“Come on!” she cried, gaily, to her mother, as a porter with a trunk on his shoulder led the way up the spiral stairs.  “It makes me think of the old song you used to sing me about the spidah and the fly, ’The way into my pahlah is up a winding stair.’  Nobody but a circus acrobat could run up the whole flight without getting dizzy.  It’s a good thing we are only goin’ to the next floah.”

She ran around several circles of steps, and then paused to look back at her mother, who was waiting for Mr. Sherman’s helping arm.  “The elephant now goes round and round when the band begins to play,” quoted Lloyd, looking down on them, her face dimpling with laughter.

“Look out!” piped a shrill voice far above her.  “I’m coming!” Lloyd gave a hasty glance upward to the top floor, and drew back against the wall.  For down the banister, with the speed of a runaway engine, came sliding a small bare-legged boy.  Around and around the dizzy spiral he went, hugging the railing closely, and bringing up with a tremendous bump against the newel post at the bottom.

“Hullo!” he said, coolly, looking up at the Little Colonel.

“It’s Henny!” she exclaimed, in amazement.  “Henderson Sattawhite!  Of all people!  How did you get heah?”

But the boy had no time to waste in talking.  He stuck his thumb in his mouth, looked at her an instant, and then, climbing down from the banister, started to the top of the stairs as fast as his short legs could carry him, for another downward spin.

Lloyd waited for her mother to come up to the step on which she stood, and then said, with a look of concern, “Do you suppose they are all heah, ‘Fido’ an’ all of them?  And that Howl will follow me around as he did on shipboard, beggin’ for stories?  It will spoil all my fun with the girls if he does.”

“‘Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you,’” said her father, playfully pinching her cheek.  “You’ll find it easier to escape persecution on land than on shipboard.  Henny didn’t seem at all anxious to renew his acquaintance with you.  He evidently finds sliding down bannisters more to his taste.  Maybe Howell has found something equally interesting.”

“I certainly hope so,” said Lloyd, running on to their rooms at the end of the hall.  The casement window in her room looked out over a broad bouleyard, down the middle of which went a double row of trees, shading a strip of grass, where benches were set at intervals.

Lloyd leaned out to look and listen.  A company of soldiers was marching up the street in the gay red and blue of their French uniforms, to the music of a band.  A group of girls from a convent school passed by.  Then some nuns.  She stood there a long time, finding the panorama that passed her window so interesting that she forgot how time was passing, until her mother called to her that they were going down to lunch.

“I like it heah, evah so much,” she announced, as she followed her father and mother into the dining-room.  “Did you ask in the office, Papa Jack, when the girls would be back?”