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Page 36
Betty repeated it softly. "How lovely!" she exclaimed, in a low tone.
All the instruments were going now in the drawing-room,--harp, mandolin,
piano, and banjo, and the music floated out sweetly on the night air to
the earnest little couple on the steps. And the music, and the
moonlight, and Betty's sympathetic little face, made it easy for Keith
to grow confidential just then, and speak of things that usually make
boys shy. He told her of his ambition to live up to his knightly motto,
and of some of his boyish efforts to right the wrong in the big world
about him, and all that he hoped to do when he was grown, and was free
to use the money his grandfather had left him.
"I wish I could be a knight," sighed Betty to herself, moved to large
ambitions by the boy's words, and discontented with her own small
sphere. How manly he looked in the moonlight, his handsome face aglow
with the thought of his noble purposes!
"It's funny," said Keith, looking down at her, "you're the only person
that I ever talked to about such things, but Aunt Allison. You seem to
understand in the same way that she does. I believe you'd have made a
good knight yourself if you had lived in those days, because that is one
of the things they had to vow, to keep a promise to the utmost."
Betty smiled happily, but made no answer. Rob joined them just then, and
they fell to talking of childish things again,--games and pets, and
things they had done, and places they had been. Next morning in her
"Good times" book, Betty carefully wrote every word she could remember
that Keith had said the evening before, about knights and knightly
deeds. It was a half-hour that she loved to think about.
Miss Allison had invited them all to a picnic at the old mill on the
following day. They were to go in the afternoon and come back by
moonlight. It was not quite four o'clock when Mrs. Sherman stepped into
the carriage at the door, followed by Eliot with an armful of wraps,
which might be needed later in the evening. Every spare inch of the
carriage was packed with things for the picnic. A huge lunch hamper
stood on the front seat beside the coachman, and he could scarcely find
room for his feet for the big freezer of ice-cream that took up so much
space. Rugs, cushions, and camp-stools were tucked in at every corner,
and Mrs. Sherman held Joyce's mandolin in her lap.
"Oh, girls!" she called, leaning out of the carriage and looking up at
the second story windows. "Can I trust one of you to post the letter
that I have left on the hall table?"
Two bright faces appeared at the same instant at different windows, and
two voices called in the same breath, one answering, "Yes, godmother,"
and the other, "Yes, Cousin Elizabeth."
"I would take it myself," said Mrs. Sherman, "if I were going past the
post-office, but I have to drive a roundabout way to the Ross place, to
get some berries I engaged for the picnic. It is very important that the
letter should go on to-night's mail train, and if one of you will drop
it in the box as you go by, I'll be so much obliged."
"Yes'm, I'll do it," answered each girl again, almost in the same
breath. With a nod and a smile to them, Mrs. Sherman told Alec to drive
on. The ponies, already saddled and bridled, were waiting in front of
the house. The girls were to ride by the MacIntyre place and escort Miss
Allison's carriage to the picnic-ground, and had promised to be there at
four, but the hall clock struck the hour before the last dress was
buttoned and the last ribbon tied.
"Do you heah that?" cried the Little Colonel, in a panic of haste, as
the musical chime sounded through the house. "It will nevah do to keep
Miss Allison waitin'! Come on!" she exclaimed, adding, as she flew
through the upper hall, "The last one down the stairs is a pop-eyed
monkey!"
"I'm not it!" shrieked Joyce, racing past her.
"I'm not it!" echoed Betty, darting ahead of them both, and reaching the
ponies first.
"Eugenia's last! She is the pop-eyed monkey!" cried Joyce, cheerfully,
looking back with a laugh as she began to untie Calico. Eugenia switched
her skirts disdainfully through the hall, and mounted in dignified
disgust.
"You're elegant, I must say!" she exclaimed, scornfully. "I wouldn't
play such a kid game!" Nevertheless, she dashed down the avenue at the
top of her speed, when Joyce called out, tantalisingly, "The last one
through the gate is a jibbering ornithorhynchus!" In her zeal not to be
dubbed such a title for the rest of the day as a jibbering
ornithorhynchus, Betty urged Lad along until she nearly bounced out of
her saddle, and the letter lay on the hall table, forgotten by both the
girls who had promised to post it.
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