It had been many a long year since those old locust-trees had seen a sight like that. Children never played any more under their dignified shadows.
Time had been (but they only whispered this among themselves on rare spring days like this) when the little feet chased each other up and down the long walk, as much at home as the pewees in the beeches.
Suddenly the little maid stood up straight, and began to sniff the air, as if some delicious odour had blown across the lawn.
"Fritz," she exclaimed, in delight, "I 'mell 'trawberries!"
The Colonel, who could not hear the remark, wondered at the abrupt pause in the game. He understood it, however, when he saw them wading through the tall grass, straight to his strawberry bed. It was the pride of his heart, and the finest for miles around. The first berries of the season had been picked only the day before. Those that now hung temptingly red on the vines he intended to send to his next neighbour, to prove his boasted claim of always raising the finest and earliest fruit.
He did not propose to have his plans spoiled by these stray guests. Laying the field-glass in its accustomed place on the little table beside his chair, he picked up his hat and strode down the walk.
Colonel Lloyd's friends all said he looked like Napoleon, or rather like Napoleon might have looked had he been born and bred a Kentuckian.
He made an imposing figure in his suit of white duck.
The Colonel always wore white from May till October.
There was a military precision about him, from his erect carriage to the cut of the little white goatee on his determined chin.