She did not go all the way to The Beeches, for she met Betty on the way back, Wardo proudly bearing his box of paints, and Betty re-reading a letter which she had found in the office. It was from Madam Chartley. There was a vacancy in Warwick Hall itself and she was to fill it; was to be her beloved Miss Chilton's assistant in the English classes. Her happiness was as great over this news as her disappointment had been over the return of her manuscript. As Madam Chartley wanted her at the school by the first of September there were only two weeks in which to make her preparations to leave.
Although Lloyd had heard the matter discussed she never fully believed that Betty was going away from Locust until she had the letter in her own hands and read Madam Chartley's expression of pleasure at the prospect of having Betty with her permanently. It swept away all thought of her own affairs, for Betty had grown as dear to her as a sister in the years they had been together. She followed her mournfully into the white and gold room, offering to help her with her preparations, and pouring out her regret and her disapproval of Betty's plans. It wasn't necessary at all she insisted for Betty to leave them, and Locust wouldn't be the same place with her gone.
Wardo required less attention than usual that afternoon, for charmed with his new paints, he sat at a low table in Betty's room while the girls sewed and talked, and coloured the pictures in every magazine he could lay his hands on. It was sunset when Lloyd noticed how long he had been bending over the table, and persuaded him to lay aside his brush till next day.
"Look at the pretty red sunset," she urged, trying to interest him in something else. "It's as red as a cherry."
He looked at it solemnly, considering her comparison. "No, it's wed as the blood of a thousand dwagons," he answered.
Lloyd looked at him in astonishment. "What do you know about dragons, child?"
"Betty telled me, when I painted one wif my paints, here in this book." He began turning the leaves of one of the magazines. "Dwagons is the stwongest fings there is," he added with a knowing wag of his head, feeling that she needed enlightenment. "But my fahvah could fight one—He's so stwong. My fahvah could fight anyfing."
"Always the same old story," said Lloyd in a low tone to Betty. "Isn't it dreadful? Always harping on the perfection of his hero. Seems to me it would have been bettah if she had not tried to keep the truth from him. The disillusionment is going to be feahful some of these days. It will shake his belief in everything."
As she rocked back and forth with his warm little body nestled against her, she thought how differently Ida would have chosen could she have known that this precious little soul was to be given into her keeping. If somebody had only gone to her with old Hildgardmar's warning—"Remember that in the right weaving of this web depends not only thy own happiness but the happiness of all those who come after thee," it might have made a world of difference. But nobody had opened her eyes to the enormity of the responsibility she was assuming, and now, maybe despite all her careful training and frantic efforts to make her little son what she would have him be, she might not be able to turn his life out of the channel of his inherited tastes and appetites.