The Little Colonel's Holidays Part 12

"Well, I am not going to take any chances with her," he persisted, backing up against the wall. That settled it. They could have moved the rock foundation of the house itself easier than the captain, when he took that kind of a stand. Looking at it from Ra.n.a.ld's point of view, none of the boys were willing to go down cellar, for they could easily imagine how the others would tease them afterward. Kitty's prank would have fallen through, if she had not been quicker than a weasel at planning mischief.

"What's to hinder fixing up a dummy man, and putting him down there?"

she suggested. "You boys can run home and get Uncle Harry's rubber boots, and his old slouch hat, and some pillows, and that military cape that Ginger's father left there, and she'll think it is an army officer that's she's going to marry. Won't she be fooled?"

The boys were as quick to act as Kitty was to plan. A noisy game of blind man's buff was going on inside the house, so no one missed the conspirators, although they were gone for some time.

"We just ran home a minute for something," was Keith's excuse, when he and Malcolm and Ra.n.a.ld came in, red-faced and breathless. Rob and Kitty were still in the cellar, putting the finishing touches to the army officer. Kitty was recklessly fastening the dummy together with big safety-pins, regardless of the holes she was making in her Uncle Harry's high rubber hunting-boots.

"Isn't he a dandy!" exclaimed Rob, putting the slouched hat on the pillow head at a fierce angle, and fastening the military cape up around the chin as far as possible. "Come on now, Kitty, let us make our escape before anybody comes."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SHE BEGAN THE OLD RHYME."]

Meanwhile, the boys had corralled Walter c.u.mmins, and Cora, seeing him leave the room, thought that the proper time had come. Slipping the hand-mirror from the dressing-table in the room where they had left their wraps, she took a candle from one of the Jack-o'-lanterns on the side porch, and signalled the girls who had agreed to follow her. She was nearly sixteen, but the three girls who groped their way across the courtyard in the flickering light of her candle were much younger.

The cellar was entered from the courtyard, by an old-fashioned door, the kind best adapted to sliding, and it took the united strength of all the girls to lift it. A rush of cold, damp air greeted them, and an earthy smell that would have checked the enthusiasm of any girl less sentimental than Cora.

"I am frightened to death, girls," she confessed at the last moment, her teeth chattering. Yet she was not so frightened as she would have been had she not been sure that Walter had gone down the steps ahead of her.

"Hold the door open," she said, preparing to back slowly down. Her fluffy light hair stood out like an aureole in the yellow candle-light, and the face reflected in the hand-mirror was pretty enough to answer every requirement of the old spell, despite the silly simper on her lips. When she was nearly at the bottom of the cellar steps she began the old rhyme:

"If in this gla.s.s his face I see, Then my true love will marry me."

But the couplet ended in a scream, so terrifying, so ear-splitting, so blood-curdling, that Katie dropped in a cold, trembling little heap on the ground, and Eliza Hughes sank down on top of Katie, weak and shivering. Cora had seen the pillow-man in the cellar. Dropping the looking-gla.s.s with a crash, but clinging desperately to the candle, she dashed up the steps shrieking at every breath. Just at the top she stepped on the front of her skirt, and fell sprawling forward. She dropped the candle then, but not before it had touched her hair and set it afire.

The soft fluffy bangs blazed up like tow, and too terrified to move, Eliza Hughes still sat on top of Katie, screaming louder than Cora had done. The sight brought Katie to her senses, however, and scrambling up from under Eliza, she flew at Cora and began beating out the fire with her bare hands. Cora, who had not discovered that her hair was ablaze, did not know what to make of such strange treatment. Her first thought was that Katie had gone crazy with fright, and that was why she had flown at her and begun to beat her on the head. It was all over in an instant, and the fire put out so quickly that only Cora's bangs were scorched, and Katie's fingers but slightly burned.

But the screams had reached through the uproar of blind man's buff, and the whole party poured out into the courtyard to see what had happened.

