The Little Colonel was waiting in the carriage at the depot when Mrs. Sherman and Betty stepped off the train at Lloydsboro Valley.  Rob Moore had come down, too, curious for a glimpse at the first arrival.  He grinned at the expression of surprise and dismay on the Little Colonel’s face as her glance fell on Betty.  Was it that her little guest had no hat, she wondered, or was it because no one in the cuckoo’s nest had ever taught her any better than to go travelling in such style?  And carrying a little old-fashioned willow basket, too!  How odd and countrified she looked!

But Lloyd was too ladylike to show her disappointment.  She climbed out of the carriage and greeted Betty as graciously as her mother had done.  Then straightway she forgot her annoyance, for the sweet friendliness of the little face smiling up into hers was irresistible.

“Does the Valley look as you thought it would, Elizabeth?” asked Mrs. Sherman, as the carriage rolled homeward, past handsome suburban homes with closely cut lawns and trimly kept paths.

“No,” said Betty, hesitatingly.  “You see I thought you lived in the country, and I suppose it is a sort of country, but not the kind that I live in.  Here everything is pruned and raked until it looks as if it had just had its hair parted smoothly in the middle, and its shoe-strings tied.  At home there is so much underbrush, and such a tangle of weeds and high grass and briers, that the yards look as if they’d forgotten to comb their hair when they got up, and had gone around all day with it hanging down their backs in snarls.”

The Little Colonel laughed.  The newcomer had amusing fancies, at any rate.

“And there’s the same difference in everything else,” continued Betty.  “The same difference that there was between Cinderella’s pumpkin and her gilded coach.  It was a pumpkin all the time, only it looked different after it was bewitched.  And do you know,” she said, with a charming little burst of confidence that made Lloyd’s heart warm toward her, “I began to feel bewitched myself, from the first moment that godmother spoke to me?  She called me Elizabeth, and at home I am just plain Betty.  Oh, I think it is perfectly beautiful to have a godmother.”

She looked shyly up at the face above her with such a winning smile that Mrs. Sherman drew her toward her with a quick hug and kiss.  Lloyd gave a little wriggle of satisfaction.  “I’m so glad you’ve come!” she cried, so completely won by Betty’s artlessness that she forgot her first impression.

“Heah we are at Locust,” she said, as they drove into the long avenue.  “I wish you could have seen the trees when they were all in bloom.  It was like a picture.”

“It is like a picture now, I think,” said Betty, gazing up at the giant branches overheard that seemed to be waving a welcome.  There was a listening expression on her face, as if she understood their leafy whisperings.  Lloyd and her mother exchanged glances, and after that she was disturbed by no word until the carriage stopped.  They understood her silent pleasure in the great trees that they themselves had learned to look upon as old friends.