the Cuckoo's Nest. It was a weekly occurrence for some of the children to be brought in limp and bleeding from various falls. Bradley had once sprained his neck turning somersaults down the hay-mow, so that he had not been able to look over his shoulder for two weeks. Scott had been picked up senseless twice, once from falling out of the top of a walnut-tree, and the other time because a high ladder broke under him. Every one of the boys but Pudding had at some time or another left a trail of blood behind him from barn to house as he went weeping homeward with some part of his body to be bandaged. So Lloyd's fall did not cause the commotion it might have done in a less adventurous family.
"Oh, she's coming around all right," said Mr. Appleton, cheerfully, as her head stirred a little on his shoulder, and she half opened her eyes.
"Here you are," he added a moment later, laying her on the bed in the parlour. "Scott, run call your mother. Bring a light, Molly. We'll soon see what is the matter."
There were no bones broken, and in a little while Lloyd sat up, white and dizzy. Then she walked across the room, and looked at herself in the little mirror hanging over a shelf, on which stood a bouquet of stiff wax flowers. It was hung so high and tilted forward so much, and the wax flowers were in the way, so that she could not get a very satisfactory view of her wounds, but she saw enough to make her feel like an old soldier home from the wars, with the marks of many battles upon her.
A bandage wet with arnica was tied around her head, over a large knot that was rapidly swelling larger. Several strips of court-plaster covered the cut on her temple. One cheek was scratched, and she was stiff and sore from many bruises.
"But not half so stiff as you'll be in the morning," Mrs. Appleton assured her, cheerfully. "All that side of your body that struck against the manger is black and blue."
"I think I'll go to bed," said the Little Colonel, faintly. "This day has been long enough, and I don't want anything else to happen to me. Fallin' through a trap-doah and havin' my mothah leave me is enough fo' one while. I think I need her moah than Aunt Jane does. You'll have to sleep with me to-night, Betty. I wouldn't stay down heah alone fo' anything."
It was very early to go to bed, scarcely more than half-past seven, when Betty blew out the candle and climbed in beside the Little Colonel. She lay for a long time, listening to the croaking of the frogs, thinking that Lloyd had forgotten her troubles in dreamland, until a mournful little voice whispered, "Say, Betty, are you asleep?"
"No; but I thought you were."
"I was, for a few minutes, but that dreadful false face of Molly's woke me up. I dreamed it was chasing me, and I seemed to be falling and falling, and somebody screamed at me 'Look out! The witches will catch you!' It frightened me so that I woke up all a tremble. I know I am safe, here in bed with you, but I'm shaking so hard that I can't go to sleep again. Oh, Betty, you don't know how much I want my mothah! I'll nevah leave her again as long as I live. My head aches, and I'm so stiff and soah I can't tu'n ovah!"
"Do you want me to tell you a story?" asked Betty, hearing the sob in Lloyd's voice, and divining that her pillow had caught more than one tear under cover of the darkness.
"Oh, yes!" begged the Little Colonel. "Talk to me, even if you don't say anything but the multiplication table. It will keep me from hearin' those dreadful frogs, and seein' that face in the dark. I'm ashamed to be frightened at nothing. I don't know what makes me such a coward."
"Maybe the fall was a sort of shock to your nerves," said Betty, comfortingly, reaching out to pat the trembling shoulders with a motherly air. "There, go to sleep, and I'll stay awake and keep away the hobgoblins. I'll recite the Lady Jane, because it jingles so beautifully. It goes like a cradle."
A little groping hand reached through the darkness and touched Betty's face, then buried itself in her soft curls, as if the touch brought a soothing sense of safety. In a slow, sing-song tone, as monotonous as the droning of a bee, Betty began, accenting every other syllable with a sleepy drawl.
"The la-dy Jane was tall and slim,
The la-dy Jane was fair.
Sir Thomas her lord was stout of limb,
His cough was short and his eyes were dim,
And he wore green specs with a tortoise shell rim,
And his hat was re-mark-ably broad in the brim,
And she was un-common-ly fond of him,
And they were a lov-ing pair.
And the name and the fame of this knight and his dame
Were every-where hailed with the loud-est ac-claim."
But it took more than the Lady Jane to put the restless little listener to sleep that night. Maud Muller was recited in the same sing-song measure, and Lord Ullin's daughter followed without a pause, till Betty herself grew sleepy, and, like a tired little mosquito, droned lower and lower, finally stopping in the middle of a sentence.
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