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[Illustration: Cover]
THE LITTLE COLONEL AT
(Trade Mark)
BOARDING-SCHOOL
Works of
ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
The Little Colonel Series
(_Trade Mark, Reg. U. S. Pat. Of._)
Each one vol., large 12mo, cloth, illustrated
The Little Colonel Stories $1.50
(Containing in one volume the three stories, "The
Little Colonel," "The Giant Scissors," and
"Two Little Knights of Kentucky.")
The Little Colonel's House Party 1.50
The Little Colonel's Holidays 1.50
The Little Colonel's Hero 1.50
The Little Colonel at Boarding-School 1.50
The Little Colonel in Arizona 1.50
The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation 1.50
The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor 1.50
The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding 1.50
The above 9 vols., _boxed_ 13.50
_In Preparation_--A New Little Colonel Book 1.50
The Little Colonel Good Times Book 1.50
Illustrated Holiday Editions
Each one vol., small quarto, cloth, illustrated, and printed in colour
The Little Colonel $1.25
The Giant Scissors 1.25
Two Little Knights of Kentucky 1.25
Big Brother 1.25
Cosy Corner Series
Each one vol., thin 12mo, cloth, illustrated
The Little Colonel $.50
The Giant Scissors .50
Two Little Knights of Kentucky .50
Big Brother .50
Ole Mammy's Torment .50
The Story of Dago .50
Cicely .50
Aunt 'Liza's Hero .50
The Quilt that Jack Built .50
Flip's "Islands of Providence" .50
Mildred's Inheritance .50
Other Books
Joel: A Boy of Galilee $1.50
In the Desert of Waiting .50
The Three Weavers .50
Keeping Tryst .50
The Legend of the Bleeding Heart .50
Asa Holmes 1.00
Songs Ysame (Poems, with Albion Fellows Bacon) 1.00
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
200 Summer Street Boston, Mass.
[Illustration: "SHE STOOD THERE ON THE PLATFORM, WAVING HER
HANDKERCHIEF."
(_See page 300_)]
The Little Colonel at Boarding-School
By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON Author of "The Little Colonel Series," "Big
Brother," "Ole Mammy's Torment," "Asa Holmes," etc.
Illustrated by ETHELDRED B. BARRY
"_This learned I from the shadow of a tree,
Which to and fro did sway upon a wall,
Our shadow selves--our influence--may fall
Where we can never be._"
[Illustration]
BOSTON * L. C. PAGE
& COMPANY * PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1903_
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
Published, July, 1903
Thirteenth Impression, March, 1909
TO
All the Girls
WHO, LIKE THE LITTLE COLONEL,
ARE
"STANDING WITH RELUCTANT FEET
WHERE THE BROOK AND RIVER MEET,
WOMANHOOD AND CHILDHOOD SWEET."
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. OFF TO BOARDING-SCHOOL 11
II. A NEW FRIEND 27
III. IDA'S SECRET 48
IV. THE SHADOW CLUB 69
V. AT THE BEECHES 89
VI. UNINVITED GUESTS 101
VII. THE HALLOWE'EN MASQUERADE 123
VIII. THE PRINCESS OF THE PENDULUM 139
IX. ONE RAINY AFTERNOON 158
X. A PLOT 176
XI. A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING 190
XII. GHOST OR GIRL 213
XIII. THE SHADOW CLUB IN DISGRACE 228
XIV. THE THREE WEAVERS 246
XV. THANKSGIVING DAY 275
XVI. CHRISTMAS GREENS AND WATCH-NIGHT EMBERS 287
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"SHE STOOD THERE ON THE PLATFORM, WAVING HER
HANDKERCHIEF" (_See page 300_) _Frontispiece_
"SHE TURNED HER WHITE FINGERS IN THE MOONLIGHT" 61
"'THIS LITTLE KNAVE MUST BE MY PARTNER'" 130
"SHE COULD HEAR EVERY WORD OF THE CONVERSATION" 167
"HE HELD IT ASIDE FOR THEM BOTH TO PASS THROUGH" 199
"MITTIE SAT UP IN BED, TOO STARTLED TO UTTER A
SOUND" 220
"'IT'S LIKE A BIT OF HOME TO SEE YOU AGAIN'" 283
"MALCOLM, LEANING ON HIS GUN, STOOD WATCHING
HER" 293
THE LITTLE COLONEL AT
(Trade Mark)
BOARDING-SCHOOL
CHAPTER I.
