The Little Colonel's House Party by Annie Fellows Johnston

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THE LITTLE COLONEL'S HOUSE PARTY

by

ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON

Author of "The Little Colonel," "Two Little Knights of Kentucky,"
"The Story of Dago," etc.

Illustrated by Louis Meynell

Boston
L. C. Page and Company
Publishers
Colonial Press
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston. Mass., U.S.A.

1907

[Illustration]

* * * * *

Works of

Annie Fellows Johnston

The Little Colonel Series

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 above 8 vols., boxed 12.00

Illustrated Holiday Editions

Each one vol., small quarto, cloth, illustrated, and printed
in color

The Little Colonel $1.25
The Giant Scissors 1.25
Two Little Knights of Kentucky 1.25
The above 3 vols., boxed 3.75

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
Asa Holmes 1.00
Songs Ysame (Poems, with Albion Fellows Bacon) 1.00

* * * * *

[Illustration: "MALCOLM WENT ON CUTTING."

(See Chapter IX. Her Sacred Promise)]

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE INVITATIONS ARE SENT

II. "ONE FLEW INTO THE CUCKOO'S NEST"

III. "ONE FLEW EAST"

IV. "ONE FLEW WEST"

V. BETTY REACHES THE "HOUSE BEAUTIFUL"

VI. THE ENCHANTED NECKLACE

VII. BITS FROM BETTY'S DIARY

VIII. THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER

IX. HER SACRED PROMISE

X. FOUND OUT

XI. SOME STORIES AND A POEM

XII. A PILLOW-CASE PARTY

XIII. MORE MEASLES

XIV. A LONG NIGHT

XV. "THE ROAD OF THE LOVING HEART"

XVI. A FEAST OF LANTERNS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"MALCOLM WENT ON CUTTING" (Frontispiece)

"'OH, RUN AND GET IT, QUICK, DAVY,' SHE CRIED"

"SHE SORTED THE RIBBONS AND EXAMINED THE GLOVES"

"BETTY BEGAN THE STORY"

"'I'M GLAD THAT I DON'T HAVE TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY THE YEAR ROUND!'"

"THERE WAS ONE WILD SCREAM AFTER ANOTHER"

"'BUT WE CAUGHT THE CHICKENS AND BROUGHT THEM BACK!'"

"'LET'S ALL SIT DOWN ON THE STEPS'"

CHAPTER I.

THE INVITATIONS ARE SENT.

Down the long avenue that led from the house to the great entrance gate
came the Little Colonel on her pony. It was a sweet, white way that
morning, filled with the breath of the locusts; white overhead where the
giant trees locked branches to make an arch of bloom nearly a quarter of
a mile in length, and white underneath where the fallen blossoms lay
like scattered snowflakes along the path.

Everybody, in Lloydsboro Valley knew Locust. "It is one of the prettiest
places in all Kentucky," they were fond of saying, and every visitor to
the Valley was taken past the great entrance gate to admire the long
rows of stately old trees, and the great stone house at the end, whose
pillars gleamed white through the Virginia creeper that nearly covered
it.

Everybody knew old Colonel Lloyd, too, the owner of the place. He also
was often pointed out to the summer visitors. Some people called
attention to him because he was an old Confederate soldier who had given
his good right arm to the cause he loved, some because they thought he
resembled Napoleon, and others because they had some amusing tale to
tell of the eccentric things he had said or done.

Nearly every one who pointed out the imposing figure, which was clad
always in white duck or linen in the summer, and wrapped in a
picturesque military cape in winter, added the remark: "And he is the
Little Colonel's grandfather." To be the grandfather of such an
attractive little bunch of mischief as Lloyd Sherman was when she first
came to the Valley was a distinction of which any man might well be
proud, and Colonel Lloyd _was_ proud of it. He was proud of the fact
that she had inherited his lordly manner, his hot temper, and imperious
ways. It pleased him that people had given her his title of Colonel on
account of the resemblance to himself. She had outgrown it somewhat
since she had first been nicknamed the Little Colonel. Then she was
only a spoiled baby of five; but now his pride in her was even greater,
since she had grown into a womanly little maid of eleven. He was proud
of her delicate, flower-like beauty, of her dainty ways, and all her
little schoolgirl accomplishments.

