The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding

"It is to illustrate a fairy-tale," explained Miss Marks. "When naughty Esmerelda runs away from the good prince, everything in the garden is in league to help him, and Brier Rose catches at her skirts as she hurries by, and holds her fast."

"Isn't it lovely?" cried Gay, flashing out of the studio with an armful which Miss Marks had given her permission to show. "Here's Betty taken as a nun —Sister Doloroso– and Lloyd as an Easter angel. It's perfectly fascinating to hear Miss Marks tell how she got that effect of flying. Arranged the draperies with Lloyd lying on the floor, and photographed her from a trap door above. Tell him how you added the doves' wings please."

Much to her surprise Miss Marks found herself telling things to this young man that she would not have dreamed of telling to another stranger; some of the remarkable makeshifts she had used in costumes and backgrounds. His flattering air of interest drew these confidences from her as irresistibly as a magnet draws steel.

"You ought to do a series of these garden pictures," he declared, "and call them 'Garden Fancies' after that poem of Browning's. By the way, there is a couplet in that which would lend itself charmingly to illustration, and I saw the very garden that you should use for it, while I was out driving yesterday. It was one of those straight walk prim bordered affairs that go with old English cottages."

He could have found no surer path to Miss Marks's good graces. Gay, not knowing that he had a purpose to gain by it, listened in amazement as he proceeded to outline picture after picture for the series of Garden Fancies, even planning costumes and suggesting clever means by which various obstacles might be overcome. Her astonishment showed itself in her face, when he even consented to pose himself, as a Spanish troubadour in a moonlit garden with a guitar.

Kitty, who knew the object of this sudden interest in photography, laughed outright, but nobody noticed her irrelevant mirth. Miss Marks was too interested in the new plan, and Gay was too puzzled over his rapidly growing enthusiasm. Presently, darting a triumphant look at Kitty, from the corner of his eye, he rose to follow Miss Marks. She was actually taking him into her inner courts. Kitty made a little grimace behind his back. She resented his I-told-you-so air, but she could not help admiring the masterful way in which he had gained his end.

One hasty glance around the studio changed his assumed interest into real. Impressed by the wonderful results Miss Marks had obtained by the combination of brush and camera, he was seized by a wish to do something in the same line himself. Accustomed to the impulsiveness of his enthusiasms, Gay was not surprised when he began to persuade Miss Marks to start to work on the Garden Fancies then and there.

The English garden was too far away for them to attempt that morning, but Miss Marks finally agreed that the moonlight scene might be managed. It was just the right time of day to take a moonlight picture, while the sunshine was so direct that it would cast the blackest of shadows. She could retouch the plate to give it the right effect, and paint in a moon.

"You'll have to hurry if I'm to be in it," ordered Kitty, "for Mother is waiting for me this blessed minute. I've a world of things to do in the next few hours."

"Give us just a quarter of one of them," begged Leland. "I'll attend to the balcony part if Miss Marks will look after the costumes and tell me where to find a step-ladder."

"Leland has plenty to amuse him now," thought Gay happily, as she watched him giving directions to Frazer, the coloured man, who came in answer to Miss Marks's call. "His foot is on his native heath and his name's 'McGregor' when it comes to a thing of this sort."

Ten minutes later Kitty found herself looking out of an improvised balcony, a charming affair outwardly, but most laughable within. A tall step-ladder had been dragged into the bay window of the music room, and the upper sash of the middle window pushed down from the top. The thick vines that grew over it were pulled back to leave an oval opening. It was out of this leafy oval she leaned from her seat on the top of the ladder, to smile down on the troubadour below. There was a rose in her dark hair, a half-furled fan in her hand, and a coquettish glance in her laughing black eyes.

Leland's costume had been hastily constructed from scraps of stage property kept for such occasions. It took but a moment to drape a long cape over one shoulder in graceful folds, twist a piece of velvet into a little cap and pin a white plume on one side. A row of potted plants laboriously put in place by Frazer hid the fact that he wore modern trousers instead of the more picturesque knee breeches which such a costume demanded.

"Fire away," he ordered, adjusting the guitar to a more comfortable position.

