After the big Thanksgiving dinner nobody was very hungry, but they all followed Mrs. Walton down to the dining-room for a light lunch. Here Lloyd found herself in another treasure-house of interesting things. She could not turn her head without a glimpse of something to arouse her curiosity, the quaint Chinese ladle on the sideboard, the gay procession of elephants and peacocks around the border of the table-cover, the old army chest, the silver candlesticks that had lighted the devotions of many a Spanish friar in the gray monasteries of Cuba, and the exquisite needlework of the nuns of far-away Luzon.
Mrs. Walton was the tale-teller now, and Lloyd listened with an intense eagerness that made her dark eyes grow more starlike than ever, and brought the delicate wild-rose pink flushing up into her cheeks.
Seeing what pleasure it was giving her little guest, Mrs. Walton took her into the library afterward and opened the cabinets, pointing out one object of interest after another. But the things that pleased Lloyd most were the bells in the hall. Near the foot of the stairs, in an oaken frame placed there for the purpose, swung three Spanish bells, that had been presented to Mrs. Walton as trophies of war. They had been taken from different church towers on the island of Luzon, by the Filipino insurgents, when they were sacking the villages and taking everything before them. These bells had been captured from the insurgents by the soldiers of the general's division. A thrill went through the Little Colonel as Mrs. Walton told her their history, and swung one of the great iron tongues back and forth till the hall echoed with the clear ringing.
Several times during the evening Lloyd slipped out into the hall again to stand before these mute witnesses of the ravages of war, and tap the rims with light finger tips. She tapped so lightly that only the faintest echo sounded in the hall, but from her rapt face Mrs. Walton knew that the note awakened other voices in the Little Colonel's imagination. She had known Lloyd ever since she had gone to live at Locust, and she remembered the child's quaint habit of singing to herself.
All the words that pleased her fancy she strung together on the thread of a soft minor tune, in a crooning little melody of her own. "Oh, the buttercups an' daisies," she had heard her sing one time, standing waist-high in a field of nodding bloom. "Oh, the buttercups an' daisies, all white an' gold an' yellow. They're all a-smilin' at me! All a-sayin' howdy! howdy!"
And another time when the August lilies, standing white and waxen in the moonlight, had moved the old Colonel to speak tenderly of the wife of his youth, Mrs. Walton had seen a smile cross his face, when the baby voice, unconscious of an audience, crooned softly from the doorstep, "Oh, the locus'-trees a-blowin', an' the stars a-shinin' through them, an' the moonlight an' the lilies, an' Amanthis! An' Amanthis!"
Now, curious to know what thoughts the bells were awakening, Mrs. Walton bent her head to listen as the Little Colonel chanted to herself in a half-whisper, "Oh, the bells, the bells a-tolling, and the tales they ring for evah, of the battle-flags an' victory, an' their hero! An' their hero!"
The tears sprang to Mrs. Walton's eyes as she listened to the child's interpretation of the voices of the bells, and presently, when she looked up and saw Lloyd standing in front of the general's portrait, gazing reverently into the brave, calm face, she crossed the room and put an arm around her.
"Do you know," said the Little Colonel, in a confiding undertone, "when I look up at that, I know just how Betty feels when she writes poetry. She heahs voices inside, and thinks things too beautiful to find words for. There's something in his face, and about that sword that he used for his country, and the flag that he followed, and the bells that ring for his memory, that make me want to cry; and yet there's a glad, proud feelin' in my heart because he was so brave, as if he sort of belonged to me, too. It makes me wish I could be a man, and go out and do something brave and grand. What do you suppose makes me feel both ways at the same time?"
"It is a part of patriotism," said Mrs. Walton, with a caressing hand on her hair.