CHAPTER X.


A good many forebodings crowded into the Colonel's mind as he walked
hurriedly on. He wondered how he would be received. What if Jack Sherman
had died after all? What if Elizabeth should refuse to see him? A dozen
times before he reached the gate he pictured to himself the probable
scene of their meeting.

He was out of breath and decidedly disturbed in mind when he walked up
the path. As he paused on the porch steps, Lloyd came running around the
house carrying her parrot on a broom. Her hair was blowing around her
rosy face under the Napoleon hat she wore, and she was singing.

The last two hours had made a vast change in her feelings. Her father
had only fainted from exhaustion.

When she came running back from Locust, she was afraid to go in the
house, lest what she dreaded most had happened while she was gone. She
opened the door timidly and peeped in. Her father's eyes were open. Then
she heard him speak. She ran into the room, and, burying her head in her
mother's lap, sobbed out the story of her visit to Locust.

To her great surprise her father began to laugh, and laughed so heartily
as she repeated her saucy speech to her grandfather, that it took the
worst sting out of her disappointment.

All the time the Colonel had been fighting his pride among the memories
of the dim old drawing-room, Lloyd had been playing with Fritz and Polly.