There was a hasty postscript scribbled across the end. "Be sure you let me know the minute you hear anything from Dot. If anybody finds her, Cousin Carl says cable the word 'found,' and we will know what you mean."
For a few minutes after the reading of the letter, the Little Colonel stood by the window, looking out without a word. Then she began:
"I wish I'd nevah had a house party. I wish I'd nevah known Joyce or Eugenia or Betty. I wish I'd nevah laid eyes on any of them, or been to the Cuckoo's Nest, or—or nothin'!"
"What is the trouble now, Lloyd?" asked her mother, wonderingly.
"Then I wouldn't be so lonesome now that everything is ovah. I despise that 'left behind' feelin' moah than anything I know. It makes me so misah'ble! They've all gone away and left me now, and I'll nevah be as happy again as I've been this summah. I'm suah of it!"
"'Tis the last rose of summer left blooming alone.
All her lovely companions are faded and gone,'"
sang Mrs. Sherman, gaily, as she came and put an arm around Lloyd's drooping shoulders. "Every summer brings its own roses, little daughter. When the old friends go, look around for new ones, and you'll always find them."
"I don't want any new ones," exclaimed the Little Colonel, gloomily. "There'll nevah be anybody that I'll take the same interest in that I do in Betty and Joyce and Eugenia."
Yet even as she spoke, there were coming toward her life, nearer and nearer as the days went by, other friends, who were to have a large part in making its happiness, and who were to fill it with new interests and new pleasures.