The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding by Annie F. Johnston

Author:Annie F. Johnston
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620128497
Publisher: Duke Classics

Chapter VIII - "Shadows of the World Appear"

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THE long July days slipped by, and Lloyd, looking back on them as Hildegarde looked into her magic glass, saw only pleasant scenes mirrored in their memory. The fortunate things, the smiling faces, the pleasant happenings were hers, and for a time even other people's troubles, those shadows of the world that are always with us, left her daily outlook undimmed.

Like Hildegarde, too, she went on with her weaving, but wholly unconscious that the shuttle of her thoughts was shaping her web to fit the shoulders of the dark-eyed knight who came oftenest. Mrs. Sherman saw it and was troubled.

"Jack," she said to her husband one afternoon, when he had come out from town earlier than usual, and they were wandering around the shady grounds together, planning some improvements, "I'm afraid those Spanish lessons are a mistake. Lloyd is seeing entirely too much of Mr. Harcourt. He is here morning, noon and night."

Mr. Sherman gave a quick glance towards the tennis court where the two were finishing a lively game. "Don't you worry, Elizabeth," was his placid answer. "It isn't as if she'd never been used to such devotion. She's never known anything else. Malcolm and Keith used to spend fully as much time with her, and Rob Moore fairly lived over here."

"Yes, but this is different," protested Mrs. Sherman. "They were mere boys, and she dominated them, but Leland Harcourt is a man, and an experienced one socially, and he is dominating her. I can see it in her quick deference to his opinions, and her evident desire to please him. Not evident to him, perhaps, but plain enough to me. I've been thinking that it might be a good thing for us to go to the springs for awhile or to the sea-shore or some place where she'd meet other people. In a quiet little country place like this a man like Leland Harcourt looms up big on a young girl's horizon; a girl just out of school, eager for new interests. It isn't wise in us to allow her to be restricted just to his society, when we could so easily give her the safe-guard of contrasts."

Mr. Sherman looked down at his wife with an indulgent smile.

"Don't you worry," he repeated. "Lloyd will do a lot of romantic day-dreaming probably, but she has my 'yard-stick' and I have her promise."

"But Jack, I verily believe the child thinks he measures up to all your requirements. And really there is nothing one can urge against his character. It's more a matter of temperament. I am sure she couldn't be happy with him. She's just at the romantic age now to be very much impressed with that kind of a man. If she were older she would see his shallowness—his lack of purpose, his intense selfishness. I don't think that we ought to shut our eyes to the possible outcome of this constant companionship we are allowing."

"Well," he answered hesitatingly, slow to acknowledge his wife's distrust of Lloyd's judgment, yet quick to see the wisdom of her point of view.

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