The Little Colonel in Arizona

by Annie F. Johnston

The call came again. She drew back the tent-flap and looked out. "I'll be there in a minute, Holland," she answered, trying to keep the impatience out of her voice. As she went over to the wash-stand to bathe her eyes, she brushed a magazine from the table in passing. It was the one Phil had brought up several days before to read aloud. She replaced it carefully, almost as one touches the belongings of some one who is dead.

There were so many things around the tent to remind her of him, it would be almost impossible to keep him out of her thoughts. She confessed to herself that it was growing very hard to keep her Hildegarde promise. She started to whisper it as one might repeat some strengthening charm: "You may trust me, fathah—" She stopped with a sob. This sudden ending of their happy companionship was going to shadow all the rest of her visit.

As her eyes met her reflection in the little mirror hanging against the side of the tent, she lifted her head with determination, and looked at it squarely.

"I will stop thinking about it all the time!" she said, defiantly, to the answering eyes. "It will spoil all my visit if I don't. I'll do the way the bees do when things get into the hive that have no right there. I'll seal it up tight as I can, and go on filling the other cells with honey,—doing things that will be pleasant to remember by and by. I'll make myself take an interest in something else!"

The same spirit that looked from the eyes of the proud old portraits at home looked back at her now from the eyes in the mirror—that strong, indomitable spirit of her ancestors, that could rise even to the conquering of that hardest of all enemies, self, when occasion demanded it.

Running out to the wood-pile, where Holland impatiently awaited her, she threw herself into the interests of the hour so resolutely that she was soon absorbed in its happenings. By the time the snake was skinned, and the skin tacked to the side of the house to dry, she had gained a victory that left her stronger for all her life to come. She had compelled herself to take an interest in the affairs of others, when she wanted to mope and dream. Instead of an hour of selfish musing in her tent, she had had an hour of wholesome laughter and chatter outside. It would be a pleasant time to look back upon, too, she thought, complacently, remembering Mary's amusing efforts to help skin the snake, and all the funny things that had been said.

"Well, that hour's memory-cell is filled all right," Lloyd thought. "I'll see how much moah honey I can store away befoah I leave."

There was not much more time, for Mr. Sherman came soon, with the announcement that they would leave in two days. Numerous letters had passed between the Wigwam and the mines, so Lloyd knew what was going to happen when her father arranged for her and Joyce to spend part of one of those days in town. She knew that when they came back they would find a long rustic arbour built in the rear of the tents—a rough shack of cottonwood poles supporting a thatch of bamboo and palm-leaves. Underneath would be a dozen or more hives, humming with thousands of golden-banded bees. And for all the rest of their little lives these bees would spend their "shining hours" in helping Joyce on toward easier times and the City of her Desire.

Something else happened that day while they were in town. Phil made his last visit before starting away with the surveying party. Nobody knew what passed between him and Aunt Emily in the old Wigwam sitting-room, but he came out from the interview smiling, so full of hope and purpose that her whispered Godspeed seemed already to have found an answer.

She told the girls afterward a little of their conversation. His ambition was aroused at last, she said. He was going to work hard all summer, and in the fall go back to school. Not the military academy, but a college where he could take the technical course this friend of Mr. Ellestad recommended. Phil admired this man immensely, and she was sure that his influence would be exceedingly helpful. She was sure, too, that he would be all right now, and he had promised to write to her every week.