CHAPTER V.
WHAT A LETTER BROUGHT ABOUT
LLOYDSBORO VALLEY would have seemed a strange place to Joyce, could shehave followed her letter back to Kentucky. She had known it only inmidsummer, when the great trees at Locust arched their leafy branchesabove the avenue, to make a giant arbour of green. Now these same treesstood bleak and bare in the February twilight, almost knee-deep indrifts of snow. Instead of a green lacework of vines, icicles hungbetween the tall white pillars of the porch, gleaming like silver wherethe light from the front windows streamed out upon them, and lay infar-reaching paths across the snow.
In the long drawing-room, softly lighted by many candles and the glow ofa great wood fire, the Little Colonel sat on the arm of her father'schair. He had just driven up from the station, and she held his coldears in her warm little hands, giving them a pull now and then toemphasize what she was saying.
"The first sleigh-ride of the season, Papa Jack. Think of that! We'vehad enough snow this wintah for any amount of coasting and sleighing ifit had only lasted. That's the trouble with Kentucky snow; it melts toofast 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 goingfor a glorious, gorgeous, grandiferous old sleigh-ride. At nine o'clockwe'll stop at The Beeches for refreshments."
"Yes," chimed in Betty from the hearth-rug, where she sat leaningagainst her godmother's knee. "Mrs. Walton says we shall have musicwherever we go, like little Jenny that 'rode a cock-horse to BanburyCross.' She has a whole pile of horns and bells ready for us. It'slovely of her to entertain both the clubs. She's asked the _Mu ChiSigma_ from the Seminary as well as our Order of Hildegarde."
"Oh, that reminds me," exclaimed Mr. Sherman, "although I don't know whyit 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 hewas 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 heras she tore open the envelope.
"Oh, it's from Joyce Ware!" she cried. "See all the funny littleillustrations on the edge of the papah! And heah is a note inside foryou, mothah, from Mrs. Ware, and oh, what's this? How sweet!" A clusterof orange blossoms fell out into her lap, brown and bruised from thelong journey, but so fragrant, that Betty, across the room, raised herhead 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 wehappened to stray away out here, next door to nowhere, and why we arecamping on the edge of the desert instead of enjoying the conveniencesof civilization in Kansas.
"'The sketch at the top of the page will give you an idea of the outsideof our little adobe house and the tents, so without stopping fordescription 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 eversaw, 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 wemade ourselves, and the new tins shine like silver. A tall screen in themiddle of the room shuts off one end for a dining-room, and the table isset 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 postin big bloody letters a little while ago.
"'Through the open door I can look into the other room, which islibrary, studio, parlour, and living-room all in one. Everything is sospick and span that nobody would ever guess what a dreadful time we hadputting on the paper and painting all the woodwork. I spilled a wholepanful of cold, sticky paste on Jack's head one day. We had made ascaffolding of boxes and barrels. One end slipped and let me down. Younever saw such a sight as he was. I had to scrape his hair and face witha 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 ofthe 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 gunkicked so bad that my shoulder is still black and blue. Phil said theloads were too heavy, and he is going to loan me his little rifle topractise with. He is such a nice boy, and, oh, Lloyd! it's the strangestthing!--he has seen _you_. I have those pictures of Locust hanging overmy easel, and, when he saw the photograph of you on Tar Baby, herecognized it right away. He was on the train and saw you ride in at thegate with a letter for your grandfather, and Hero following you.
* * * * *
"'I didn't get any farther than this in my letter (because I spent somuch time making the illustrations) before Phil and Jack came back withsome quail they had shot. They were the proudest boys you ever saw, andnothing would do but they must have those quail cooked for supper. Theycouldn't wait till next day. Mamma had invited Phil to take supper withus, and help make a sort of house-warming of our first meal in the newhome.
"'We had the jolliest kind of a time, and afterward he helped wipe thedishes. I told him that I was writing to you, and he took this littlepiece of orange blossom out of his buttonhole, and asked me if I didn'twant to send it to you as a sample of what we are enjoying in this landof perpetual sunshine.
"'It isn't a sample of everything, however. The place has lots ofdrawbacks. Oh, Lloyd, you can't imagine how lonesome I get sometimes. Ihave been here a month, and haven't met a single girl my age. If therewas just one to be chums with I wouldn't mind the rest so much,--theleaving school and all that. I don't mind the work, even the washing andironing and scrubbing,--it's just the lonesomeness, and the missing thegood times we used to have at the high school.
