"Hold fast all I give you!" she exclaimed, gaily, tossing a tiny white box into Joyce's lap and another into Lloyd's. But the third one she opened, and, taking out the ring it held, slipped it on Betty's finger.
"They are all like the one papa gave me," she said, "and have Tusitala's name inside to help me remember the Memory roads that Betty told us about."
"It will remind me of more than that," said Betty gratefully, when she and the girls had expressed their thanks in a chorus of delighted exclamations. "It will remind me of the happiest day in my life. This is the first ring I ever owned," she added, turning it proudly on her finger. "I wish I could see it." Then, with a gladness in her voice that thrilled her listeners,—"But I shall see it some day! Oh, girls, you couldn't know, you couldn't possibly imagine how much that means to me, unless you'd been shut up as I have in this awful darkness."
There was silence for a moment, and then Eugenia stooped over and gave her a quick, impulsive kiss. "Well, your blindness did some good, Betty," she said, speaking hurriedly and with very red cheeks. "It made me see how hateful and selfish I've always been, and I'm never going to be so mean again to anybody as I was to you. I'm trying to dig a road like Tusitala's and I never would have thought of it, if it hadn't been for you."
With that she turned hastily, and, running across the hall to her own room, shut the door behind her with a bang.
CHAPTER XVI.
A FEAST OF LANTERNS.
The first week of July had come to an end, and with it came the end of the house party.
"Oh, deah," croaked the Little Colonel like a dismal raven, as she waited at the head of the stairs for the girls to finish dressing. "This is the la-st mawnin' well all go racin' down to breakfast togethah! I'm glad that Betty isn't goin' away for a while longah. If you all had to leave at the same time, it would be so lonesome that I couldn't stand it."