wish you all would be willing to ask Ida," said Lloyd, imploringly.

"She does such beautiful leather-work, and that brings better prices than anything we can make."

"I am sure I'm willing," said Betty, cordially.

"I have no objection," said Allison, remembering the pleasant things Ida had said about her, and Kitty, who cared little who was in the club or out of it, so long as she had Katie Mallard, echoed her sister's consent.

"As it is a Shadow Club, we'll keep dark about it," said Kitty. "The girls need never know we've formed one. We ought to meet in the dark to carry out the idea of its name. How would it do to have the haunted house of Hartwell Hollow for our meeting-place?"

"Mercy, no!" exclaimed Lloyd, with a shiver. "That's too spooky, but if you and Allison and Katie can make some excuse to spend the night at the seminary some time, we'll have a midnight suppah."

"I think we might tell mother and Mrs. Mallard about the club," said Allison. "They can keep a secret, and we'll have lots nicer times and better refreshments if we let them into it."

"Well," agreed Lloyd, "but we mustn't let a single girl find it out.

They'd be mad as fiah to be slighted this way. Cross yoah heart and body now, every one of you, that you'll not breathe it to a soul."

Three hands instantly imitated her solemn gesture.

"We'll have the first meeting at The Beeches," said Allison, "because I got up the club. I'll get mother to telephone to the princ.i.p.al to let you and Betty and Ida come over to supper Sat.u.r.day."

Lloyd danced away to recitation so happy that her face fairly beamed.

She managed to spell across to Ida on her fingers that the invitation she had coveted was hers at last.

CHAPTER V.

AT THE BEECHES

"HOW good it feels to be free!" exclaimed the Little Colonel, as she pushed open the high green picket gate in front of the seminary, and held it ajar for Ida to pa.s.s through.

"This is the first time that I have been out on the road without a teachah and a flock of girls, for a whole month. I despise the way we have to line up two by two and go mah'ching through the Valley as if we were pah't of a circus parade, or inmates of an asylum, out for an airing."

Ida laughed as they started down the path, along the road leading to The Beeches. It was one of those perfect days in mid-October when it is easy to laugh; when all outdoors seems filled to the brim with a great content, and even the woods and fields, all autumn-clad, are keeping holiday. Besides it was Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and they were on their way to their first club meeting.

This was their first appearance together since the night of their stolen visit to the apple orchard, a week ago. It had cost Lloyd many a pang to give up her intimacy with Ida, but she had never shown such unselfishness as she did in this devotion to her friend. Since Ida's interests demanded that she should go off with the other girls no matter how much she longed to stay, she went obediently. Although Ida no longer wore her violets, she kept her room sweet with fresh bunches of them.

Although her name was constantly in her thoughts, she rarely mentioned it, even to Betty. A few whispered words in the hall, an adoring glance toward her now and then at the table, was all she could s.n.a.t.c.h in the daytime. She even allowed the school to surmise what it pleased; that Ida had quarrelled with her or had grown tired of her; for her love was of the kind that "endureth all things." But every night she lay awake, living over that scene in the moonlit orchard, happy in the consciousness that she was making Ida happy, and dreaming of the romance that she was helping on its way.

Betty had hurried on up the road to call by for Katie Mallard, with the agreement that the couple which reached the post-office first should wait there for the other.

"Let's cut through Clovercroft," suggested Lloyd.

"Mrs. Marks won't care, and it is much shortah that way. The path below her ice-house will bring us out at her woodland gate, just across the road from the depot."

"Anything to get to the post-office first," agreed Ida. "I'm sure that there'll be a letter in your box for me to-day. I can just _feel_ that there's one there."

From the depot it was but a few steps to the post-office. One had only to cross the road, pa.s.s the country store, and stroll a short distance along the shady avenue. There it sat by the wayside, a little box of a room, that always made Lloyd think of a dove-cote; for the first time she had been taken there her grandfather had explained that all the little square places where Miss Mattie was putting the letters were pigeonholes. Presently when Miss Mattie opened the window and handed him a letter from one of those places, she cried out with a little squeal of delight which made every one smile, "Oh, white pigeon wing flied out fo'

you, grandfathah!"

Afterward it grew to be a byword that they always used between themselves, when one carried home a letter for the other. "Pigeon wing for grandpa's baby," he would call fondly, even when she had grown to be a tall girl; and "White pigeon wing flied out fo' you, grandfathah deah," was the cry if she were the bearer of the missive.

From the post-office door, looking across the road to a gra.s.sy ridge beyond, one could see the big inn that the year before had been turned into a home for old Confederate soldiers. Farther on was the wide green slope of the churchyard, and the little stone church with its ivy-covered belfry. The manse stood just behind it. Next to that was the cottage with the high green gables and diamond-shaped window-panes, where the Waltons had lived one summer while their new house was being built. And next to the cottage was the new house itself, set away back in the great grove of trees which gave to the place the name of "The Beeches."

Ida stood outside the door while Lloyd went in for the mail. She was afraid that Miss Mattie might suspect that she had an interest in the letters if she went in too, so she busied herself in looking for four-leaf clovers along the path. She could not have seen one, however, had they been growing on every gra.s.s-blade, she was in such a nervous flutter of expectancy. When Lloyd came out with two letters in her hand, her face flushed crimson at sight of the familiar handwriting on one envelope.

"This is mine," she exclaimed, in a low tone, s.n.a.t.c.hing it eagerly.

"Let's sit down here on the step while I read it."

"I'm mighty glad it wasn't the only one," said Lloyd, glancing back over her shoulder to see if Miss Mattie still stood at the delivery-window.