Mrs. Sherman raised her head haughtily. "No, indeed, Aunt Sally. I can
forgive and forget much, but you are greatly mistaken if you think I can
go to such lengths as that. He closed his doors against me with a curse,
for no reason on earth but that the man I loved was born north of the
Mason and Dixon line. There never was a nobler man living than Jack,
and papa would have seen it if he hadn't deliberately shut his eyes and
refused to look at him. He was just prejudiced and stubborn."

Aunt Sally said nothing, but her thoughts took the shape of Mom Beck's
declaration, "The Lloyds is all stubborn."

"I wouldn't go through his gate now if he got down on his knees and
begged me," continued Elizabeth, hotly.

"It's too bad," exclaimed her aunt; "he was always so perfectly devoted
to 'little daughter,' as he used to call you. I don't like him myself.
We never could get along together at all, because he is so high-strung
and overbearing. But I know it would have made your poor mother mighty
unhappy if she could have foreseen all this."

Elizabeth sat with the tears dropping down on her little white hands,
as her aunt proceeded to work on her sympathies in every way she could
think of.

Presently Lloyd came out all fresh and rosy from her long nap, and went
to play in the shade of the great beech-trees that guarded the cottage.

"I never saw a child with such influence over animals," said her mother,
as Lloyd came around the house with the parrot perched on the broom she