"Suppose you sing a verse of a real serenade," suggested Miss Marks, "so as to get into the proper spirit of the thing. Then just as you finish, while you're looking soulfully into each other's eyes, I'll squeeze the bulb."

Kitty, seeing the seamy side of his improvised cap, and feeling the absurdity of her position on the top of the step-ladder, could only giggle when she tried to look soulful. But Leland had taken part in too many private theatricals to be disconcerted now. With as impassioned a gaze as any Romeo ever fixed on his Juliet, he struck the soft chords of a Spanish serenade, and began to sing so meaningly that Kitty's giggle was silenced, and she looked down with a conscious blush:

"Thine eyes are stars of morning,Thy lips are crimson flowers.Good night, good night, beloved,While I count the weary hours."

"There! That ought to be perfect," cried Miss Marks, emerging from under the black cloth which covered the camera. "Mr. Harcourt, you're the most satisfactory man I've ever had pose for me. It's easy enough to get a score of pretty girls any time I need them, but it isn't once in a decade one finds such an altogether desirable model of a man. You seem to know by intuition exactly the right positions to fall into. I'm sure the series will be a success now."

Leland bowed his appreciation of the compliment, and Gay, knowing his vulnerable spot and how secretly pleased he was, could have danced a breakdown in her delight.

As they were all eager to see the result, Miss Marks took herself at once to the dark room with the plate, promising they should have a proof before time for the Martinsville train. Then Gay and Leland walked home with Kitty, and stayed talking awhile on the shady porch.

"It's been a very decent sort of morning," Leland admitted on his way home to lunch. A siesta in the hammock shortened the afternoon. He was in a most agreeable mood when they drove over to the station to see the Waltons off on their train.

Better than her promise, Miss Marks had sent a finished picture instead of a proof. It was fully as good as the one of Brier Rose and Esmerelda, and Leland was enthusiastic in his admiration of the balcony he had improvised, and the Spanish beauty within it. When it had passed around the circle he coolly took possession of it, although Kitty claimed it, as Frazer had brought it up to The Beeches.

"I'll keep it till your return, Miss Kitty," he said. "You have your mirror, so you don't need this. It may inspire me to run over to the Springs myself a few days to see the original if you stay away too long."

Something in the light tone made Gay glance up quickly. She groaned as she saw the admiration his expressive eyes showed so plainly.

"Now he's gone and done it!" she thought in dismay. "He's taken a fancy to Kitty instead of Lloyd, when I've set my heart on saving Kitty for Frank Percival. May blessings light on those old Martinsville Springs for taking her out of the way for awhile! Maybe I can get him switched off on the other track before she comes back."

CHAPTER VI

"GARDEN FANCIES"

"Oh, where are you going, my pretty maid?" It was Alex Shelby who called out the question, leaning forward from the doctor's buggy, to look down the locust avenue. Lloyd was coming toward the gate, swinging a hunter's horn back and forth by its green cord. She waved it gaily as she sang in response:

"I'm going a posing, sir, she said."

He turned the wheel and sprang out, asking eagerly, "Is it anywhere that I can take you?"

"No, you're going in exactly the opposite direction, for I'm bound for the spring in the Lindsey woods. Miss Marks asked me to meet her there at eleven o'clock, but her note didn't come until aftah mothah had gone out with the carriage."

Alex glanced at his watch. "If you could wait till I take this case of instruments up to Uncle, I could drive you over as well as not. It would detain you ten minutes, but even then you'd get to the Spring much sooner than if you were to walk."

"I'll certainly accept yoah offah," exclaimed Lloyd gratefully, looking down the long hot way that lay between her and the Lindsey woods.

"No, I'll not drive ovah to the doctah's with you, thanks. That is such a hot, dusty stretch of road. I'll just sit heah in the shade and wait." Laying the hunter's horn on the stone bench near the gate, she sat down beside it and began to fan herself with her hat.

"What's going on at the spring?" he asked as he climbed back into the buggy.

"I can't tell you. All I know is that old Frazer came up with a note asking me to pose as Olga, the Flax-spinnah's maiden. Miss Marks is always illustrating some old fairy-tale. She wanted me to bring grandfathah's hunting hawn for the prince. I've been wondering evah since who she's found to take that paht."