"She is like those who have gone before," he used to say to himself
sometimes, pacing slowly back and forth under the locusts; and the
bloom-tipped branches above would nod to each other as if they
understood. "Yes-s, yes-s," they whispered in the soft lisping language
of the leaves, "_we_ know! She's like Amanthis,--sweet-souled and
starry-eyed; we were here when you brought her home, a bride. She's like
Amanthis! Like Amanthis!"

Under the blossoms rode the Little Colonel, all in white herself this
May morning, except the little Napoleon hat of black velvet, set
jauntily over her short light hair. Into the cockade she had stuck a
spray of locust blossoms, and as she rode slowly along she fastened a
bunch of them behind each ear of her pony, whose coat was as soft and
black as the velvet of her hat. "Tarbaby" she called him, partly because
he was so black, and partly because that was the name of her favourite
Uncle Remus story.

"There!" she exclaimed, when the flowers were fastened to her
satisfaction. "Yo' lookin' mighty fine this mawnin', Tarbaby! Maybe I'll
take you visitin' aftah I've been to the post-office and mailed these
lettahs. You didn't know that Judge Moore's place is open for the
summah, did you, and that all the family came out yesta'day? Well, they
did, and if Bobby Moore isn't ovah to my house by the time we get back
home, we'll go ovah to Bobby's."

As she spoke, she passed through the gate at the end of the avenue and
turned into the public road, a wide pike with a railroad track on one
side of it and a bridle-path on the other. Two minutes' brisk canter
brought her to another gate, one that had been closed all winter, and
one that she was greatly interested in, because it led to Judge Moore's
house. Judge Moore was Rob's grandfather, and she and Rob had played
together every summer since she could remember.

The wide white gate was standing open now, and she drew rein, peering
anxiously in. She hoped for the sight of a familiar freckled face or the
sound of a welcoming whoop. But it was so still everywhere that all she
saw was the squirrels playing hide and seek in the beech-grove around
the house, and all she heard was the fearless cry, "Pewee! pewee!" of a
little bird perched in a tree overarching the gate. It balanced itself
on the limb, leaning over and cocking its bright bead-like eyes at her,
as if admiring the sight.

What it saw was a slender girl of eleven, taller than most children of
that age, and more graceful. There was a colour in her cheek like the
delicate pink of a wild rose, and the big hazel eyes had a roguish
twinkle in them, as they looked out fearlessly on the world from under
the little Napoleon hat with its nodding cockade of locust blossoms.

"There's nobody in sight, Tarbaby," said the Little Colonel, "and there
isn't time to go in befo' we've been to the post-office, so we might as
well be travellin' on."

She was turning slowly away when down the pike behind her came the quick
beat of a horse's hoofs and a shrill whistle. A twelve-year-old boy was
riding toward her as fast as his big gray horse could carry him. He was
riding bareback, straight and lithe as a young Indian, his cap pushed to
the back of his head. He snatched it off with a flourish as he came
within speaking distance of the Little Colonel, his freckled face all
ashine with pleasure.

"Hello! Lloyd," he called, "I was just going to your house."

"And I was looking for you, Bobby," she answered, as informally as if
it were only yesterday they had parted, instead of eight months before.

"Come and go down to the post-office with me. I must take these
lettahs."

"All right," said Rob, wheeling the gray horse around beside the black
pony, and smiling broadly as he looked down into the Little Colonel's
welcoming eyes. "You don't know how good it feels to get back to the
country again, Lloyd. I could hardly wait for school to close, when I'd
think about the fish waiting for me out here in the creek, and the wild
strawberries getting ripe, and the horses just spoiling to be exercised.
It was more than I could stand. What have you been doing all winter?"

"Oh, the same old things: school and music lessons, and good times in
the evenin' with mothah and papa Jack and grandfathah."

As they jogged along, side by side, the Little Colonel chatting gaily of
all that had happened since their last meeting, Rob kept casting curious
glances at her. "What have you been doing to yourself, Lloyd Sherman?"
he demanded, finally. "You look so--so _different_!" There was such a
puzzled expression in his sharp gray eyes that the Little Colonel
laughed. Then her hand flew up to her head.

"Don't you see? I've had my hair cut. I had to beg and beg befo' mothah
and papa Jack would let me have it done; but it was so long,--away below
my waist,--and _such_ a bothah. It had to be brushed and plaited a dozen
times a day."

"I don't like it that way. It isn't a bit becoming," said Rob, with the
frankness of old comradeship. "You look like a boy. Why, it is as short
as mine."

