her mother's room.

"Last yeah she stood at the window and waved to me when I rode away,"
sighed the child, her eyes filling with tears again. "Now she's so white
and ill it makes me cry to look at her. Maybe that is the trouble this
yeah is goin' to bring me. Betty's mothah died, and Eugenia's, and
maybe"--but the thought was too dreadful to put into words, and she
stopped abruptly.

"Mom Beck was right," she whispered with a nod of her head. "She said that
sad thoughts are like crows. They come in flocks. I wish I could stop
thinkin' about such mou'nful things."

A train passed as she cantered through the gate and started down the road
beside the railroad track. She drew rein to watch it thunder by. Some
child at the window pointed a finger at her, and then two smiling little
faces were pressed against the pane for an eager glimpse. It was the
prettiest wayside picture the passengers had seen in all that morning's
travel--the Little Colonel on her pony, with the spray of locust bloom in
the cockade of the Napoleon cap she wore, and a plume of the same graceful
blossoms nodding jauntily over each of Tarbaby's black ears.

As the admiring faces whirled past her, Lloyd drew a long breath of
relief. "I'm glad that I don't have to do my riding in a smoky old car
this May mawnin'," she thought. "It is wicked for me to be so unhappy when
I have Tarbaby and all the othah things that mothah and Papa Jack have
given me. I know perfectly well that they love me just the same even if
they have forgotten my birthday, and I won't let such old black crow
thoughts flock down on me. I'll ride fast and get away from them."