The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation by Annie Fellows Johnston

THE string of white beads grew steadily, but work went hand in hand with / play at Warwick Hall, as Kitty's memory-book testified. She brought it / out to liven the recreation hour one rainy afternoon, late in the term, / when they were house-bound by the weather. Its covers, labelled "Gala / Days and Bonfire Nights," were bulging with souvenirs of many memorable / occasions. She sat on the floor with it spread open on her lap. Betty / was on one side and Lloyd on the other, while Gay leaned against her / back and looked over her shoulder.

Kitty opened her treasure-house of mementos with a giggle, for on the / first page was a water-colour sketch of Gay as she had appeared on the / welcoming night. She had painted her with two enormous feet protruding / from her flowing skirts, one cased in a party slipper with an / exaggerated French heel, the other in a down-trodden bedroom slipper / painted a brilliant crimson.

"You mean thing!" cried Gay, laughing over the ridiculous caricature of / herself.

"That isn't a circumstance to some of them," remarked Allison, who was / virtuously spending her recreation hour in sewing buttons on her gloves / and mending a rip in the lining of her coat-sleeve. "Wait till you come / to the programme of the recital given by the students of voice, violin, / and piano. The pictures she made all around the margin of it are some of / the best she has done. The sketch of Susie Tyndall, tearing her hair and / shrieking out the 'Polish Boy,' is simply killing."

"Kitty Walton," exclaimed Gay, as she bent over the grotesquely / decorated programme, "where do you keep this book o' nights? I'll surely / have to steal it. Think what it will be worth to us when we are old / ladies. There's one thing certain, you could never pose as a saintly old / grandmother with such a record for mischief as this to bear witness / against you."

Kitty looked up with a startled expression. "You know, it never occurred / to me before that I'd ever look at this book through spectacles. I / wonder if I'll find it as amusing then, when I'm dignified and / rheumatic, as I do now."

"I'm sure _that_ will be pleasant to recall," said Betty, pointing to a / withered rose pinned to the next page. "That will properly impress your / grandchildren."

Underneath the rose was written the date of a private reception granted / the Warwick Hall girls at the White House.

"I had such a lovely time that afternoon," sighed Betty. "It was so much / nicer to go as we did, for a friendly little visit under Madam's wing, / than to have pushed by in a big public mob. Wasn't Cora Basket funny? / She was so overawed by the honour that she fairly turned purple. Her / roommate vows that, when she wrote home, she began, 'Preserve this / letter! The hand that is now writing it has been shaken by the President / of the United States of America!"

"Cordie Brown was funnier than Cora," said Allison. "She wanted to / impress people with the idea that the affair was nothing to her. That it / rather bored her, in fact. She went around with her nose in the air, / trying to appear so superior and indifferent, as if crowned heads and / their ilk made her tired."

"What's this?" demanded Lloyd, as they turned the next leaf, through / which a single long black hair had been drawn. Underneath was the / gruesome legend, "Dead men tell no tales."

"Oh, that's only a 'hair from the tail of the dog of the child of the / wife of the wild man of Borneo," laughed Kitty, attempting to turn the / page; but Lloyd, laying both palms across it, held it fast.

"You know it's not, you naughty thing. You've been up to some prank."

"It a p. j. A private joke," explained Kitty, bending over the book and / laughing till her forehead touched her knees. "I'm dying to tell you, / for it's the funniest thing in the collection. It happened at the / Hallowe'en party, and I promised not to tell."

"Promised whom?" demanded Betty.

"Can't tell that, either," was all that Kitty would say. She flipped / over the next leaf. A gilded wishbone was fastened to the page by the / bit of red ribbon run through it.

"That's 'In Memoriam' of the grand spread at the Thanksgiving Day feast. / And this button pasted on just below it, popped off the glove of / Mademoiselle La Tosto the afternoon she came to the Studio Tea and Art / reception. You know how the girls buzzed around her like a swarm of / bees, begging for her autograph. I'd rather have this button than a / dozen autographs, for it dropped off her glove as she clapped her hands / in that vivacious Frenchy way of hers, when she saw my caricature of / Paderewski that the girls stuck up on the wall. Understand, young / ladies, she was _applauding_ it. I walked on air all afternoon."

"Why undah the sun have you saved this tea leaf?" asked Lloyd, pointing / to one pasted carefully in the corner of the next page.

"Don't you remember the day that we went down to Mammy Easter's cabin, / and her old black grandmother was there, and told our fortunes? She was / a regular old hag, Gay. I wish you could have seen her, -- teeth all gone; / skin puckered as a dried apple; she looked more monkey than human. But / she's a fine fortune-teller. I made a few hieroglyphics to recall what / she said. This mark is supposed to be a coach and four. She said that / Allison was to wed wid de quality and ride in a car'age, but sorrow / would be her po'shun if she walked proud. She said that I'm bawn to / trouble as de spah'ks fly upwa'd, case I won't hah'k to counsel, and / that I mustn't marry the first man that axes me, and I mustn't marry the / second man that axes me, but the third man that axes me, him I can / safely marry. This tea leaf stands for the third man. I'm to have three / sons and one daughter, and my luck will come to me through running water / when the weather-vane points west."

Kitty pointed to several pencil scratches beside the tea leaf, intended / to signify a brook and a weather-vane on a steeple.