WHAT A LETTER BROUGHT ABOUT
LLOYDSBORO VALLEY would have seemed a strange place to Joyce, could she
have followed her letter back to Kentucky. She had known it only in
midsummer, when the great trees at Locust arched their leafy branches
above the avenue, to make a giant arbour of green. Now these same trees
stood bleak and bare in the February twilight, almost knee-deep in
drifts of snow. Instead of a green lacework of vines, icicles hung
between the tall white pillars of the porch, gleaming like silver where
the light from the front windows streamed out upon them, and lay in
far-reaching paths across the snow.
In the long drawing-room, softly lighted by many candles and the glow of
a great wood fire, the Little Colonel sat on the arm of her father's
chair. He had just driven up from the station, and she held his cold
ears in her warm little hands, giving them a pull now and then to
emphasize what she was saying.
"The first sleigh-ride of the season, Papa Jack. Think of that! We've
had enough snow this wintah for any amount of coasting and sleighing if
it had only lasted. That's the trouble with Kentucky snow; it melts too
fast to be any fun. But to-night everything is just right, moon and all,
and the sleighs are to call for us at half-past seven, and we're going
for a glorious, gorgeous, grandiferous old sleigh-ride. At nine o'clock
we'll stop at The Beeches for refreshments."
"Yes," chimed in Betty from the hearth-rug, where she sat leaning
against her godmother's knee. "Mrs. Walton says we shall have music
wherever we go, like little Jenny that 'rode a cock-horse to Banbury
Cross.' She has a whole pile of horns and bells ready for us. It's
lovely of her to entertain both the clubs. She's asked the _Mu Chi
Sigma_ from the Seminary as well as our Order of Hildegarde."
"Oh, that reminds me," exclaimed Mr. Sherman, "although I don't know why
it should--I brought a letter up from the post-office for you, Lloyd."
Feeling in several pockets, he at last found the big square envelope he
was searching for.
"What a big fat one it is," said Lloyd, glancing at the postmark.
"Phoenix, Arizona! I don't know anybody out there."
"Arizona is where our mines are located," said Mr. Sherman, watching her
as she tore open the envelope.
"Oh, it's from Joyce Ware!" she cried. "See all the funny little
illustrations on the edge of the papah! And heah is a note inside for
you, mothah, from Mrs. Ware, and oh, what's this? How sweet!" A cluster
of orange blossoms fell out into her lap, brown and bruised from the
long journey, but so fragrant, that Betty, across the room, raised her
head with a long indrawn breath of pleasure.
"Listen! I'll read it aloud:"
"'WARE'S WIGWAM, ARIZONA.
"'DEAREST LLOYD:--Mamma's note to your mother will explain how we
happened to stray away out here, next door to nowhere, and why we are
camping on the edge of the desert instead of enjoying the conveniences
of civilization in Kansas.
"'The sketch at the top of the page will give you an idea of the outside
of our little adobe house and the tents, so without stopping for
description I'll begin right here in the kitchen, where I am sitting,
waiting for a cake to bake. It's the cleanest, cosiest kitchen you ever
saw, for Jack and I have been cleaning and scrubbing for days and days.
It has all sorts of little shelves and cupboards and cuddy holes that we
made ourselves, and the new tins shine like silver. A tall screen in the
middle of the room shuts off one end for a dining-room, and the table is
set for supper. To-night we are to have our first meal in the wigwam.
Holland and Mary named it that, and painted the name on the porch post
in big bloody letters a little while ago.
"'Through the open door I can look into the other room, which is
library, studio, parlour, and living-room all in one. Everything is so
spick and span that nobody would ever guess what a dreadful time we had
putting on the paper and painting all the woodwork. I spilled a whole
panful of cold, sticky paste on Jack's head one day. We had made a
scaffolding of boxes and barrels. One end slipped and let me down. You
never saw such a sight as he was. I had to scrape his hair and face with
a spoon. Then so much of the paper wrinkled and would stick on crooked,
but now that the pictures are hung and the furniture in place, none of
the mistakes show.
"'Jack has gone hunting with Phil Tremont, a boy staying at Lee's ranch.
