"He needn't have gone so far out of his way to have done that," exclaimed Lloyd, as they started up the road toward Locust. "It was the clerk's place to open the doah, and he nearly knocked him down, trying to get there first."
"Who?" inquired Ida, innocently. She was several steps in advance, and could not see Lloyd's face.
"That horrid Mistah Ned Bannon. I can't bea'h him. Papa Jack told mothah she must nevah invite him to the house, undah any circumstances, because he wasn't fit for Betty and me to know, and—"
She stopped abruptly, for Ida turned with a white, pained face.
"Oh, Lloyd!" she cried. "How can you hurt me so? Don't believe any of those dreadful things you hear about him!" Then, seeing from Lloyd's amazed expression that she failed to understand the situation, she added, in a distressed tone, "He is Edwardo."
If Ida had struck her on the face she could not have been more amazed. She stood staring at her helplessly, unable to say a word.
"I must be dreaming all this," she thought. "After awhile I'll surely wake up and find I've had a horrible nightmare."
But the distress in Ida's voice was too real to be a dream. She was biting her lips to keep back the tears. After one look into Lloyd's dismayed face she turned away and began moving slowly on toward Locust. Lloyd walked beside her, mechanically. She could not shake off the feeling that she must be in a dream. From time to time she cast a half-frightened glance toward Ida. She felt that she had wounded her so deeply that nothing she might say could ever make amends. When she saw a tear course slowly down her cheek and splash down on the bunch of flowers on her coat, she clasped her arm impulsively, saying, "Oh, Violet, deah, don't cry! I wouldn't have hurt you for worlds. I didn't have the faintest idea that he was the one."
"It isn't so much what you said," answered Ida, controlling her voice with an effort, "but I'd counted so much on your friendship for him. And now to know that people have prejudiced you against him before you've had a chance to meet him and find out for yourself that they're mistaken—" She stopped with a sob. "Under all his wild ways he's good and noble and true at heart, and it isn't fair for everybody to condemn him for what he has done, and stand in his way when he's trying so hard to do better."
One little hand in the muff was bare, and Lloyd saw the gleam of the pearl on it as Ida took out her handkerchief and dabbed it hastily across her eyes. It brought back all that scene in the moonlighted orchard, and Ida's blushing confession: "He says that is what my life means to him—a pearl. That if it wasn't for my love and prayers he wouldn't care what became of him or what he did. Do you blame me for disregarding aunt's wishes?" And again as on that night the Little Colonel's heart swelled with an indignant "No!" Again she arrayed herself beside her friend, ready to do battle for her against the whole world if necessary.