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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: "LLOYD ... TOOK HER PLACE BESIDE THE HARP"
(_See page 68_)]
The Little Colonel:
Maid of Honor
By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
Author of "The Little Colonel Series," "Big Brother," "Ole Mammy's
Torment," "Joel: A Boy of Galilee," "Asa Holmes," etc.
Illustrated by ETHELDRED B. BARRY
[Illustration]
BOSTON * L. C. PAGE
& COMPANY * PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1906_
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
* * * * *
_Entered at Stationers' Hall, London_
* * * * *
_All rights reserved_
First Impression, October, 1906
Third Impression, August, 1907
Fourth Impression, April, 1908
Fifth Impression, March, 1909
Sixth Impression, February, 1910
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. AT WARWICK HALL 1
II. AT WARE'S WIGWAM 19
III. IN BEAUTY'S QUEST 31
IV. MARY'S "PROMISED LAND" 43
V. AT "THE LOCUSTS" 58
VI. THE FOX AND THE STORK 70
VII. THE COMING OF THE BRIDE 88
VIII. AT THE BEECHES 113
IX. "SOMETHING BLUE" 136
X. "A COON HUNT" 158
XI. THE FOUR-LEAVED CLOVER 178
XII. THE WEDDING 198
XIII. DREAMS AND WARNINGS 216
XIV. A SECOND MAID OF HONOR 241
XV. THE END OF THE HOUSE-PARTY 258
XVI. THE GOLDEN LEAF OF HONOR 275
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"LLOYD ... TOOK HER PLACE BESIDE THE HARP"
(_See page 68_) _Frontispiece_
"IT NEEDED NO SECOND GLANCE TO TELL HIM WHO SHE WAS" 20
"HE WAS LEANING FORWARD IN HIS CHAIR, TALKING TO JOYCE" 66
"A TALL, ATHLETIC FIGURE IN OUTING FLANNELS" 84
"A LONG-DRAWN 'O-O-OH' GREETED THE BEAUTIFUL TABLEAU" 132
"'ALL YOU GIRLS STANDING WITH YOUR HANDS STUCK THROUGH THE BARS'" 163
"'THEY STEPPED IN AND ROWED OFF DOWN THE SHINING WATERWAY'" 171
"'ONE, TWO, THREE--_THROW_!'" 253
THE LITTLE COLONEL,
MAID OF HONOR
CHAPTER I.
AT WARWICK HALL
It was mid-afternoon by the old sun-dial that marked the hours in
Warwick Hall garden; a sunny afternoon in May. The usual busy routine of
school work was going on inside the great Hall, but no whisper of it
disturbed the quiet of the sleepy old garden. At intervals the faint
clang of the call-bell, signalling a change of classes, floated through
the open windows, but no buzz of recitations reached the hedge-hidden
path where Betty Lewis sat writing.
The whole picturesque place seemed as still as the palace of the
Sleeping Beauty. Even the peacocks on the terraced river-front stood
motionless, their resplendent tails spread out in the sun; and although
the air was filled with the odor of wild plum blossoms, the breeze that
bore it through the arbor where Betty sat, absorbed in her work, was so
gentle that it scarcely stirred the vines around her.
With her elbows resting on the rustic table in front of her, and one
finger unconsciously twisting the lock of curly brown hair that strayed
over her ear, she sat pushing her pencil rapidly across the pages of her
note-book. At times she stopped to tap impatiently on the table, when
the word she wanted failed to come. Then she would sit looking through
half-closed eyes at the sun-dial, or let her dreamy gaze follow the lazy
windings of the river, which, far below, took its slow way along between
the willows.
As editor-in-chief of _The Spinster_, there was good reason why she
should be excused from recitations now and then, to spend an afternoon
in this retreat. This year's souvenir volume bade fair to be the
brightest and most creditable one ever issued by the school. The English
professor not only openly said so, but was plainly so proud of Betty's
ability that the lower classes regarded her with awe, and adored her
from a distance, as a real live genius.
