sten patiently, and to keep tryst with
the expectations of those about her, so that at nightfall there might be
another pearl to slip on the silken cord, in token of another day
unstained by selfishness.

There was rarely time for envying the girls at school now. The days were
too full. Almost before it seemed possible, the locusts were in bloom
and it was mid-May by the calendar. In that time perfect health had come
back to her. There were no more crying spells now, no more hours of
nervous exhaustion, of fretful impatience over trifles. She went singing
about the house, with a colour in her cheeks that rivalled the pink of
the apple blossoms.

"Spring has come indoors as well as out," said Mrs. Sherman one morning.
"I think that we may safely count that your Christmas vacation is over,
and you may go back to your music lessons whenever you choose."

The night before her birthday, Lloyd sat with her elbows on her
dressing-table, peering into the mirror with a very serious face.

"You'll be sixteen yeahs old in the mawning, Lloyd Sherman," she told
the girl in the glass. "'Sweet sixteen!' You've come to the end of lots
of things, and to-morrow it will be like going through a gate that
you've seen ahead of you for a long, long time. A big, wide gate that
you have looked forward to for yeahs, and things are bound to be
different on the othah side."

Next morning, just in fun, she trailed down to breakfast in one of her
mother's white dresses, with her hair piled on the top of her head. It
was very becoming so, but it made her look so tall and womanly that she
was sure her grandfather would object to it.

"He'll nevah let me grow up if he can help it," she said, half-pouting,
as she gave a final glance over her shoulder at the mirror, vastly
pleased with her young ladylike appearance. "He'll say, 'Tut, tut!
That's not grandpa's Little Colonel.' But I can't stay his Little
Colonel always."

She was standing by the window looking down the locust avenue when he
came in to breakfast, so she did not see his start of surprise at sight
of her. But his half-whispered exclamation, "_Amanthis!_" told her why
he failed to make the speech she expected to hear. With her hair done
high, showing the beautiful curve of her head and throat as she stood
half-turned toward him, he had caught another glimpse of her startling
resemblance to the portrait. He could not regret losing his Little
Colonel if that loss were to give him a livi