After that the old Colonel unsheathed his sword and got out his spurs, and started to tell the bloodiest battle tales he knew, and when they did not meet with the approval he expected, he actually invented a game of bear, which they played in his den. They played it till Wardo began shrieking with thrills of real fear at the fearsome growling and the big fur gloves thrust at him from behind the leather couch. He grew so nervous and excited that the Colonel was at a loss to know how to calm the whirlwind he had unintentionally stirred up.
It was Betty who came to the rescue. She led him down to the orchard, and taking him on her lap in the old swing, swung him so high up into the top of the apple-tree that they could look over and see the eggs in a blue-bird's nest. Then little by little she stopped their swinging, till presently they were swaying very gently back and forth near the ground, and she had charmed him into quietness with one of the old tales that she used to tell Davy, about the elves who live in the buttercups and ride far miles on the bumblebees.
Glancing up towards the house, she saw Leland Harcourt mounting the steps. It was the hour for Lloyd's lesson. So although she had intended to spend the morning outlining a magazine story which she had in mind, she took a fresh grip on the swing rope, and began another tale.
That was the way Wardo's entertainment went on for the next few days. He was not allowed an idle moment in which to think of going home. So what with all these amusements and the novelty of constant attention from his elders, it was not long before he developed into a veritable little tyrant, demanding attention every moment of his waking hours. But when her unremitting service grew irksome Lloyd had only to think of Ida, tossing helpless and delirious at the mercy of the wasting fever. Her daily visits to the cottage kept her in full realization of the seriousness of the case, and a deeper feeling of tenderness swept over her whenever she came back to Wardo after one of these visits, for each time she knew that the dreaded crisis was nearer, and she could not bear to think of his being left motherless.
"It will just kill him!" she thought with tears in her eyes, as she watched the pitiful quivering of his mouth and the manly attempt to choke back his sobs, whenever Ida's name was mentioned. So to make sure that he was happily employed she took him wherever she went, except on that one short drive which she made daily to Rollington. When she and Betty spent the day at The Beeches or the Cabin, he was one of the party. When Miss Marks had another expedition to finish her Garden Fancies, he was included in the group, and a charming picture he made, as with a butterfly net in his hand, he stooped to point to the figures on the old sun-dial, that marked the flight of the happy summer.
It was from this expedition that they drove back one evening in the early August twilight. He had been asleep most of the way home, but roused up as the carriage turned in at the gate. Betty, leaning forward in her seat, drew a long breath.
"Oh, smell the lilies!" she exclaimed, looking across the lawn to where they stood, like tall white ghosts in the twilight. "How heavenly sweet! Such a delicious ending to such a nice day. Do you know, Lloyd, I've been feeling all the way home as if I were going to hear from my book to-night. The publishers have had plenty of time to read it since I sent it. I feel it in my bones that there'll be a letter waiting for me."
"How do you feel fings wif your bones, Betty?" asked Wardo, sleepily raising his curly head from Lloyd's shoulder.
"Oh, I couldn't make you understand," she answered. "It's just a sort of happy flutter all through you that tells you something nice is going to happen."