"Harcourt, I'll bet you anything!" was Alex's emphatic answer as he gathered up the reins. "I saw him over at Clovercroft yesterday morning, setting up a tripod in front of the bay window. Well, here goes. I'll be back in ten minutes."

As Lloyd watched the cloud of dust whirling along behind the rapidly disappearing buggy, the impulse seized her to call out after him that he needn't come back to take her to the spring, for she was not going. Several times that morning the suspicion had crossed her mind that Miss Marks's new model might prove to be Leland Harcourt, and Alex's emphatic answer seemed to confirm her misgivings. If that were the case she felt that she could not possibly go. He had made such a point of avoiding her that night at the Cabin, that even Betty had noticed it, and she was very sure she didn't want to have her picture taken with a man who had showed his aversion to her so plainly as all that. It would be horribly awkward, she thought, if Miss Marks had asked him to pose with her. He would have to stoop and drink out of her hands as the prince had done out of Olga's. Of course he couldn't refuse, and it would be disagreeable to him and embarrassing to her, knowing as she did how he felt towards her.

It was unlike Lloyd to be sensitive over little things, and to magnify trifles, and she had been unhappy for several days because she had done so in this instance. If she had met Leland Harcourt like any other stranger, she would not have given his manner toward her a second thought; but Gay's plea beforehand in his behalf made her self-conscious. Of course he couldn't possibly know that she had lain awake, looking at the stars, picturing herself as a sort of guardian angel, who should lead him to great heights of achievement (as Gay had assured her she could do). But she felt that he must have divined her intentions toward him, and was secretly amused at her presumption. Her face burned every time she thought of the regal manner in which she had swept into the room, trying to make her entrance impressive, and then the polite way in which he had handed her over to some one else as if she were a mere child to whom he must be civil, but whose school-girl prattle bored him.

"I can't beah him!" she said in a disgusted tone to a black ant, which was crawling along towards the stone bench where she sat. But the little ant, intent on its own affairs, hurried past her as unheedingly as if she had been part of the bench.

"And I suppose my opinion is of no moah impawtance to him than it is to you," she added, with a shrug of the shoulders. Then she laughed, for the comparison suddenly seemed to put the affair in a different light.

"I'm certainly glad you happened along this way, Mistah Ant," she said, bending over to stop him with a stick while she made her whimsical speech. "Because I'm going to profit by yoah example from now on. Heah me? I'm going to quit worrying over what people may think of me and go along about my business just as you are doing. You nevah think about yoahself, do you! You don't even know that you have a self, so of co'se you can't feel slighted and sensitive."

Lifting the stick so that the little creature might go on its eager way again, she watched it disappear, and then began idly tracing figures in the dust at her feet.

"I wish I had an enchanted necklace like Olga's," she mused, recalling the old fairy-tale for which she was soon to pose. "Not one that could give me gorgeous dresses whenevah I repeated the charm, but one that would sawt of clothe my mind – put me into such a beautifully serene mental state that I wouldn't mind slights, and would be as unconscious of self as that little old ant."

Then a surprised, pleased expression lighted her face, as a sudden recollection seemed to illuminate the old fairy-tale, and give it a new meaning.

"Why, it's like that lovely verse in the Psalms that Miss Allison read to the King's Daughters, the first time I went to a meeting of the Circle. 'The King's Daughter is all glorious within. Her clothing is of wrought gold.'" Sentences from Miss Allison's earnest little talk of long ago began coming back to Lloyd like fragments of forgotten music. Something about being anointed with the "oil of gladness" and wearing garments that smelled of myrrh and aloes and cassia "out of the ivory palaces whereby they have made thee glad."

