The Little Colonel's House Party Part 17

By this time, the servants' quarters were aroused, and Mrs. Sherman, now really alarmed, called for Walker and Alec to bring lanterns. The lawn was a wreck, strewn with leaves and fallen limbs and pieces of broken flower urns that had been overturned by the wind. The searchers stumbled over them as they waded through the wet gra.s.s, looking in every nook and corner where it was possible for a child to have strayed, but their search was in vain. Never a trace did they find of the lost twins.

"Stay in the house, girls," said Mrs. Sherman, as she caught up the trail of her wrapper, and ran out to follow the flickering lanterns and Mrs. Ca.s.sidy's frantic cries. "It might give you your death of cold to expose yourselves so soon after the measles."

As they stood in the door watching the wavering lights, Lloyd exclaimed, "The puppies are gone, too. I wonder where they can be. Maybe they were left outside in the storm when we all ran indoors in such a hurry. Maybe the twins were playing with them."

She leaned out of the door, peering into the night. "Heah, Bob!" she called, snapping her fingers, and whistling the shrill signal she always gave when she fed them. There was no response from the darkness outside, and she turned indoors repeating the whistle, and calling, "Heah, Bob!

Heah, puppy! Come to yo' miss!"

In answer there was a stir under the low Persian couch in the library, then a whine, and an inquiring little nose was thrust through the heavy knotted fringe that draped the lower part of the couch. The next instant Lloyd's Bob came sprawling joyously toward her, his pink bow c.o.c.ked rakishly over one ear. Lloyd dropped on her knees, and, lifting the fringe, looked under. Then she gave an excited scream.

"Heah they are!" she called. "I've found them! Heah's the twins, and all the Bobs!"

"They're found!" called Joyce, running out on the porch and shouting the news until the searchers farthest from the house heard, and ran joyfully back. "They're found! Lloyd's found them!"

"Who ever would have thought of squeezing into such a place as that?"

said Miss Allison, as she came running in, out of breath. "I started to look under that couch twice, but it was so low I thought they couldn't possibly have crawled under. Besides, some one was sitting on it all evening, and they surely would have been seen if they had attempted it."

Rob and Malcolm lifted the couch and set it aside, and there, curled up on two fat sofa cushions, with the puppies beside them, lay the twins fast asleep. Great beads of perspiration stood on their foreheads and trickled down their dimpled faces. Their hair curled in little wet rings all over their heads, and their chubby arms and necks were red with p.r.i.c.kly heat.

"It is a wonder that they weren't smothered," cried Mrs. Ca.s.sidy, taking them up in her arms and waking them with her tearful kisses. "Oh, _why_ did you hide away from mother, precious?" she asked, reproachfully, as Bethel's eyes opened with a dazed stare at the crowd of faces around her. She leaned her head heavily on her mother's shoulder, for she was not fully awake, and clung around her neck with both arms. Finally, in answer to the chorus of questions that came from all sides, she roused enough to answer.

"It lightened, that's why we hid. Mammy Chloe thed if you go get in a dark plathe on a pile of featheths, no lightnin' can hurt you. Mammy Chloe always puth uth in the middle of her feather-bed. Tho me and thithter took a thofa pillow and got under the thofa and shut our eyeth tight. We wath hot," she added, gravely, "and tho wath the puppieth, but the lightnin' couldn't get uth."

The laugh that went up from the amused listeners aroused both the twins so thoroughly that they joined in without knowing what they were laughing about. Then Alec and Walker carried them triumphantly on their shoulders to the wagonette, and once more the party started homeward.

This time they moved off without singing, but from the gate came back three cheers for the twins, then three cheers for the Little Colonel, who had found them. Once started to cheering, somebody proposed three for the pillow-case party, and so l.u.s.tily did they give them, that an old rooster, awakening from sleep as the wheels creaked by, thought it the call of some giant chanticleer, and promptly crowed an answering challenge, that was echoed by every c.o.c.k in the Valley.

CHAPTER XIII.

MORE MEASLES.

It seemed to Betty that that night would never end. It was after midnight before the house grew quiet. Then, whenever she closed her eyes, she could see those ghostly figures dancing before her in a long, white wavering line. After awhile she gave up the attempt to sleep, and lay with her eyes wide open, staring into the darkness, alert, and quivering at the slightest sound.

"I don't know what makes me so nervous," she thought. "I feel as if I should fly, and the dark seems so horrible, as if it was full of creepy, crawling things, with horns and claws."

A beetle boomed against the window, striking the pane with a heavy thud.

She drew the sheet over her head and shivered. "Maybe if I'd read awhile it would make me sleepy," she thought, and, slipping softly out of bed, she groped her way across the room in the dark to the dressing-table.

Lighting a candle in one of the crystal candlesticks that always reminded her of twisted icicles, she put it on a stand beside her bed.

