Mrs. Lloyd

“ Lloyd looked at her in amazement.
"Another place!" she repeated. "Have you told your mother and father what you intend to do?"
"No, ma'am, not yet; but I dare say I shall before I leave."
"Do you think your mother will be pleased to hear that you have done this without asking her advice? When you were coming here, she wisely came to see me first and judge what sort of a home you were likely to have with me. I suppose you have been tempted by the offer of higher wages?" concluded Mrs. Lloyd.
"Yes, partly," answered Fanny. "Everybody wants as much money as they can get," added the girl. ”

“ Mrs. Lloyd had traveled through Europe, and spoke in a familiar way of the celebrated personages whom she had met abroad,--talked of art, music and architecture, literature, artists and literary men--displayed such high culture and easy acquaintance with themes quite above the range usually met with among ordinary people, that Mrs. Emerson felt really flattered with the compliment of a visit.
"My good friend, Mrs. Talbot," said Mrs. Lloyd, during their conversation, "has spoken of you so warmly that I could do no less than make overtures for an acquaintance, which I trust may prove agreeable. ”

“ Lloyd. "I should like above all things to meet you to-morrow evening."
Mrs. Emerson smiled as she answered,
"Husbands have rights, young know, as well as wives. We must consult their pleasure sometimes, as well as our own."
"Certainly--certainly." Mrs. Lloyd spoke with visible impatience.
"I promised to go with my husband to-morrow night," said Mrs. Emerson; "and, much as I may desire to meet you at Mrs. Talbot's, I am not at liberty to go there."
"In bonds! Ah me! Poor wives!" sighed Mrs. Talbot, in affected pity. "Not at liberty! The admission which comes to us from all sides." ”

“ Lloyd. Jane rose, embarrassed for her aunt and herself, and walked to the window. Mrs. Wilson attempted to speak, to rise; she could do neither, and she sunk back on her chair, convulsed with misery and passion. Mr. Lloyd mistook her agitation for the natural wailings of a mother, and with instinctive benevolence he advanced to her, and kindly taking her hand, said, "Be composed, I pray; I have intelligence that will comfort thee." ”

“ Gilbert Lloyd's friends--by which expression is meant the men of the set in which he regularly lived--saw little of Mrs. Lloyd, who was popularly supposed by them to be next to a nonentity, Lloyd being a man who "always had his own way." And indeed, so far as those words were ordinarily understood, Gilbert Lloyd's acquaintances were right. For months and months his comings and goings, his long absences, his conduct while at home, had been uncommented upon by Gertrude, save in the expression of her face and in the tone of her voice. ”

“ He was so accustomed to being washed and brushed and dressed that he made no objection to what most children of that age consider an unnecessary process, and when Lloyd went about it with unpractised fingers, he gravely corrected her mistakes, and laughed when she made a play of the buttonholes being hungry mouths, that swallowed the buttons in a hurry. Never in her life had she exerted herself so much to be entertaining, for she wanted to take him away without a scene. She wanted, too, for him to look his best, that he might win his own way at The Locusts. ”

“ We were met at the door by Owen Lloyd himself—a man in whose countenance guilelessness, even to simplicity, seemed stamped by nature's own true hand. So much, thought I, for the reliance to be placed on physiognomy! 'I have brought you a customer,' said Mr Jones; 'but he is as deaf as a stone.' I was courteously invited in by signs; and with much hallooing and shouting, it was finally settled that, after dinner, I should look over Mr Lloyd's stock of wood. Dinner had just been placed on the table by Mrs Lloyd and her daughter. ”

“ There never was a finer gentleman than old Doctor Lloyd. He was always doing kindnesses to everybody; and he had a way of doing them that made you feel as if you was doing the favour, not him. Well, well, let Old Lady Lloyd keep herself and her money to herself if she wants to. If she doesn’t want our company, she doesn’t have to suffer it, that’s all. ”

“ With her pity and compassion for the sick child there arose in Lloyd a certain unreasoned, intuitive obstinacy, a banding together of all her powers and faculties in one great effort at resistance, a steadfastness under great stress, a stubbornness, that shut its ears and eyes. It was her one dominant characteristic rising up, strong and insistent the instant she knew herself to be thwarted in her desires or checked in a course she believed to be right and good. ”