"I don't care," answered Lloyd, her eyes flashing dangerously. "It's
comfortable this way, and grandfathah likes it. He says he's got his
Little Colonel back again now, and he sent to town for this Napoleon hat
like the ones I used to weah when I was a little thing."

"When you were a little thing!" laughed Rob, teasingly. "What do you
think you are now, missy? You're head and shoulders shorter than I am."

"I'm eleven yeahs old, anyway, I'd have you to undahstand, Bobby Moore,"
answered the Little Colonel, with such dignity that Rob wished he hadn't
spoken. "I was eleven last week. That was one of my birthday presents,
havin' my own way about cuttin' my hair, and anothah was the house
pahty. Oh, you don't know anything about the house pahty I'm to have in
June, do you!" she cried, every trace of displeasure vanishing at the
thought. "Grandfathah and papa Jack are goin' away fo' a month to some
mineral springs in Va'ginia, and I'm to have my house pahty in June to
keep mothah and me from bein' lonesome. It will not be a very big one,
only three girls to spend June with me, but mothah says we can have
picnics every day if we want to, and invite all the boys and girls in
the Valley, and we can have the house full from mawnin' till night. I'll
invite you right now for every day that you want to come. We'll expect
you at all the pahties and picnics and candy-pullin's that we have. I
want you to help me give the girls a good time, Bobby."

Rob whirled his cap around his head with a "Whe-ew! Jolly for you!"
before he answered more politely, "Thank you, Lloyd, you can count on me
for my part. I'll be on hand every time you turn around, if you want me.
Who all's coming?"

For answer Lloyd held up the three letters she was carrying, and let him
see the first address, written in Mrs. Sherman's flowing hand.

_Miss Eugenia Forbes,_
_The Waldorf-Astoria,_
_New York City._

"Well, who is she?" he asked, reading it aloud.

"Eugenia is a sort of cousin of mine," explained Lloyd. "At least her
fathah and my fathah are related in some way. I used to know her when
we lived in New York, but I haven't seen her since we left. I was five
then and she was seven, so she must be neahly thirteen yeahs old now.
When we played togethah she would scream and _scream_ if I didn't give
up to her in everything, and as I had a bad tempah, too, we were always
fussin'. She was dreadfully spoiled. I'll nevah fo'get how my hand bled
one day when she bit it, or how she clawed my face till it looked as if
a tigah had scratched it."

"Then what did you do?" asked Rob, with a grin. He had experimented with
Lloyd's temper himself in the past.

"I believe that that was the time I pounded her on the back with my
little red chair," answered Lloyd, laughing at the recollection. "Or
maybe it was the time I banged her ovah the head with a toy teakettle. I
remembah I did both those bad things, and that we were always in trouble
whenevah we were togethah. I didn't want mothah to invite her, but she
said she felt that we ought to. Eugenia's mothah is dead. She died three
yeahs ago, and since then she's been kept in a boa'din' school most of
the time. When she's not away at school she stays in some big hotel with
her fathah, eithah in New York or at some summah resort. He is always so
busy there's no one to pay any attention to her but her maid. They are
very wealthy, and Eugenia has had the best of everything so long that
I'm afraid she'll find the Valley dreadfully poah and poky. I imagine
she's stuck up, too. She used to be, and she's always had her own way
about everything."

"Number one doesn't sound very inviting," said Rob, with a sour grimace.
"Who is your number two?" Lloyd held out the second envelope.

_Miss Joyce Ware,
Plainsville,
Kansas._

"I nevah saw her," said Lloyd, "but I feel as if we had always been old
friends. Her mothah and mine used to go to school togethah heah in
Lloydsboro Valley at the Girls' College, and they've written to each
othah once a month for fifteen yeahs. Mrs. Ware is a widow now, and they
have ha'd times, for they are poah, and she has foah children youngah
than Joyce. But Joyce has had lots of things that neithah Eugenia nor I
have had. Last yeah her cousin Kate took her abroad with her, and she
studied French, and she had lots of beautiful times where they spent the
wintah in France. Mrs. Ware sent some of the lettahs to mothah that
Joyce wrote. One was about a Christmas tree that they gave to thirty
little peasant children,--and so many queer things happened behind a
gate that they called the 'Gate of the Giant Scissahs,' because there
was a pair of enormous scissahs hanging ovah it, you know. Oh, it was
just like a fairy tale, all the things that Joyce did when she was in
Touraine."