"'Save up your pennies, or else get a railroad pass, you and Betty, forsome of these days I'm going to give a wigwam-party. It will be a fardifferent affair from your house-party (could there ever be another suchheavenly time?), but there are lots of interesting things to see outhere: an ostrich farm, an Indian school and reservation, and queer oldruins to visit. There are scissors-birds and Gila monsters--I can'tbegin to name the things that would keep you staring. Mrs. Lee has aJapanese chef, and a Mexican to do her irrigating, and a Chinaman tobring her vegetables, and she always buys her wood of the Indians, so itseems very foreign and queer at first. There is no lack of variety, so Iought to be satisfied, and I am usually, except when I think of littleold Plainsville, and the boys and girls going up and down the dear oldstreets to high school, and meeting in the library, and sitting on thesteps singing in the moonlight, and all the jolly, sociable village lifeand the friends I have left behind for ever. Then it seems to me that Ican hardly stand it here. I wish you and Betty were with me this veryminute. _Please_ write soon. With love to you both and everybody else inthe family and the dear old valley,
"'Your homesick "'JOYCE.'"
Mrs. Ware's letter was cheerful and uncomplaining, but there were tearsin Mrs. Sherman's eyes when she finished reading it aloud.
"Poor Emily," she said. "She was always such a brave little body. Idon't see how she can write such a hopeful letter under thecircumstances,--an invalid sent out into the wilderness to die, maybe,with all those children. She has so much ambition to make something ofthem, 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 canstop and see her."
Lloyd looked up in surprise. "When are you going, Papa Jack? Isn't itqueah how things happen!"
"The latter part of this month, probably. Mr. Robeson has invited me togo out with a party in his private car. He is interested in the samemines."
"I wonder--" began Mrs. Sherman, then stopped as Mom Beck came toannounce dinner. "I'll talk to you about it after awhile,
Jack."
Somehow both Betty and Lloyd felt that it was not the summons to dinnerwhich interrupted her, but that she had started to speak of somethingwhich 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. "Iremembah when you came back from the mines. It was yeahs ago, befo' Icould talk plainly. Mothah and Fritz and I went to the station to meetyou. Fritz had roses stuck in his collah, and kept barking all the timeas if he knew something was going to happen. You fainted when we got tothe house, and were so ill that you neahly died. I heard you talk abouta fiah at the mines, and evah since I've thought of Arizona as lookinglike the Sodom and Gomorrah in my old pictuah book--smoke and fiahsweeping 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'veread about the wonderful petrified forests of agate, and the great canyonof the Colorado, but it's always seemed the last place in the world I'dever want to visit. It's terrible for Joyce to give up everything and goout there to live."
"The Waltons were out there several years," said Mrs. Sherman. "Theywere at Fort Huachuca, and learned to love it dearly. Ask them about itto-night. They will tell you that Joyce is a very fortunate girl to havethe opportunity of living in such a lovely and interesting country, anddoes not need any one's pity."
Little else was discussed all during dinner. Afterward they sat aroundthe fire in the drawing-room, still talking of the Wares and the strangecountry to which they had moved, until a tooting of horns and a jinglingof bells announced the coming of the sleighing party. Both the girlswere into their wraps before the first sleigh reached the gate. Theystood waiting by the hall window, looking out on the stretches ofmoon-lighted snow. What a cold, white, glistening world it was! Onecould 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 orangeblossoms. She was taking Joyce's letter to show to the girls.
Betty, her eyes fixed on the stars, twinkling above the bare branches ofthe locust-trees, caught the fragrance also, and it fired her romanticlittle soul with a sudden thought.
"Lloyd," she exclaimed, "what if that orange blossom was an omen! Whatif Phil were the one written for you in the stars!"
"Oh, Betty! The idea!" laughed Lloyd. "You're always imagining thingsthe way they are in books."
"But this happened just that way," persisted Betty. "His passing Locuston the train and seeing you when you were a little girl, and thenfinding your picture away out on the desert several years after, andsending you a token of his remembrance by a friend, and orange blossomsat that! If ever I finish that story of Gladys and Eugene, I'm going toput something like that in it."
"Heah they come," interrupted Lloyd, as the sleighs dashed up to thedoor. "Come on, Papa Jack and everybody. Give us a good send-off."
She looked back after her father had helped them into the sleigh, towave good-bye to the group on the porch. How interested they all were inher good times, she thought. Even her grandfather had come to the door,despite his rheumatism, to wish them a pleasant ride. Life was so sweetand full. How beautiful it was to be dashing down the snowy road in themoonlight! Was she too happy? Everybody else had troubles. Wouldsomething dreadful have to happen by and by, to make up for all theunclouded happiness of the present? She was not cold, but a suddenshiver passed over her. Then she took up the song with the others, aparody 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 thelittle village of Rollington, on and on through the night. Songs andlaughter, the jingling of bells and the sound of girlish voices floatedthrough all the valley. It was not every winter that gave them suchsport, and they enjoyed it all the more because it was rare. It was nineo'clock when the horses swung around through the wide gate at TheBeeches, and stopped in front of the great porch, where hospitablelights streamed out at every window across the snow.
