Peeping through the gla.s.s which covered the part.i.tion wall of pigeonholes, Lloyd saw that she had gone back to her desk by the rear window. So she continued, in a low tone:

"Suppose that had been the only letter, and Betty had asked me if I got one?"

"You would have said no, of course," said Ida, looking up from the page, impatient at the interruption. "This is not for you."

"But it is addressed to me," persisted Lloyd. "Suppose Miss Mattie heard me say no to such a question, or that Betty saw me take it out of the box?"

Again Ida looked up impatiently, but seeing the distressed expression of Lloyd's face, said, soothingly, "I know what you are thinking, Princess.

It has just occurred to you that your helping me to carry on this correspondence under cover of your name seems a little bit underhanded.

But if you could just read this letter you'd never be troubled by such a thought again. It makes me feel that I am carrying out the motto of our club in the very highest way possible.

"'Our shadow-selves--our influence--may fall Where we can never be.'"

she quoted, softly, looking dreamily away toward the ivy-grown belfry.

"I cannot be with Edwardo, but at least half of this letter is taken up with telling me how much my letters have helped and influenced him. That the thought of me off here, true to him in spite of all that has been done to separate us, is keeping him straight as nothing else could do.

Somehow it seems a good omen for the club that I should get such a letter on my way to the first meeting."

Ida's manner was convincing, and Lloyd's face brightened as she listened, but she breathed more freely when she saw the envelope bearing her name torn into little bits too small to tell tales, and dropped down the crack behind the doorstep.

Betty and Katie joined them presently, and two by two they rustled along through the fallen leaves which filled the path, to The Beeches. Long before three o'clock the six members of the Shadow Club were a.s.sembled around the big table in the dining-room, with their materials spread out for Mrs. Walton's inspection. Piles of brightly coloured tissue-paper, embroidery silks, zephyr, and ribbon, made a gay showing. Mrs. Walton entered into their plans for the fair enthusiastically, as she helped wind a skein of Iceland wool for Katie's crocheting.

"The beauty of this club," remarked Kitty, as she opened her paint-box and carefully selected a brush, "is that there's no fuss and feathers about it. No election of officers, no dues, no rules, no tiresome minutes to read. All we have to do when we begin is to begin."

"And to remember our motto," suggested Betty, to whom the purpose of the club appealed strongly.

"Ida has made something to help us do that," said Lloyd. "Give them to us now, Ida, while Mrs. Walton is here to see them, please," she urged.

Ida, who had delayed showing them for that very reason, glanced shyly toward her hostess, and then hesitatingly opened the case which held her pyrography outfit.

"It's only some little blotting-pads for your writing-desks," she said, with a blush. "It seems to me that the verse is especially appropriate at letter-writing time, when we consciously cast our shadow-selves where we cannot be."

There was a chorus of delighted exclamations as she pa.s.sed the packages around. Only two narrow slips of white blotting-paper held together by a white silken cord, but the cover was of soft gray kid, on which she had burned with her pyrography needle the club's motto in old English letters. Mrs. Walton leaned over the table to read the one on Allison's:

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

"It is beautifully done, my dear," she exclaimed, smiling down into the shy violet eyes raised gratefully to hers in acknowledgment of her lavish praise. "The club is certainly to be congratulated on having a member who can not only make such pretty things, but who can think of such sweet, suggestive ways in which to keep its purpose always in view."

Lloyd's hand, groping along under the table, found Ida's and gave it a squeeze of sympathetic delight.

"There's something to write to your aunt," she whispered. While the girls were still admiring their blotters, the maid came in to announce a visitor for Mrs. Walton in the library.

Several minutes after she had left them to themselves, Kitty exclaimed, "Oh, mamma forgot to give me those little bra.s.s clamps to fasten the candle-shades, and now she has company, and I haven't the faintest idea where to look for them."

"They may be in the hat-rack drawer in the hall," suggested Allison. "I think I saw them in there this morning, but I am not sure."

Kitty skipped out of the room to look for them, and a few minutes later came back, her black eyes shining teasingly.

"I have a trade-last for you, Ida," she said. "Mrs. Mallard is in the library, discussing our club, and I heard mother say something awfully nice about you."

"Tell it!" demanded Lloyd.

"No, I said a trade-last."

"Oh, fishing for a compliment!" sang Katie. "Don't tell her, Ida, even if you have heard one. It will make her vain."

"Besides," put in Allison, "Miss Bina McCannister said it was common and silly to play trade-last."