OFF TO BOARDING-SCHOOL
SOMETHING unusual was happening at Locust. Although it was early in
September, and the heat and dust of a Kentucky summer still lingered in
every corner of Lloydsboro Valley, the great house with its vine-covered
pillars was being hastily put in order for winter closing.
Rob Moore, swinging his tennis racket as he sauntered down the avenue
under the arching locust-trees, stopped short with a whistle of
surprise. The tennis net was down. He had come at the Little Colonel's
invitation for a farewell game, as they were both to start to school on
the morrow, she in the Valley, and he in town. He could not understand
the sudden removal of the net.
Then he noticed that every hammock and garden-chair had disappeared from
the lawn. Not even the usual trail of magazines and palm-leaf fans was
left on the grass, to show that somebody had been spending a comfortable
hour in the shade. Usually at this time in the afternoon there was a
flutter of ribbons and white dresses somewhere back among the trees; but
the place was deserted now. The wicker tea-table was gone from its
corner on the piazza. The rugs and cushions which had filled the cosy
corners behind the vines were packed away. The lace curtains were down
in the long drawing-room, and, peering through the windows which opened
to the floor, he saw a coloured man, busily shrouding the handsome old
furniture in linen covers.
"What's the matter, Alec?" asked Rob. "What has become of everybody?"
"Done had bad news from Ole Colonel las' night," answered the man.
"Walkah telegraphed from Hot Springs that ole Marse's rheumatiz is wuss,
and Mis' Sherman she's gwine down to stay with him awhile, an' the young
ladies is gwine to bo'din'-school. We all's fixin' to shet up the place
till Chris'mus."
Rob gave another long whistle, shrill and loud. "Boarding-school!" he
exclaimed. "Well, this is the biggest surprise out!"
His whistle was answered from the upper hall by a clear high trill,
which had been the Little Colonel's signal for him since the first
summer they had played together. Giving the answering call he stepped
inside the hall, and standing at the foot of the stairs peered up
anxiously at the laughing face leaning over the banister-rail above him.
"Come down, Lloyd, and tell me all about it," he demanded.
"I can't now," she replied, in an important tone, smiling tantalizingly
at the tall, broad-shouldered boy who shook his racket at her with a
threatening gesture. "Mothah has gone to town, and Mom Beck is packing
my trunk. I have to show her what things to put into it. Betty is down
there somewhere. She'll take the edge off yoah curiosity. Betty," she
called, catching sight of a pink dress whisking through the lower hall,
"don't tell Rob what school we are going to. Make him guess."
"All right," answered Betty, with a mischievous light in her brown eyes,
as she tossed back her curls and led the way out to the stone steps.
"We'll have to sit out here. All the hammocks and porch-chairs are
packed away in the attic," she explained, as she spread out the pink
skirt and leaned comfortably back against one of the white pillars.
"Seems to me you've been in a howling hurry with your planning and your
packing," said Rob, in an aggrieved tone. "I didn't hear a whisper of
all this when I was here yesterday evening."
"The telegram didn't come until after you had gone," answered Betty.
"But I think godmother must have been expecting it, for in half an hour
her plans were all made, and the packing began early this morning. As
Papa Jack's business will keep him away nearly all fall, there was
nothing to do but close the house and send Lloyd and me to
boarding-school. You can't imagine how busy we've been. We are to leave
to-morrow morning."
"So are we," answered Rob. "Oaklea looks nearly as deserted as Locust. I
always hate this breaking-up time at the end of every summer."
As he spoke, a delicious odour of hot gingerbread was wafted around the
corner of the house from the distant kitchen, and he stopped to look at
Betty and smile.
"What does that make you think of?" he asked.