“ Lloyd was really a disinterested man. He had so long made it a rule to imitate the Parent of the universe, in still educing good from evil, that, in every trial of his life, it was his first aim to ascertain his duty, and then to perform it. He could weave the happiness of others, even though no thread of his own was in the fabric. In the present case, he resolved still to watch over Jane; to win the friendship of Erskine, to endeavour to rectify his principles, to exert over him an insensible influence, and, if possible, to render him more worthy of his enviable destiny. ”

“ Lloyd with a tremulous accent, and his dim eyes suffused with tears—“Caroline!—ay, truly her daughter would be named Caroline.” An instant after, he added, drawing himself up with an air of pride and some sternness: “Caroline Lloyd, sir, is a person who, by birth, and, I doubt not, character and attainments, is a fitting match for the son of the proudest merchant of this proud city.” ”

“ Jobson, thank you; Mrs. Lloyd is alive and very well."
"That's good hearing, I'm sure; and grown into a fine woman, I've no doubt. Those slight slips of girls with plenty of bone, when they fill out, improve wonderful;" and then Mrs. Jobson changed the subject, and launched into questions of domestic economy into which it is not necessary to follow her.
And the next day Gilbert Lloyd prepared to play the last trump-card which he found in his hand when he so carefully examined it on the night he left Baden. ”

“ Lloyd were not well clad and cared for, after witnessing one of his magnificent entertainments? Who could say that they did not seem to glory in being the slaves of such a master? Who, but a fanatic, could get up any sympathy for persons whose every movement was agile, easy and graceful, and who evinced a consciousness of high superiority? And who would ever venture to suspect that Col. Lloyd was subject to the troubles of ordinary mortals? Master and slave seem alike in their glory here? ”

“ It mortified Lloyd dreadfully to have [315] them quarrel in her presence, and have them pour out their grievances for her to decide which was in the wrong.
She always rose to go at that juncture, flushed and embarrassed, and vowing inwardly she would never visit them again. But they always managed to extract a promise before she got to the door that she would drop in again the next time she was passing.
"Somehow you seem to get husband's mind off himself," Mrs. Apwall would whisper at parting. "He isn't half so touchy when you've cheered him up a spell." ”

“ He liked Jack, but he didn't want Lloyd to sing his praises so enthusiastically.
"Oh, I'm only a girl without any especial talent," answered Lloyd, "so I can't expect to amount to as much as Joyce and Betty. But I want to live up to our club motto, and to leave a Road of the Loving Heart behind me in everybody's memory, and to be just as much like mothah and my beautiful Grandmothah Amanthis as I can. A home-makah, grandfathah says, is moah needed in the world than an artist or an authah. He consoles me that way sometimes, when I feel bad because I can't do the things I'd like to. ”

“ She was amazed when Lloyd called to her that they were going down to lunch. She had sat the entire morning wrapped in her steamer-rug, looking out across the water with far-seeing eyes. As the blue waves rose and fell, her thoughts had risen and swayed to their rhythmic motion, and begun to shape themselves into rhyme. Line after line was taking form, and she wished impatiently that Lloyd had not called her. How could one be hungry when some inward power, past understanding, was making music in one's soul? ”

“ Lloyd yawned. "Excuse me for saying it," she began teasingly, "but I don't see how you can get up so much interest in anybody like that, even if he is yoah brothah-in-law's brothah. It sounds to me as if he is just plain lazy and I nevah did have any use for a man that had to be nagged all [40] the time to keep his ambition up to high-watah mark."
Gay sat up in bed in her earnestness. "Oh Lloyd, don't say that!" she protested. "Don't judge him till you've seen him. He's perfectly dear in lots of ways, in spite of his faults. You'll find him fascinating. Everybody does. ”

