"What's flutter?" asked the tireless questioner, but Betty paid no heed. The carriage had reached the steps, and with a spring she was out, calling eagerly as she stepped into the broad path of light streaming across the porch from the hall door, "Any mail for me, godmother?"
"Nothing but a package," answered Mrs. Sherman, coming out to meet them. "And it will keep. Better run on in and eat your dinner first. Cindy has been keeping it hot for you all."
But Betty could not wait. As she darted into the hall Mrs. Sherman turned to Lloyd, who was half dragging, half lifting the sleepy Wardo up the steps.
"Poor little girl," she said in a low tone. "I wanted to put off her disappointment as long as possible, and not spoil her happy day with such an ending. Her manuscript has come back from the publishers."
"Oh, mothah!" exclaimed Lloyd in distress. "You don't mean that they've refused it! They suahly couldn't have done that! Maybe they've just sent it back for her to make some changes in it."
Betty's voice in the door stopped her. As long as she lived, Lloyd never again smelled the odour of August lilies when they were heavy with dew, that she did not see the tragic misery of Betty's white face as it appeared that moment in the light of the hall lamp.
"They've sent it back, godmother," she said in a low even tone. "It wasn't good enough. It's all a miserable mistake to think that I can write, for I put the very best of myself into this and it is a failure."
"No! No!" began Lloyd, but Betty would not wait for any attempted comfort. "I don't want any dinner," she said, then with her mouth twitching piteously as she fought back the tears, she ran up-stairs, and they heard the door close and the key turn in the lock.
Nobody ever knew what went on behind that locked door, for Betty was as quiet in her griefs as she was in her joy and made no audible moan. She threw herself across the foot of the bed and lay there staring out of the window in the hopelessness of utter defeat. The katydids shrilling in the Locusts seemed to fill the night with an unbearable discord. She put her hands over her ears to shut out the hateful sound. It seemed to her that nothing mattered any more. As she slowly recalled all her months of painstaking work, the keen pleasure that each hour of it had afforded her was turned into bitterness by the thought that it had proved a failure.
Only once before had she felt such hopelessness. That was at the first house-party, when she thought she was doomed to be blind. They had brought her the newspaper containing her first published poem. It was called "Night," and as they guided her finger over the page that it might rest proudly on the place where her name was printed, she had faltered, "It's going to be such a long night, and there are no stars in this one!"