"Who else is going to help?" asked Lloyd, when she had cordially accepted the invitation for herself and Betty.
"Nobody. I had intended to have Bernice Howe, and went up there awhile ago to ask her. She said maybe she'd come, but she certainly wouldn't help receive if you were going to. She's dreadfully down on you, Lloyd."
"Yes, I know it. I've heard some of the catty things she said about my breaking up the friendship between her and Malcolm. It's simply absurd, and it makes me so boiling mad every time I think about it that I feel like a smouldering volcano. There aren't any words strong enough to relieve my mind. I'd like to thundah and lighten at her."
"Yes, it is absurd," agreed Katie. "I told her so too. I told her that Malcolm always had thought more of you than any girl in the Valley, and always would. And she said, well, you had no 'auld lang syne' claim on Alex, and that if he once got started to going to Locust you'd soon have him under your thumb as you do every one else, and that would be the end of the affair for her."
"As if I were an old spidah, weaving webs for everybody that comes along!" cried Lloyd, indignantly. "She's no right to talk that way."
"I think it's because she really cares so much, and not that she does it to be spiteful," said Katie. "She hasn't a bit of pride about hiding her feeling for him. She openly cried about it while she was talking to me."
"What do you think I ought to do?" asked Lloyd, with a troubled face. "I like Mistah Shelby evah so much, and I'd like to be nice to him for the old doctah's sake if for no othah reason, for I'm devoted to him. And I really would enjoy seeing him often, especially now when everybody else is gone or going for the rest of the summah. Besides, he'd think it mighty queah for me to write to him not to come next Thursday. But I'd hate to really interfere with Bernice's happiness, if it has grown to be such a serious affair with her that she can cry about it. I'd hate to have her going through the rest of her life thinking that I had deliberately wronged her, and if she's breaking her heart ovah it"—she stopped abruptly.
"Oh, I don't see that you have any call to do the grand renouncing act!" exclaimed Katie. "Why should you cut yourself off from a good time and a good friend by snubbing him? It will put you in a very unpleasant light, for you couldn't explain without making Bernice appear a perfect ninny. And if you don't explain, what will he think of you? Let me tell you, it is more than she would do for you if you were in her place. Somehow, with us girls, life seems like a game of 'Hold fast all I give you.' What falls into your hands is yours by right of the game, and you've no call to hand it over to the next girl because she whimpers that she wants to be 'it.' Don't you worry. Go on and have a good time."
With that parting advice Katie hurried away, and Lloyd was left to pace up and down the avenue more undecided than before. It was late in the afternoon of the next day when she finally found the answer to her question. She had been wandering around the drawing-room, glancing into a book here, rearranging a vase of flowers there, turning over the pile of music on the piano, striking aimless chords on the harp-strings.
Presently she paused in front of the mantel to lift the lid from the rose-jar and let its prisoned sweetness escape into the room. As she did so she glanced up into the eyes of the portrait above her. With a whimsical smile she thought of the times before when she had come to it for counsel, and the question half-formed itself on her lips: "What would you do, you beautiful Grandmother Amanthis?"