<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
<div class='chaptertitle'>WHAT A LETTER BROUGHT ABOUT</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Lloydsboro Valley</span> would have seemed a
strange place to Joyce, could she have followed her
letter back to Kentucky. She had known it only in
midsummer, when the great trees at Locust arched
their leafy branches above the avenue, to make a
giant arbour of green. Now these same trees stood
bleak and bare in the February twilight, almost
knee-deep in drifts of snow. Instead of a green
lacework of vines, icicles hung between the tall
white pillars of the porch, gleaming like silver
where the light from the front windows streamed
out upon them, and lay in far-reaching paths across
the snow.</p>
<p>In the long drawing-room, softly lighted by many
candles and the glow of a great wood fire, the
Little Colonel sat on the arm of her father's chair.
He had just driven up from the station, and she<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></SPAN></span>
held his cold ears in her warm little hands, giving
them a pull now and then to emphasize what she
was saying.</p>
<p>"The first sleigh-ride of the season, Papa Jack.
Think of that! We've had enough snow this wintah
for any amount of coasting and sleighing if
it had only lasted. That's the trouble with Kentucky
snow; it melts too fast to be any fun. But
to-night everything is just right, moon and all, and
the sleighs are to call for us at half-past seven, and
we're going for a glorious, gorgeous, grandiferous
old sleigh-ride. At nine o'clock we'll stop at The
Beeches for refreshments."</p>
<p>"Yes," chimed in Betty from the hearth-rug,
where she sat leaning against her godmother's knee.
"Mrs. Walton says we shall have music wherever
we go, like little Jenny that 'rode a cock-horse
to Banbury Cross.' She has a whole pile of horns
and bells ready for us. It's lovely of her to entertain
both the clubs. She's asked the <i>Mu Chi Sigma</i>
from the Seminary as well as our Order of Hildegarde."</p>
<p>"Oh, that reminds me," exclaimed Mr. Sherman,
"although I don't know why it should—I
brought a letter up from the post-office for you,
Lloyd." Feeling in several pockets, he at last<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></SPAN></span>
found the big square envelope he was searching
for.</p>
<p>"What a big fat one it is," said Lloyd, glancing
at the postmark. "Phœnix, Arizona! I don't
know anybody out there."</p>
<p>"Arizona is where our mines are located," said
Mr. Sherman, watching her as she tore open the
envelope.</p>
<p>"Oh, it's from Joyce Ware!" she cried. "See
all the funny little illustrations on the edge of the
papah! And heah is a note inside for you, mothah,
from Mrs. Ware, and oh, what's this? How
sweet!" A cluster of orange blossoms fell out into
her lap, brown and bruised from the long journey,
but so fragrant, that Betty, across the room, raised
her head with a long indrawn breath of pleasure.</p>
<p>"Listen! I'll read it aloud:"</p>
<div class='right'>
"'<span class="smcap">Ware's Wigwam, Arizona.</span><br/></div>
<p>"'<span class="smcap">Dearest Lloyd</span>:—Mamma's note to your
mother will explain how we happened to stray away
out here, next door to nowhere, and why we are
camping on the edge of the desert instead of enjoying
the conveniences of civilization in Kansas.</p>
<p>"'The sketch at the top of the page will give you
an idea of the outside of our little adobe house and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></SPAN></span>
the tents, so without stopping for description I'll
begin right here in the kitchen, where I am sitting,
waiting for a cake to bake. It's the cleanest, cosiest
kitchen you ever saw, for Jack and I have been
cleaning and scrubbing for days and days. It has
all sorts of little shelves and cupboards and cuddy
holes that we made ourselves, and the new tins
shine like silver. A tall screen in the middle of the
room shuts off one end for a dining-room, and
the table is set for supper. To-night we are to have
our first meal in the wigwam. Holland and Mary
named it that, and painted the name on the porch
post in big bloody letters a little while ago.</p>
<p>"'Through the open door I can look into the
other room, which is library, studio, parlour, and
living-room all in one. Everything is so spick and
span that nobody would ever guess what a dreadful
time we had putting on the paper and painting all
the woodwork. I spilled a whole panful of cold,
sticky paste on Jack's head one day. We had made
a scaffolding of boxes and barrels. One end slipped
and let me down. You never saw such a sight as
he was. I had to scrape his hair and face with a
spoon. Then so much of the paper wrinkled and
would stick on crooked, but now that the pictures<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></SPAN></span>
are hung and the furniture in place, none of the
mistakes show.</p>
<p>"'Jack has gone hunting with Phil Tremont, a
boy staying at Lee's ranch. I am learning to shoot,
too. I practised all one afternoon, and the gun
kicked so bad that my shoulder is still black and
blue. Phil said the loads were too heavy, and he
is going to loan me his little rifle to practise with.
