She was in the midst of her lessons one afternoon, her book open on her knees, and her hands over her ears, when she felt, rather than heard, the jar of a heavy chair drawn across the porch. Dropping her hands from her ears, she heard her mother say: "Take this rocker, Allison. I'm so glad you have come. I have been wishing that you would all afternoon."
"Oh, it is Miss Allison MacIntyre!" thought Lloyd. "I wish I didn't have to study while she is heah. I love to listen to her talk."
Thinking to get through as soon as possible, she turned her attention resolutely to her book, but, after a few moments, she could not resist stopping to lift her head and listen, just to find out what subject they were discussing. Although Miss Allison was her mother's friend, Lloyd claimed her as her own especial property. But all children did that. Such was the charming interest with which she entered into comradeship with every boy and girl in the Valley, that they counted her one of themselves. A party without Miss Allison was not to be thought of, and a picnic was sure to be a failure unless she was one of the number.
The two little knights, Keith and Malcolm, were privileged, by reason of family ties, to call her auntie, but there were many like Lloyd who put her on a pedestal in their affections, and claimed a kinship almost as dear. Presently Lloyd caught a word that made her prick up her ears, and she leaned forward, listening eagerly.
"Sister Mary's children are coming out next Saturday. I was lying awake last night, wondering what I could do to entertain them, when it popped into my head that Saturday will be the last day of October, and of course they'll want to celebrate Hallowe'en."
"Sister Mary's children," repeated Lloyd to herself, with a puzzled expression, that suddenly turned to one of joyful recollection. "Oh, she means the little Waltons! I wondah how long they've been back in America?"
Her geography slipped unnoticed to the floor, as she sat thinking of her old playmates, whom she had not seen since their departure for the Philippines, and wondering if they had changed much in their long absence. There were four of them, Ranald (she remembered that he must be fourteen now, counting by his cousin Malcolm's age) and his three younger sisters, Allison, Kitty, and Elise. Some of the happiest days that Lloyd could remember had been the ones spent with them in the big tent pitched on the MacIntyre lawn; for no matter how far west was the army post at which their father happened to be stationed, they had been brought back every summer to visit their grandmother in the old Kentucky home.
Lloyd had not seen them since their father had been made a general, and they had gone away on the transport to the strange new life in the Philippines. Although many interesting letters were sent back to the Valley, in which the whole neighbourhood was interested, it happened that Lloyd had never heard any of them read. Her old playmates seemed to have dropped completely out of her life, until one sad day when the country hung its flags at half-mast, and the black head-lines in every newspaper in the land announced the loss of a nation's hero.
Lloyd remembered how strange it seemed to read the account, and know it was Ranald's father who was meant. She thought of them often in the weeks that followed, for Papa Jack could not pick up a newspaper without reading some touching tribute to the brave general's memory, some beautiful eulogy on his heroic life, but somehow the strange experiences her little playmates were passing through seemed to set them apart from other children in Lloyd's imagination, and she thought of them as people in a book, instead of children she had romped with through many a long summer day.
As she listened to the voice on the porch she found that Miss Allison was talking about her sister, and telling some of the interesting things that had happened to the children in Manila. It was more than the Little Colonel could endure, to sit in the house and hear only snatches of conversation.