“Just look, old fellow.  There’s dollars and dollars in there.  See what you’ve done for the Red Cross.  If it hadn’t been for you, Betty never would have written the play.”

“And if it hadn’t been for Betty’s writing the play you never would have sent me this heart of gold,” said Malcolm in an aside to Lloyd, as he unfastened her locket and chain from his shield.  “Am I to keep it always, fair princess?”

“No, indeed!” she answered, laughingly, holding out her hand to take it.  “Papa Jack gave me that, and I wouldn’t give it up to any knight undah the sun.”

“That’s right, little daughter,” whispered her father, “I am not in such a hurry to give up my Princess Winsome as the old king was.  Come, dear, help me find Betty.  I want to tell her what a grand success it was.”

Lloyd slipped a hand in her father’s and led him toward a wing whither the shy little godmother had fled, without a glance in Malcolm’s direction.  But afterward, when she came out of the dressing-room, wrapped in her long party-cloak, she saw him standing by the door.  “Good night!” he said, waving his plumed helmet.  Then, with a mischievous smile, he sang in an undertone: 

    “Go bid the princess in the tower
     Forget all thought of sorrow. 
     Her true knight will return to her
     With joy, on some glad morrow.”

CHAPTER XIV.

IN CAMP

Several miles from Lloydsboro Valley, where a rapid brook runs by the ruins of an old paper-mill, a roaring waterfall foams and splashes.  Even in the long droughts of midsummer it is green and cool there, for the spray, breaking on the slippery stones, freshens the ferns on the bank, and turns its moss to the vivid hue of an emerald.  Near by, in an open pasture, sloping down from a circle of wooded hills, lies an ideal spot for a small camp.

It was here that Mrs. Walton and Miss Allison came one warm afternoon, the Monday following the entertainment, with a wagonette full of children.  Ranald, Malcolm, Keith, and Rob Moore had ridden over earlier in the day to superintend the coloured men who dug the trenches and pitched the tents.  By the time the wagonette arrived, fuel enough to last a week was piled near the stones where the camp-fire was laid, and everything was in readiness for the gay party.  Flags floated from the tent poles, and Dinah, the young coloured woman who was to be the cook, came up from the spring, balancing a pail of water on her head, smiling broadly.

As the boys and girls swarmed out and scurried away in every direction like a horde of busy ants, Mrs. Walton turned to her sister with a laugh.  “Did we lose any of them on the way, Allison?  We’d better count noses.”

“No, we are all here:  eight girls, four boys, the four already on the field, Dinah and her baby, and ourselves, twenty in all.”

“Twenty-one, counting Hero,” corrected Mrs. Walton, as the great St. Bernard went leaping after Lloyd, sniffing at the tents, and barking occasionally to express his interest in the frolic.  “He seems to be enjoying it as much as any of us.”