There was such a gabble over the steaming cups of hot chocolate and thelittle plates of oyster pates that Lloyd could not have read the letterif she had tried. For there were Allison and Kitty and Elise passing thebonbons around again and again, with hospitable insistence, and sayingfunny things and making everybody feel that "The Beeches" was the mostcharming place in the Valley for an entertainment of that kind.Everybody was in a gale of merriment. Miss Allison was helping to keepthem so, and some of the teachers were there from the college, and twoor three darkies, with banjoes and mandolins, out in the back hall,added to the general festivities by a jingling succession of oldplantation melodies.
However, Lloyd managed to tell Mrs. Walton about the letter, saying: "Italmost spoils my fun to-night to think of poah Joyce being away out inthat dreadful lonesome country."
"Why, my dear child," cried Mrs. Walton, "some of the happiest years ofmy life were spent in that dreadful country, as you call it. It is acharming place. Just look around and see how I have filled my home withsouvenirs of it, because I loved it so."
Lloyd's glance followed hers to the long-handled peace-pipe over thefireplace, the tomahawks that, set in mortars captured during a battlein Luzon, guarded the hearth instead of ordinary andirons, the baskets,the rugs, and the Navajo portieres, and the Indian spears and potteryarranged on the walls of the stairway.
"Even that string of loco berries over Geronimo's portrait has ahistory," said Mrs. Walton. "Come down some day, and I'll tell you somany interesting things about Arizona that you'll want to start straightoff to see it."
Her duties as hostess called her away just then, but her enthusiasmstayed with Lloyd all the rest of the evening, until she reached homeand found her father and mother before the fire, still talking about theWares and their wigwam.
"Your mother wants me to take you with me when I go to Arizona," saidMr. Sherman, drawing her to his knee. "Mr. Robeson had invited her togo, but, as long as that is out of the question, she wants to arrangefor you to go in her place."
"And leave school?" gasped Lloyd.
"Yes, with Betty's help, you could easily make up lost lessons duringthe summer vacation. You'd help her, wouldn't you, dear?"
"Yes, indeed!" cried Betty. "I'd get them for her while she was gone, ifI could."
"Oh, it's so sudden, it takes my breath away," said Lloyd, after amoment's pause. "Pinch me, Betty! Shake me! And then say it all ovahagain, 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 askedfor.
"Oh, I don't need any new clothes," she cried. "But, Papa Jack, I'lltell 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 ashe could, and I got so that I could put a hole through a leaf at evenlonger range than he could. Christmas, when Ranald Walton was home, weall practised with his gun. It's lots of fun. Joyce is learning toshoot, you know. _Please_ let me have one, Papa Jack. I'd rather have itthan a dozen new dresses."
Mr. Sherman looked at her in astonishment. "And _this_ is my daintyPrincess Winsome," he said at last. "I thought you were going for anice, tame little visit. I'll be afraid now to take you. You'll want tocome back on a bucking broncho, and dash through the Valley, shootingholes through the crown of people's hats, and lassoing carriage horseswhen you can't find any wild ones to rope. No, I can't take you now. I'mafraid of consequences."
"No, honestly, Papa Jack," laughed Lloyd, "I'll be just as civilized asanybody when I come back, if you'll only get me the rifle. I'll try tobe extra civilized, just to please you."
"We'll see," was the only answer he would give, but Lloyd, who had neverknown him to
refuse her anything, knew what that meant, and danced offto bed perfectly satisfied. She was too excited to sleep. To see Joyceagain, to share the wigwam life, and make the acquaintance of Jack andHolland and Mary, who had been such interesting personages in Joyce'stales of them, to have that long trip with Papa Jack in Mr. Robeson'sprivate car, and a month's delightful holiday, seemed too muchhappiness for one small person. All sorts of exciting adventures mightlie ahead of her in that month.
The stars, peeping through her curtains, twinkled in friendly fashion ather, as if they were glad of her good fortune. Suddenly they made herthink of Betty's words: "What if Phil should be the one written for youin the stars?" It _was_ strange, his having seen her so long ago, andfinding her picture in such an unexpected way. She wondered what he waslike, and if they would be good friends, and if she could ever think asmuch of him as she did of her old playmates, Rob and Malcolm. Then shefell asleep, wishing that it was morning, so that she could send aletter to Joyce on the first mail-train, telling her that she wascoming,--that in less than two weeks she would be with her at Ware'sWigwam.