I am learning to shoot, too. I practised all one afternoon, and the gun
kicked so bad that my shoulder is still black and blue. Phil said the
loads were too heavy, and he is going to loan me his little rifle to
practise with. He is such a nice boy, and, oh, Lloyd! it's the strangest
thing!--he has seen _you_. I have those pictures of Locust hanging over
my easel, and, when he saw the photograph of you on Tar Baby, he
recognized it right away. He was on the train and saw you ride in at the
gate with a letter for your grandfather, and Hero following you.
* * * * *
"'I didn't get any farther than this in my letter (because I spent so
much time making the illustrations) before Phil and Jack came back with
some quail they had shot. They were the proudest boys you ever saw, and
nothing would do but they must have those quail cooked for supper. They
couldn't wait till next day. Mamma had invited Phil to take supper with
us, and help make a sort of house-warming of our first meal in the new
home.
"'We had the jolliest kind of a time, and afterward he helped wipe the
dishes. I told him that I was writing to you, and he took this little
piece of orange blossom out of his buttonhole, and asked me if I didn't
want to send it to you as a sample of what we are enjoying in this land
of perpetual sunshine.
"'It isn't a sample of everything, however. The place has lots of
drawbacks. Oh, Lloyd, you can't imagine how lonesome I get sometimes. I
have been here a month, and haven't met a single girl my age. If there
was just one to be chums with I wouldn't mind the rest so much,--the
leaving school and all that. I don't mind the work, even the washing and
ironing and scrubbing,--it's just the lonesomeness, and the missing the
good times we used to have at the high school.
"'Save up your pennies, or else get a railroad pass, you and Betty, for
some of these days I'm going to give a wigwam-party. It will be a far
different affair from your house-party (could there ever be another such
heavenly time?), but there are lots of interesting things to see out
here: an ostrich farm, an Indian school and reservation, and queer old
ruins to visit. There are scissors-birds and Gila monsters--I can't
begin to name the things that would keep you staring. Mrs. Lee has a
Japanese chef, and a Mexican to do her irrigating, and a Chinaman to
bring her vegetables, and she always buys her wood of the Indians, so it
seems very foreign and queer at first. There is no lack of variety, so I
ought to be satisfied, and I am usually, except when I think of little
old Plainsville, and the boys and girls going up and down the dear old
streets to high school, and meeting in the library, and sitting on the
steps singing in the moonlight, and all the jolly, sociable village life
and the friends I have left behind for ever. Then it seems to me that I
can hardly stand it here. I wish you and Betty were with me this very
minute. _Please_ write soon. With love to you both and everybody else in
the family and the dear old valley,
"'Your homesick
"'JOYCE.'"
Mrs. Ware's letter was cheerful and uncomplaining, but there were tears
in Mrs. Sherman's eyes when she finished reading it aloud.
"Poor Emily," she said. "She was always such a brave little body. I
don't see how she can write such a hopeful letter under the
circumstances,--an invalid sent out into the wilderness to die, maybe,
with all those children. She has so much ambition to make something of
them, and no way to do it. Jack, if you go out to the mines this month,
as you talked of doing, I want you to arrange your trip so that you can
stop and see her."
Lloyd looked up in surprise. "When are you going, Papa Jack? Isn't it
queah how things happen!"
"The latter part of this month, probably. Mr. Robeson has invited me to
go out with a party in his private car. He is interested in the same
mines."
"I wonder--" began Mrs. Sherman, then stopped as Mom Beck came to
announce dinner. "I'll talk to you about it after awhile, Jack."
Somehow both Betty and Lloyd felt that it was not the summons to dinner
which interrupted her, but that she had started to speak of something
which she did not care to discuss in their presence.
"Arizona has always seemed such a dreadful place to me," said Lloyd,
hanging on her father's arm, as they went out to the dining-room. "I
remembah when you came back from the mines. It was yeahs ago, befo' I
could talk plainly. Mothah and Fritz and I went to the station to meet
you. Fritz had roses stuck in his collah, and kept barking all the time
as if he knew something was going to happen. You fainted when we got to
the house, and were so ill that you neahly died. I heard you talk about
a fiah at the mines, and evah since I've thought of Arizona as looking
like the Sodom and Gomorrah in my old pictuah book--smoke and fiah
sweeping across a great plain, and people running to get away from it."