Whether she was a genius or not, one thing is certain, she spent hours
of patient, painstaking work to make her writing measure up to the
standard she had set for it. It was work that she loved better than
play, however, and to-day she sighed regretfully when the hunter's horn,
blowing on the upper terrace, summoned the school to its outdoor sports.
Instantly, in answer to the winding call, the whole place began to
awaken. There was a tread of many feet on the great staircase, the outer
doors burst open, and a stream of rollicking girls poured out into the
May sunshine.
Betty knew that in a few minutes the garden would be swarming with them
as if a flock of chattering magpies had taken possession of it. With a
preoccupied frown drawing her eyebrows together, she began gathering up
her papers, preparatory to making her escape. She glanced down the long
flight of marble steps leading to the river. There on the lowest
terrace, a fringe of willow-trees trailed their sweeping branches in the
water. Around the largest of these trees ran a circular bench. Seated on
the far side of this, the huge trunk would shield her from view of the
Hall, and she decided to go down there to finish.
It would never do to stop now, when the verses were spinning themselves
out so easily. None of the girls, except her four most intimate friends,
would dare think of following her down there, and if she could slip away
from that audacious quartette, she would be safe for the rest of the
afternoon.
Peering through a hole in the hedge, she stood waiting for them to pass.
A section of the botany class came first, swinging their baskets, and
bound for a wooded hillside where wild flowers grew in profusion. A
group on their way to the golf links came next, then half a dozen tennis
players, and the newly organized basket-ball team. A moment more, and
the four she was waiting for tramped out abreast, arm in arm: Lloyd
Sherman, Gay Melville, Allison and Kitty Walton. Gay carried a kodak,
and, from the remarks which floated over the hedge, it was evident they
were on their way to the orchard, to take a picture which would
illustrate the nonsense rhyme Kitty was chanting at the top of her
voice. They all repeated it after her in a singsong chorus, the four
pairs of feet keeping time in a soldierly tread as they marched past the
garden:
"Diddledy diddledy dumpty!
Three old maids in a plum-tree!
Half a crown to get them down,
Diddledy diddledy dumpty!"
Only in this instance Betty knew they were to be young maids instead of
old ones, all in a row on the limb of a plum-tree in the orchard, their
laughing faces thrust through the mass of snowy blossoms, as they waited
to be photographed.
"Diddledy diddledy dumpty"--the ridiculous refrain grew fainter and died
away as the girls passed on to the orchard, and Betty, smiling in
sympathy with their high spirits, ran down the stately marble steps to
the seat under the willow. It was so cool and shadowy down there that at
first it was a temptation just to sit and listen to the lap of the water
against the shore, but the very length of the shadows warned her that
the afternoon was passing, and after a few moments she fell to work
again with conscientious energy.
So deeply did she become absorbed in her task, she did not look up when
some one came down the steps behind her. It was an adoring little
freshman, who had caught the glimmer of her pink dress behind the tree.
The special-delivery letter she carried was her excuse for following.
She had been in a flutter of delight when Madame Chartley put it in her
hand, asking her to find Elizabeth Lewis and give it to her. But now
that she stood in the charmed presence, actually watching a poem in the
process of construction, she paused, overwhelmed by the feeling that she
was rushing in "where angels feared to tread."
Still, special-delivery letters are important things. Like time and tide
they wait for no man. Somebody might be dead or dying. So summoning all
her courage, she cleared her throat. Then she gave a bashful little
cough. Betty looked up with an absent-minded stare. She had been so busy
polishing a figure of speech to her satisfaction that she had forgotten
where she was. For an instant the preoccupied little pucker between her
eyebrows smote the timid freshman with dismay. She felt that she had
gained her idol's everlasting displeasure by intruding at such a time.
But the next instant Betty's face cleared, and the brown eyes smiled in
the way that always made her friends wherever she went.
"What is it, Dora?" she asked, kindly. Dora, who could only stammer an
embarrassed reply, held out the letter. Then she stood with toes turned
in, and both hands fumbling nervously with her belt ribbon, while Betty
broke the seal.
"I--I hope it isn't bad news," she managed to say at last. "I--I'd hate
to bring _you_ bad news."
Betty looked up with a smile which brought Dora's heart into her throat.
