The Little Colonel
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Annie Fellows Johnston >> The Little Colonel
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,"
she called, "cut me a big locus' bough. I want to wave it fo' a flag!"
Just as he dropped a branch down at her feet, she caught the sound of
wheels. "Hurry, gran'fathah," she called; "they's comin'." But the
old Colonel had already started on toward the gate to meet them. The
carriage stopped, and in a moment more Papa Jack was tossing Lloyd up in
his arms, while the old Colonel was helping Elizabeth to alight.
"Isn't this a happy mawnin'?" exclaimed the Little Colonel, as she
leaned from her seat on her father's shoulder to kiss his sunburned
cheek.
"A very happy morning," echoed her grandfather, as he walked on toward
the house with Elizabeth's hand clasped close in his own.
Long after they had passed up the steps the old locusts kept echoing
the Little Colonel's words. Years ago they had showered their fragrant
blossoms in this same path to make a sweet white way for Amanthis's
little feet to tread when the Colonel brought home his bride.
They had dropped their tribute on the coffin-lid when Tom was carried
home under their drooping branches. The soldier-boy had loved them so,
that a little cluster had been laid on the breast of the gray coat he
wore.
Night and day they had guarded this old home like silent sentinels that
loved it well.
Now, as they looked down on the united family, a thrill passed through
them to their remotest bloom-tipped branches.
It sounded only like a faint rustling of leaves, but it was the locusts
whispering together. "The children have come home at last," they
kept repeating. "What a happy morning! Oh, what a happy morning!"