Part 12 (2/2)
”Mothah! Mothah!” she called, pus.h.i.+ng open the parlour door. ”Come heah, quick!”
The Colonel, taking the hat from his white head, and dropping it on the floor, took an expectant step forward. There was a slight rustle, and Elizabeth stood in the doorway. For just a moment they looked into each other's faces. Then the Colonel held out his arm.
”Little daughter,” he said, in a tremulous voice. The love of a lifetime seemed to tremble in those two words.
In an instant her arms were around his neck, and he was ”kissing away the sorry feelin's” as tenderly as the lost Amanthis could have done.
As soon as Lloyd began to realize what was happening, her face grew radiant. She danced around in such excitement that Fritz barked wildly.
”Come an' see Papa Jack, too,” she cried, leading him into the next room.
Whatever deep-rooted prejudices Jack Sherman may have had, they were unselfishly put aside after one look into his wife's happy face.
He raised himself on his elbow as the dignified old soldier crossed the room. The white hair, the empty sleeve, the remembrance of all the old man had lost, and the thought that after all he was Elizabeth's father, sent a very tender feeling through the younger man's heart.
”Will you take my hand, sir?” he asked, sitting up and offering it in his straightforward way.
”Of co'se he will!” exclaimed Lloyd, who still clung to her grandfather's arm. ”Of co'se he will!”
”I have been too near death to harbour ill will any longer,” said the younger man, as their hands met in a strong, forgiving clasp.
The old Colonel smiled grimly.
”I had thought that even death itself could not make me give in,” he said, ”but I've had to make a complete surrender to the Little Colonel.”
That Christmas there was such a celebration at Locust that May Lilly and Henry Clay nearly went wild in the general excitement of the preparation. Walker hung up cedar and holly and mistletoe till the big house looked like a bower. Maria bustled about, airing rooms and bringing out stores of linen and silver.
The Colonel himself filled the great punch-bowl that his grandfather had brought from Virginia.
”I'm glad we're goin' to stay heah to-night,” said Lloyd, as she hung up her stocking Christmas Eve. ”It will be so much easiah fo' Santa Claus to get down these big chimneys.”
In the morning when she found four tiny stockings hanging beside her own, overflowing with candy for Fritz, her happiness was complete.
That night there was a tree in the drawing-room that reached to the frescoed ceiling. When May Lilly came in to admire it and get her share from its loaded branches, Lloyd came skipping up to her. ”Oh, I'm goin'
to live heah all wintah,” she cried. ”Mom Beck's goin' to stay heah with me, too, while mothah an' Papa Jack go down South where the alligatahs live. Then when they get well an' come back, Papa Jack is goin' to build a house on the othah side of the lawn. I'm to live in both places at once; mothah said so.”
There were music and light, laughing voices and happy hearts in the old home that night. It seemed as if the old place had awakened from a long dream and found itself young again.
The plan the Little Colonel unfolded to May Lilly was carried out in every detail. It seemed a long winter to the child, but it was a happy one. There were not so many displays of temper now that she was growing older, but the letters that went southward every week were full of her odd speeches and mischievous pranks. The old Colonel found it hard to refuse her anything. If it had not been for Mom Beck's decided ways, the child would have been sadly spoiled.
At last the spring came again. The pewees sang in the cedars. The dandelions sprinkled the roadsides like stars. The locust-trees tossed up the white spray of their fragrant blossoms with every wave of their green boughs.
”They'll soon be heah! They'll soon be heah!” chanted the Little Colonel every day.
The morning they came she had been down the avenue a dozen times to look for them before the carriage had even started to meet them. ”Walkah,”
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