“Well, aren’t you queer!” exclaimed Fidelia, opening her eyes wide and looking at Lloyd as if she were some sort of a freak.  It was her tone and look that were offensive, more than her words.  Lloyd was furious.

“No, I am not queah, Miss Sattawhite!” she exclaimed, moving away much ruffled.  As she flounced toward the cabin, her eyes very bright and her cheeks very red, she looked back with an indignant glance.  “I wish now that I’d told her why I’m sorry for Howl and Henny.  I’d be sorry for anybody that had such a rude sistah!”

But there were other children on the vessel whose acquaintance Lloyd made before the week was over.  She played checkers and quoits with the boys, and paper dolls with the girls, and one sunny morning she was invited to join the group under the stairs, where she heard the story of the white prince from beginning to end, and found out why he vanished.

Those were happy days on the big steamer, despite the fact that Howl and Henny haunted her like two hungry little shadows.  Sometimes the captain himself came down and walked with her.  The Shermans sat at his table, and he had grown quite fond of the little Kentucky girl with her soft Southern accent.  As they paced the deck hand in hand, he told her marvellous tales of the sea, till she grew to love the ship and the heaving water world around them, and wished that they might sail on and on, and never come to land until the end of the summer.

CHAPTER III.

LLOYD MEETS HERO

It was July when they reached Switzerland.  After three weeks of constant travel, it seemed good to leave boats and railroads for awhile, and stop to rest in the clean old town of Geneva.  The windows of the big hotel dining-room looked out on the lake, and the Little Colonel, sitting at breakfast the morning after their arrival, could scarcely eat for watching the scene outside.

Gay little pleasure boats flashed back and forth on the sparkling water.  The quay and bridge were thronged with people.  From open windows down the street came the tinkle of pianos, and out on the pier, where a party of tourists were crowding on to one of the excursion steamers, a band was playing its merriest holiday music.

Far away in the distance she could see the shining snow crown of Mont Blanc, and it gave her an odd feeling, as if she were living in a geography lesson, to know that she was bounded on one side by the famous Alpine mountain, and on the other by the River Rhone, whose source she had often traced on the map.  The sunshine, the music, and the gay crowds made it seem to Lloyd as if the whole world were out for a holiday, and she ate her melon and listened to the plans for the day with the sensation that something very delightful was about to happen.

“We’ll go shopping this morning,” said Mrs. Sherman.  “I want Lloyd to see some of those wonderful music boxes they make here; the dancing bears, and the musical hand-mirrors; the chairs that play when you sit down in them, and the beer-mugs that begin a tune when you lift them up.”