Now in the story when Olga would change her gown of tow to one befitting her royal station, she had only to clasp a bead of her magic rosary and whisper:

"For love's sweet sake, in my hour of need,Blossom and deck me, little seed,"

and straightway she would be clad in a garment, fine and fair as the shimmer of moonbeams. And Lloyd, casting about in her mind for a like charm that would make her "all glorious within" as Olga's made her glorious without, suddenly bethought herself of her little necklace of Roman pearls. She had not taken it back to school with her in her Senior year, for she felt that she had outgrown its childish symbolism. She could "keep tryst" with life's obligations now without the visible reminder of a little white bead, slipped daily over a silken cord. Still, it had helped her to remember, so many times in the past, that she was strongly tempted to try the efficacy of her little talisman just once more. Glancing at her watch, she saw that Alex had been gone only five minutes. Then dropping the stick with which she had been writing in the dust, she ran lightly up the avenue, into the house and up to her room.

"Maybe it is sawt of childish," she thought as she opened the sandal-wood box and clasped the rosary around her neck. "But I don't care, if it will only help me to remembah not to be snippy and sensitive and to go about my business like that little black ant. It's funny how such a little thing started me on the right path."

When Alex came back she met him with such a shining face that he glanced at her curiously. "You look as if you had heard good news," he said as he helped her into the buggy. "What's happened?"

"Oh, nothing," she laughed. "I've just been practising my paht while I waited for you. I'm the Princess Olga, and I've gotten rid of my gown of tow, and I'm so relieved to find the real King's-daughtah attire, that I'm as happy as a June-bug."

He did not understand her allusion, but it would have made no difference if she had talked to him in Greek, with that charming dimple coming and going as she laughed. It was a pleasure just to sit and watch her, while she rattled on in her inimitable way about June-bugs, wondering how happy they were anyhow, and why people chose them as the unit of measurement when they were measuring joy.

Over at the spring while they waited for Lloyd to come, Miss Marks and Leland Harcourt experimented at picture-making with Gay for a victim. Stretched out on the rocks of the creek bank, with her hands lying in the shallow water and her hair streaming over her shoulders, she was obligingly trying to obey instructions to "look as wet and dead as possible."

Lloyd and Alex, coming on her unexpectedly as they picked their way up the ravine, having tied the horse where the woodland road ended, were horrified to find her lying there so limp and still. But the next instant Leland's voice sounded somewhere up among the bushes: "That's great, Pug. Try to keep the pose a little longer till we get one more plate. With a sea-gull and some rolling waves painted in in the background, it will be a perfect copy of that painting I saw in Brittany."

"Well, hurry, please!" called Gay plaintively. "I can't stand it much longer. The sun on my wet face is burning it to a blister, and the rocks are cutting my elbow, and I know it's a spider that's crawling over the back of my neck."

Lloyd gave a toot of the hunter's horn to warn them of their approach and the extra plate was never made. For with a little shriek the "Drowned Fishermaiden" scrambled up from the rocks in embarrassed haste, and when she caught sight of Alex, fled away into the bushes to gather up her dishevelled hair and otherwise put herself to rights. She was too agitated to notice Lloyd's meeting with Leland, but while she made herself presentable the sound of laughter floated in among the bushes to her most reassuringly.

"They're laughing at me," she thought, "but I don't care how ridiculous I looked. Anything to break the ice between them and put them on a friendly footing."

At the sight of Leland's dark face with its cynical, slightly amused expression, Lloyd's resentment returned, but the touch of the little necklace recalled her resolve. "I'll not be snippy and sensitive," she repeated to herself, clasping one of the beads in her fingers as if it really held some potent charm to help her change her mental attitude.

So when Gay joined them she found that Lloyd had dropped her distant, disdainful manner of the day before and was her own sweet, winsome self. It was with a sigh of relief that Gay left them to the discussion of poses and costumes, and turned to Alex, who was about to take his departure. The one word, picnic, was enough to stop him. It was what he had been hoping for ever since the Harcourts had taken the Cabin. Gay's appeal for help set him to work with the zest of a truant school-boy.

While he made a fire and carried water from the spring, Gay emptied the baskets they had brought, and spread the contents out on a great flat rock. Then while the water boiled for the coffee, and the potatoes were roasting in the ashes, she sent him to look for a wild grape-vine.

"I want a lot of grape-leaves to make into little baskets to serve the berries in," she told him. "And bring them up here where I can keep an eye on what is going on at the spring. There seems to be a hitch in the performance somewhere."

The difficulty was with the prince's costume. Nothing they had brought gave quite the effect they wanted, so finally Leland proposed bringing the story down to date.