"Of a lovely September afternoon just like this," answered Betty,
dreamily, half-closing her eyes and drawing in the fragrance with a
slow, deep breath. "Of long shadows on the lawn and the sunshine
flickering down through the locust leaves like gold, just as it is doing
now. Of Malcolm MacIntyre sitting over where you are, thrumming on his
banjo, and of Keith and you and Lloyd and me all singing 'My Old
Kentucky Home.' Is that what it makes you think of?"
"Yes, that and the chase we gave old Aunt Cindy. Wasn't she mad when I
made off with that gingerbread! I can hear her old slipper soles yet,
flopping down the path after me."
"How long ago that seems," mused Betty, "and yet it's only two years."
"It surely must be longer than that," exclaimed Rob.
"No, don't you remember, it was just after Lloyd's house party, when she
was eleven and I was twelve. I went abroad that fall with Cousin Carl
and Eugenia, and stayed with them a year. And I've only been living at
Locust a year. Now I'm a little over fourteen and Lloyd's thirteen; so
that just makes it."
"Thirteen yeahs and foah months exactly, if you're talking about me,"
said the Little Colonel, coming out on the porch with a plate in her
hands. "I smelled the gingahbread, so I told Mom Beck I'd have to stop
for refreshments, and she could finish packing by herself. I've piled
everything on the bed that I thought I could possibly need at
bo'ding-school, and that's neahly everything I own. One needs so many
things going off from home this way. Have some?"
She passed the plate to each one, and then, sitting down on the top step
beside it, helped herself to a slice of the hot, spicy cake.
"Oh, Rob, we're going to have _such_ larks!" she began. "I've always
wanted to go away to school, and have midnight suppahs and do the things
you read about in stories. I've heard mothah talk about the funny things
that happened at the seminary when she was a girl, till I was simply
wild to go there, too. And now it seems too good to be true, that we are
really going, and are to have the very same room that she had one term
when grandfathah was away from home, and she boahded there in little old
Lloydsboro Seminary just as we are going to do. There!" she added,
ruefully, clapping her hand over her mouth. "I've gone and told you, and
I intended to keep you guessing for an hou'ah. I knew you'd nevah think
that we were going to stay right here in the Valley."
"Of course not," answered Rob. "You've been a day pupil at that old
seminary for the last five years, ever since you started to school. I'd
naturally suppose that when you packed up all you owned and started off
to school you'd at least go out of the sight of your own chimney smoke.
I don't see where the fun is coming in. I can't think of anything more
stupid. Instead of tearing around the country on horseback after
lessons, as you've always done, riding where you please, you'll have to
take walks with a gang of other girls with a teacher at the head of the
procession. It's great exercise, that, taking steps about an inch long
and saying nothing but prunes and prisms."
"Don't you believe that's all!" cried Lloyd. "We'll have to take the
walks, of co'se, but think of the time we'll have for basket-ball. We'll
be able to play the Anchorage girls by Thanksgiving, and I couldn't have
been on the team if I'd been only a day pupil."
"Of course we'll miss the ponies," Betty added. "Godmother tried to make
some arrangement with President Wells to let us ride every day; but he
said he couldn't make an exception in our case without being accused of
partiality. If we came as regular pupils we must conform to the regular
rules, and could not have even the liberties we always had as day
pupils."
"Except in one thing," corrected Lloyd. "We can still go to the
post-office for our mail, instead of having all our lettahs pass through
the principal's hands. Mothah thought it wouldn't be worth while to
change the address for just one term, especially as she wants me to
forward the mail that comes to our box for Papa Jack. He changes his
address so often on these business trips that he couldn't keep notifying
the postmistress all the time, so I am to do it."
"Well, I pity _you_!" exclaimed Rob, teasingly, tapping his racket
against the toes of his tennis shoes. "Boarding-schools are a bad lot,
all that I've ever heard of. Scorched oatmeal and dried apples, with old
cats watching at every keyhole! Ugh!"
Both girls laughed at his scowl of disgust, and Betty hastened to say,
"But we'll have Aunt Cindy to fall back on if the fare gets too bad.
That's the beauty of staying so near home. Mom Beck is to come every
Monday to get our clothes to launder, and every Saturday to bring them
back and see that we are all right, and you know she'll not let us
starve. And there aren't any old cats in this school, Rob. Miss Edith is
a dear. The girls fairly love the ground she walks on, and I'm sure
that nobody could be nicer and more motherly than Mrs. Gelling."