He is such a nice boy, and, oh, Lloyd! it's the
strangest thing!—he has seen <i>you</i>. I have those
pictures of Locust hanging over my easel, and,
when he saw the photograph of you on Tar Baby,
he recognized it right away. He was on the train
and saw you ride in at the gate with a letter for
your grandfather, and Hero following you.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>"'I didn't get any farther than this in my letter
(because I spent so much time making the illustrations)
before Phil and Jack came back with some
quail they had shot. They were the proudest boys
you ever saw, and nothing would do but they must
have those quail cooked for supper. They couldn't
wait till next day. Mamma had invited Phil to
take supper with us, and help make a sort of house-warming
of our first meal in the new home.</p>
<p>"'We had the jolliest kind of a time, and afterward<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></SPAN></span>
he helped wipe the dishes. I told him that I
was writing to you, and he took this little piece of
orange blossom out of his buttonhole, and asked
me if I didn't want to send it to you as a sample
of what we are enjoying in this land of perpetual
sunshine.</p>
<p>"'It isn't a sample of everything, however. The
place has lots of drawbacks. Oh, Lloyd, you can't
imagine how lonesome I get sometimes. I have
been here a month, and haven't met a single girl
my age. If there was just one to be chums with
I wouldn't mind the rest so much,—the leaving
school and all that. I don't mind the work, even
the washing and ironing and scrubbing,—it's just
the lonesomeness, and the missing the good times
we used to have at the high school.</p>
<p>"'Save up your pennies, or else get a railroad
pass, you and Betty, for some of these days I'm
going to give a wigwam-party. It will be a far
different affair from your house-party (could
there ever be another such heavenly time?), but
there are lots of interesting things to see out here:
an ostrich farm, an Indian school and reservation,
and queer old ruins to visit. There are scissors-birds
and Gila monsters—I can't begin to name
the things that would keep you staring. Mrs. Lee<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></SPAN></span>
has a Japanese chef, and a Mexican to do her irrigating,
and a Chinaman to bring her vegetables,
and she always buys her wood of the Indians, so it
seems very foreign and queer at first. There is no
lack of variety, so I ought to be satisfied, and I am
usually, except when I think of little old Plainsville,
and the boys and girls going up and down the dear
old streets to high school, and meeting in the library,
and sitting on the steps singing in the moonlight,
and all the jolly, sociable village life and the
friends I have left behind for ever. Then it seems
to me that I can hardly stand it here. I wish you
and Betty were with me this very minute. <i>Please</i>
write soon. With love to you both and everybody
else in the family and the dear old valley,</p>
<div class='sig'>
<span style="margin-right: 4em;"> "'Your homesick</span><br/>
"'<span class="smcap">Joyce</span>.'"<br/></div>
<p>Mrs. Ware's letter was cheerful and uncomplaining,
but there were tears in Mrs. Sherman's eyes
when she finished reading it aloud.</p>
<p>"Poor Emily," she said. "She was always such
a brave little body. I don't see how she can write
such a hopeful letter under the circumstances,—an
invalid sent out into the wilderness to die, maybe,
with all those children. She has so much ambition<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></SPAN></span>
to make something of them, and no way to do it.
Jack, if you go out to the mines this month, as you
talked of doing, I want you to arrange your trip
so that you can stop and see her."</p>
<p>Lloyd looked up in surprise. "When are you
going, Papa Jack? Isn't it queah how things happen!"</p>
<p>"The latter part of this month, probably. Mr.
Robeson has invited me to go out with a party in
his private car. He is interested in the same mines."</p>
<p>"I wonder—" began Mrs. Sherman, then
stopped as Mom Beck came to announce dinner.
"I'll talk to you about it after awhile, Jack."</p>
<p>Somehow both Betty and Lloyd felt that it was
not the summons to dinner which interrupted her,
but that she had started to speak of something
which she did not care to discuss in their presence.</p>
<p>"Arizona has always seemed such a dreadful
place to me," said Lloyd, hanging on her father's
arm, as they went out to the dining-room. "I
remembah when you came back from the mines.
It was yeahs ago, befo' I could talk plainly.