"How old is she?" interrupted Rob.

"Just Eugenia's age, I believe, and she must be an interestin' sort of
girl, for she draws beautifully. Mothah says that her sketches are fine,
and that Joyce will be a real artist when she is grown."

"Number two is all right," said Rob, with an approving nod. "Next!" The
Little Colonel held out the third envelope.

"One flew east and one flew west, so I s'pose this will fly into the
cuckoo's nest," said Rob, as he read the address:

_Miss Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis,
Jaynes's Post-office,
Kentucky._

"Why, that's just what mothah calls the place," cried the Little
Colonel, "the cuckoo's nest! She says that the cuckoo is the most
careless bird in the world about the way it builds its nest. They weave
a few twigs and sticks togethah just in any kind of way, and nevah mind
a bit if their poah little young ones fall out of the nest. They seem to
think that any kind of home is good enough, and that is the kind of a
home that Elizabeth Lewis has. She is a poah little orphan, and is
livin' on a farm up Green Rivah. Mother is her godmothah. That's why she
is named Elizabeth Lloyd. Mrs. Lewis was an old school friend of
mothah's, too, and she wants Joyce and Elizabeth and me to be as deah
friends as she and Emily Ware and Joyce Lewis were, she says. That's why
she invited them."

"And you don't know anything about this one?" questioned Rob.

"Not a thing. I shouldn't be su'prised if she's mighty countrified, for
the farm is several miles from a railroad, and the people she lives with
don't think of anything but work, yeah in and yeah out."

They had reached the post-office by this time, and Rob held out his hand
for the letters. "I'll put them in for you," he said. Then, dropping
them into the box, one by one, he repeated the rhyme:

"One flew east and one flew west.
And one flew into the cuckoo's nest."

Lloyd added, quickly:

"Eugenia, Joyce, or Elizabeth,
Which of the three shall we like best?"

"Joyce," said Rob, promptly.

"I think so, too," agreed the Little Colonel, stooping to fasten the
locust blossoms more securely behind the pony's ears.

"Well, the invitations are off now. Come on, Tarbaby, and see if you
can't beat Bobby Moore's old gray hawse so bad it will be ashamed to
evah race again."

With that the little black pony was off like an arrow toward Locust,
with the big gray horse thundering hard at its heels.

The dust flew, dogs barked, and chickens ran squawking across the road
out of the way. Heads were thrust out of the windows as the two vanished
up the dusty pike, and an old graybeard loafing in front of the corner
grocery gave an amused chuckle. "Beats all how them two do get over the
ground," he said. "They ride like Tarn O'Shanter, and I'll bet a quarter
there's nothing on earth that either of 'em are afraid of."

A little while later the three white envelopes were jogging sociably
along, side by side in a mail-bag, on their way to Louisville. But
their course did not lie together long. In the city post-office they
were separated, and sent on their different ways, like three white
carrier-pigeons, to bid the guests make ready for the Little Colonel's
house party.

CHAPTER II.

"ONE FLEW INTO THE CUCKOO'S NEST."

The letter for Jaynes's Post-office reached the end of its journey
first. It wasn't much of a post-office; only an old case of pigeon-holes
set up in one corner of a cross-roads store. A man riding over from the
nearest town twice a week brought the mail-bag on horseback. So few
letters found their way into this, particular bag that Squire Jaynes,
who kept the store and post-office, felt a personal interest in every
envelope that passed through his hands.

"Miss Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis," he spelled aloud, examining the address
through his square-bowed spectacles with a critical squint. "Now, who
under the canopy might _she_ be?"

There was no one in the store to answer the question but an overgrown
boy who had stopped to get his father's weekly paper. He sat on the
counter dangling his big bare feet against a nail-keg, and catching
flies in his sunburned hands, while he waited for the mail to be
opened.

The squire peered inquiringly at him over the square-bowed spectacles.
"Jake," he asked, "ever hear tell of a Miss Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis up
this way?"

"Wy, sure!" drawled the boy. "That's Betty. The Appletons' Betty. Don't
you know? She's that little orphan they're a-bringin' up. I worked there
a while this spring, a-plowin'."

