The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation by Annie Fellows Johnston

THE red coat Lloyd wore that winter was long remembered in the Valley, / for wherever it went it carried a bright face above it, a cheery / greeting, and some pleasant word that made the day seem better for its / passing.

Mrs. Bisbee and the little Crisps were not the only ones who learned to / watch for it. As all the lonely town of Hamelin must have felt toward / the one child left to it after the Pied Piper had passed through its / streets, so all the Valley turned with tender regard to the young girl / left in its midst. Mothers, whose daughters were away at school, stopped / to talk to her with affectionate interest. The old ladies whom she / regularly visited welcomed her as if she were a part of their vanished / youth. The young ladies took her under their wing, glad to have her in / the choir and the King's Daughters' Circle, for she was bubbling over / with girlish enthusiasm and a sincere desire to help.

So she found the cobwebs in the neighbourhood sky, and disagreeable / enough they were at times, even more disagreeable than her experience / with Mrs. Perkins. But she swept away with praiseworthy energy, till / gradually she found that the accumulation of outside interests, like the / cobweb strands which Ederyn twisted, made a rope strong enough to lift / her out of herself and her dungeon of disappointment.

After the novelty of giving music lessons had worn off, it grew to be a / bore. Not the lessons themselves, for Agnes's delight in them never / flagged. It was the tied-up feeling it gave her to remember that those / afternoons were not her own. It happened so often that the afternoons / devoted to Agnes were the ones which of all the week she wanted to have / free, and she had to give up many small pleasures on account of them.

It grew to be a bore, also, calling on some of the people who claimed a / weekly visit. She never tired of Mrs. Bisbee's lively comments on her / neighbours and her interesting tales about them. But there was old Mr. / and Mrs. Apwall, who, with nothing to do but sit on opposite sides of / the fire and look at each other, were said to quarrel like cat and dog. / It mortified Lloyd dreadfully to have them quarrel in her presence, and / have them pour out their grievances for her to decide which was in the / wrong.

She always rose to go at that juncture, flushed and embarrassed, and / vowing inwardly she would never visit them again. But they always / managed to extract a promise before she got to the door that she would / drop in again the next time she was passing.

"Somehow you seem to get husband's mind off himself," Mrs. Apwall would / whisper at parting. "He isn't half so touchy when you've cheered him up / a spell."

And Mr. Apwall would follow her out through the chilly hall to open the / front door, and say, huskily: "Come again, daughter. Come again. Your / visits seem to do the madam a world of good. They give her something to / talk about beside my fancied failings."

So inwardly groaning, Lloyd would go again, painfully alert to keep the / conversation away from subjects that invariably led to disputes. And / inwardly groaning, she went dutifully to the Coburns' at their repeated / requests. The first few times the garrulous old couple were interesting, / but the most thrilling tale grows tiresome when one has heard it a / dozen times. She could scarcely keep from fidgeting in her chair when / the inevitable story of their feud with the Cayn family was begun. They / never left out a single petty detail.

No one will ever know how often the thought of the little rosary in the / sandalwood box helped Lloyd to listen patiently, and to keep tryst with / the expectations of those about her, so that at nightfall there might be / another pearl to slip on the silken cord, in token of another day / unstained by selfishness.

There was rarely time for envying the girls at school now. The days were / too full. Almost before it seemed possible, the locusts were in bloom / and it was mid-May by the calendar. In that time perfect health had come / back to her. There were no more crying spells now, no more hours of / nervous exhaustion, of fretful impatience over trifles. She went singing / about the house, with a colour in her cheeks that rivalled the pink of / the apple blossoms.

"Spring has come indoors as well as out," said Mrs. Sherman one morning. / "I think that we may safely count that your Christmas vacation is over, / and you may go back to your music lessons whenever you choose."

The night before her birthday, Lloyd sat with her elbows on her / dressing-table, peering into the mirror with a very serious face.

"You'll be sixteen yeahs old in the mawning, Lloyd Sherman," she told / the girl in the glass. "Sweet sixteen!' You've come to the end of lots / of things, and to-morrow it will be like going through a gate that / you've seen ahead of you for a long, long time. A big, wide gate that / you have looked forward to for yeahs, and things are bound to be / different on the othah side."

Next morning, just in fun, she trailed down to breakfast in one of her / mother's white dresses, with her hair piled on the top of her head. It / was very becoming so, but it made her look so tall and womanly that she / was sure her grandfather would object to it.

"He'll nevah let me grow up if he can help it," she said, half-pouting, / as she gave a final glance over her shoulder at the mirror, vastly / pleased with her young ladylike appearance. "He'll say, 'Tut, tut! / That's not grandpa's Little Colonel.' But I can't stay his Little / Colonel always."