“ I should think she'd rather stay with her husband."
"Bosh!" said Gay. "Being married doesn't change a person's disposition and make tame old hens out of lively little humming-birds. That's just what Lucy was, a dear little humming-bird, always in a flutter of doing and going; and you needn't tell me that she enjoys poking there at home with nobody but Jameson, as much as she would enjoy going out with us and doing things."
"But he's her husband!" insisted Lloyd, as if that term covered all that could be desired of human companionship. ”

“ Lloyd, listening with breathless interest to the friend whom she loved with all a little girl's adoring enthusiasm for an older one whom she has taken as her model, gave a passionate assent.
"Oh, I knew you'd feel that way about it," said Ida, reaching out to clasp Lloyd's hand with the white one on which glimmered the pearl. "It is so good to have some one to talk to who can understand and sympathize." ”

“ Before her death she gave her daughter to her sister, saying to her, "Let her be thine own, dear Anne. She is but one year younger than thy Robert: and, if it please God so to incline their hearts, let them be united, that, as we have not been divided in life, our children may not be. Keep her from the world and its vanities, and train her for Heaven, dear sister."
Mrs. Lloyd loved her sister so devotedly, that she would, at any time, have yielded her wishes to Mrs. ”

“ He's well born and talented and rich and fairly good-looking. He's so entertaining one never tires of his company, good-hearted and generous to a fault, and—Oh Lloyd, please say you'll take enough interest to keep him keyed up to the right pitch for awhile. It's all he lacks to make a splendid man."
"Do you know, I think that's a mighty big lack," said Lloyd, honestly. "I've had strings on my harp that wouldn't stay strung. It's the most exasperating thing in the world. You know how it is, with a violin. ”

“ Owen Lloyd, I should tell you, is married to a very amiable, superior sort of woman, and has one child, a daughter named Caroline, an elegant, gentle-mannered, beautiful girl I admit, to whom my wife was much attached, and she was consequently a frequent visitor in Brook Street. This I always felt was very imprudent; and the result was, that my son Arthur Smith—only about two years her senior; she was just turned of seventeen when her father was compelled to fly from his creditors—formed a silly, boyish attachment for her. ”

“ Lloyd were different from every body else in the world, but now you puzzle me more than ever. I expected to see your aunt Wilson look grum—that's natural to her, when any good befalls any one else; and Elvira, who every body knows has been setting her cap every way for Erskine, ever since she was old enough to think of a husband; she has a right to have her eyes as red as a ferret's. ”

“ The sight of Lloyd and Betty in their dainty dresses aroused her worst jealousy, and awoke the old bitterness that had grown up in her slum life, and that always raged within her whenever she saw people with whom fortune had dealt more kindly than with herself. ”

“ I'm just picturing two grown men, frowning in earnest concentration, their ears separated by a few inches of plastic, and it's funny."
"Not if you're correct, it isn't," said Lloyd, and Andra stopped smiling. "As soon as he hears you, the jig's up."
"Maybe—" She leaned forward with eager hope. "Maybe it would be a good thing, Lloyd. He's a powerful man in the Hive. If he knew your problem, he could use his influence to do something, couldn't he?"
"My father loves me, sure," said Lloyd, with a wry quirk to his lips. "But I don't think he loves anything so much as his position in our society. ”

“ I'll always be glad that we had this experience."
"And it wasn't at all like you said it would be," added Lloyd, laughingly, "'scorched oatmeal and dried apples and old cats watching at every keyhole.' There was some eavesdropping, but it wasn't the teachahs who did it, and we had moah fun getting even with the girl who did than I could tell in a week. I'll tell you about our playing ghost, and all the rest, when you come out Christmas."
"Then I'll have to hand over the candy," he said. "You've earned it, if you've stood the strain this long and kept as hale and hearty as you look." ”

“ Lloyd had taken part in many of the mischievous adventures, and she sat smiling over the novelty of hearing herself described [243] with all the imperious ways, naughty temper, and winning charm that had been hers at the age of eight.
"It is like looking at an old photograph of oneself," she said, after awhile. "It seems so strange to be one of the characters in a book, and listen to stories about oneself."
"That reminds me of the game I spoke of," said Miss Allison. "I invented it when I was about your age. ”