"Hump!" grunted the squire, slipping the letter into the pigeon-hole
marked "A." "If that's who it is, I know all about her. Precious little
bringing up she'll get at the Appletons', I can tell you that. They keep
her because they're her nearest of living kin, which isn't very near,
after all; fourth or fifth cousins to her father, or something like
that. Any-how, they're all she's got, and her father made some
arrangement with them before he died. Left a little money to pay her
board, they say, but I've heard she works just the same as if she was
living on charity."

"That's the truth," said Jake; "she does. Talk about bringin' up. She
doesn't get any of it. Mrs. Appleton has her hands so full of cookin'
for farm hands and all, that she can't half tend to her own children,
let alone anybody else's. It's Betty that 'pears to be bringin' up the
little Appletons."

"I'm glad there's somebody takes enough interest in the child to write
to her," continued the gossipy old squire, who often talked to himself
when he could find no other audience. "I wonder who it is. Lloydsboro
Valley it's postmarked. Wish she'd happen down here. I'd ask her who
it's from."

Jake got up, dragged his bare feet across the floor, and leaned lazily
on the counter as he reached for his paper.

"Little Betty will be mighty proud to get a real shore 'nuff letter all
for herself. I never got one in my life. I'll take it up to her, squire,
if you say so. I'm goin' by the Appletons' on my way home."

"Reckon you might as well," answered the old man, giving a final close
scrutiny before handing it to the boy. "It might lie here all week in
case none of them happened to come to the store, and it looks as if it
might be important."

Jake slipped the letter into the band of his broad-brimmed straw hat and
slouched lazily out of the store. An old blaze-faced sorrel horse
whinnied as he stepped up to untie it. Jake mounted and rode off slowly,
his bare feet dangling far below the stirrups. It was two miles to the
Appleton farm, down a hot, dusty road, and he took his time in going.
Well for little Betty that she did not know what wonderful surprise was
on its way to her, or she would have been in a fever of impatience for
the letter to arrive.

It had been a tiresome day for the child. Up before five, in her bare
little room in the west gable, busy with morning chores until breakfast
was ready, she had earned a rest long before the Little Colonel's day
had begun. Afterward she had helped with the breakfast dishes and had
taken her turn at the butter-making in the spring-house, thumping the
heavy dasher up and down in the cedar churn until her arms ached. But it
was cool and pleasant down in the spring-house with the water trickling
out in a ceaseless drip-drip on the cold stones. She dabbled her fingers
in the spring for a long time when the churning was done, wishing she
had nothing to do but sit there and listen to the secrets it was trying
to tell. Surely it must have learned a great many on its underground way
among the roots of things, and all else that lies hidden in the earth.

But she could not loiter long. There was the dinner-table to set for the
hungry farm-hands, and after the dinner was over more dishes to wash.
Then there were some towels to iron. It was two o'clock before her work
was all done, and she had time to go up to her little room in the west
gable.

The sun poured in through the shutterless windows so fiercely that she
did not stay long,--only long enough to put on a clean apron and brush
her curly hair, as she stood in front of the little looking-glass. It
was such a tiny mirror that she could see only a part of her face at a
time. When her big brown eyes, wistful and questioning as a fawn's, were
reflected in it, there was no room for the sensitive little mouth. Or if
she stood on tiptoe so that she could see her plump round chin, dimpled
cheeks, and white teeth, the eyes were left out, and she could see no
more of her inquisitive little nose than lay below the big freckle in
the middle of it.

Hastily tying back her curls with a bow of brown ribbon, she slipped on
her apron, and ran down-stairs, buttoning it as she went. She was free
now to do as she pleased until supper-time. Once out of the house, she
walked slowly along through the shady orchard, swinging her sunbonnet by
the strings. After the orchard came the long leafy lane, with its double
rows of cherry-trees, and then the gate at the end, leading into the
public highway.

As she slipped her hand around the post to unfasten the chain that held
the gate, little bare feet came pattering behind her, and a shrill voice
called: "Wait, Betty, wait a minute!" It was Davy Appleton. Betty's
little lamb, they called him, and Betty's shadow, and Betty's
sticking-plaster, because everywhere she went there was Davy just at her
heels.

All the Appleton children were boys,--three younger and two older than
Davy, whose last birthday cake should have had eight candles if there
had been any celebration of the event. But there never had been a
birthday cake with candles on it on the Appleton table. It would have
been considered a foolish waste of time and money, and birthdays came
and went sometimes, without the children knowing that they had passed.

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