s of great trees, and wide stretches of
waving blue-grass. Stately white pillars of an old Southern mansion
gleamed through the vines at the end of the long avenue. Then a flutter
of white dresses and gay ribbons, and Lloyd and Betty came running to
meet them.

CHAPTER V.

AT "THE LOCUSTS"

Lloyd and Betty had been home from Warwick Hall only two days, and the
joyful excitement of arrival had not yet worn off. The Locusts had never
looked so beautiful to them as it did this vacation, and their
enthusiasm over all that was about to happen kept them in a flutter from
morning till night.

When Rob's telephone message came that the train was late and that he
could not bring the girls out until after lunch, Lloyd chafed at the
delay at first. Then she consoled herself with the thought that she
could arrange a more effective welcome for the middle of the afternoon
than for an earlier hour.

"Grandfathah will have had his nap by that time," she said, with a saucy
glance in his direction, "and he will be as sweet and lovely as a May
mawning. And he'll have on a fresh white suit for the evening, and a
cah'nation in his buttonhole." Then she gave her orders more directly.

"You must be suah to be out on the front steps to welcome them,
grandfathah, with yoah co'tliest bow. And mothah, you must be beside him
in that embroidered white linen dress of yoahs that I like so much. Mom
Beck will stand in the doahway behind you all just like a pictuah of an
old-time South'n welcome. Of co'se Joyce has seen it all befoah, but
little Mary has been looking foh'wa'd to this visit to The Locusts as
she would to heaven. You know what Joyce wrote about her calling this
her promised land."

"I know how it is going to make her feel," said Betty. "Just as it made
me feel when I got here from the Cuckoo's Nest, and found this 'House
Beautiful' of my dreams. And if she is the little dreamer that I was the
best time will not be the arrival, but early candle-lighting time, when
you are playing on your harp. I used to sit on a foot-stool at
godmother's feet, so unutterably happy, that I would have to put out my
hand to feel her dress. I was so afraid that she might vanish--that
everything was too lovely to be real.

"And now, to think," she added, turning to Mrs. Sherman and
affectionately laying a hand on each shoulder, "it's lasted all this
time, till I have grown so tall that I could pick you up and carry you
off, little godmother.