"Thank you, dear," she answered, cordially. Then, as her eye travelled
farther down the page, she gave a cry of pleasure.
"Oh, it is perfectly lovely news, Dora. It's the most beautiful surprise
for Lloyd's birthday that ever was. She's not to know till to-morrow.
It's too good a secret to keep to myself, so I'll share it with you in a
minute if you'll swear not to tell till to-morrow."
Scarcely believing that she heard aright, Dora dropped down on the
grass, regardless of the fact that her roommate and two other girls were
waiting on the upper terrace for her to join them. They were going to
Mammy Easter's cabin to have their fortunes told. Feeling that this was
the best fortune that had befallen her since her arrival at Warwick
Hall, and sure that Mammy Easter could foretell no greater honor than
she was already enjoying, she signalled wildly for them to go on without
her.
At first they did not understand her frantic gestures for them to go on,
and stood beckoning, till she turned her back on them. Then they moved
away reluctantly and in great disgust at her abandoning them. When a
glance over her shoulder assured her that she was rid of them, she
settled down with a blissful sigh. What greater honor could she have
than to be chosen as the confidante of the most brilliant pupil ever
enrolled at Warwick Hall? At least it was reported that that was the
faculty's opinion of her. Dora's roommate, Cornie Dean, had chosen Lloyd
Sherman as the shrine of her young affections, and it was from Cornie
that Dora had learned the personal history of her literary idol. She
knew that Lloyd Sherman's mother was Betty's godmother, and that the two
girls lived together as sisters in a beautiful old home in Kentucky
called "The Locusts." She had seen the photograph of the place hanging
in Betty's room, and had heard scraps of information about the various
house-parties that had frolicked under the hospitable rooftree of the
fine old mansion. She knew that they had travelled abroad, and had had
all sorts of delightful and unusual experiences. Now something else fine
and unusual was about to happen, and Betty had offered to share a
secret with her. A little shiver of pleasure passed over her at the
thought. This was so delightfully intimate and confidential, almost like
taking one of those "little journeys to the homes of famous people."
As Betty turned the page, Dora felt with another thrill that that was
the hand which had written the poem on "Friendship," which all the girls
had raved over. She herself knew it by heart, and she knew of at least
six copies which, cut from the school magazine in which it had been
published, were stuck in the frames of as many mirrors.
And that was the hand that had written the junior class song and the
play that the juniors gave on Valentine night. If reports were true that
was also the hand which would write the valedictory next year, and which
was now secretly at work upon a book which would some day place its
owner in the ranks with George Eliot and Thackeray.
While she still gazed in a sort of fascination at the daintily manicured
pink-tipped fingers, Betty looked up with a radiant face. "Now I'll read
it aloud," she said. "It will take several readings to make me realize
that such a lovely time is actually in store for us. It's from
godmother," she explained.
"DEAR ELIZABETH:--As I cannot be sure just when
this will reach Warwick Hall, I am sending the
enclosed letter to Lloyd in your care. A little
package for her birthday has already gone on to
her by express, but as this bit of news will give
her more pleasure than any gift, I want her to
receive it also on her birthday. I have just
completed arrangements for a second house-party, a
duplicate of the one she had six years ago, when
she was eleven. I have bidden to it the same
guests which came to the first one, you and
Eugenia Forbes and Joyce Ware, but Eugenia will
come as a bride this time. I have persuaded her to
have her wedding here at Locust, among her only
kindred, instead of in New York, where she and her
father have no home ties. It will be a rose
wedding, the last of June. The bridegroom's
brother, Phil Tremont, is to be best man, and
Lloyd maid of honor. Stuart's best friend, a young
doctor from Boston, is to be one of the
attendants, and Rob another. You and Joyce are to
be bridesmaids, just as you would have been had
the wedding been in New York.
"Eugenia writes that she bought the material in
Paris for your gowns. I enclose a sample, pale
pink chiffon. Like a rose-leaf, is it not? Dressed
in this dainty color, you will certainly carry out
my idea of a rose wedding. Now do not let the
thoughts of all this gaiety interfere with your
studies. That is all I can tell you now, but you
may spend your spare time until school is out
planning things to make this the happiest of
house-parties, and we will try to carry out all
the plans that are practicable. Your devoted
godmother,
"ELIZABETH SHERMAN."
