The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation Part 4

CHAPTER III.

AN EXCURSION

IT was a Sabbath afternoon in October, sunny and still, with a purple haze resting on the distant woodlands across the river. A warm odour of ripe apples floated across the old peach orchard, for a few rare pippin-trees stood in its midst, flaunting the last of their fruitage from gnarled limbs, or hiding it in the sear gra.s.s underneath.

Here and there groups of bareheaded girls wandered in the sun-flecked shade, exchanging confidences and stooping now and then to pounce joyfully upon some apple that had hitherto evaded discovery. Betty, who had been reading aloud for nearly an hour to a little group under one of the largest trees, closed her book with a yawn. Lloyd and Kitty leaned lazily back against the mossy trunk, and Allison, with her arms around her knees, gazed dreamily across the river. The only one who did not seem to have fallen under the drowsy spell of the Indian summer afternoon was Gay. Up in the tree above them, she lay stretched out along a limb, peering down through the leaves like a saucy squirrel.

"What a Sleepy Hollow tale that was!" she exclaimed. "It just suits the day, but it has hypnotized all of you. Do wake up and be sociable."

She began breaking off bits of twigs and dropping them down on the heads below. One struck Lloyd's ear, and she brushed it off impatiently, thinking it was a bug. Gay laughed and began teasingly:

"There was a young maiden named Lloyd, Whom reptiles always annoyed.

An innocent worm would cause her to squirm, And cloyed--toyed--employed--

I'm stuck, Betty. Come to the rescue with a rhyme."

"So with germicide she's overjoyed," supplied Betty, promptly.

"That's all right," said Kitty, waking up. "Let's each make a Limerick.

Five minutes is the limit, and the one that hasn't his little verse ready when the time is up will have to answer truthfully any question the others agree to ask."

"No," objected Lloyd. "I'd be suah to be it. I can make the rhymes, but the lines limp too dreadfully for any use."

"We won't count that," promised Kitty, looking at her chatelaine watch.

"Now, one, two, three! Fire away!"

There was silence for a little s.p.a.ce, broken only by the soft cooing of a far-away dove. Then Betty looked up with a satisfied smile. The anxious pucker smoothed out of Lloyd's forehead, and Allison nodded her readiness.

"Lloyd first," called Kitty, looking at her watch again.

A mischievous smile brought the dimples to the Little Colonel's face as she began:

"There's a girl in our school called Kitty, Evidently not from the city.

With screeches and squawkin's She upset the nerves of poah old Hawkins.

Oh, her behaviour was not at all pretty."

A burst of laughter greeted Lloyd's attempt at verse-making, for the subject which she had chosen recalled one of Kitty's outbreaks the first week of school, when the temptation to upset Hawkins's dignity was more than she could resist. No one of them who had seen Hawkins's wild exit from the linen closet the night she hid on the top shelf, and raised his hair with her blood-curdling moans and spectral warnings (having blown out his candle from above), could think of the occurrence without laughing till the tears came to their eyes.

"Now, Allison," said Kitty, when the final giggle had died away. "It's your turn." Allison referred to the lines she had scribbled on the back of a magazine:

"There is a young maiden, they say, Who grows more beloved every day.

When we talk or we ramble, there's always a scramble To be next to the maid who is _Gay_."

"Whew! Thanks awfully!" came the embarra.s.sed exclamation from the boughs above, and Betty cried, in surprise: "Why, I wrote about her, too. I said:

"Like the bow on the strings when she plays, So she crosses with music our days.

Our hearts doth she tune to the gladness of June, And the smile that brings suns.h.i.+ne is Gay's."

"My dear, that's no Limerick, that's poetry!" exclaimed Kitty, and Gay called down: "It's awfully nice of you, girls, but please change the subject. I'm so covered with confusion that I'm about to fall off this limb."

"Well, here's something mean enough to brace you up," answered Kitty.

"It's about Maud Minor. It's hateful of me to write it, but I happened to see her going down the terrace steps and it just popped into my head:

"There is a young lady named Maud, Whose manners are overmuch thawed.

