"This is the first time that I have been out on the road without a teachah and a flock of girls, for a whole month. I despise the way we have to line up two by two and go mah'ching through the Valley as if we were pah't of a circus parade, or inmates of an asylum, out for an airing."
Ida laughed as they started down the path, along the road leading to The Beeches. It was one of those perfect days in mid-October when it is easy to laugh; when all outdoors seems filled to the brim with a great content, and even the woods and fields, all autumn-clad, are keeping holiday. Besides it was Saturday afternoon, and they were on their way to their first club meeting.
This was their first appearance together since the night of their stolen visit to the apple orchard, a week ago. It had cost Lloyd many a pang to give up her intimacy with Ida, but she had never shown such unselfishness as she did in this devotion to her friend. Since Ida's interests demanded that she should go off with the other girls no matter how much she longed to stay, she went obediently. Although Ida no longer wore her violets, she kept her room sweet with fresh bunches of them. Although her name was constantly in her thoughts, she rarely mentioned it, even to Betty. A few whispered words in the hall, an adoring glance toward her now and then at the table, was all she could snatch in the daytime. She even allowed the school to surmise what it pleased; that Ida had quarrelled with her or had grown tired of her; for her love was of the kind that "endureth all things." But every night she lay awake, living over that scene in the moonlit orchard, happy in the consciousness that she was making Ida happy, and dreaming of the romance that she was helping on its way.
Betty had hurried on up the road to call by for Katie Mallard, with the agreement that the couple which reached the post-office first should wait there for the other.
"Let's cut through Clovercroft," suggested Lloyd.
"Mrs. Marks won't care, and it is much shortah that way. The path below her ice-house will bring us out at her woodland gate, just across the road from the depot."
"Anything to get to the post-office first," agreed Ida. "I'm sure that there'll be a letter in your box for me to-day. I can just feel that there's one there."
From the depot it was but a few steps to the post-office. One had only to cross the road, pass the country store, and stroll a short distance along the shady avenue. There it sat by the wayside, a little box of a room, that always made Lloyd think of a dove-cote; for the first time she had been taken there her grandfather had explained that all the little square places where Miss Mattie was putting the letters were pigeonholes. Presently when Miss Mattie opened the window and handed him a letter from one of those places, she cried out with a little squeal of delight which made every one smile, "Oh, white pigeon wing flied out fo' you, grandfathah!"
Afterward it grew to be a byword that they always used between themselves, when one carried home a letter for the other. "Pigeon wing for grandpa's baby," he would call fondly, even when she had grown to be a tall girl; and "White pigeon wing flied out fo' you, grandfathah deah," was the cry if she were the bearer of the missive.
From the post-office door, looking across the road to a grassy ridge beyond, one could see the big inn that the year before had been turned into a home for old Confederate soldiers. Farther on was the wide green slope of the churchyard, and the little stone church with its ivy-covered belfry. The manse stood just behind it. Next to that was the cottage with the high green gables and diamond-shaped window-panes, where the Waltons had lived one summer while their new house was being built. And next to the cottage was the new house itself, set away back in the great grove of trees which gave to the place the name of "The Beeches."