e are ready to give her up. It's too much
to lose you both within half a year of each other."

"How utterly you have lost me!" teased Lloyd. "You see me mawning, noon
and night. When I'm not at The Locusts you're at Oaklea, or at the othah
end of the telephone wiah. Heah I am, come to spend the whole live-long
day with you, and you say you have lost me. Own up, now. Honest! I'm
yoah same little girl that I've always been. I haven't changed one
bit."

"I know," he admitted, smiling down affectionately into the glowing face
lifted to his. "It might have been worse. But it will be losing Betty in
reality when _she_ goes. Arizona is a far country. I wish that young
jackanapes had never seen her. There are plenty of fine fellows back
here in Kentucky she might have had, and then we'd have had her where we
could see her once in a while. How long has it been since she came to
The Locusts to live?"

"Twelve yeahs, grandfathah," said Lloyd, after a pause, in which she
counted backward. "She's been just like a real sistah to me, and I feel
worse than you do about giving her up. Lone-Rock does have a dreadfully
dismal fo'saken sawt of sound. But I can ovahlook that for Jack Ware's
sake. He's such a splendid fellow."

The Colonel made no answer to that, for he fully agreed with her, but
changing the subject said in an aggrieved tone, "I suppose that even the
few days that are left to us will be so taken up with folderols and
preparations that we'll scarcely see her. It was that way when Eugenia
had her wedding here; caterers and florists turning the house upside
down. And it was the same way with yours. So many people in the house
always going and coming, so many things to be planned and discussed and
decided, that I scarcely got a word in edgeways with you for a whole
week before."

"It will not be that way this time," Lloyd answered. "It has been less
than a yeah since Jack's mothah died, so Betty wouldn't have anything
but a very quiet affair on that account. It is to be so simple and so
different from any wedding that you've evah seen that you'll nevah know
it's going to take place till it is all ovah. There's to be no flurry or
worry about anything. Mothah wanted to make a grand occasion of it, but
Betty wouldn't let her. There'll not be moah than half a dozen guests."

They had reached the house by this time, and on again being assured that
Lloyd intended to remain all day, the Colonel left her and turned back
to take