"How about Miss Bina McCannister?" asked Rob, with a wry face. "She is
cross enough to stop a clock, sober and prim and crabbed, with eyes like
a fish. I went up there one day with a note from grandfather to
Professor Fowler, and she gave me such a stony glare because I happened
to let a door bang, that I had cold shivers down my spine for a week."
"Oh, Rob," laughed Lloyd. "Aren't you ashamed to talk so? Anyhow, Miss
McCannister will not bother us, because we are not in any of her
classes."
"But she'll take her turn in trotting you out to walk, just the same.
Then think what a glad procession that will be. You'll feel like
prisoners in a chain-gang."
"Talk all you want to, if it amuses you any," said Lloyd, passing the
gingerbread around once more. "It won't keep us from having a good time
at bo'ding-school."
"Well, I'm coming out again at Thanksgiving. There's to be a big family
reunion at Oaklea this year, and if you've stood the storm and still
think that boarding-school life is funny, I'll stand treat to a
five-pound box of Huyler's best. You can let that thought buoy you up
through all the hungry hours between that time and this."
"Mercy, Rob, don't throw cold water on all our bright hopes like that,"
cried Betty, springing up as she heard her name spoken in the hall. "Mom
Beck wants me. She is ready to begin packing my trunk."
"I must go in a few minutes," said Rob, "so if you're disappearing now,
I'll say good-bye till Thanksgiving."
Betty held out her warm little hand. "Good-bye. 'Be good, sweet child,
and let who will be clever,'" she quoted, as Rob gave it an awkward
shake.
"Practise what you preach, Grandma Betty," he said, in a severe tone,
but his blue eyes were smiling into her brown ones with a softened light
in them. She had been a merry little comrade in the summer just gone,
and then there was something in the brown eyes that made everybody smile
on Betty.
As she turned to go she saw that the last crumb of gingerbread had
disappeared, and stooping, picked up the plate. She recognized it as her
godmother's pet piece of Delft ware. "I'll take this in before anybody
steps in it," she said.
"Thanks," said Lloyd, lazily, without looking around, but she turned to
Rob as soon as they were alone. "Betty is always so thoughtful about
such things. I wouldn't know how to get along without her now, and to
think, when she first came heah to live, I wasn't suah that I wanted
her! I had nevah had to divide with anybody befoah, and I was afraid I
should be jealous. But nobody could be jealous of Betty. She seems like
a real suah enough sistah now, and bo'ding-school will be twice the fun
because she can go with me."
"Betty's a brick," agreed Rob emphatically, "the nicest girl I know,
except you, but I can't imagine her planning scrapes. She's too much
afraid of hurting somebody's feelings for that."
"She's not planning scrapes. Neithah of us want to do anything really
bad. We only want to stir the seminary up a bit, and make it lively.
We're growing up so fast that if we don't have some fun soon, it will be
too late. In only a few moah yeahs I'll be through school, and then I'll
have to be a debutante and settle down to be propah and young ladified.
Mom Beck always used to be telling me to 'sit still and be a little
lady,' and if there's anything I despised it was that."
"How fast the shadows grow long these afternoons," said Rob, presently,
looking at his watch. "It's nearly time for me to go. Come on down to
the measuring-tree. We mustn't forget our good-bye ceremony."
Seven Septembers were marked on the tall locust that they called their
measuring-tree. It towered above a rustic seat half-way down the avenue.
Lloyd laid one finger on the lowest notch and another on the next mark a
few inches above it.
"There wasn't neahly so much difference in our heights when I was five
and you six as there is now," she said, with a little sigh. "You're
almost as tall as Papa Jack, and I'm only up to yoah shouldah. You're
growing away from me so fast, Bobby."
Rob threw back his shoulders complacently. "Daddy says that is why I am
so awkward; that my height is too much for a fourteen-year-old boy to
manage gracefully. I'll soon be through growing at this rate. Maybe
after a couple of years more I'll not have to change the mark on the
tree."