"Oh, bother old Miss Bina!" said the disrespectful Kitty. "Well, I'll tell you, anyhow. I heard mother tell Mrs. Mallard that she thought you were a charming girl, one of the sweetest that she had met in a long time. She said she was glad we had chosen you in the club instead of a younger girl, for she thought you would have a quieting, refining influence on us, especially _me_! Think of that now! Me! And she said on that account she would like to have you here often."

Again Lloyd's hand met Ida's under the table in a quick squeeze.

"Something else to write to your aunt," she whispered.

Several pretty candle-shades, two doll tam-o'-shanter caps, and three calendars in water-colours were laid aside finished, as the result of that afternoon's work. Besides, Lloyd and Betty had each made considerable progress on the centrepieces they had undertaken to embroider, and the magazine-cover Ida was burning in an elaborate design of dragons was half-done. Allison packed the finished articles away in a hat-box after supper, and put them up on a shelf in her closet.

"Our first meeting has surely been a success," she exclaimed. "At this rate we'll have enough things made by Easter to hold a splendid big fair. We ought to be able to cast our shadows quite a distance with the money we'll make, if we do this well every time."

"Come cast your shadows on this sheet, girls," called Mrs. Walton from the next room, where she had pinned some strips of white paper to a sheet hung on the wall, and placed a lamp at the proper distance for making silhouettes. "The name of your club suggested an old amus.e.m.e.nt of ours. Come, see how clever you are at drawing each other's shadows."

It proved to be an amusing undertaking, for whenever they laughed during the process, it changed their profiles into all sorts of ridiculous outlines. But finally some very creditable silhouettes were made, and each member of the club carried home her own shadow as a souvenir of the first meeting.

Katie's father called for her at half-past eight, and escorted the seminary girls as far as the high green gate.

"What a perfectly lovely time we've had!" exclaimed Betty, as she and Lloyd and Ida strolled slowly on toward the house, when they had bidden Katie and Mr. Mallard good night.

"And what a delicious suppah we had!" sighed Lloyd. "Oh, if we could only have shaded candles, and pretty silvah, and flowahs at bo'ding-school! I'm so tiahed of that long bare table. Everything tasted so good to-night. Those deah little beaten biscuit made me homesick. I haven't had any since I left Locust."

"The club is certainly an inspiration to do something and be something worth while," said Betty. "What Mrs. Walton said at supper, and afterward when she was showing us the general's sword, made me feel that way. Somehow, to-night, the world seems so much lovelier to be in than ever it did before; so full of opportunities, when one little person can cast such a tremendously long shadow." She looked back at hers, stretching down the path behind her, in the light from the hall lamp, till it seemed the length of a giant.

They pa.s.sed on into the house, and up the stairs together. As Betty went ahead to light the lamp in their room, Ida caught Lloyd impetuously around the waist and gave her a grateful hug.

"Oh, Princess," she exclaimed, "I've had such a happy day, and I owe it all to you! If it hadn't been for you I'd have had neither the visit to The Beeches nor Edwardo's letter. You're _such_ a comfort!"

CHAPTER VI.

UNINVITED GUESTS

"THIS is the last day of October," announced Betty, one morning, tearing a leaf from the calendar, as was her habit as soon as she finished dressing. "To-night will be Hallowe'en."

"Do you realize," answered Lloyd, "that we have been at school six whole weeks without doing a single thing we had planned? We have been painfully good. Yestahday when I pa.s.sed the music-room where Professah Steinwig was giving a violin lesson, I heard him say, 'Ach, you must let down der strings when you have feenish playing. If you keep him keyed to von high pitch alway, some day bif! He go break!' That's just the way I feel this morning; that I've been thinking so much about my shadow-self, and the work we've undehtaken for the mountain people, that it's kept me keyed up to too high a pitch of goodness. I've got to let down and get into some sort of mischief, or bif! I'll go break!"

Betty laughed. "Maybe the changes in the atmosphere affect people as well as fiddle-strings, and it is because it's Hallowe'en, and witches are in the air, that you feel so."

It may have been that the faculty were of Betty's opinion, and felt the spell lurking in the atmosphere. Warned by some mysterious "p.r.i.c.king of the thumbs" of coming wickedness, they sought to avert it. It was announced at breakfast that the usual rules would be suspended that night, and that from seven until eleven the resident pupils would be at liberty to observe the customs of Hallowe'en anywhere in the building, and that a spread of nuts, gingerbread, and apples would be furnished in the gymnasium.