Part 9 (2/2)

She reached out to the chair beside her bed, where her clothes were hanging, and felt in her ap.r.o.n pocket for the little glove. She sat up in bed, and looked at it in the dim firelight. Then she held it against her face. ”Oh, I want my mothah! I want my mothah!” she sobbed, in a heart-broken whisper.

Laying her head on her knees, she began to cry quietly, but with great sobs that nearly choked her.

There was a rustling under the bed. She lifted her wet face in alarm.

Then she smiled through her tears, for there was Fritz, her own dear dog, and not an unknown horror waiting to grab her.

He stood on his hind legs, eagerly trying to lap away her tears with his friendly red tongue.

She clasped him in her arms with an ecstatic hug. ”Oh, you're such a comfort!” she whispered. ”I can go to sleep now.”

She spread her ap.r.o.n on the bed, and motioned him to jump. With one spring he was beside her.

It was nearly midnight when the door from the Colonel's room was noiselessly opened.

The old man stirred the fire gently until it burst into a bright flame.

Then he turned to the bed. ”You rascal!” he whispered, looking at Fritz, who raised his head quickly with a threatening look in his wicked eyes.

Lloyd lay with one hand stretched out, holding the dog's protecting paw.

The other held something against her tear-stained cheek.

”What under the sun!” he thought, as he drew it gently from her fingers.

The little glove lay across his hand, slim and aristocratic-looking. He knew instinctively whose it was. ”Poor little thing's been crying,” he thought. ”She wants Elizabeth. And so do I! And so do I!” his heart cried out with bitter longing. ”It's never been like home since she left.”

He laid the glove back on her pillow, and went to his room.

”If Jack Sherman should die,” he said to himself many times that night, ”then she would come home again. Oh, little daughter, little daughter!

why did you ever leave me?”

CHAPTER VIII.

The first thing that greeted the Little Colonel's eyes when she opened them next morning was her mother's old doll. Maria had laid it on the pillow beside her.

It was beautifully dressed, although in a queer, old-fas.h.i.+oned style that seemed very strange to the child.

She took it up with careful fingers, remembering its great age. Maria had warned her not to waken her grandfather, so she admired it in whispers.

”Jus' think, Fritz,” she exclaimed, ”this doll has seen my Gran'mothah Amanthis, an' it's named for her. My mothah wasn't any bigger'n me when she played with it. I think it is the loveliest doll I evah saw in my whole life.”

Fritz gave a jealous bark.

”s.h.!.+” commanded his little mistress. ”Didn't you heah M'ria say, 'Fo' de Lawd's sake don't wake up ole Ma.r.s.e?' Why don't you mind?”

The Colonel was not in the best of humours after such a wakeful night, but the sight of her happiness made him smile in spite of himself, when she danced into his room with the doll.

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