The Little Colonel's Knight Come Riding

"THE lights are out and gone are all the guests." It is very late, but I must sit up and write the full account of it while it is all fresh and clear in my mind. Besides I am too wide awake to sleep even if I should try. It was a beautiful, beautiful wedding; but I must go back ever so far if I am to have no gaps in this record.

It is three years now since I went away to Warwick Hall to teach; full, hard years, but so rich in experiences and so helpful in my work that I'd gladly go on with them if I were not needed here at home. But they do need me now that Lloyd is married and gone, and although she has not gone far and will be in and out every day, and her room is just as she left it, and her place will always be hers, still I am the daughter of the house in many ways, and can in a measure make up to godmother and Papa Jack all they have done for me. I think they do feel repaid to a great extent by my little successes and the prospect of more to follow by and by. It made me so glad and proud when I heard Papa Jack telling the doctor to-day about the essays the _Atlantic_ had accepted of mine, and how pleased he was over the series of sketches that the New York publishers are going to bring out in book form in time for the holidays. The same publishers that refused my poor old novel too.