As Lloyd listened a look of utter astonishment crept over her face.  Then she suddenly sprang from her chair, and running to her father put a hand on each shoulder.  “Papa Jack,” she cried, breathlessly, “look me straight in the eyes!  Are you in earnest?  You don’t mean that we are going abroad, do you?  It couldn’t be anything so lovely as that, could it?”

For answer he drew an envelope from his pocket and shook it before her eyes.  “Look for yourself,” he said.  “This is to show that we are listed for passage on a steamer going to Antwerp the first of June.  You may begin to pack your trunk next week, if you wish.”

It was impossible for Lloyd to eat any more after that.  She was too excited and happy, and there were countless questions she wanted to ask.  “It’s bettah than a hundred house pahties,” she exclaimed, as she blew out the last birthday candle.  “It’s the loveliest wondah-ball that evah was, and I’m suah that nobody in all Kentucky is as happy as I am now.”

CHAPTER II.

THE WONDER-BALL BEGINS TO UNWIND

Lloyd’s wonder-ball began to unroll the morning that her father took her to town to choose her own steamer trunk, and some of the things that were to go in it.  She packed and unpacked it many times in the two weeks that followed, although she knew that Mom Beck would do the final packing, and probably take out half the things which she insisted upon crowding into it.

Every morning it was a fresh delight to waken and find it standing by her dressing-table, reminding her of the journey they would soon begin together, and, when the journey was actually begun, she settled back in her seat with a happy sigh.

“Now, I’ll commence to count my packages as they fall out,” she said.  “I think I ought to count what I see from the car windows as one, for I enjoy looking out at the different places we pass moah than I evah enjoyed my biggest pictuah books.”

“Then count this number two,” said her father, putting a flat, square parcel in her lap.  Lloyd looked puzzled as she opened it.  There was only a blank book inside, bound in Russia leather, with the word “Record” stamped on it in gilt.

“I thought it would be a good idea to keep a partnership diary,” he said.  “We can take turns in writing in it, and some day, when you are grown, and your mother and I are old and gray, it will help us to remember much of the journey that otherwise might pass out of our memories.  So many things happen when one is travelling, that they are apt to crowd each other out of mind unless a record is kept of them.”

“We’ll begin as soon as we get on the ship,” said Lloyd.  “Mothah shall write first, then you, and then I. And let’s put photographs in it, too, as Mrs. Walton did in hers.  It will be like writing a real book.  Package numbah two is lovely, Papa Jack.”

It happened that Mr. Sherman was the only one who made an entry in the record for more than a week.  Mrs. Sherman felt the motion of the vessel too much to be able to do more than lie out on deck in her steamer-chair.  The Little Colonel, while she was not at all seasick, was afraid to attempt writing until she reached land.