The light flickered unsteadily, but she piled the pillows up behind her and settled herself to read.

It was a new book that she was greatly interested in, and before long she was so deep in the story that she never noticed how the time was flying. Instead of bringing sleep to her eyes, it seemed to drive it farther and farther away. The candle burned lower and lower, but she never noticed it, and read on by its unsteady light until she heard the hall clock strike four. The candle was flickering in its socket, and the June dawn was beginning to streak the sky. Her eyes smarted and burned, and ached with a dull throbbing pain.

She turned over and went to sleep then, and slept so heavily that she did not hear the noises of the awakening household. Once Mrs. Sherman came to the door and peeped in, but, finding her asleep, tiptoed out again. It was nearly noon when she awoke, feeling as tired as when she went to bed. She dressed languidly and went down-stairs, but was so unlike her usually sunny self, that Mrs. Sherman watched her anxiously.

Late in the afternoon she sent for Doctor Fuller, and a general wail went up when he announced what was the matter with her.

"More measles, Mrs. Sherman," he said, cheerfully. "Well, this is the most extraordinary house party I ever heard of. You seem to be exceedingly partial to this one line of amus.e.m.e.nts."

"It isn't fair for Betty to have it," exclaimed Joyce, "when she wouldn't go to the camp, and she's had it before! It's just too bad!"

"We'll all have to be mighty good to her," said the Little Colonel, "for she was so sweet about amusing us. We'll take turns reading to her and entertaining her, for she stayed hours with us in that dark room when she could have been outdoors enjoying herself."

"That is probably the reason she is laid up now," answered the doctor.

"She should have kept entirely away from you."

"But she had had one case," explained Mrs. Sherman, "and we never dreamed of her having another. Poor little thing! I hope this will be light. She had a hard time before, so we must make a regular frolic of this, girls."

"Well, no, madam, at least not for several days," said the doctor, gravely, "And you must be extremely careful about her eyes. They seem to be badly affected, and I must warn you that they are really in danger."

They told Betty that afterward, thinking it would stop her crying, when everything else failed to do so, if she realised how necessary it was for her not to inflame them with her tears. Usually she was a sensible little body, obedient to the slightest suggestion, but now she lay curled up in a disconsolate little heap in bed, sobbing as if her heart would break.

"Oh, I don't want to have the measles!" she sobbed, catching her breath in great gasps. "Oh, I don't _want_ to!"

"My dear little girl, don't let it distress you so!" begged Mrs.

Sherman, leaning over and tenderly wiping the flushed little face.

"It will not be any worse for you than for the other girls, and in a few days when you feel better we are going to have all sorts of sport out of it. The girls are planning now what they shall do to make up to you for this disappointment. They feel as if they are to blame for bringing this illness upon you by their disobedience, and you cannot imagine how bad it makes them feel to have you take it to heart so bitterly."

But even that failed to stop her tears, and presently Mrs. Sherman went out into the hall, where the girls were waiting for her.

"There is some reason for all this distress that I am unable to discover," she said. "Joyce, maybe if you would go in and talk to her you might find out."

"She must be lots worse than we were," whispered Eugenia to Lloyd, as the high, shrill voice, so unlike Betty's usual tones, went on complainingly in the next room.

"Hush!" warned Lloyd. "She's telling Joyce what the matter is." The words came out to them distinctly. She was speaking with a nervous quickness as if her fever had almost reached delirium.

"I was trying to dig one of those roads," wailed Betty, in a high, querulous voice. "One that would last for ever, don't you know? like the one they built for Tusitala. You _do_ know, don't you?" she insisted, feverishly, but Joyce had to acknowledge that she had never heard of it, and Betty cried again, because she felt too nervous and ill to explain.

"There, there! never mind!" said Joyce, soothingly, thinking that Betty's mind was wandering. "You can tell me all about it when you get well."

"But I want you to know _now_!" sobbed Betty, with all the unreasoning impatience of a sick child. "It is all in my 'Good times book.' I cut it out of an old _Youth's Companion_, just after I came, and the piece is inside the cover of that little white and gold book in the writing-desk. Read it, won't you? Then you will understand."

Joyce took the slip of paper to the window, and glanced rapidly along the lines.

"No, read it aloud!" demanded Betty, fretfully. "I want to hear it, too.

It is such a sweet story, and I read it over every day to help me remember."

Mrs. Sherman and the girls, sitting outside the door, leaned forward to listen, as Joyce read aloud the newspaper clipping that Betty counted among her chief treasures. This is what they heard:

"THE ROAD OF THE LOVING HEART."[1]

"Remembering the great love of his highness, Tusitala, and his loving care when we were in prison and sore distressed, we have prepared him an enduring present, this road which we have dug for ever."