Betty spread the sample of chiffon out over her knee, and stroked it
admiringly, before she slipped it back into the envelope with the
letter. "The Princess is going to be so happy over this," she exclaimed.
"I'm sure she'll enjoy this second house-party at seventeen a hundred
times more than she did the first one at eleven, and yet nobody could
have had more fun than we did at that time."
Dora's eager little face was eloquent with interest. Betty could not
have chosen a more attentive listener, and, inspired by her flattering
attention, she went on to recall some of the good times they had had at
Locust, and in answer to Dora's timid questions explained why Lloyd was
called The Little Colonel and the Princess Winsome and the Queen of
Hearts and Hildegarde, and all the other titles her different friends
had showered upon her.
"She must have been born with a gold spoon in her mouth, to be so
lucky," sighed Dora, presently. "Life has been all roses for her, and no
thorns whatever."
"No, indeed!" answered Betty, quickly. "She had a dreadful
disappointment last year. She was taken sick during the Christmas
vacation, and had to stay out of school all last term. It nearly broke
her heart to drop behind her class, and she still grieves over it every
day. The doctors forbade her taking extra work to catch up with it. Then
so much is expected of an only child like her, who has had so many
advantages, and it is no easy matter living up to all the expectations
of a family like the old Colonel's."
Betty's back was turned to the terraces, but Dora, who faced them,
happened to look up just then. "There she comes now," she cried in
alarm. "Hide the letter! Quick, or she'll see you!"
Glancing over her shoulder, Betty saw, not only the four girls she had
run away from, but four others, running down the terraces, taking the
flight of marble steps two at a time. Gay's shoe-strings were tripping
her at every leap, and Lloyd's hair had shaken down around her shoulders
in a shining mass in the wild race from the orchard.
Lloyd reached the willow first. Dropping down on the bench, almost
breathless, she began fanning herself with her hat.
"Oh!" she gasped. "Tell me quick, Betty! What is the mattah? Cornie Dean
said a messenger boy had just come out to the Hall on a bicycle with a
special-delivery lettah from home. I was so suah something awful had
happened I could hardly run, it frightened me so."
"And we thought maybe something had happened at 'The Beeches,'"
interrupted Allison, "and that mamma had written to you to break the
news to us."
"Why, nothing at all is the matter," answered Betty, calmly, darting a
quick look at Dora to see if her face was betraying anything. "It was
just a little note from godmother. She wanted me to attend to something
for her."
"But why should she send it by special delivery if it isn't impawtant?"
asked Lloyd, in an aggrieved tone.
"It is important," laughed Betty. "Very."
"For goodness' sake, what is it, then?" demanded Lloyd. "Don't tease me
by keeping me in suspense, Betty. You know that anything about mothah or
The Locusts must concern me, too, and that I am just as much interested
in the special lettah as you are. I should think it would be just as
much my business as yoah's."
"This does concern you," admitted Betty, "and I'm dying to tell you, but
godmother doesn't want you to know until to-morrow."
"To-morrow," echoed Lloyd, much puzzled. Then her face lighted up. "Oh,
it's about my birthday present. Tell me what it is _now_, Betty," she
wheedled. "I'd lots rathah know now than to wait. I could be enjoying
the prospect of having whatevah it is all the rest of the day."
Betty clapped her hands over her mouth, and rocked back and forth on the
bench, her eyes shining mischievously.
"_Do_ go away," she begged. "_Don't_ ask me! It's so lovely that I can
hardly keep from telling you, and I'm afraid if you stay here I'll not
have strength of character to resist."
"Tell _us_, Betty," suggested Kitty. "Lloyd will hide her ears while you
confide in us."
"No, indeed!" laughed Betty. "The cat is half out of the bag when a
secret is once shared, and I know you couldn't keep from telling Lloyd
more than an hour or two."