There was great excitement for a little while, and Kitty, enjoying the confusion she had stirred up, giggled as she listened to Cora's startling description of the man that had peeped over her shoulder. "He didn't look like any one I'd ever seen before," she declared. "He was tall and handsome and dressed like a soldier."

"Oh, surely not, Cora," answered Miss Allison, who saw that some of the little girls gathered around her were badly frightened. "That couldn't be, you know. The cellar is quite empty. Give me the candle, and I'll go down and show you."

"Oh, no, please, auntie, don't go down," cried Kitty, seeing that the time had come to confess. "It is just a Hallowe'en joke. We didn't suppose that Cora would be scared. We just wanted to tease her because she seemed so sure that she would find Walter down there. Go and bring him up, boys."

Ra.n.a.ld and Rob started down the stairs, with Keith carrying a candle, and Malcolm calling for Walter to come on and help carry out his rival.

The four boys, picking up the dummy as if it had been a real man, carried it up the steps and laid it carefully on the ground. So comical did it look with its pudgy pillow face, that everybody laughed except Cora. She was furiously angry, and not all Kitty's penitent speeches or the boys' polite apologies could appease her. If it had not been for Miss Allison she would have flounced home in high displeasure. But she as usual poured oil on the troubled waters, and talked in such a tactful way of her harum-scarum niece's many pranks, that there was no resisting such an appeal. She allowed herself to be led back to the house, but she would not join in any of the games.

"Mom Beck says I'll have bad luck for seven years because I broke that looking-gla.s.s," she said, mournfully.

"Oh, nonsense!" exclaimed Miss Allison. "Don't give it another thought, dear, it is only an old negro superst.i.tion."

She might have added that it was to herself and brother the ill luck had come, since it was her silver mirror that was broken, and Harry's rubber boots that would be henceforth useless for wading because of the holes thoughtless Kitty had made in them with safety-pins, when she fastened them to the pillows.

Refreshments were served soon after they went back to the house. Not the cakes and ices that usually attended parties in the Valley, but things suggestive of Hallowe'en. Pop-corn, nuts, and apples, doughnuts and mola.s.ses candy. Then the fate cake was cut, and everybody took a slice to carry home to dream on.

"Eat it the last thing before you retire," said Miss Allison. "Then walk to bed backwards without taking a drink of water or speaking another word to-night. It is so salty that it is likely you will dream of being thirsty, and of somebody bringing you water. They say if you dream of its being brought in a golden goblet you will marry into wealth. If in a tin cup poverty will be your lot. The kind of vessel you see in your dream will decide your fate. Ah, Walter got the b.u.t.ton in his slice.

That means he will be an old bachelor and sew his own b.u.t.tons on all his life."

Anna Moore got the dime, and Eliza Hughes the ring, which foretold that she would be the first one in the company to have a wedding. The thimble fell to no one, as it slipped out between two slices in the cutting.

"That means none of us will be old maids," said little Elise. Miss Allison slipped it on Kitty's finger. "To mend your mischievous ways with," she said, and everybody who had enjoyed the pillow-man laughed.

The moon was hiding behind a cloud when at last the merry party said good-night, so Miss Allison provided each little group with a Jack-o'-lantern to light them on their homeward way. As the grotesque yellow heads with their grinning fire-faces went bobbing down the lonely road, it was well for Tam O'Shanter that he need not pa.s.s that way. All the witches of Allway Kirk could not have made such a weird procession.

Well, too, for old Ichabod Crane that he need not ride that night through the shadowy Valley. One pumpkin, in the hands of the headless rider, had been enough to banish him from Sleepy Hollow for ever. What would have happened no one can tell, could he have met the long procession of bodiless heads that straggled through the gate that Hallowe'en, from the haunted house of Hartwell Hollow.

CHAPTER XII.

THE HOME OF A HERO.

WITH November came heavier frosts and the first light snowfall of the season, a skim of ice on the meadow-ponds, shorter days, and long cheerful evenings around the library fire. More than that, it brought the end of the extra home-lessons, for by this time the Little Colonel had not only caught up with her cla.s.ses, but stood at the head of most of them.

