"It is almost like having Betty back again to have Allison," Lloyd confided to her mother. "She is so sensible, and has the same sweet little ways that Betty had of thinking of other people's pleasure first. Sometimes I forget and call her Betty. I wish they could all come out again next week."
"Have you looked at the calendar to see what comes next week, Lloyd?"
"No, mothah. What is it? Anybody's birthday?"
"What do we always have the last Thursday in November?"
"Oh, Thanksgiving!" exclaimed Lloyd, joyfully. "Anothah holiday! How fast they come!"
Usually Thanksgiving was made a great occasion at Locust, and the house was full of guests; but this year Mr. Sherman was obliged to be in New York all week, and the old Colonel was in Virginia. Lloyd and her mother were planning to celebrate alone when Aunt Jane sent for them to spend the Thanksgiving vacation with her in town.
Lloyd never enjoyed her visits to her great-aunt Jane. The house was too big and solemn with its dark furniture and heavily curtained windows. The chairs were all so tall that they lifted her feet high above the floor. The books in the library were all heavy volumes with dull, hard names that she could not pronounce. The tedious hours when she sat in the invalid's dimly lighted room and listened to the details of her many ailments, or to tales of people whom she had never seen, seemed endless.
This Thanksgiving Day it was unusually cheerless. "All so grown-up and grumbly!" thought Lloyd. "Seems to me the lesson set for me to learn on every holiday is patience. I'm tiahed of being patient."
Aunt Jane had her Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of the day. Much turkey and plum-pudding made Lloyd drowsy, and the hour that followed was a stupid one. She sat motionless in a big velvet armchair listening to more of Aunt Jane's long stories of unknown people. Now and then she stifled a yawn, wishing with all her heart that she could change places with the little newsboy, calling papers in the street below the window, or with the stumpy-tailed dog frisking by in the snow. She fairly ached with sitting still so long, and wondered how her mother could be so interested in all that Aunt Jane was telling. She could have clapped her hands for joy when the maid broke the tediousness of the hour by asking Mrs. Sherman to step out into the hall. Mrs. Walton wanted to speak to her at the telephone.
Lloyd slipped from her chair and followed her mother out of the room, thankful for any excuse to make her escape. She wished she could hear what Mrs. Walton was saying, instead of only one side of the conversation. This is what she heard her mother say: