on his face when he finished.
"That is certainly a lengthy letter for a twelve-year-old girl to write,"
he said, in a pleased tone, "and cannot fail to be interesting to Joyce.
The letters she wrote me from the Cuckoo's Nest were stiff, short scrawls
compared to this. I must tell my Little Colonel how proud I am of her
improvement."

His words of praise were not spoken, however. He expressed his
appreciation, later, by leaving on her table a box of foreign
correspondence paper. It was of the best quality he could find in Tours,
and to Lloyd's delight the monogram engraved on it was even prettier than
Eugenia's.

"Why did Papa Jack write this on the first sheet in the box, mothah?" she
asked, coming to her with a sentence written in her father's big,
businesslike hand: '_There is no surer way to build a Road of the Loving
Heart in the memory of absent friends, than to bridge the space between
with the cheer and sympathy and good-will of friendly letters._'

"Why did Papa Jack write that?" she repeated.

"Because he saw your last letter to Joyce, and was so pleased with the
improvement you have made," answered Mrs. Sherman. "He has given you a
good text for your writing-desk."

"I'll paste it in the top," said Lloyd. "Then I can't lose it." "'There is
no surer way,'" she repeated to herself as she carried the box back to her
room, "'to bridge the space between ... with the cheer and sympathy and
good-will.'"

There flashed across her mind the thought of some one who needed cheer and
sympathy far more than Joyce did, and who would welcome a friendly letter
from her with its foreign stamp, as eagerly as if it were some real
treasure. Jessie Nolan was the girl she thought of, an invalid with a
crippled spine, to whom the dull days in her wheeled chair by the window
seemed endless, and who had so little to brighten her monotonous life.

"I'll write her a note this minute," thought Lloyd, with a warm glow in
her heart. "I'll describe some of the sights we have seen, and send her
that fo' leafed clovah that I found at the chateau yestahday, undah a
window of the great hall where Anne of Brittany was married ovah fo'
hundred yeahs ago. I don't suppose Jessie gets a lettah once a yeah."

When that note was written, Lloyd thought of Mom Beck and the pride that
would shine in the face of her old black nurse if she should receive a
letter from Europe, and how proudly it would be carried around and
displayed to all the colou