growing stronger between them, as they yearly cut a higher notch in the bark of the old measuring-tree.
"If they could only stay children always!" whispered the locusts again, with something so like a sigh in the refrain, that Lloyd felt the tears spring to her eyes, she scarcely knew why.
"There," said Rob, closing his knife and slipping it into his pocket. "I must go now."
As usual, Lloyd walked down to the gate with him. He whistled as he went, a musical, rollicking negro chorus, and she joined in with an accompaniment of little trills and calls, in clever imitation of a mocking-bird. But just before they reached the gate her whistling stopped. Her quick eyes spied a four-leafed clover in the grass, and she sprang forward to get it.
"And heah's anothah!" she cried, triumphantly. "One for you too, Rob. That means good luck for both of us. Put it in yoah pocket."
Rob took the little charm she held out, with a skeptical smile, yet he had imbibed too great a belief in such omens from his old coloured nurse not to regard it with respect. "Thanks," he said, "I have a safer place than my pocket. I'll need all the luck this or anything else can bring me in my Latin this year, so I'll carry it to every recitation." Opening the back of his watch he carefully smoothed the green petals and laid them inside, then closed the case with a snap. "Now I'm fixed," he said, with a nod of satisfaction.
At the gate they did not shake hands, but parted as they had done so many times before, as if they expected to begin their playtime on the morrow.
"Good-bye, Lloyd," was all he said, with a slight lifting of his cap as he walked away.
"Good-bye, Bobby," she answered. She stood for a moment shading her eyes from the sunset, with the hand that held the four-leafed clover, as she watched him go striding down the road toward Oaklea, switching with his tennis racket at the asters and goldenrod along his path. Then she went slowly back to the house, thinking how tall he looked as he strode away. As she passed the measuring-tree she looked up at the old locusts overhead, and sure of their sympathy, said, half-aloud, "Oh, I wish we didn't have to grow up!"
CHAPTER II
A NEW FRIEND
Lloydsboro Seminary was not an especially attractive place viewed from the outside of the high picket fence, which surrounded its entire domain. The fence itself was forbidding. Its tall pickets, sharp-pointed and close together, seemed to suggest that strict rules were to be found inside; rules like the pickets, too firm and pointed to be easily broken through or climbed over.
The building was old and weather-beaten, but in its prime the school had been one of the best in the State, and many a woman remembered it loyally in after years when she had daughters of her own to educate. So it happened that some of the pupils came long distances, and from many parts of the country, to sit at the same old desks their mothers sat at, to study the same old lessons, and to learn to love every rock and tree on the seminary grounds, because of their associations with all the warm young friendships formed there.
A group of maples and cedars stood between the seminary and the high green picket gate in front, with a score of rustic seats and wooden swings scattered about in their shade. On the east an old neglected apple orchard sloped away from the house, where during the first few weeks of school, hard juicy winesaps, russets, and bellflowers lay in hiding from the hungry schoolgirls, who searched for them in the tall grass, waving knee-deep among the trees. On the other side, the high fence separated the grounds from the closely clipped lawn of Clovercroft, one of the hospitable old homesteads of the Valley, whose wide porches and vine-covered tower made a charming picture from the western windows of the seminary.
The opening day of school was always a sort of gala occasion. No regular work could be done, for pupils were continually coming in on the various trains to be registered and assigned to classes. After chapel exercises the day pupils were at liberty to go home, but it was a time-honoured custom for them to adjourn to the apple orchard, to hold a reunion with all the last year's boarders who had returned.
The swings and seats in front of the seminary were left for the newcomers. Many a longing glance was cast toward the orchard by the strangers, who, left thus inhospitably alone, made shy advances toward acquaintance among themselves. On the morrow they, too, might be included in the friendly little groups exchanging confidences with their heads close together, and walking with their arms around each other under the gnarly old trees; but that they should be ignored the first day was as binding as the unwritten "laws of the jungle."
From her seat in the swing nearest the house, a new girl watched the others swarming out from chapel, laughing and talking and calling to those ahead to wait. The primary grades went racing through the warm morning sunshine, down to their playhouses by the spring. The seniors and juniors strolled off in opposite directions in dignified exclusiveness, to different parts of the orchard. Each group as it passed attracted the new girl's attention, but her interest centred in a dozen or more girls lingering on the front steps. Their ages seemed to range from twelve to fifteen years. They were evidently waiting for some one.
"Why don't they hurry?" asked an impatient voice. "What's the matter?"
"The matron stopped them," some one answered. "I heard her asking about some bedding that was to be sent from Locust."
It was nearly five minutes before some one interrupted a discussion that had begun, to call "Here they come!" Then a chorus of calls began most confusing to the girl in the swing, who did not know the names of the newcomers who seemed to be so popular.
"I bid to walk with the Little Colonel!"
"Come on, Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis, I'm waiting for you."
"Hurry up, Betty! I've got something to tell you!"
"Lloyd! Lloyd Sherman! Can't you hear? Is it really true that you are going to board here?"
With the two girls in their midst, trying to explain to a dozen different questioners in the same breath, when and why they had become resident pupils, the noisy procession moved on. Only one was left behind, a pale-faced child in spectacles, who, in spite of all their protests, stood looking after them, insisting she must wait for Sue Bell.
As the others moved away, the new girl beckoned to her with a friendly smile. "You're Janie Clung, aren't you?" she asked, as the little girl advanced a few steps, and then stood awkwardly rubbing one foot against the other.
"You see I couldn't help hearing your name. They spoke it so often. I am Ida Shane, from Clay County. Won't you sit here in the swing with me until the girl you are waiting for comes out, and tell me something about the school? It's so hard," she added, plaintively, "to be a stranger in a place where everybody else has so many friends. You seem to know every one here. From the way they all begged you to go with them, I imagine you must be very popular."
Much flattered by this last remark from one so much older than herself, Janie climbed into the seat in the swing, opposite the girl from Clay County, and scrutinized her shyly.
Ida Shane was very pretty, she decided. She must be nearly sixteen, or maybe more, for she wore her dresses long and her hair in a soft, fluffy pompadour. Then Janie's gaze wandered from her hair to a bewitching little dimple that came at the corner of Ida's mouth when she smiled, and she thought to herself that the slow, soft drawl in which Ida spoke was exceedingly musical and ladylike. She found herself talking in a lower tone than usual, and quite slowly, when she answered.
"You know, I think it is always best to be very particular in choosing friends when one goes to a new place," Ida remarked, in a confidential tone, which seemed to insinuate that Janie could be safely chosen. "I don't want to take up with everybody. That's why I want
