The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding

by Annie F. Johnston

The question made such a profound impression on him he could not shake it off, and acting on the impulse of the moment he decided to take it to the Judge himself for an answer. He would show him the winsome little lad who bore his name. He would demand of him what right he had to withhold from him the protection and shelter that was his heritage. The child's father had been cast off in proud scorn for his profligate ways. Secretly the Colonel had always thought that his old friend had shirked responsibility, and that the open repudiation of him by his family had given Ned his final downward shove.

It made no difference to the Colonel that Ned's name was a forbidden one in the household. He'd tell Cy Bannon a few things. Then his face softened and he smiled a trifle foolishly, muttering something about its being a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The Judge might come back at him with the argument that he had been just as harsh with his own child for far less cause; but that would only give him a chance to urge a reconciliation on the ground that he had surrendered gracefully, and had been glad of it ever since. Cy would be a mighty queer sort of man, he concluded, if he could hold out against such a little grandson as Wardo. He was a child to walk into anybody's affections.

Lloyd had left the pair so deeply absorbed in war-stories, that she was surprised on her return to the library a little later, to find no trace of either of them. They'd gone for a trolley ride Walker told her, and expected to be gone most of the morning. So relieved of her responsibility Lloyd made a longer visit in Rollington than usual. The crisis had been passed some time now, and Ida was so much better she was beginning to talk about Wardo's return. She would be able to sit up in a few days. As Lloyd entertained her with accounts of Wardo's sayings and doings she realized more and more what a large place he had come to fill in the household, and how sorely they would all miss him when they had to give him up. Ida's future looked so hopeless. It would be a long time before she would be strong enough to begin sewing again. She talked wearily of the burden she must assume as soon as possible, and Lloyd came away weighed down with a sense of the injustice and wrong in the world and her helplessness to right it.

It was nearly noon when she reached the house. Wardo, who had just come in with her grandfather, rushed down the steps to meet her, his sailor hat on the back of his head, and his arms outstretched to give her glad welcome. He clasped her around the knees, and put up his face to be kissed. His morning's adventures made him feel that he had been away an age. Then his voice trembling with the importance of his news, he announced the three things of his visit which had made the most impression on him.

"I saw the place on my gwan'fahvah's head where the Yankee bullet hit him, wite over his eye! An' the Colonel he shaked his stick at my gwan'fahvah, and got wed in the face when he talked." Then digging down into the mite of a pocket that graced his blouse, he triumphantly brought out the third item, a silver dollar that Judge Bannon had given him.

By this time the Colonel had come out, and in answer to Lloyd's excited questions confessed the truth of Wardo's tale. He had shaken his stick at the Judge. They had had a stormy interview and he lost his temper. He was sorry at first that he had taken Wardo, the child was so frightened, but it proved a good move, for his appealing little face pleaded his cause better than anything else could have done, and in the end the Judge was completely won over by his handsome little namesake.

"And," concluded the Colonel triumphantly, "he's promised to take Ned back and give him one more chance. He'll keep the lad and his mother in any event, and he's to send for them just as soon as she's able to be moved."

"Oh, you blessed old peace-makah!" cried Lloyd running up the steps to throw her arms around his neck and give him as rapturous a hug as Wardo had given her. "You're a perfect darling, and you've made me so happy I don't know what to do or say. I believe I'm as happy as Ida will be when she heahs it, and I'm going ovah there the minute I've had lunch, to tell her. You're a public benefactah and everything else in the dictionary that's extra nice and fine."

It was joy to the Colonel to have his praises sung like that, and he went around the rest of the week with a self-satisfied virtuous feeling that kept him beaming benignly on everything and everybody. In such an angelic humour was he, that Walker confided to Mom Beck that he was "right sma'ht worried 'bout ole Marse."

It was a day of surprises for the whole family. On Lloyd's return from her second visit to Rollington, about the middle of the afternoon, she saw Jack Ware on the rear platform of the trolley-car, which passed the carriage when she was nearly home. He had arrived two days sooner than any one expected he could. Taller, broader and browner by far than the slim lad who waved her farewell from the Wigwam, he was unmistakably the same Jack, and she would have recognized him anywhere.