She'll beat an oil-well. When they'd gushed for a spell _It_ would take a back seat and applaud."

"What's the matter, Kitty?" asked Betty, "I thought you admired her immensely."

"I did that first week, but it's just as I say. She gushes over me so, simply because I am Malcolm's cousin. I know very well that I am not the dearest, cutest, brightest, most beautiful and angelic being in the universe, and she isn't sincere when she insists that I am. She overdoes it, and is so dreadfully effusive that I want to run whenever she comes near me. I wish she wasn't going on the excursion to-morrow."

"She doesn't worry me," said Gay. "I meet her on her own ground and fire back her own adjectives at her, doubled and twisted. She has let me alone for some time."

The discussion of Maud led their thoughts away from Gay's Limerick, and Kitty forgot to ask for it. They sat in silence again, and the plaintive calling of the dove sounded several times before any one spoke.

"It's so sweet and peaceful here," said Betty, softly. "It makes me think of Lloydsboro Valley. I could shut my eyes and almost believe I was back in the old Seminary orchard."

"I'm glad we're not," said Allison. "For then we'd miss to-morrow's excursion. And I like having our holiday on Monday instead of Sat.u.r.day, as we did there."

"What excursion are you talking about?" asked Gay, lazily swinging her foot over the limb.

Betty explained. "We're going to see some rare old books and illuminated ma.n.u.scripts. Miss Chilton has a friend in Was.h.i.+ngton who has one of the finest private collections in the country, and she offered to take any of the freshman cla.s.s who cared to go. Ten of us have accepted the invitation. We're going to the Congressional Library in the morning, take lunch at some restaurant, and then call on this lady early in the afternoon. It will be the only chance to see them, as she is going abroad very soon, and the house will be closed for the winter."

"There are other things in the collection besides books," said Allison "Some queer old musical instruments,--a harpsichord and a lute, and an old violin worth its weight in gold. Some of the most noted violinists in the world have played on it."

"Oh, I know!" cried Gay, raising herself to a sitting position and throwing away the core of the apple she had been eating. "That's the excursion I missed last year when I sprained my ankle. I never was so disappointed in my life. I'm going right now to ask Miss Chilton to take me, too. I'm wild to get my fingers on that violin."

Swinging lightly down from the limb to the ground, she twisted around like a contortionist in a vain attempt to see her back.

"There!" she exclaimed, feeling her belt with a sigh of relief. "For a wonder there's nothing torn or busted this trip. I must be reforming Girls, what do you think! I haven't lost a single thing for a whole week."

"Don't brag," warned Lloyd. "Mom Beck would say you'd bettah scratch on wood if you don't want yoah luck to change."

Gay shrugged her shoulders at the superst.i.tion, but she reached over and lightly scratched the pencil thrust through Betty's curly hair.

"There goes the first bell for vespers," said Kitty, as they strolled slowly back toward the Hall, five abreast and arm in arm. With one accord they began to hum the hymn with which the service always opened,--"Day is dying in the west."

"It's going to be a fair day to-morrow," prophesied Gay, pausing an instant on the chapel steps. "There's Miss Chilton. I'll run over and ask her now."

"It's all right," she whispered several minutes later, when she slipped into the seat next Lloyd. "I can go. It'll be the greatest kind of a lark."

As Sybil Green pa.s.sed through the hall next morning, where the excursionists were a.s.sembling, Gay stopped her and began slowly revolving on her heels. "Now view me with a critic's eye," she commanded. "Gaze on me from chapeau to shoe sole, and bear witness that I am properly girded up for the occasion. See how severely neat and plain I am. See how beautifully my belts make connection in the back.

Three big, stout safety-pins will surely keep my skirt and s.h.i.+rt-waist together till nightfall, and there's not a thing about me that I can possibly lose."

She was still turning around and around. "Not a watch, ring, pin, or bangle! Not even a pocketbook. Miss Chilton is carrying my car-fare, and my handkerchief is up my sleeve."