"I think she deserves a reward of merit," said Papa Jack when she came home one day, proudly bearing a record of perfect recitations for a week. And so it came about that the next Friday afternoon she had a reward of her own choosing. Allison, Kitty, and Elise were invited out to stay until Monday. So for two happy days four little girls raced back and forth under the bare branches of the locusts, where usually one lonely child walked to and fro by herself. And because the daylight did not last half long enough, and because bedtime seemed to come hours too soon, they were invited to come out next week also.

"It is almost like having Betty back again to have Allison," Lloyd confided to her mother. "She is so sensible, and has the same sweet little ways that Betty had of thinking of other people's pleasure first.

Sometimes I forget and call her Betty. I wish they could all come out again next week."

"Have you looked at the calendar to see what comes next week, Lloyd?"

"No, mothah. What is it? Anybody's birthday?"

"What do we always have the last Thursday in November?"

"Oh, Thanksgiving!" exclaimed Lloyd, joyfully. "Anothah holiday! How fast they come!"

Usually Thanksgiving was made a great occasion at Locust, and the house was full of guests; but this year Mr. Sherman was obliged to be in New York all week, and the old Colonel was in Virginia. Lloyd and her mother were planning to celebrate alone when Aunt Jane sent for them to spend the Thanksgiving vacation with her in town.

Lloyd never enjoyed her visits to her great-aunt Jane. The house was too big and solemn with its dark furniture and heavily curtained windows.

The chairs were all so tall that they lifted her feet high above the floor. The books in the library were all heavy volumes with dull, hard names that she could not p.r.o.nounce. The tedious hours when she sat in the invalid's dimly lighted room and listened to the details of her many ailments, or to tales of people whom she had never seen, seemed endless.

This Thanksgiving Day it was unusually cheerless. "All so grown-up and grumbly!" thought Lloyd. "Seems to me the lesson set for me to learn on every holiday is patience. I'm tiahed of being patient."

Aunt Jane had her Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of the day. Much turkey and plum-pudding made Lloyd drowsy, and the hour that followed was a stupid one. She sat motionless in a big velvet armchair listening to more of Aunt Jane's long stories of unknown people. Now and then she stifled a yawn, wishing with all her heart that she could change places with the little newsboy, calling papers in the street below the window, or with the stumpy-tailed dog frisking by in the snow. She fairly ached with sitting still so long, and wondered how her mother could be so interested in all that Aunt Jane was telling. She could have clapped her hands for joy when the maid broke the tediousness of the hour by asking Mrs. Sherman to step out into the hall. Mrs. Walton wanted to speak to her at the telephone.

Lloyd slipped from her chair and followed her mother out of the room, thankful for any excuse to make her escape. She wished she could hear what Mrs. Walton was saying, instead of only one side of the conversation. This is what she heard her mother say:

"Is that you, Mary?"

"Yes; we came in for the Thanksgiving holidays, and expect to stay until Sat.u.r.day afternoon."

"A b.u.t.terfly Carnival? How lovely!"

"No, I couldn't possibly leave for any length of time, thank you. Aunt Jane is counting on my staying with her; but I'll gladly accept for Lloyd if she is willing to stay away all night without me. Wait a moment, please, I'll ask her."

"Lloyd," she said, turning from the instrument, "Mrs. Walton has just telephoned me that you are included in the invitation that Anna Moore has given the girls to the b.u.t.terfly Carnival at the Opera House to-morrow afternoon. It is for the benefit of the free kindergarten in which Mrs. Moore is interested, and she has taken a box at the matinee for Anna and her friends. Anna is going to give a b.u.t.terfly luncheon just before the performance. She heard that you were in town and thought that you were visiting Allison, so she called at Mrs. Walton's to invite you. Mrs. Walton has asked you to stay all night with the girls. Would you like to go?"

Mrs. Sherman could not help laughing at the expression of delight on Lloyd's face as she began noiselessly clapping her hands.