CHAPTER XIV.
A SECOND MAID OF HONOR
It was a new experience to Miles Bradford, this trudging through the dense beech woods on a summer night behind a row of flickering lanterns. The path they followed was a wide one, and well worn by the feet of churchgoing negroes, for it was the shortest cut between the Valley and Stumptown, a little group of cabins clustered around the colored church.
Ranald led the way with a brakeman's lantern, and Rob occasionally illuminated the scene by electric flashes from the head of the walking-stick he was flourishing. A varied string of fiery dragons, winged fish, and heathen hobgoblins danced along beside them, for Kitty was putting candles in a row of Japanese lanterns when they arrived at The Beeches, and nearly everybody in the party accepted her invitation to take one. Mary chose a sea-serpent with a grinning face, and Elise a pretty oval one with birds and cherry blossoms on each side. Lloyd did not take any. Her hands were already filled with a huge bouquet of red roses.
"Sylvia asked me to carry these," she explained to Miles Bradford, "and to weah a white dress and this hat with the red roses on it. Because I was maid of honah at Eugenia's wedding she seems to think I can reflect some sawt of glory on hers. She said she wanted all her young ladies to weah white."
"Who are her young ladies, and why?" he asked.
"Allison, Kitty, Betty, and I. You see, Sylvia's grandfathah was the MacIntyre's coachman befoah the wah, and her mothah is our old Aunt Cindy. She considahs that she belongs to us and we belong to her."
Farther down the line they could hear Katie Mallard's cheerful giggle as she tripped over a beech root, then Bernice Howe's laugh as they all went slipping and sliding down a steep place in the path which led to the hollow crossed by the dry creek bed.
"Sing!" called Miss Allison, who was chaperoning the party, and picking her way behind the others with Mary and Elise each clinging to an arm. "There's such a pretty echo down in this hollow. Listen!" The tune that she started was one of the popular songs of the summer. It was caught up by every one in the procession except Miles Bradford, and he kept silent in order to enjoy this novel pilgrimage to the fullest. The dark woods rang with the sweet chorus, and the long line of fantastic lanterns sent weird shadows bobbing up in their wake.