Mothah and Fritz and I went to the station to meet
you. Fritz had roses stuck in his collah, and kept
barking all the time as if he knew something was
going to happen. You fainted when we got to the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></SPAN></span>
house, and were so ill that you neahly died. I
heard you talk about a fiah at the mines, and evah
since I've thought of Arizona as looking like the
Sodom and Gomorrah in my old pictuah book—smoke
and fiah sweeping across a great plain, and
people running to get away from it."</p>
<p>"To me it's just a yellow square on a map,"
said Betty. "Of course, I've read about the wonderful
petrified forests of agate, and the great ca�on
of the Colorado, but it's always seemed the last
place in the world I'd ever want to visit. It's terrible
for Joyce to give up everything and go out
there to live."</p>
<p>"The Waltons were out there several years,"
said Mrs. Sherman. "They were at Fort Huachuca,
and learned to love it dearly. Ask them
about it to-night. They will tell you that Joyce
is a very fortunate girl to have the opportunity of
living in such a lovely and interesting country, and
does not need any one's pity."</p>
<p>Little else was discussed all during dinner. Afterward
they sat around the fire in the drawing-room,
still talking of the Wares and the strange
country to which they had moved, until a tooting
of horns and a jingling of bells announced the
coming of the sleighing party. Both the girls were<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></SPAN></span>
into their wraps before the first sleigh reached the
gate. They stood waiting by the hall window,
looking out on the stretches of moon-lighted snow.
What a cold, white, glistening world it was! One
could hardly imagine that it had ever been warm
and green.</p>
<p>Lloyd put her nose into the end of her muff for
a whiff of the orange blossoms. She was taking
Joyce's letter to show to the girls.</p>
<p>Betty, her eyes fixed on the stars, twinkling above
the bare branches of the locust-trees, caught the
fragrance also, and it fired her romantic little soul
with a sudden thought.</p>
<p>"Lloyd," she exclaimed, "what if that orange
blossom was an omen! What if Phil were the one
written for you in the stars!"</p>
<p>"Oh, Betty! The idea!" laughed Lloyd.
"You're always imagining things the way they are
in books."</p>
<p>"But this happened just that way," persisted
Betty. "His passing Locust on the train and seeing
you when you were a little girl, and then finding
your picture away out on the desert several years
after, and sending you a token of his remembrance
by a friend, and orange blossoms at that! If ever<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></SPAN></span>
I finish that story of Gladys and Eugene, I'm going
to put something like that in it."</p>
<p>"Heah they come," interrupted Lloyd, as the
sleighs dashed up to the door. "Come on, Papa
Jack and everybody. Give us a good send-off."</p>
<p>She looked back after her father had helped them
into the sleigh, to wave good-bye to the group on
the porch. How interested they all were in her
good times, she thought. Even her grandfather
had come to the door, despite his rheumatism, to
wish them a pleasant ride. Life was so sweet and
full. How beautiful it was to be dashing down
the snowy road in the moonlight! Was she too
happy? Everybody else had troubles. Would
something dreadful have to happen by and by, to
make up for all the unclouded happiness of the
present? She was not cold, but a sudden shiver
passed over her. Then she took up the song with
the others, a parody one of the Seminary girls had
made for the occasion:</p>
<div class='poem'>
"Oh, the snow falls white on my old Kentucky home.<br/>
<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">'Tis winter, the Valley is gay.</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The moon shines bright and our hearts are all atune,</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To the joy-bells jingling on our sleigh."</span><br/></div>
<p>Down the avenue they went, past Tanglewood
and Oaklea, through the little village of Rollington,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></SPAN></span>
on and on through the night. Songs and laughter,
the jingling of bells and the sound of girlish voices
floated through all the valley. It was not every
winter that gave them such sport, and they enjoyed
it all the more because it was rare. It was nine
o'clock when the horses swung around through the
wide gate at The Beeches, and stopped in front of
the great porch, where hospitable lights streamed
out at every window across the snow.</p>
<p>There was such a gabble over the steaming cups
of hot chocolate and the little plates of oyster pat�s
that Lloyd could not have read the letter if she had
tried. For there were Allison and Kitty and Elise
passing the bonbons around again and again, with
hospitable insistence, and saying funny things and
making everybody feel that "The Beeches" was
the most charming place in the Valley for an entertainment
of that kind. Everybody was in a gale
of merriment. Miss Allison was helping to keep
them so, and some of the teachers were there from
the college, and two or three darkies, with banjoes
and mandolins, out in the back hall, added to the
general festivities by a jingling succession of old
plantation melodies.</p>
<p>However, Lloyd managed to tell Mrs. Walton
about the letter, saying: "It almost spoils my fun<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></SPAN></span>
to-night to think of poah Joyce being away out in
that dreadful lonesome country."</p>
<p>"Why, my dear child," cried Mrs. Walton,
"some of the happiest years of my life were spent
in that dreadful country, as you call it. It is a
charming place. Just look around and see how
I have filled my home with souvenirs of it, because
I loved it so."</p>
<p>Lloyd's glance followed hers to the long-handled
peace-pipe over the fireplace, the tomahawks that,
set in mortars captured during a battle in Luzon,
guarded the hearth instead of ordinary andirons,
the baskets, the rugs, and the Navajo porti�res, and
the Indian spears and pottery arranged on the walls
of the stairway.</p>
<p>"Even that string of loco berries over Geronimo's
portrait has a history," said Mrs. Walton.
