Here the gardener met them, and the conversation dropped. The next half hour was spent in consultation over some changes to be made in the conservatory.
When they went back to the house Leland Harcourt had gone, and Lloyd was just stepping into Doctor Shelby's buggy, which was drawn up in front of the house. The old doctor waited for them to come within hearing distance before he leaned out and called:
"I'm just borrowing the Little Colonel for awhile. There's a case over at Rollington that needs the attention of her King's Daughters Circle, and I'm taking her over to investigate it. We'll be home before dark."
"All right," called Mr. Sherman, waving his hat as Lloyd looked back at them with a smile and a flutter of her handkerchief. During the winter that Lloyd had joined the Circle, and in the summer vacations following, it had been a matter of frequent occurrence for the old doctor to take her with him on such errands. Remembering how interested Lloyd had become in many of the cases, Mrs. Sherman breathed a sigh of thankfulness, hoping that this might prove to be one that would enlist her sympathies and occupy so much of her time that it would make a serious break in the Spanish lessons.
It had been a happy afternoon for Lloyd. If she had stopped and tried to recall what made it so, she could not have mentioned any particular thing. To be young and well and filled with the same glow that made the summer day a joy was enough, but to feel that some one whose opinion she valued very much found her charming, and said so with every glance of his dark eyes, was more than enough. It made her cup of happiness complete and brimmed it over.
The doctor was pouring out a tale of somebody's woes, but the trace of a smile lingered on her lips as she made a polite attempt to listen. She could not quite shut out the thought of that last game of tennis, and the trivial pleasantries that had gone to make up the sum of her great content. There was a dreamy, far-away look in her eyes as she listened. The Spanish serenade that Leland Harcourt had sung before he left kept repeating itself over and over, a sort of undercurrent to what the doctor was saying. She beat time to it with her finger-tips on the side of the buggy. Once it rose so insistently that she lost what the doctor was saying, and came to herself with a start when a familiar name arrested her attention.
"Ned Bannon's wife!" she repeated in astonishment. "You suahly can't mean that it's Ida Shane who's sick ovah in that tumbledown cottage of the McCarty's!"
"I surely do," he answered. "She didn't want to come back to this part of the country, goodness knows. She remembers what a commotion it raised when she eloped from the Seminary with Ned, five years ago. But Ned has scarcely drawn a sober breath for the last year. She's sure of getting needlework here, and with little Wardo to consider there was nothing for her to do but put her pride in her pocket and come."
"Little Wardo!" breathed Lloyd wonderingly. The ride seemed full of surprises.