"To me it's just a yellow square on a map," said Betty. "Of course, I've
read about the wonderful petrified forests of agate, and the great canyon
of the Colorado, but it's always seemed the last place in the world I'd
ever want to visit. It's terrible for Joyce to give up everything and go
out there to live."
"The Waltons were out there several years," said Mrs. Sherman. "They
were at Fort Huachuca, and learned to love it dearly. Ask them about it
to-night. They will tell you that Joyce is a very fortunate girl to have
the opportunity of living in such a lovely and interesting country, and
does not need any one's pity."
Little else was discussed all during dinner. Afterward they sat around
the fire in the drawing-room, still talking of the Wares and the strange
country to which they had moved, until a tooting of horns and a jingling
of bells announced the coming of the sleighing party. Both the girls
were into their wraps before the first sleigh reached the gate. They
stood waiting by the hall window, looking out on the stretches of
moon-lighted snow. What a cold, white, glistening world it was! One
could hardly imagine that it had ever been warm and green.
Lloyd put her nose into the end of her muff for a whiff of the orange
blossoms. She was taking Joyce's letter to show to the girls.
Betty, her eyes fixed on the stars, twinkling above the bare branches of
the locust-trees, caught the fragrance also, and it fired her romantic
little soul with a sudden thought.
"Lloyd," she exclaimed, "what if that orange blossom was an omen! What
if Phil were the one written for you in the stars!"
"Oh, Betty! The idea!" laughed Lloyd. "You're always imagining things
the way they are in books."
"But this happened just that way," persisted Betty. "His passing Locust
on the train and seeing you when you were a little girl, and then
finding your picture away out on the desert several years after, and
sending you a token of his remembrance by a friend, and orange blossoms
at that! If ever I finish that story of Gladys and Eugene, I'm going to
put something like that in it."
"Heah they come," interrupted Lloyd, as the sleighs dashed up to the
door. "Come on, Papa Jack and everybody. Give us a good send-off."
She looked back after her father had helped them into the sleigh, to
wave good-bye to the group on the porch. How interested they all were in
her good times, she thought. Even her grandfather had come to the door,
despite his rheumatism, to wish them a pleasant ride. Life was so sweet
and full. How beautiful it was to be dashing down the snowy road in the
moonlight! Was she too happy? Everybody else had troubles. Would
something dreadful have to happen by and by, to make up for all the
unclouded happiness of the present? She was not cold, but a sudden
shiver passed over her. Then she took up the song with the others, a
parody one of the Seminary girls had made for the occasion:
"Oh, the snow falls white on my old Kentucky home.
'Tis winter, the Valley is gay.
The moon shines bright and our hearts are all atune,
To the joy-bells jingling on our sleigh."
Down the avenue they went, past Tanglewood and Oaklea, through the
little village of Rollington, on and on through the night. Songs and
laughter, the jingling of bells and the sound of girlish voices floated
through all the valley. It was not every winter that gave them such
sport, and they enjoyed it all the more because it was rare. It was nine
o'clock when the horses swung around through the wide gate at The
Beeches, and stopped in front of the great porch, where hospitable
lights streamed out at every window across the snow.
There was such a gabble over the steaming cups of hot chocolate and the
little plates of oyster pates that Lloyd could not have read the letter
if she had tried. For there were Allison and Kitty and Elise passing the
bonbons around again and again, with hospitable insistence, and saying
funny things and making everybody feel that "The Beeches" was the most
charming place in the Valley for an entertainment of that kind.
Everybody was in a gale of merriment. Miss Allison was helping to keep
them so, and some of the teachers were there from the college, and two
or three darkies, with banjoes and mandolins, out in the back hall,
added to the general festivities by a jingling succession of old
plantation melodies.