"The modern Princess is the Summer Girl," he said. "So take Miss Sherman just as she is, and I'll go back to the Cabin and put on a bicycle suit."

"They are getting on famously," thought Gay as she listened to Lloyd's merry response to something he called back, as he went crashing away through the bushes. The last little basket was made and filled with berries before Leland came back, dragging his wheel up the ravine. Gay and Alex, having finished their preparations, climbed up the bank to watch the pretty tableau, Lloyd making a cup of her white hands and catching the water in them, that the prince might stoop and drink.

"Let's try it again, Miss Marks," cried Leland enthusiastically. "How is this pose?" He dropped gracefully to one knee, baring his head as he bowed it over Lloyd's hands.

"Is the change in him or is it in me?" thought Lloyd as the dark eager face smiled up at her, with its quick flashing smile that she found so peculiarly attractive. "He certainly is the most entahtaining man I evah talked to."

"The show is over," called Gay as Miss Marks began to put up her camera. "If your royal highnesses will deign to descend, dinner will be served immediately." It was an attractive table she led them to, the red berries shining in luscious heaps in their little green baskets, mounds of fresh watercress beside every plate, and a big bouquet of wildflowers in the centre of the rock table.

"What is the peculiar charm of a picnic?" queried Alex as he fished an ant out of the sugar and opened a half-cooked potato.

"At home one would send such a dish back to the kitchen in red-hot wrath. Here one eats it in a sort of solemn joy."

"It's the spell of the June woods," suggested Miss Marks.

"No, it's youth in the blood," said Leland. "All the Junes in the world and all outdoors wouldn't make a half-baked potato fit for the gods unless one has 'the sun and the wind in his pulses.'"

"No," insisted Gay. "It can't be that, for Jameson isn't much older than you, and he despises prowling around in the woods, as he calls it. He made so much fun of it that Lucy went driving with him instead of coming with us, and she adores such outings, just as much now as she did before she was married."

"Maybe no one feels the charm unless the gods have given him a sort of Midas touch that will turn everything disagreeable, like ants and underdone potatoes, into golden experiences," said Alex. "The Midas imagination let us call it. And the way to keep it in good working order is to give it constant practice. Let's have a picnic every day."

"To-morrow," announced Leland, "I'll take you all over to that old English garden that I discovered, to take that Garden fancy of Browning's we were discussing."

Gay looked up quickly. It had been understood only yesterday that they were to wait for Kitty's return for that picture. His taking it for granted that Lloyd would assume the part augured well for her hopes.

"You know that poem of Browning's, don't you, Miss Sherman?" he asked, smiling across at her.

Now Lloyd had never cared for Browning. In fact she frankly admitted that she had never got far enough into many of his poems to know what he was talking about. At Warwick Hall Miss Chilton had been such an enthusiastic interpreter of his that ten of the girls in Lloyd's class had formed a Browning club. Although she declined their invitation to join them, she was more complimented by that invitation than any other of that school term, and envied them their apparent enjoyment of what to her was a tangle of vague meanings. Now when, she saw Leland take a well worn copy from his pocket and flip over the leaves to find the place, with an ease that showed long familiarity with it, she wished that she had joined the club. It made her feel childish and immature to think that she could not discuss this subject with him as any one of those ten girls could have done. But it was one of the simple poems to which the book opened. From her seat opposite, Lloyd could see the marked margins and underscored lines, as he read aloud:

"'Here is the garden she walked acrossArm in my arm such a short while since.· · · · · · · ·Down this side of the gravel walkShe went, while her robe's edge brushed the box.And here she paused in her gracious talkTo point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.'"

"Oh, I can just see that picture," cried Miss Marks enthusiastically. "I wish we had time to take it to-day."

"But wait, here's a better one," he added, turning the page.

"'This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,Stooped over in doubt, as settling its claim,Till she gave me with pride to make no slip,Its soft, meandering Spanish name.What a name! Was it love or praise?Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?I must learn Spanish one of these daysOnly for that slow, sweet name's sake.'"

Lloyd picked up the book open at the place where he laid it, face downward, on the rock.