"Kling! lang! ling! She hears her bonny bride-bells ring."
When he had sung it through, Lloyd's handkerchief was no longer making hasty passes at her eyes.
"I wonder what my little sister Elsie is doing to-night," he said. "That song always makes me think of her."
"Tell me about her," said Lloyd, who wanted a little more time to regain her composure. He understood why she asked, and began to talk, simply to divert her mind from her recent fright. But presently her eager questions showed that she was interested, and he talked on, feeling that it was good to have such an appreciative listener. He began to enjoy the reminiscences himself, and as he talked, the old days seemed to draw very near, till they gave him a homesick feeling for the old place that would never welcome him again. It had gone to strangers, he told her, and Aunt Patricia was dead.
"Poor old Aunt Patricia," he added, after laughing over one of the pranks they had played on her. "She never did understand boys. We tried her patience terribly. She did the best she could for us, but I've often thought how different it would have been if my mother had lived. I had a letter from Daddy to-day, in answer to the one I wrote about leaving school. It broke me all up. Made me think of the time when I was a little fellow, and he rocked me to sleep one night when I had been naughty, and explained why I ought to be a good boy. It almost made me wish I could be a little kid again, and curl up in his arms, and tell him I was sorry, and would turn over a new leaf."
Lloyd liked the affectionate, almost wistful way in which he spoke of his father as Daddy. Whatever indignation she had felt toward him was wiped away by those confidences. And when he apologized presently, in his most winning way, for not keeping his engagement, and told her frankly what had prevented, she liked him better than she had done before. She wondered how it could be so, but she felt now that she knew him as well as Malcolm or Rob, and that their friendship was not the growth of a few weeks, but that it reached back to the very beginning of things.
"You can't imagine what a fascination there is in seeing that roulette wheel whirl around," he said, "but I'm done with that now. Daddy's letter settled the question. And even if that hadn't come, I would have stopped. I don't want to lose my precious turquoises--my friendship stones," he added, meaningly. "I know how you and Joyce feel about it. Look at old Alaka's eyes, twinkling up there over Camelback. They seem to know that I have heeded their warning."