didn't want mothah to invite her, but she said she felt that we ought to. Eugenia's mothah is dead. She died three yeahs ago, and since then she's been kept in a boa'din' school most of the time. When she's not away at school she stays in some big hotel with her fathah, eithah in New York or at some summah resort. He is always so busy there's no one to pay any attention to her but her maid. They are very wealthy, and Eugenia has had the best of everything so long that I'm afraid she'll find the Valley dreadfully poah and poky. I imagine she's stuck up, too. She used to be, and she's always had her own way about everything."

"Number one doesn't sound very inviting," said Rob, with a sour grimace. "Who is your number two?" Lloyd held out the second envelope.

"I nevah saw her," said Lloyd, "but I feel as if we had always been old friends. Her mothah and mine used to go to school togethah heah in Lloydsboro Valley at the Girls' College, and they've written to each othah once a month for fifteen yeahs. Mrs. Ware is a widow now, and they have ha'd times, for they are poah, and she has foah children youngah than Joyce. But Joyce has had lots of things that neithah Eugenia nor I have had. Last yeah her cousin Kate took her abroad with her, and she studied French, and she had lots of beautiful times where they spent the wintah in France. Mrs. Ware sent some of the lettahs to mothah that Joyce wrote. One was about a Christmas tree that they gave to thirty little peasant children,—and so many queer things happened behind a gate that they called the 'Gate of the Giant Scissahs,' because there was a pair of enormous scissahs hanging ovah it, you know. Oh, it was just like a fairy tale, all the things that Joyce did when she was in Touraine."

"How old is she?" interrupted Rob.

"Just Eugenia's age, I believe, and she must be an interestin' sort of girl, for she draws beautifully. Mothah says that her sketches are fine, and that Joyce will be a real artist when she is grown."

"Number two is all right," said Rob, with an approving nod. "Next!" The Little Colonel held out the third envelope.

"One flew east and one flew west, so I s'pose this will fly into the cuckoo's nest," said Rob, as he read the address:

"Why, that's just what mothah calls the place," cried the Little Colonel, "the cuckoo's nest! She says that the cuckoo is the most careless bird in the world about the way it builds its nest. They weave a few twigs and sticks togethah just in any kind of way, and nevah mind a bit if their poah little young ones fall out of the nest. They seem to think that any kind of home is good enough, and that is the kind of a home that Elizabeth Lewis has. She is a poah little orphan, and is livin' on a farm up Green Rivah. Mother is her godmothah. That's why she is named Elizabeth Lloyd. Mrs. Lewis was an old school friend of mothah's, too, and she wants Joyce and Elizabeth and me to be as deah friends as she and Emily Ware and Joyce Lewis were, she says. That's why she invited them."

"And you don't know anything about this one?" questioned Rob.

"Not a thing. I shouldn't be su'prised if she's mighty countrified, for the farm is several miles from a railroad, and the people she lives with don't think of anything but work, yeah in and yeah out."

They had reached the post-office by this time, and Rob held out his hand for the letters. "I'll put them in for you," he said. Then, dropping them into the box, one by one, he repeated the rhyme:

Lloyd added, quickly:

"Joyce," said Rob, promptly.

"I think so, too," agreed the Little Colonel, stooping to fasten the locust blossoms more securely behind the pony's ears.

"Well, the invitations are off now. Come on, Tarbaby, and see if you can't beat Bobby Moore's old gray hawse so bad it will be ashamed to evah race again."

With that the little black pony was off like an arrow toward Locust, with the big gray horse thundering hard at its heels.

The dust flew, dogs barked, and chickens ran squawking across the road out of the way. Heads were thrust out of the windows as the two vanished up the dusty pike, and an old graybeard loafing in front of the corner grocery gave an amused chuckle. "Beats all how them two do get over the ground," he said. "They ride like Tarn O'Shanter, and I'll bet a quarter there's nothing on earth that either of 'em are afraid of."

A little while later the three white envelopes were jogging sociably along, side by side in a mail-bag, on their way to Louisville. But their course did not lie together long. In the city post-office they were separated, and sent on their different ways, like three white carrier-pigeons, to bid the guests make ready for the Little Colonel's house party.

CHAPTER II.

"ONE FLEW INTO THE CUCKOO'S NEST."

The letter for Jaynes's Post-office reached the end of its journey first. It wasn't much of a post-office; only an old case of pigeon-holes set up in one corner of a cross-roads store. A man riding over from the nearest town twice a week brought the mail-bag on horseback. So few letters found their way into this, particular bag that Squire Jaynes, who kept the store and post-office, felt a personal interest in every envelope that passed through his hands.

"Miss Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis," he spelled aloud, examining the address through his square-bowed spectacles with a critical squint. "Now, who under the canopy might she be?"

There was no one in the store to answer the question but an overgrown boy who had stopped to get his father's weekly paper. He sat on the counter dangling his big bare feet against a nail-keg, and catching flies in his sunburned hands, while he waited for the mail to be opened.

The squire peered inquiringly at him over the square-bowed spectacles. "Jake," he asked, "ever hear tell of a Miss Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis up this way?"

"Wy, sure!" drawled the boy. "That's Betty. The Appletons' Betty. Don't you know? She's that little orphan they're a-bringin' up. I worked there a while this spring, a-plowin'."

"Hump!" grunted the squire, slipping the letter into the pigeon-hole marked "A." "If that's who it is, I know all about her. Precious little bringing up she'll get at the Appletons', I can tell you that. They keep her because they're her nearest of living kin, which isn't very near, after all; fourth or fifth cousins to her father, or something like that. Any-how, they're all she's got, and her father made some arrangement with them before he died. Left a little money to pay her board, they say, but I've heard she works just