Just then Lloyd, leaning forward, pounced upon something at Betty's
feet. It was the sample of pink chiffon that had dropped from the
envelope.
"Sherlock Holmes the second!" she cried. "I've discovahed the secret. It
has something to do with Eugenia's rose wedding, and mothah is going to
give me my bridesmaid's dress as a birthday present. Own up now, Betty.
Isn't that it?"
Betty darted a startled look at Dora. "Well," she admitted, cautiously,
"if it were a game of hunt the slipper, I'd say you were getting rather
warm. That is _not_ the present your mother mentioned, although it _is_
a sample of the bridesmaids' dresses. Eugenia got the material in Paris
for all of them. I'm at liberty to tell you that much."
"Is that the wedding where you are to be maid of honor, Princess?" asked
Grace Campman, one of the girls who had been posing in the plum-tree,
and who had followed her down to hear the news.
"Yes," answered Lloyd. "Is it any wondah that I'm neahly wild with
curiosity?"
"Make her tell," urged an excited chorus. "Just half a day beforehand
won't make any difference."
"Let's all begin and beg her," suggested Grace.
Lloyd, long used to gaining her own way with Betty by a system of
affectionate coaxing hard to resist, turned impulsively to begin the
siege to wrest the secret from her, but another reference to the maid of
honor by Grace made her pause. Then she said suddenly, with the
well-known princess-like lifting of the head that they all admired:
"No, don't tell me, Betty. A maid of _honah_ should be too honahable to
insist on finding out things that were not intended for her to know. I
hadn't thought. If mothah took all the trouble of sending a
special-delivery lettah to you to keep me from knowing till my birthday,
I'm not going to pry around trying to find out."
"Well, if you aren't the _queerest_," began Grace. "One would think to
hear you talk that 'maid of honor' was some great title to be lived up
to like the 'Maid of Orleans,' and that only some high and mighty
creature like Joan of Arc could do it. But it's nothing more than to go
first in the wedding march, and hold the bride's bouquet. I shouldn't
think you'd let a little thing like that stand in the way of your
finding out what you're so crazy to know."
"_Wouldn't_ you?" asked Lloyd, with a slight shrug, and in a tone which
Dora described afterward to Cornie as simply withering.
"'Well, that's the difference, as you see,
Betwixt my lord the king and _me_!'"
To Grace's wonder, she dropped the sample of pink chiffon in Betty's
lap, as if it had lost all interest for her, and stood up.
"Come on, girls," she exclaimed. "Let's take the rest of those pictuahs.
There are two moah films left in the roll."
"I might as well go with you," said Betty, gathering up the loose leaves
that had fallen from her note-book. "It's no use trying to write with my
head so full of the grand secret. I couldn't possibly think of anything
else."
Arm in arm with Allison, she sauntered up the steps behind the others to
the old garden, which was the pride of every pupil in Warwick Hall. The
hollyhocks from Ann Hathaway's cottage had not yet begun to flaunt their
rosettes of color, but the rhododendrons from Killarney were in gorgeous
bloom. As Lloyd focussed the camera in such a way as to make them a
background for a picture of the sun-dial, Betty heard Kitty ask: "You'll
let us know early in the morning what your present is, won't you,
Princess?"
"Yes, I'll run into yoah room with it early in the mawning, just as soon
as I lay eyes on it myself," promised Lloyd, solemnly.
"She can't!" whispered Betty to Allison, with a giggle. "In the first
place, it's something that can't be carried, and in the second place it
will take a month for her to see all of it herself."
Allison stopped short in the path, her face a picture of baffled
curiosity. "Betty Lewis," she said, solemnly, "I could find it in my
heart to choke you. Don't tempt me too far, or I'll do it with a good
grace."
Betty laughed and pushed aside the vines at the entrance to the arbor.
"Come in here," she said, in a low tone. "I've intended all along to
tell you as soon as we got away from Grace Campman and those freshmen,
for it concerns you and Kitty, too. You missed the first house-party we
had at The Locusts, but you'll have a big share in the second one. For a
June house-party with a wedding in it is the 'surprise' godmother has
written about in Lloyd's birthday letter."