However, Lloyd managed to tell Mrs. Walton about the letter, saying: "It
almost spoils my fun to-night to think of poah Joyce being away out in
that dreadful lonesome country."
"Why, my dear child," cried Mrs. Walton, "some of the happiest years of
my life were spent in that dreadful country, as you call it. It is a
charming place. Just look around and see how I have filled my home with
souvenirs of it, because I loved it so."
Lloyd's glance followed hers to the long-handled peace-pipe over the
fireplace, the tomahawks that, set in mortars captured during a battle
in Luzon, guarded the hearth instead of ordinary andirons, the baskets,
the rugs, and the Navajo portieres, and the Indian spears and pottery
arranged on the walls of the stairway.
"Even that string of loco berries over Geronimo's portrait has a
history," said Mrs. Walton. "Come down some day, and I'll tell you so
many interesting things about Arizona that you'll want to start straight
off to see it."
Her duties as hostess called her away just then, but her enthusiasm
stayed with Lloyd all the rest of the evening, until she reached home
and found her father and mother before the fire, still talking about the
Wares and their wigwam.
"Your mother wants me to take you with me when I go to Arizona," said
Mr. Sherman, drawing her to his knee. "Mr. Robeson had invited her to
go, but, as long as that is out of the question, she wants to arrange
for you to go in her place."
"And leave school?" gasped Lloyd.
"Yes, with Betty's help, you could easily make up lost lessons during
the summer vacation. You'd help her, wouldn't you, dear?"
"Yes, indeed!" cried Betty. "I'd get them for her while she was gone, if
I could."
"Oh, it's so sudden, it takes my breath away," said Lloyd, after a
moment's pause. "Pinch me, Betty! Shake me! And then say it all ovah
again, Papa Jack, to be suah that I'm awake!"
"Do you think you could get your clothes ready in ten days?" he asked,
when he had playfully given her the shaking and pinching she had asked
for.
"Oh, I don't need any new clothes," she cried. "But, Papa Jack, I'll
tell you what I do want, and that's a small rifle. _Please_ get me one.
I used to practise with Rob's air-gun till I could shoot as straight as
he could, and I got so that I could put a hole through a leaf at even
longer range than he could. Christmas, when Ranald Walton was home, we
all practised with his gun. It's lots of fun. Joyce is learning to
shoot, you know. _Please_ let me have one, Papa Jack. I'd rather have it
than a dozen new dresses."
Mr. Sherman looked at her in astonishment. "And _this_ is my dainty
Princess Winsome," he said at last. "I thought you were going for a
nice, tame little visit. I'll be afraid now to take you. You'll want to
come back on a bucking broncho, and dash through the Valley, shooting
holes through the crown of people's hats, and lassoing carriage horses
when you can't find any wild ones to rope. No, I can't take you now. I'm
afraid of consequences."
"No, honestly, Papa Jack," laughed Lloyd, "I'll be just as civilized as
anybody when I come back, if you'll only get me the rifle. I'll try to
be extra civilized, just to please you."
"We'll see," was the only answer he would give, but Lloyd, who had never
known him to refuse her anything, knew what that meant, and danced off
to bed perfectly satisfied. She was too excited to sleep. To see Joyce
again, to share the wigwam life, and make the acquaintance of Jack and
Holland and Mary, who had been such interesting personages in Joyce's
tales of them, to have that long trip with Papa Jack in Mr. Robeson's
private car, and a month's delightful holiday, seemed too much
happiness for one small person. All sorts of exciting adventures might
lie ahead of her in that month.
The stars, peeping through her curtains, twinkled in friendly fashion at
her, as if they were glad of her good fortune. Suddenly they made her
think of Betty's words: "What if Phil should be the one written for you
in the stars?" It _was_ strange, his having seen her so long ago, and
finding her picture in such an unexpected way. She wondered what he was
like, and if they would be good friends, and if she could ever think as
much of him as she did of her old playmates, Rob and Malcolm. Then she
fell asleep, wishing that it was morning, so that she could send a
letter to Joyce on the first mail-train, telling her that she was
coming,--that in less than two weeks she would be with her at Ware's
Wigwam.