"I should certainly hope so," cried Lloyd, "unless you want to be a
giant in a side-show. Heah! Measuah me."
She stiffened herself against the trunk of the tree, standing as erect
as possible, while he stuck the blade of his knife into the bark, so
close to the top of her head that he almost pinned a lock of the light
hair to the tree.
"You've grown a lot too, this last year, Lloyd," he said, looking down
at her approvingly.
"Oh, Rob," she cried, with a quick, wistful look upward into his face.
"I don't want to grow up. It would be so much nicah if we could stay
children always."
"We have had a lot of fun under these old locusts, that's a fact," he
admitted, as he began cutting the date opposite the measurements he had
just taken. Then he became so absorbed in trying to make the figures
neatly that he said nothing more until the task was done.
Lloyd, kneeling on the rustic bench to watch him, was silent also, and
for a few minutes the only sound in all the late afternoon sunshine was
the soft rustling of the leaves overhead.
"If they could only stay children always!" the locusts were repeating
one to another. "Children always! That is the happiest time!" Rob,
intent on his carving, never noticed the stirring of the leaves, but the
Little Colonel, who in a vague way always seemed to understand the
whisperings of these old family sentinels, looked up and listened. As
if she were one of them, she began recalling with them the scenes they
had looked upon. How long ago seemed those summer days when she measured
up only to the first notch. Mom Beck and Rob's faithful old nurse,
Dinah, sat on the bench where she was now kneeling, and watched the two
children that the locusts were whispering about, romping up and down the
avenue. How well she remembered the little blue shoes she wore, and the
jingling of the bells on the gay knitted bridle, as they played horse,
with Fritz barking wildly at their heels.
The locusts had watched them in all the playtimes that lay between the
first and last of those seven notches, eight it would be when Rob had
finished; for it was in their friendly shade they had rolled their hoops
and spun their tops and played at marbles and made their kites. Here,
too, they had set their target when he taught her to shoot with his air
rifle, and up and down in the winter holidays they had passed with their
skates over their shoulders, with their sleds dragging after them, or
their arms piled high with Christmas greens. Here they had tramped,
shoulder to shoulder, whistling like two boys; here they had raced their
ponies; here they had strolled and played and sung together, the
strong, deep friendship yearly growing stronger between them, as they
yearly cut a higher notch in the bark of the old measuring-tree.
"If they could only stay children always!" whispered the locusts again,
with something so like a sigh in the refrain, that Lloyd felt the tears
spring to her eyes, she scarcely knew why.
"There," said Rob, closing his knife and slipping it into his pocket. "I
must go now."
As usual, Lloyd walked down to the gate with him. He whistled as he
went, a musical, rollicking negro chorus, and she joined in with an
accompaniment of little trills and calls, in clever imitation of a
mocking-bird. But just before they reached the gate her whistling
stopped. Her quick eyes spied a four-leafed clover in the grass, and she
sprang forward to get it.
"And heah's anothah!" she cried, triumphantly. "One for you too, Rob.
That means good luck for both of us. Put it in yoah pocket."
Rob took the little charm she held out, with a skeptical smile, yet he
had imbibed too great a belief in such omens from his old coloured nurse
not to regard it with respect. "Thanks," he said, "I have a safer place
than my pocket. I'll need all the luck this or anything else can bring
me in my Latin this year, so I'll carry it to every recitation."
Opening the back of his watch he carefully smoothed the green petals and
laid them inside, then closed the case with a snap. "Now I'm fixed," he
said, with a nod of satisfaction.
At the gate they did not shake hands, but parted as they had done so
many times before, as if they expected to begin their playtime on the
morrow.
"Good-bye, Lloyd," was all he said, with a slight lifting of his cap as
he walked away.
"Good-bye, Bobby," she answered. She stood for a moment shading her eyes
from the sunset, with the hand that held the four-leafed clover, as she
watched him go striding down the road toward Oaklea, switching with his
tennis racket at the asters and goldenrod along his path. Then she went
slowly back to the house, thinking how tall he looked as he strode away.
As she passed the measuring-tree she looked up at the old locusts
overhead, and sure of their sympathy, said, half-aloud, "Oh, I _wish_ we
didn't have to grow up!"