"Come down some day, and I'll tell you so many
interesting things about Arizona that you'll want
to start straight off to see it."</p>
<p>Her duties as hostess called her away just then,
but her enthusiasm stayed with Lloyd all the rest
of the evening, until she reached home and found
her father and mother before the fire, still talking
about the Wares and their wigwam.</p>
<p>"Your mother wants me to take you with me<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></SPAN></span>
when I go to Arizona," said Mr. Sherman, drawing
her to his knee. "Mr. Robeson had invited
her to go, but, as long as that is out of the question,
she wants to arrange for you to go in her place."</p>
<p>"And leave school?" gasped Lloyd.</p>
<p>"Yes, with Betty's help, you could easily make
up lost lessons during the summer vacation. You'd
help her, wouldn't you, dear?"</p>
<p>"Yes, indeed!" cried Betty. "I'd get them for
her while she was gone, if I could."</p>
<p>"Oh, it's so sudden, it takes my breath away,"
said Lloyd, after a moment's pause. "Pinch me,
Betty! Shake me! And then say it all ovah again,
Papa Jack, to be suah that I'm awake!"</p>
<p>"Do you think you could get your clothes ready
in ten days?" he asked, when he had playfully
given her the shaking and pinching she had asked
for.</p>
<p>"Oh, I don't need any new clothes," she cried.
"But, Papa Jack, I'll tell you what I do want, and
that's a small rifle. <i>Please</i> get me one. I used
to practise with Rob's air-gun till I could shoot as
straight as he could, and I got so that I could put
a hole through a leaf at even longer range than he
could. Christmas, when Ranald Walton was home,
we all practised with his gun. It's lots of fun.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></SPAN></span>
Joyce is learning to shoot, you know. <i>Please</i> let
me have one, Papa Jack. I'd rather have it than
a dozen new dresses."</p>
<p>Mr. Sherman looked at her in astonishment.
"And <i>this</i> is my dainty Princess Winsome," he
said at last. "I thought you were going for a
nice, tame little visit. I'll be afraid now to take
you. You'll want to come back on a bucking
broncho, and dash through the Valley, shooting
holes through the crown of people's hats, and lassoing
carriage horses when you can't find any wild
ones to rope. No, I can't take you now. I'm afraid
of consequences."</p>
<p>"No, honestly, Papa Jack," laughed Lloyd, "I'll
be just as civilized as anybody when I come back,
if you'll only get me the rifle. I'll try to be extra
civilized, just to please you."</p>
<p>"We'll see," was the only answer he would give,
but Lloyd, who had never known him to refuse her
anything, knew what that meant, and danced off
to bed perfectly satisfied. She was too excited to
sleep. To see Joyce again, to share the wigwam
life, and make the acquaintance of Jack and Holland
and Mary, who had been such interesting personages
in Joyce's tales of them, to have that long
trip with Papa Jack in Mr. Robeson's private car,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></SPAN></span>
and a month's delightful holiday, seemed too much
happiness for one small person. All sorts of exciting
adventures might lie ahead of her in that
month.</p>
<p>The stars, peeping through her curtains, twinkled
in friendly fashion at her, as if they were glad of
her good fortune. Suddenly they made her think
of Betty's words: "What if Phil should be the
one written for you in the stars?" It <i>was</i> strange,
his having seen her so long ago, and finding her
picture in such an unexpected way. She wondered
what he was like, and if they would be good friends,
and if she could ever think as much of him as she
did of her old playmates, Rob and Malcolm. Then
she fell asleep, wishing that it was morning, so
that she could send a letter to Joyce on the first
mail-train, telling her that she was coming,—that
in less than two weeks she would be with her at
Ware's Wigwam.</p>
<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></SPAN></span></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />