The Golden Road by Lucy Maud Montgomery (page 3)

colours. It must be very tiresome if you don’t.”

“When you think of me what colour is it?” asked Peter curiously.

“Yellow,” answered the Story Girl promptly. “And Cecily is a sweet pink, like those mayflowers, and Sara Ray is very pale blue, and Dan is red and Felix is yellow, like Peter, and Bev is striped.”

“What colour am I?” asked Felicity, amid the laughter at my expense.

“You’re–you’re like a rainbow,” answered the Story Girl rather reluctantly. She had to be honest, but she would rather not have complimented Felicity. “And you needn’t laugh at Bev. His stripes are beautiful. It isn’t HE that is striped. It’s just the THOUGHT of him. Peg Bowen is a queer sort of yellowish green and the Awkward Man is lilac. Aunt Olivia is pansy-purple mixed with gold, and Uncle Roger is navy blue.”

“I never heard such nonsense,” declared Felicity. The rest of us were rather inclined to agree with her for once. We thought the Story Girl was making fun of us. But I believe she really had a strange gift of thinking in colours. In later years, when we were grown up, she told me of it again. She said that everything had colour in her thought; the months of the year ran through all the tints of the spectrum, the days of the week were arrayed as Solomon in his glory, morning was golden, noon orange, evening crystal blue, and night violet. Every idea came to her mind robed in its own especial hue. Perhaps that was why her voice and words had such a charm, conveying to the listeners’ perception such fine shadings of meaning and tint and music.

“Well, let’s go and have something to eat,” suggested Dan. “What colour is eating, Sara?”

“Golden brown, just the colour of a molasses cooky,” laughed the Story Girl.

We sat on the ferny bank of the pool and ate of the generous basket Aunt Janet had provided, with appetites sharpened by the keen spring air and our wilderness rovings. Felicity had made some very nice sandwiches of ham which we all appreciated except Dan, who declared he didn’t like things minced up and dug out of the basket a chunk of boiled pork which he proceeded to saw up with a jack-knife and devour with gusto.

“I told ma to put this in for me. There’s some CHEW to it,” he said.

“You are not a bit refined,” commented Felicity.

“Not a morsel, my love,” grinned Dan.

“You make me think of a story I heard Uncle Roger telling about Cousin Annetta King,” said the Story Girl. “Great-uncle Jeremiah King used to live where Uncle Roger lives now, when Grandfather King was alive and Uncle Roger was a boy. In those days it was thought rather coarse for a young lady to have too hearty an appetite, and she was more admired if she was delicate about what she ate. Cousin Annetta set out to be very refined indeed. She pretended to have no appetite at all. One afternoon she was invited to tea at Grandfather King’s when they had some special company–people from Charlottetown. Cousin Annetta said she could hardly eat anything. ‘You know, Uncle Abraham,’ she said, in a very affected, fine-young-lady voice, ‘I really hardly eat enough to keep a bird alive. Mother says she wonders how I continue to exist.’ And she picked and pecked until Grandfather King declared he would like to throw something at her. After tea Cousin Annetta went home, and just about dark Grandfather King went over to Uncle Jeremiah’s on an errand. As he passed the open, lighted pantry window he happened to glance in, and what do you think he saw? Delicate Cousin Annetta standing at the dresser, with a big loaf of bread beside her and a big platterful of cold, boiled pork in front of her; and Annetta was hacking off great chunks, like Dan there, and gobbling them down as if she was starving. Grandfather King couldn’t resist the temptation. He stepped up to the window and said, ‘I’m glad your appetite has come back to you, Annetta. Your mother needn’t worry about your continuing to exist as long as you can tuck away fat, salt pork in that fashion.’

“Cousin Annetta never forgave him, but she never pretended to be delicate again.”

“The Jews don’t believe in eating pork,” said Peter.

“I’m glad I’m not a Jew and I guess Cousin Annetta was too,” said Dan.

“I like bacon, but I can never look at a pig without wondering if they were ever intended to be eaten,” remarked Cecily naively.

When we finished our lunch the barrens were already wrapping themselves in a dim, blue dusk and falling upon rest in dell and dingle. But out in the open there was still much light of a fine emerald-golden sort and the robins whistled us home in it. “Horns of Elfland” never sounded more sweetly around hoary castle and ruined fane than those vesper calls of the robins from the twilight spruce woods and across green pastures lying under the pale radiance of a young moon.

When we reached home we found that Miss Reade had been up to the hill farm on an errand and was just leaving. The Story Girl went for a walk with her and came back with an important expression on her face.

“You look as if you had a story to tell,” said Felix.

“One is growing. It isn’t a whole story yet,” answered the Story Girl mysteriously.

“What is it?” asked Cecily.

“I can’t tell you till it’s fully grown,” said the Story Girl. “But I’ll tell you a pretty little story the Awkward Man told us– told me–tonight. He was walking in his garden as we went by, looking at his tulip beds. His tulips are up ever so much higher than ours, and I asked him how he managed to coax them along so early. And he said HE didn’t do it–it was all the work of the pixies who lived in the woods across the brook. There were more pixy babies than usual this spring, and the mothers were in a hurry for the cradles. The tulips are the pixy babies’ cradles, it seems. The mother pixies come out of the woods at twilight and rock their tiny little brown babies to sleep in the tulip cups. That is the reason why tulip blooms last so much longer than other blossoms. The pixy babies must have a cradle until they are grown up. They grow very fast, you see, and the Awkward Man says on a spring evening, when the tulips are out, you can hear the sweetest, softest, clearest, fairy music in his garden, and it is the pixy folk singing as they rock the pixy babies to sleep.”

“Then the Awkward Man says what isn’t true,” said Felicity severely.

CHAPTER XIII

A SURPRISING ANNOUNCEMENT

“Nothing exciting has happened for ever so long,” said the Story Girl discontentedly, one late May evening, as we lingered under the wonderful white bloom of the cherry trees. There was a long row of them in the orchard, with a Lombardy poplar at either end, and a hedge of lilacs behind. When the wind blew over them all the spicy breezes of Ceylon’s isle were never sweeter.

It was a time of wonder and marvel, of the soft touch of silver rain on greening fields, of the incredible delicacy of young leaves, of blossom in field and garden and wood. The whole world bloomed in a flush and tremor of maiden loveliness, instinct with all the evasive, fleeting charm of spring and girlhood and young morning. We felt and enjoyed it all without understanding or analyzing it. It was enough to be glad and young with spring on the golden road.

“I don’t like excitement very much,” said Cecily. “It makes one so tired. I’m sure it was exciting enough when Paddy was missing, but we didn’t find that very pleasant.”

“No, but it was interesting,” returned the Story Girl thoughtfully. “After all, I believe I’d rather be miserable than dull.”

“I wouldn’t then,” said Felicity decidedly. “And you need never be dull when you have work to do. ‘Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do!'”

“Well, mischief is interesting,” laughed the Story Girl. “And I thought you didn’t think it lady-like to speak of that person, Felicity?”

“It’s all right if you call him by his polite name,” said Felicity stiffly.

“Why does the Lombardy poplar hold its branches straight up in the air like that, when all the other poplars hold theirs out or hang them down?” interjected Peter, who had been gazing intently at the slender spire showing darkly against the fine blue eastern sky.

“Because it grows that way,” said Felicity.

“Oh I know a story about that,” cried the Story Girl. “Once upon a time an old man found the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end. There IS a pot there, it is said, but it is very hard to find because you can never get to the rainbow’s end before it vanishes from your sight. But this old man found it, just at sunset, when Iris, the guardian of the rainbow gold, happened to be absent. As he was a long way from home, and the pot was very big and heavy, he decided to hide it until morning and then get one of his sons to go with him and help him carry it. So he hid it under the boughs of the sleeping poplar tree.

“When Iris came back she missed the pot of gold and of course she was in a sad way about it. She sent Mercury, the messenger of the gods, to look for it, for she didn’t dare leave the rainbow again, lest somebody should run off with that too. Mercury asked all the trees if they had seen the pot of gold, and the elm, oak and pine pointed to the poplar and said,

“‘The poplar can tell you where it is.’

“‘How can I tell you where it is?’ cried the poplar, and she held up all her branches in surprise, just as we hold up our hands–and down tumbled the pot of gold. The poplar was amazed and indignant, for she was a very honest tree. She stretched her boughs high above her head and declared that she would always hold them like that, so that nobody could hide stolen gold under them again. And she taught all the little poplars she knew to stand the same way, and that is why Lombardy poplars always do. But the aspen poplar leaves are always shaking, even on the very calmest day. And do you know why?”

And then she told us the old legend that the cross on which the Saviour of the world suffered was made of aspen poplar wood and so never again could its poor, shaken, shivering leaves know rest or peace. There was an aspen in the orchard, the very embodiment of youth and spring in its litheness and symmetry. Its little leaves were hanging tremulously, not yet so fully blown as to hide its development of bough and twig, making poetry against the spiritual tints of a spring sunset.

“It does look sad,” said Peter, “but it is a pretty tree, and it wasn’t its fault.”

“There’s a heavy dew and it’s time we stopped talking nonsense and went in,” decreed Felicity. “If we don’t we’ll all have a cold, and then we’ll be miserable enough, but it won’t be very exciting.”

“All the same, I wish something exciting would happen,” finished the Story Girl, as we walked up through the orchard, peopled with its nun-like shadows.

“There’s a new moon tonight, so may be you’ll get your wish,” said Peter. “My Aunt Jane didn’t believe there was anything in the moon business, but you never can tell.”

The Story Girl did get her wish. Something happened the very next day. She joined us in the afternoon with a quite indescribable expression on her face, compounded of triumph, anticipation, and regret. Her eyes betrayed that she had been crying, but in them shone a chastened exultation. Whatever the Story Girl mourned over it was evident she was not without hope.

“I have some news to tell you,” she said importantly. “Can you guess what it is?”

We couldn’t and wouldn’t try.

“Tell us right off,” implored Felix. “You look as if it was something tremendous.”

“So it is. Listen–Aunt Olivia is going to be married.”

We stared in blank amazement. Peg Bowen’s hint had faded from our minds and we had never put much faith in it.

“Aunt Olivia! I don’t believe it,” cried Felicity flatly. “Who told you?”

“Aunt Olivia herself. So it is perfectly true. I’m awfully sorry in one way–but oh, won’t it be splendid to have a real wedding in the family? She’s going to have a big wedding–and I am to be bridesmaid.”

“I shouldn’t think you were old enough to be a bridesmaid,” said Felicity sharply.

“I’m nearly fifteen. Anyway, Aunt Olivia says I have to be.”

“Who’s she going to marry?” asked Cecily, gathering herself together after the shock, and finding that the world was going on just the same.

“His name is Dr. Seton and he is a Halifax man. She met him when she was at Uncle Edward’s last summer. They’ve been engaged ever since. The wedding is to be the third week in June.”

“And our school concert comes off the next week,” complained Felicity. “Why do things always come together like that? And what are you going to do if Aunt Olivia is going away?”

“I’m coming to live at your house,” answered the Story Girl rather timidly. She did not know how Felicity might like that. But Felicity took it rather well.

“You’ve been here most of the time anyhow, so it’ll just be that you’ll sleep and eat here, too. But what’s to become of Uncle Roger?”

“Aunt Olivia says he’ll have to get married, too. But Uncle Roger says he’d rather hire a housekeeper than marry one, because in the first case he could turn her off if he didn’t like her, but in the second case he couldn’t.”

“There’ll be a lot of cooking to do for the wedding,” reflected Felicity in a tone of satisfaction.

“I s’pose Aunt Olivia will want some rusks made. I hope she has plenty of tooth-powder laid in,” said Dan.

“It’s a pity you don’t use some of that tooth-powder you’re so fond of talking about yourself,” retorted Felicity. “When anyone has a mouth the size of yours the teeth show so plain.”

“I brush my teeth every Sunday,” asseverated Dan.

“Every Sunday! You ought to brush them every DAY.”

“Did anyone ever hear such nonsense?” demanded Dan sincerely.

“Well, you know, it really does say so in the Family Guide,” said Cecily quietly.

“Then the Family Guide people must have lots more spare time than I have,” retorted Dan contemptuously.

“Just think, the Story Girl will have her name in the papers if she’s bridesmaid,” marvelled Sara Ray.

“In the Halifax papers, too,” added Felix, “since Dr. Seton is a Halifax man. What is his first name?”

“Robert.”

“And will we have to call him Uncle Robert?”

“Not until he’s married to her. Then we will, of course.”

“I hope your Aunt Olivia won’t disappear before the ceremony,” remarked Sara Ray, who was surreptitiously reading “The Vanquished Bride,” by Valeria H. Montague in the Family Guide.

“I hope Dr. Seton won’t fail to show up, like your cousin Rachel Ward’s beau,” said Peter.

“That makes me think of another story I read the other day about Great-uncle Andrew King and Aunt Georgina,” laughed the Story Girl. “It happened eighty years ago. It was a very stormy winter and the roads were bad. Uncle Andrew lived in Carlisle, and Aunt Georgina–she was Miss Georgina Matheson then–lived away up west, so he couldn’t get to see her very often. They agreed to be married that winter, but Georgina couldn’t set the day exactly because her brother, who lived in Ontario, was coming home for a visit, and she wanted to be married while he was home. So it was arranged that she was to write Uncle Andrew and tell him what day to come. She did, and she told him to come on a Tuesday. But her writing wasn’t very good and poor Uncle Andrew thought she wrote Thursday. So on Thursday he drove all the way to Georgina’s home to be married. It was forty miles and a bitter cold day. But it wasn’t any colder than the reception he got from Georgina. She was out in the porch, with her head tied up in a towel, picking geese. She had been all ready Tuesday, and her friends and the minister were there, and the wedding supper prepared. But there was no bridegroom and Georgina was furious. Nothing Uncle Andrew could say would appease her. She wouldn’t listen to a word of explanation, but told him to go, and never show his nose there again. So poor Uncle Andrew had to go ruefully home, hoping that she would relent later on, because he was really very much in love with her.”

“And did she?” queried Felicity.

“She did. Thirteen years exactly from that day they were married. It took her just that long to forgive him.”

“It took her just that long to find out she couldn’t get anybody else,” said Dan, cynically.

CHAPTER XIV

A PRODIGAL RETURNS

Aunt Olivia and the Story Girl lived in a whirlwind of dressmaking after that, and enjoyed it hugely. Cecily and Felicity also had to have new dresses for the great event, and they talked of little else for a fortnight. Cecily declared that she hated to go to sleep because she was sure to dream that she was at Aunt Olivia’s wedding in her old faded gingham dress and a ragged apron.

“And no shoes or stockings,” she added, “and I can’t move, and everyone walks past and looks at my feet.”

“That’s only in a dream,” mourned Sara Ray, “but I may have to wear my last summer’s white dress to the wedding. It’s too short, but ma says it’s plenty good for this summer. I’ll be so mortified if I have to wear it.”

“I’d rather not go at all than wear a dress that wasn’t nice,” said Felicity pleasantly.

“I’d go to the wedding if I had to go in my school dress,” cried Sara Ray. “I’ve never been to anything. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“My Aunt Jane always said that if you were neat and tidy it didn’t matter whether you were dressed fine or not,” said Peter.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing about your Aunt Jane,” said Felicity crossly.

Peter looked grieved but held his peace. Felicity was very hard on him that spring, but his loyalty never wavered. Everything she said or did was right in Peter’s eyes.

“It’s all very well to be neat and tidy,” said Sara Ray, “but I like a little style too.”

“I think you’ll find your mother will get you a new dress after all,” comforted Cecily. “Anyway, nobody will notice you because everyone will be looking at the bride. Aunt Olivia will make a lovely bride. Just think how sweet she’ll look in a white silk dress and a floating veil.”

“She says she is going to have the ceremony performed out here in the orchard under her own tree,” said the Story Girl. “Won’t that be romantic? It almost makes me feel like getting married myself.”

“What a way to talk,” rebuked Felicity, “and you only fifteen.”

“Lots of people have been married at fifteen,” laughed the Story Girl. “Lady Jane Gray was.”

“But you are always saying that Valeria H. Montague’s stories are silly and not true to life, so that is no argument,” retorted Felicity, who knew more about cooking than about history, and evidently imagined that the Lady Jane Gray was one of Valeria’s titled heroines.

The wedding was a perennial source of conversation among us in those days; but presently its interest palled for a time in the light of another quite tremendous happening. One Saturday night Peter’s mother called to take him home with her for Sunday. She had been working at Mr. James Frewen’s, and Mr. Frewen was driving her home. We had never seen Peter’s mother before, and we looked at her with discreet curiosity. She was a plump, black-eyed little woman, neat as a pin, but with a rather tired and care-worn face that looked as if it should have been rosy and jolly. Life had been a hard battle for her, and I rather think that her curly- headed little lad was all that had kept heart and spirit in her. Peter went home with her and returned Sunday evening. We were in the orchard sitting around the Pulpit Stone, where we had, according to the custom of the households of King, been learning our golden texts and memory verses for the next Sunday School lesson. Paddy, grown sleek and handsome again, was sitting on the stone itself, washing his jowls.

Peter joined us with a very queer expression on his face. He seemed bursting with some news which he wanted to tell and yet hardly liked to.

“Why are you looking so mysterious, Peter?” demanded the Story Girl.

“What do you think has happened?” asked Peter solemnly.

“What has?”

“My father has come home,” answered Peter.

The announcement produced all the sensation he could have wished. We crowded around him in excitement.

“Peter! When did he come back?”

“Saturday night. He was there when ma and I got home. It give her an awful turn. I didn’t know him at first, of course.”

“Peter Craig, I believe you are glad your father has come back,” cried the Story Girl.

“‘Course I’m glad,” retorted Peter.

“And after you saying you didn’t want ever to see him again,” said Felicity.

“You just wait. You haven’t heard my story yet. I wouldn’t have been glad to see father if he’d come back the same as he went away. But he is a changed man. He happened to go into a revival meeting one night this spring and he got converted. And he’s come home to stay, and he says he’s never going to drink another drop, but he’s going to look after his family. Ma isn’t to do any more washing for nobody but him and me, and I’m not to be a hired boy any longer. He says I can stay with your Uncle Roger till the fall ’cause I promised I would, but after that I’m to stay home and go to school right along and learn to be whatever I’d like to be. I tell you it made me feel queer. Everything seemed to be upset. But he gave ma forty dollars–every cent he had–so I guess he really is converted.”

“I hope it will last, I’m sure,” said Felicity. She did not say it nastily, however. We were all glad for Peter’s sake, though a little dizzy over the unexpectedness of it all.

“This is what I’D like to know,” said Peter. “How did Peg Bowen know my father was coming home? Don’t you tell me she isn’t a witch after that.”

“And she knew about your Aunt Olivia’s wedding, too,” added Sara Ray.

“Oh, well, she likely heard that from some one. Grown up folks talk things over long before they tell them to children,” said Cecily.

“Well, she couldn’t have heard father was coming home from any one,” answered Peter. “He was converted up in Maine, where nobody knew him, and he never told a soul he was coming till he got here. No, you can believe what you like, but I’m satisfied at last that Peg is a witch and that skull of hers does tell her things. She told me father was coming home and he come!”

“How happy you must be,” sighed Sara Ray romantically. “It’s just like that story in the Family Guide, where the missing earl comes home to his family just as the Countess and Lady Violetta are going to be turned out by the cruel heir.”

Felicity sniffed.

“There’s some difference, I guess. The earl had been imprisoned for years in a loathsome dungeon.”

Perhaps Peter’s father had too, if we but realized it–imprisoned in the dungeon of his own evil appetites and habits, than which none could be more loathsome. But a Power, mightier than the forces of evil, had struck off his fetters and led him back to his long-forfeited liberty and light. And no countess or lady of high degree could have welcomed a long-lost earl home more joyfully than the tired little washerwoman had welcomed the erring husband of her youth.

But in Peter’s ointment of joy there was a fly or two. So very, very few things are flawless in this world, even on the golden road.

“Of course I’m awful glad that father has come back and that ma won’t have to wash any more,” he said with a sigh, “but there are two things that kind of worry me. My Aunt Jane always said that it didn’t do any good to worry, and I s’pose it don’t, but it’s kind of a relief.”

“What’s worrying you?” asked Felix.

“Well, for one thing I’ll feel awful bad to go away from you all. I’ll miss you just dreadful, and I won’t even be able to go to the same school. I’ll have to go to Markdale school.”

“But you must come and see us often,” said Felicity graciously. “Markdale isn’t so far away, and you could spend every other Saturday afternoon with us anyway.”

Peter’s black eyes filled with adoring gratitude.

“That’s so kind of you, Felicity. I’ll come as often as I can, of course; but it won’t be the same as being around with you all the time. The other thing is even worse. You see, it was a Methodist revival father got converted in, and so of course he joined the Methodist church. He wasn’t anything before. He used to say he was a Nothingarian and lived up to it–kind of bragging like. But he’s a strong Methodist now, and is going to go to Markdale Methodist church and pay to the salary. Now what’ll he say when I tell him I’m a Presbyterian?”

“You haven’t told him, yet?” asked the Story Girl.

“No, I didn’t dare. I was scared he’d say I’d have to be a Methodist.”

“Well, Methodists are pretty near as good as Presbyterians,” said Felicity, with the air of one making a great concession.

“I guess they’re every bit as good,” retorted Peter. “But that ain’t the point. I’ve got to be a Presbyterian, ’cause I stick to a thing when I once decide it. But I expect father will be mad when he finds out.”

“If he’s converted he oughtn’t to get mad,” said Dan.

“Well, lots o’ people do. But if he isn’t mad he’ll be sorry, and that’ll be even worse, for a Presbyterian I’m bound to be. But I expect it will make things unpleasant.”

“You needn’t tell him anything about it,” advised Felicity. “Just keep quiet and go to the Methodist church until you get big, and then you can go where you please.”

“No, that wouldn’t be honest,” said Peter sturdily. “My Aunt Jane always said it was best to be open and above board in everything, and especially in religion. So I’ll tell father right out, but I’ll wait a few weeks so as not to spoil things for ma too soon if he acts up.”

Peter was not the only one who had secret cares. Sara Ray was beginning to feel worried over her looks. I heard her and Cecily talking over their troubles one evening while I was weeding the onion bed and they were behind the hedge knitting lace. I did not mean to eavesdrop. I supposed they knew I was there until Cecily overwhelmed me with indignation later on.

“I’m so afraid, Cecily, that I’m going to be homely all my life,” said poor Sara with a tremble in her voice. “You can stand being ugly when you are young if you have any hope of being better looking when you grow up. But I’m getting worse. Aunt Mary says I’m going to be the very image of Aunt Matilda. And Aunt Matilda is as homely as she can be. It isn’t”–and poor Sara sighed–“a very cheerful prospect. If I am ugly nobody will ever want to marry me, and,” concluded Sara candidly, “I don’t want to be an old maid.”

“But plenty of girls get married who aren’t a bit pretty,” comforted Cecily. “Besides, you are real nice looking at times, Sara. I think you are going to have a nice figure.”

“But just look at my hands,” moaned Sara. “They’re simply covered with warts.”

“Oh, the warts will all disappear before you grow up,” said Cecily.

“But they won’t disappear before the school concert. How am I to get up there and recite? You know there is one line in my recitation, ‘She waved her lily-white hand,’ and I have to wave mine when I say it. Fancy waving a lily-white hand all covered with warts. I’ve tried every remedy I ever heard of, but nothing does any good. Judy Pineau said if I rubbed them with toad-spit it would take them away for sure. But how am I to get any toad- spit?”

“It doesn’t sound like a very nice remedy, anyhow,” shuddered Cecily. “I’d rather have the warts. But do you know, I believe if you didn’t cry so much over every little thing, you’d be ever so much better looking. Crying spoils your eyes and makes the end of your nose red.”

“I can’t help crying,” protested Sara. “My feelings are so very sensitive. I’ve given up trying to keep THAT resolution.”

“Well, men don’t like cry-babies,” said Cecily sagely. Cecily had a good deal of Mother Eve’s wisdom tucked away in that smooth, brown head of hers.

“Cecily, do you ever intend to be married?” asked Sara in a confidential tone.

“Goodness!” cried Cecily, quite shocked. “It will be time enough when I grow up to think of that, Sara.”

“I should think you’d have to think of it now, with Cyrus Brisk as crazy after you as he is.”

“I wish Cyrus Brisk was at the bottom of the Red Sea,” exclaimed Cecily, goaded into a spurt of temper by mention of the detested name.

“What has Cyrus been doing now?” asked Felicity, coming around the corner of the hedge.

“Doing NOW! It’s ALL the time. He just worries me to death,” returned Cecily angrily. “He keeps writing me letters and putting them in my desk or in my reader. I never answer one of them, but he keeps on. And in the last one, mind you, he said he’d do something desperate right off if I wouldn’t promise to marry him when we grew up.”

“Just think, Cecily, you’ve had a proposal already,” said Sara Ray in an awe-struck tone.

“But he hasn’t done anything desperate yet, and that was last week,” commented Felicity, with a toss of her head.

“He sent me a lock of his hair and wanted one of mine in exchange,” continued Cecily indignantly. “I tell you I sent his back to him pretty quick.”

“Did you never answer any of his letters?” asked Sara Ray.

“No, indeed! I guess not!”

“Do you know,” said Felicity, “I believe if you wrote him just once and told him your exact opinion of him in good plain English it would cure him of his nonsense.”

“I couldn’t do that. I haven’t enough spunk,” confessed Cecily with a blush. “But I’ll tell you what I did do once. He wrote me a long letter last week. It was just awfully SOFT, and every other word was spelled wrong. He even spelled baking soda, ‘bacon soda!'”

“What on earth had he to say about baking soda in a love-letter?” asked Felicity.

“Oh, he said his mother sent him to the store for some and he forgot it because he was thinking about me. Well, I just took his letter and wrote in all the words, spelled right, above the wrong ones, in red ink, just as Mr. Perkins makes us do with our dictation exercises, and sent it back to him. I thought maybe he’d feel insulted and stop writing to me.”

“And did he?”

“No, he didn’t. It is my opinion you can’t insult Cyrus Brisk. He is too thick-skinned. He wrote another letter, and thanked me for correcting his mistakes, and said it made him feel glad because it showed I was beginning to take an interest in him when I wanted him to spell better. Did you ever? Miss Marwood says it is wrong to hate anyone, but I don’t care, I hate Cyrus Brisk.”

“Mrs. Cyrus Brisk WOULD be an awful name,” giggled Felicity.

“Flossie Brisk says Cyrus is ruining all the trees on his father’s place cutting your name on them,” said Sara Ray. “His father told him he would whip him if he didn’t stop, but Cyrus keeps right on. He told Flossie it relieved his feelings. Flossie says he cut yours and his together on the birch tree in front of the parlour window, and a row of hearts around them.”

“Just where every visitor can see them, I suppose,” lamented Cecily. “He just worries my life out. And what I mind most of all is, he sits and looks at me in school with such melancholy, reproachful eyes when he ought to be working sums. I won’t look at him, but I FEEL him staring at me, and it makes me so nervous.”

“They say his mother was out of her mind at one time,” said Felicity.

I do not think Felicity was quite well pleased that Cyrus should have passed over her rose-red prettiness to set his affections on that demure elf of a Cecily. She did not want the allegiance of Cyrus in the least, but it was something of a slight that he had not wanted her to want it.

“And he sends me pieces of poetry he cuts out of the papers,” Cecily went on, “with lots of the lines marked with a lead pencil. Yesterday he put one in his letter, and this is what he marked:

“‘If you will not relent to me
Then must I learn to know
Darkness alone till life be flown.

Here–I have the piece in my sewing-bag–I’ll read it all to you.”

Those three graceless girls read the sentimental rhyme and giggled over it. Poor Cyrus! His young affections were sadly misplaced. But after all, though Cecily never relented towards him, he did not condemn himself to darkness alone till life was flown. Quite early in life he wedded a stout, rosy, buxom lass, the very antithesis of his first love; he prospered in his undertakings, raised a large and respectable family, and was eventually appointed a Justice of the Peace. Which was all very sensible of Cyrus.

CHAPTER XV

THE RAPE OF THE LOCK

June was crowded full of interest that year. We gathered in with its sheaf of fragrant days the choicest harvest of childhood. Things happened right along. Cecily declared she hated to go to sleep for fear she might miss something. There were so many dear delights along the golden road to give us pleasure–the earth dappled with new blossom, the dance of shadows in the fields, the rustling, rain-wet ways of the woods, the faint fragrance in meadow lanes, liltings of birds and croon of bees in the old orchard, windy pipings on the hills, sunset behind the pines, limpid dews filling primrose cups, crescent moons through darklings boughs, soft nights alight with blinking stars. We enjoyed all these boons, unthinkingly and light-heartedly, as children do. And besides these, there was the absorbing little drama of human life which was being enacted all around us, and in which each of us played a satisfying part–the gay preparations for Aunt Olivia’s mid-June wedding, the excitement of practising for the concert with which our school-teacher, Mr. Perkins, had elected to close the school year, and Cecily’s troubles with Cyrus Brisk, which furnished unholy mirth for the rest of us, though Cecily could not see the funny side of it at all.

Matters went from bad to worse in the case of the irrepressible Cyrus. He continued to shower Cecily with notes, the spelling of which showed no improvement; he worried the life out of her by constantly threatening to fight Willy Fraser–although, as Felicity sarcastically pointed out, he never did it.

“But I’m always afraid he will,” said Cecily, “and it would be such a DISGRACE to have two boys fighting over me in school.”

“You must have encouraged Cyrus a little in the beginning or he’d never have been so persevering,” said Felicity unjustly.

“I never did!” cried outraged Cecily. “You know very well, Felicity King, that I hated Cyrus Brisk ever since the very first time I saw his big, fat, red face. So there!”

“Felicity is just jealous because Cyrus didn’t take a notion to her instead of you, Sis,” said Dan.

“Talk sense!” snapped Felicity.

“If I did you wouldn’t understand me, sweet little sister,” rejoined aggravating Dan.

Finally Cyrus crowned his iniquities by stealing the denied lock of Cecily’s hair. One sunny afternoon in school, Cecily and Kitty Marr asked and received permission to sit out on the side bench before the open window, where the cool breeze swept in from the green fields beyond. To sit on this bench was always considered a treat, and was only allowed as a reward of merit; but Cecily and Kitty had another reason for wishing to sit there. Kitty had read in a magazine that sun-baths were good for the hair; so both she and Cecily tossed their long braids over the window-sill and let them hang there in the broiling sun-shine. And while Cecily sat thus, diligently working a fraction sum on her slate, that base Cyrus asked permission to go out, having previously borrowed a pair of scissors from one of the big girls who did fancy work at the noon recess. Outside, Cyrus sneaked up close to the window and cut off a piece of Cecily’s hair.

This rape of the lock did not produce quite such terrible consequences as the more famous one in Pope’s poem, but Cecily’s soul was no less agitated than Belinda’s. She cried all the way home from school about it, and only checked her tears when Dan declared he’d fight Cyrus and make him give it up.

“Oh, no, You mustn’t.” said Cecily, struggling with her sobs. “I won’t have you fighting on my account for anything. And besides, he’d likely lick you–he’s so big and rough. And the folks at home might find out all about it, and Uncle Roger would never give me any peace, and mother would be cross, for she’d never believe it wasn’t my fault. It wouldn’t be so bad if he’d only taken a little, but he cut a great big chunk right off the end of one of the braids. Just look at it. I’ll have to cut the other to make them fair–and they’ll look so awful stubby.”

But Cyrus’ acquirement of the chunk of hair was his last triumph. His downfall was near; and, although it involved Cecily in a most humiliating experience, over which she cried half the following night, in the end she confessed it was worth undergoing just to get rid of Cyrus.

Mr. Perkins was an exceedingly strict disciplinarian. No communication of any sort was permitted between his pupils during school hours. Anyone caught violating this rule was promptly punished by the infliction of one of the weird penances for which Mr. Perkins was famous, and which were generally far worse than ordinary whipping.

One day in school Cyrus sent a letter across to Cecily. Usually he left his effusions in her desk, or between the leaves of her books; but this time it was passed over to her under cover of the desk through the hands of two or three scholars. Just as Em Frewen held it over the aisle Mr. Perkins wheeled around from his station before the blackboard and caught her in the act.

“Bring that here, Emmeline,” he commanded.

Cyrus turned quite pale. Em carried the note to Mr. Perkins. He took it, held it up, and scrutinized the address.

“Did you write this to Cecily, Emmeline?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“Who wrote it then?”

Em said quite shamelessly that she didn’t know–it had just been passed over from the next row.

“And I suppose you have no idea where it came from?” said Mr. Perkins, with his frightful, sardonic grin. “Well, perhaps Cecily can tell us. You may take your seat, Emmeline, and you will remain at the foot of your spelling class for a week as punishment for passing the note. Cecily, come here.”

Indignant Em sat down and poor, innocent Cecily was haled forth to public ignominy. She went with a crimson face.

“Cecily,” said her tormentor, “do you know who wrote this letter to you?”

Cecily, like a certain renowned personage, could not tell a lie.

“I–I think so, sir,” she murmured faintly.

“Who was it?”

“I can’t tell you that,” stammered Cecily, on the verge of tears.

“Ah!” said Mr. Perkins politely. “Well, I suppose I could easily find out by opening it. But it is very impolite to open other people’s letters. I think I have a better plan. Since you refuse to tell me who wrote it, open it yourself, take this chalk, and copy the contents on the blackboard that we may all enjoy them. And sign the writer’s name at the bottom.”

“Oh,” gasped Cecily, choosing the lesser of two evils, “I’ll tell you who wrote it–it was–

“Hush!” Mr. Perkins checked her with a gentle motion of his hand. He was always most gentle when most inexorable. “You did not obey me when I first ordered you to tell me the writer. You cannot have the privilege of doing so now. Open the note, take the chalk, and do as I command you.”

Worms will turn, and even meek, mild, obedient little souls like Cecily may be goaded to the point of wild, sheer rebellion.

“I–I won’t!” she cried passionately.

Mr. Perkins, martinet though he was, would hardly, I think, have inflicted such a punishment on Cecily, who was a favourite of his, had he known the real nature of that luckless missive. But, as he afterwards admitted, he thought it was merely a note from some other girl, of such trifling sort as school-girls are wont to write; and moreover, he had already committed himself to the decree, which, like those of Mede and Persian, must not alter. To let Cecily off, after her mad defiance, would be to establish a revolutionary precedent.

“So you really think you won’t?” he queried smilingly. “Well, on second thoughts, you may take your choice. Either you will do as I have bidden you, or you will sit for three days with”–Mr. Perkins’ eye skimmed over the school-room to find a boy who was sitting alone–“with Cyrus Brisk.”

This choice of Mr. Perkins, who knew nothing of the little drama of emotions that went on under the routine of lessons and exercises in his domain, was purely accidental, but we took it at the time as a stroke of diabolical genius. It left Cecily no choice. She would have done almost anything before she would have sat with Cyrus Brisk. With flashing eyes she tore open the letter, snatched up the chalk, and dashed at the blackboard.

In a few minutes the contents of that letter graced the expanse usually sacred to more prosaic compositions. I cannot reproduce it verbatim, for I had no after opportunity of refreshing my memory. But I remember that it was exceedingly sentimental and exceedingly ill-spelled–for Cecily mercilessly copied down poor Cyrus’ mistakes. He wrote her that he wore her hare over his hart–“and he stole it,” Cecily threw passionately over her shoulder at Mr. Perkins–that her eyes were so sweet and lovely that he couldn’t find words nice enuf to describ them, that he could never forget how butiful she had looked in prar meeting the evening before, and that some meels he couldn’t eat for thinking of her, with more to the same effect and he signed it “yours till deth us do part, Cyrus Brisk.”

As the writing proceeded we scholars exploded into smothered laughter, despite our awe of Mr. Perkins. Mr. Perkins himself could not keep a straight face. He turned abruptly away and looked out of the window, but we could see his shoulders shaking. When Cecily had finished and had thrown down the chalk with bitter vehemence, he turned around with a very red face.

“That will do. You may sit down. Cyrus, since it seems you are the guilty person, take the eraser and wipe that off the board. Then go stand in the corner, facing the room, and hold your arms straight above your head until I tell you to take them down.”

Cyrus obeyed and Cecily fled to her seat and wept, nor did Mr. Perkins meddle with her more that day. She bore her burden of humiliation bitterly for several days, until she was suddenly comforted by a realization that Cyrus had ceased to persecute her. He wrote no more letters, he gazed no longer in rapt adoration, he brought no more votive offerings of gum and pencils to her shrine. At first we thought he had been cured by the unmerciful chaffing he had to undergo from his mates, but eventually his sister told Cecily the true reason. Cyrus had at last been driven to believe that Cecily’s aversion to him was real, and not merely the defence of maiden coyness. If she hated him so intensely that she would rather write that note on the blackboard than sit with him, what use was it to sigh like a furnace longer for her? Mr. Perkins had blighted love’s young dream for Cyrus with a killing frost. Thenceforth sweet Cecily kept the noiseless tenor of her way unvexed by the attentions of enamoured swains.

CHAPTER XVI

AUNT UNA’S STORY

Felicity, and Cecily, Dan, Felix, Sara Ray and I were sitting one evening on the mossy stones in Uncle Roger’s hill pasture, where we had sat the morning the Story Girl told us the tale of the Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess. But it was evening now and the valley beneath us was brimmed up with the glow of the afterlight. Behind us, two tall, shapely spruce trees rose up against the sunset, and through the dark oriel of their sundered branches an evening star looked down. We sat on a little strip of emerald grassland and before us was a sloping meadow all white with daisies.

We were waiting for Peter and the Story Girl. Peter had gone to Markdale after dinner to spend the afternoon with his reunited parents because it was his birthday. He had left us grimly determined to confess to his father the dark secret of his Presbyterianism, and we were anxious to know what the result had been. The Story Girl had gone that morning with Miss Reade to visit the latter’s home near Charlottetown, and we expected soon to see her coming gaily along over the fields from the Armstrong place.

Presently Peter came jauntily stepping along the field path up the hill.

“Hasn’t Peter got tall?” said Cecily.

“Peter is growing to be a very fine looking boy,” decreed Felicity.

“I notice he’s got ever so much handsomer since his father came home,” said Dan, with a killing sarcasm that was wholly lost on Felicity, who gravely responded that she supposed it was because Peter felt so much freer from care and responsibility.

“What luck, Peter?” yelled Dan, as soon as Peter was within earshot.

“Everything’s all right,” he shouted jubilantly. “I told father right off, licketty-split, as soon as I got home,” he added when he reached us. “I was anxious to have it over with. I says, solemn-like, ‘Dad, there’s something I’ve got to tell you, and I don’t know how you’ll take it, but it can’t be helped,’ I says. Dad looked pretty sober, and he says, says he, ‘What have you been up to, Peter? Don’t be afraid to tell me. I’ve been forgiven to seventy times seven, so surely I can forgive a little, too?’ ‘Well,’ I says, desperate-like, ‘the truth is, father, I’m a Presbyterian. I made up my mind last summer, the time of the Judgment Day, that I’d be a Presbyterian, and I’ve got to stick to it. I’m sorry I can’t be a Methodist, like you and mother and Aunt Jane, but I can’t and that’s all there is to it,’ I says. Then I waited, scared-like. But father, he just looked relieved and he says, says he, ‘Goodness, boy, you can be a Presbyterian or anything else you like, so long as it’s Protestant. I’m not caring,’ he says. ‘The main thing is that you must be good and do what’s right.’ I tell you,” concluded Peter emphatically, “father is a Christian all right.”

“Well, I suppose your mind will be at rest now,” said Felicity. “What’s that you have in your buttonhole?”

“That’s a four-leaved clover,” answered Peter exultantly. “That means good luck for the summer. I found it in Markdale. There ain’t much clover in Carlisle this year of any kind of leaf. The crop is going to be a failure. Your Uncle Roger says it’s because there ain’t enough old maids in Carlisle. There’s lots of them in Markdale, and that’s the reason, he says, why they always have such good clover crops there.”

“What on earth have old maids to do with it?” cried Cecily.

“I don’t believe they’ve a single thing to do with it, but Mr. Roger says they have, and he says a man called Darwin proved it. This is the rigmarole he got off to me the other day. The clover crop depends on there being plenty of bumble-bees, because they are the only insects with tongues long enough to–to–fer– fertilize–I think he called it the blossoms. But mice eat bumble-bees and cats eat mice and old maids keep cats. So your Uncle Roger says the more old maids the more cats, and the more cats the fewer field-mice, and the fewer field-mice the more bumble-bees, and the more bumble-bees the better clover crops.”

“So don’t worry if you do get to be old maids, girls,” said Dan. “Remember, you’ll be helping the clover crops.”

“I never heard such stuff as you boys talk,” said Felicity, “and Uncle Roger is no better.”

“There comes the Story Girl,” cried Cecily eagerly. “Now we’ll hear all about Beautiful Alice’s home.”

The Story Girl was bombarded with eager questions as soon as she arrived. Miss Reade’s home was a dream of a place, it appeared. The house was just covered with ivy and there was a most delightful old garden–“and,” added the Story Girl, with the joy of a connoisseur who has found a rare gem, “the sweetest little story connected with it. And I saw the hero of the story too.”

“Where was the heroine?” queried Cecily.

“She is dead.”

“Oh, of course she’d have to die,” exclaimed Dan in disgust. “I’d like a story where somebody lived once in awhile.”

“I’ve told you heaps of stories where people lived,” retorted the Story Girl. “If this heroine hadn’t died there wouldn’t have been any story. She was Miss Reade’s aunt and her name was Una, and I believe she must have been just like Miss Reade herself. Miss Reade told me all about her. When we went into the garden I saw in one corner of it an old stone bench arched over by a couple of pear trees and all grown about with grass and violets. And an old man was sitting on it–a bent old man with long, snow-white hair and beautiful sad blue eyes. He seemed very lonely and sorrowful and I wondered that Miss Reade didn’t speak to him. But she never let on she saw him and took me away to another part of the garden. After awhile he got up and went away and then Miss Reade said, ‘Come over to Aunt Una’s seat and I will tell you about her and her lover–that man who has just gone out.’

“‘Oh, isn’t he too old for a lover?’ I said.

“Beautiful Alice laughed and said it was forty years since he had been her Aunt Una’s lover. He had been a tall, handsome young man then, and her Aunt Una was a beautiful girl of nineteen.

“We went over and sat down and Miss Reade told me all about her. She said that when she was a child she had heard much of her Aunt Una–that she seemed to have been one of those people who are not soon forgotten, whose personality seems to linger about the scenes of their lives long after they have passed away.”

“What is a personality? Is it another word for ghost?” asked Peter.

“No,” said the Story Girl shortly. “I can’t stop in a story to explain words.”

“I don’t believe you know what it is yourself,” said Felicity.

The Story Girl picked up her hat, which she had thrown down on the grass, and placed it defiantly on her brown curls.

“I’m going in,” she announced. “I have to help Aunt Olivia ice a cake tonight, and you all seem more interested in dictionaries than stories.”

“That’s not fair,” I exclaimed. “Dan and Felix and Sara Ray and Cecily and I have never said a word. It’s mean to punish us for what Peter and Felicity did. We want to hear the rest of the story. Never mind what a personality is but go on–and, Peter, you young ass, keep still.”

“I only wanted to know,” muttered Peter sulkily.

“I DO know what personality is, but it’s hard to explain,” said the Story Girl, relenting. “It’s what makes you different from Dan, Peter, and me different from Felicity or Cecily. Miss Reade’s Aunt Una had a personality that was very uncommon. And she was beautiful, too, with white skin and night-black eyes and hair–a ‘moonlight beauty,’ Miss Reade called it. She used to keep a kind of a diary, and Miss Reade’s mother used to read parts of it to her. She wrote verses in it and they were lovely; and she wrote descriptions of the old garden which she loved very much. Miss Reade said that everything in the garden, plot or shrub or tree, recalled to her mind some phrase or verse of her Aunt Una’s, so that the whole place seemed full of her, and her memory haunted the walks like a faint, sweet perfume.

“Una had, as I’ve told you, a lover; and they were to have been married on her twentieth birthday. Her wedding dress was to have been a gown of white brocade with purple violets in it. But a little while before it she took ill with fever and died; and she was buried on her birthday instead of being married. It was just in the time of opening roses. Her lover has been faithful to her ever since; he has never married, and every June, on her birthday, he makes a pilgrimage to the old garden and sits for a long time in silence on the bench where he used to woo her on crimson eves and moonlight nights of long ago. Miss Reade says she always loves to see him sitting there because it gives her such a deep and lasting sense of the beauty and strength of love which can thus outlive time and death. And sometimes, she says, it gives her a little eerie feeling, too, as if her Aunt Una were really sitting there beside him, keeping tryst, although she has been in her grave for forty years.”

“It would be real romantic to die young and have your lover make a pilgrimage to your garden every year,” reflected Sara Ray.

“It would be more comfortable to go on living and get married to him,” said Felicity. “Mother says all those sentimental ideas are bosh and I expect they are. It’s a wonder Beautiful Alice hasn’t a beau herself. She is so pretty and lady-like.”

“The Carlisle fellows all say she is too stuck up,” said Dan.

“There’s nobody in Carlisle half good enough for her,” cried the Story Girl, “except–ex-cept–“

“Except who?” asked Felix.

“Never mind,” said the Story Girl mysteriously.

CHAPTER XVII

AUNT OLIVIA’S WEDDING

What a delightful, old-fashioned, wholesome excitement there was about Aunt Olivia’s wedding! The Monday and Tuesday preceding it we did not go to school at all, but were all kept home to do chores and run errands. The cooking and decorating and arranging that went on those two days was amazing, and Felicity was so happy over it all that she did not even quarrel with Dan–though she narrowly escaped it when he told her that the Governor’s wife was coming to the wedding.

“Mind you have some of her favourite rusks for her,” he said.

“I guess,” said Felicity with dignity, “that Aunt Olivia’s wedding supper will be good enough for even a Governor’s wife.”

“I s’pose none of us except the Story Girl will get to the first table,” said Felix, rather gloomily.

“Never mind,” comforted Felicity. “There’s a whole turkey to be kept for us, and a freezerful of ice cream. Cecily and I are going to wait on the tables, and we’ll put away a little of everything that’s extra nice for our suppers.”

“I do so want to have my supper with you,” sighed Sara Ray, “but I s’pose ma will drag me with her wherever she goes. She won’t trust me out of her sight a minute the whole evening–I know she won’t.”

“I’ll get Aunt Olivia to ask her to let you have your supper with us,” said Cecily. “She can’t refuse the bride’s request.”

“You don’t know all ma can do,” returned Sara darkly. “No, I feel that I’ll have to eat my supper with her. But I suppose I ought to be very thankful I’m to get to the wedding at all, and that ma did get me a new white dress for it. Even yet I’m so scared something will happen to prevent me from getting to it.”

Monday evening shrouded itself in clouds, and all night long the voice of the wind answered to the voice of the rain. Tuesday the downpour continued. We were quite frantic about it. Suppose it kept on raining over Wednesday! Aunt Olivia couldn’t be married in the orchard then. That would be too bad, especially when the late apple tree had most obligingly kept its store of blossom until after all the other trees had faded and then burst lavishly into bloom for Aunt Olivia’s wedding. That apple tree was always very late in blooming, and this year it was a week later than usual. It was a sight to see–a great tree-pyramid with high, far- spreading boughs, over which a wealth of rosy snow seemed to have been flung. Never had bride a more magnificent canopy.

To our rapture, however, it cleared up beautifully Tuesday evening, and the sun, before setting in purple pomp, poured a flood of wonderful radiance over the whole great, green, diamond- dripping world, promising a fair morrow. Uncle Alec drove off to the station through it to bring home the bridegroom and his best man. Dan was full of a wild idea that we should all meet them at the gate, armed with cowbells and tin-pans, and “charivari” them up the lane. Peter sided with him, but the rest of us voted down the suggestion.

“Do you want Dr. Seton to think we are a pack of wild Indians?” asked Felicity severely. “A nice opinion he’d have of our manners!”

“Well, it’s the only chance we’ll have to chivaree them,” grumbled Dan. “Aunt Olivia wouldn’t mind. SHE can take a joke.”

“Ma would kill you if you did such a thing,” warned Felicity. “Dr. Seton lives in Halifax and they NEVER chivaree people there. He would think it very vulgar.”

“Then he should have stayed in Halifax and got married there,” retorted Dan, sulkily.

We were very curious to see our uncle-elect. When he came and Uncle Alec took him into the parlour, we were all crowded into the dark corner behind the stairs to peep at him. Then we fled to the moonlight world outside and discussed him at the dairy.

“He’s bald,” said Cecily disappointedly.

“And RATHER short and stout,” said Felicity.

“He’s forty, if he’s a day,” said Dan.

“Never you mind,” cried the Story Girl loyally, “Aunt Olivia loves him with all her heart.”

“And more than that, he’s got lots of money,” added Felicity.

“Well, he may be all right,” said Peter, “but it’s my opinion that your Aunt Olivia could have done just as well on the Island.”

“YOUR opinion doesn’t matter very much to our family,” said Felicity crushingly.

But when we made the acquaintance of Dr. Seton next morning we liked him enormously, and voted him a jolly good fellow. Even Peter remarked aside to me that he guessed Miss Olivia hadn’t made much of a mistake after all, though it was plain he thought she was running a risk in not sticking to the Island. The girls had not much time to discuss him with us. They were all exceedingly busy and whisked about at such a rate that they seemed to possess the power of being in half a dozen places at once. The importance of Felicity was quite terrible. But after dinner came a lull.

“Thank goodness, everything is ready at last,” breathed Felicity devoutly, as we foregathered for a brief space in the fir wood. “We’ve nothing more to do now but get dressed. It’s really a serious thing to have a wedding in the family.”

“I have a note from Sara Ray,” said Cecily. “Judy Pineau brought it up when she brought Mrs. Ray’s spoons. Just let me read it to you:–

DEAREST CECILY:–A DREADFUL MISFORTUNE has happened to me. Last night I went with Judy to water the cows and in the spruce bush we found a WASPS’ NEST and Judy thought it was AN OLD ONE and she POKED IT WITH A STICK. And it was a NEW ONE, full of wasps, and they all flew out and STUNG US TERRIBLY, on the face and hands. My face is all swelled up and I can HARDLY SEE out of one eye. The SUFFERING was awful but I didn’t mind that as much as being scared ma wouldn’t take me to the wedding. But she says I can go and I’m going. I know that I am a HARD-LOOKING SIGHT, but it isn’t anything catching. I am writing this so that you won’t get a shock when you see me. Isn’t it SO STRANGE to think your dear Aunt Olivia is going away? How you will miss her! But your loss will be her gain.

“‘Au revoir,
“‘Your loving chum,
SARA RAY.'”

“That poor child,” said the Story Girl.

“Well, all I hope is that strangers won’t take her for one of the family,” remarked Felicity in a disgusted tone.

Aunt Olivia was married at five o’clock in the orchard under the late apple tree. It was a pretty scene. The air was full of the perfume of apple bloom, and the bees blundered foolishly and delightfully from one blossom to another, half drunken with perfume. The old orchard was full of smiling guests in wedding garments. Aunt Olivia was most beautiful amid the frost of her bridal veil, and the Story Girl, in an unusually long white dress, with her brown curls clubbed up behind, looked so tall and grown- up that we hardly recognized her. After the ceremony–during which Sara Ray cried all the time–there was a royal wedding supper, and Sara Ray was permitted to eat her share of the feast with us.

“I’m glad I was stung by the wasps after all,” she said delightedly. “If I hadn’t been ma would never have let me eat with you. She just got tired explaining to people what was the matter with my face, and so she was glad to get rid of me. I know I look awful, but, oh, wasn’t the bride a dream?”

We missed the Story Girl, who, of course, had to have her supper at the bridal table; but we were a hilarious little crew and the girls had nobly kept their promise to save tid-bits for us. By the time the last table was cleared away Aunt Olivia and our new uncle were ready to go. There was an orgy of tears and leavetakings, and then they drove away into the odorous moonlight night. Dan and Peter pursued them down the lane with a fiendish din of bells and pans, much to Felicity’s wrath. But Aunt Olivia and Uncle Robert took it in good part and waved their hands back to us with peals of laughter.

“They’re just that pleased with themselves that they wouldn’t mind if there was an earthquake,” said Felix, grinning.

“It’s been splendid and exciting, and everything went off well,” sighed Cecily, “but, oh dear, it’s going to be so queer and lonesome without Aunt Olivia. I just believe I’ll cry all night.”

“You’re tired to death, that’s what’s the matter with you,” said Dan, returning. “You girls have worked like slaves today.”

“Tomorrow will be even harder,” said Felicity comfortingly. “Everything will have to be cleaned up and put away.”

Peg Bowen paid us a call the next day and was regaled with a feast of fat things left over from the supper.

“Well, I’ve had all I can eat,” she said, when she had finished and brought out her pipe. “And that doesn’t happen to me every day. There ain’t been as much marrying as there used to be, and half the time they just sneak off to the minister, as if they were ashamed of it, and get married without any wedding or supper. That ain’t the King way, though. And so Olivia’s gone off at last. She weren’t in any hurry but they tell me she’s done well. Time’ll show.”

“Why don’t you get married yourself, Peg?” queried Uncle Roger teasingly. We held our breath over his temerity.

“Because I’m not so easy to please as your wife will be,” retorted Peg.

She departed in high good humour over her repartee. Meeting Sara Ray on the doorstep she stopped and asked her what was the matter with her face.

“Wasps,” stammered Sara Ray, laconic from terror.

“Humph! And your hands?”

“Warts.”

“I’ll tell you what’ll take them away. You get a pertater and go out under the full moon, cut the pertater in two, rub your warts with one half and say, ‘One, two, three, warts, go away from me.’ Then rub them with the other half and say, ‘One, two, three, four, warts, never trouble me more.’ Then bury the pertater and never tell a living soul where you buried it. You won’t have no more warts. Mind you bury the pertater, though. If you don’t, and anyone picks it up, she’ll get your warts.”

CHAPTER XVIII

SARA RAY HELPS OUT

We all missed Aunt Olivia greatly; she had been so merry and companionable, and had possessed such a knack of understanding small fry. But youth quickly adapts itself to changed conditions; in a few weeks it seemed as if the Story Girl had always been living at Uncle Alec’s, and as if Uncle Roger had always had a fat, jolly housekeeper with a double chin and little, twinkling blue eyes. I don’t think Aunt Janet ever quite got over missing Aunt Olivia, or looked upon Mrs. Hawkins as anything but a necessary evil; but life resumed its even tenor on the King farm, broken only by the ripples of excitement over the school concert and letters from Aunt Olivia describing her trip through the land of Evangeline. We incorporated the letters in Our Magazine under the heading “From Our Special Correspondent” and were very proud of them.

At the end of June our school concert came off and was a great event in our young lives. It was the first appearance of most of us on any platform, and some of us were very nervous. We all had recitations, except Dan, who had refused flatly to take any part and was consequently care-free.

“I’m sure I shall die when I find myself up on that platform, facing people,” sighed Sara Ray, as we talked the affair over in Uncle Stephen’s Walk the night before the concert.

“I’m afraid I’ll faint,” was Cecily’s more moderate foreboding.

“I’m not one single bit nervous,” said Felicity complacently.

“I’m not nervous this time,” said the Story Girl, “but the first time I recited I was.”

“My Aunt Jane,” remarked Peter, “used to say that an old teacher of hers told her that when she was going to recite or speak in public she must just get it firmly into her mind that it was only a lot of cabbage heads she had before her, and she wouldn’t be nervous.”

“One mightn’t be nervous, but I don’t think there would be much inspiration in reciting to cabbage heads,” said the Story Girl decidedly. “I want to recite to PEOPLE, and see them looking interested and thrilled.”

“If I can only get through my piece without breaking down I don’t care whether I thrill people or not,” said Sara Ray.

“I’m afraid I’ll forget mine and get stuck,” foreboded Felix. “Some of you fellows be sure and prompt me if I do–and do it quick, so’s I won’t get worse rattled.”

“I know one thing,” said Cecily resolutely, “and that is, I’m going to curl my hair for to-morrow night. I’ve never curled it since Peter almost died, but I simply must tomorrow night, for all the other girls are going to have theirs in curls.”

“The dew and heat will take all the curl out of yours and then you’ll look like a scarecrow,” warned Felicity.

“No, I won’t. I’m going to put my hair up in paper tonight and wet it with a curling-fluid that Judy Pineau uses. Sara brought me up a bottle of it. Judy says it is great stuff–your hair will keep in curl for days, no matter how damp the weather is. I’ll leave my hair in the papers till tomorrow evening, and then I’ll have beautiful curls.”

“You’d better leave your hair alone,” said Dan gruffly. “Smooth hair is better than a lot of fly-away curls.”

But Cecily was not to be persuaded. Curls she craved and curls she meant to have.

“I’m thankful my warts have all gone, any-way,” said Sara Ray.

“So they have,” exclaimed Felicity. “Did you try Peg’s recipe?”

“Yes. I didn’t believe in it but I tried it. For the first few days afterwards I kept watching my warts, but they didn’t go away, and then I gave up and forgot them. But one day last week I just happened to look at my hands and there wasn’t a wart to be seen. It was the most amazing thing.”

“And yet you’ll say Peg Bowen isn’t a witch,” said Peter.

“Pshaw, it was just the potato juice,” scoffed Dan.

“It was a dry old potato I had, and there wasn’t much juice in it,” said Sara Ray. “One hardly knows what to believe. But one thing is certain–my warts are gone.”

Cecily put her hair up in curl-papers that night, thoroughly soaked in Judy Pineau’s curling-fluid. It was a nasty job, for the fluid was very sticky, but Cecily persevered and got it done. Then she went to bed with a towel tied over her head to protect the pillow. She did not sleep well and had uncanny dreams, but she came down to breakfast with an expression of triumph. The Story Girl examined her head critically and said,

“Cecily, if I were you I’d take those papers out this morning.”

“Oh, no; if I do my hair will be straight again by night. I mean to leave them in till the last minute.”

“I wouldn’t do that–I really wouldn’t,” persisted the Story Girl. “If you do your hair will be too curly and all bushy and fuzzy.”

Cecily finally yielded and went upstairs with the Story Girl. Presently we heard a little shriek–then two little shrieks–then three. Then Felicity came flying down and called her mother. Aunt Janet went up and presently came down again with a grim mouth. She filled a large pan with warm water and carried it upstairs. We dared ask her no questions, but when Felicity came down to wash the dishes we bombarded her.

“What on earth is the matter with Cecily?” demanded Dan. “Is she sick?”

“No, she isn’t. I warned her not to put her hair in curls but she wouldn’t listen to me. I guess she wishes she had now. When people haven’t natural curly hair they shouldn’t try to make it curly. They get punished if they do.”

“Look here, Felicity, never mind all that. Just tell us what has happened Sis.”

“Well, this is what has happened her. That ninny of a Sara Ray brought up a bottle of mucilage instead of Judy’s curling-fluid, and Cecily put her hair up with THAT. It’s in an awful state.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Dan. “Look here, will she ever get it out?”

“Goodness knows. She’s got her head in soak now. Her hair is just matted together hard as a board. That’s what comes of vanity,” said Felicity, than whom no vainer girl existed.

Poor Cecily paid dearly enough for HER vanity. She spent a bad forenoon, made no easier by her mother’s severe rebukes. For an hour she “soaked” her head; that is, she stood over a panful of warm water and kept dipping her head in with tightly shut eyes. Finally her hair softened sufficiently to be disentangled from the curl papers; and then Aunt Janet subjected it to a merciless shampoo. Eventually they got all the mucilage washed out of it and Cecily spent the remainder of the forenoon sitting before the open oven door in the hot kitchen drying her ill-used tresses. She felt very down-hearted; her hair was of that order which, glossy and smooth normally, is dry and harsh and lustreless for several days after being shampooed.

“I’ll look like a fright tonight,” said the poor child to me with trembling voice. “The ends will be sticking out all over my head.”

“Sara Ray is a perfect idiot,” I said wrathfully

“Qh, don’t be hard on poor Sara. She didn’t mean to bring me mucilage. It’s really all my own fault, I know. I made a solemn vow when Peter was dying that I would never curl my hair again, and I should have kept it. It isn’t right to break solemn vows. But my hair will look like dried hay tonight.”

Poor Sara Ray was quite overwhelmed when she came up and found what she had done. Felicity was very hard on her, and Aunt Janet was coldly disapproving, but sweet Cecily forgave her unreservedly, and they walked to the school that night with their arms about each other’s waists as usual.

The school-room was crowded with friends and neighbours. Mr. Perkins was flying about, getting things into readiness, and Miss Reade, who was the organist of the evening, was sitting on the platform, looking her sweetest and prettiest. She wore a delightful white lace hat with a fetching little wreath of tiny forget-me-nots around the brim, a white muslin dress with sprays of blue violets scattered over it, and a black lace scarf.

“Doesn’t she look angelic?” said Cecily rapturously.

“Mind you,” said Sara Ray, “the Awkward Man is here–in the corner behind the door. I never remember seeing him at a concert before.”

“I suppose he came to hear the Story Girl recite,” said Felicity. “He is such a friend of hers.”

The concert went off very well. Dialogues, choruses and recitations followed each other in rapid succession. Felix got through his without “getting stuck,” and Peter did excellently, though he stuffed his hands in his trousers pockets–a habit of which Mr. Perkins had vainly tried to break him. Peter’s recitation was one greatly in vogue at that time, beginning,

“My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills My father feeds his flocks.”

At our first practice Peter had started gaily in, rushing through the first line with no thought whatever of punctuation–” My name is Norval on the Grampian Hills.”

“Stop, stop, Peter,” quoth Mr. Perkins, sarcastically, “your name might be Norval if you were never on the Grampian Hills. There’s a semi-colon in that line, I wish you to remember.”

Peter did remember it. Cecily neither fainted nor failed when it came her turn. She recited her little piece very well, though somewhat mechanically. I think she really did much better than if she had had her desired curls. The miserable conviction that her hair, alone among that glossy-tressed bevy, was looking badly, quite blotted out all nervousness and self-consciousness from her mind. Her hair apart, she looked very pretty. The prevailing excitement had made bright her eye and flushed her cheeks rosily– too rosily, perhaps. I heard a Carlisle woman behind me whisper that Cecily King looked consumptive, just like her Aunt Felicity; and I hated her fiercely for it.

Sara Ray also managed to get through respectably, although she was pitiably nervous. Her bow was naught but a short nod–“as if her head worked on wires,” whispered Felicity uncharitably–and the wave of her lily-white hand more nearly resembled an agonized jerk than a wave. We all felt relieved when she finished. She was, in a sense, one of “our crowd,” and we had been afraid she would disgrace us by breaking down.

Felicity followed her and recited her selection without haste, without rest, and absolutely without any expression whatever. But what mattered it how she recited? To look at her was sufficient. What with her splendid fleece of golden curls, her great, brilliant blue eyes, her exquisitely tinted face, her dimpled hands and arms, every member of the audience must have felt it was worth the ten cents he had paid merely to see her.

The Story Girl followed. An expectant silence fell over the room, and Mr. Perkins’ face lost the look of tense anxiety it had worn all the evening. Here was a performer who could be depended on. No need to fear stage fright or forgetfulness on her part. The Story Girl was not looking her best that night. White never became her, and her face was pale, though her eyes were splendid. But nobody thought about her appearance when the power and magic of her voice caught and held her listeners spellbound.

Her recitation was an old one, figuring in one of the School Readers, and we scholars all knew it off by heart. Sara Ray alone had not heard the Story Girl recite it. The latter had not been drilled at practices as had the other pupils, Mr. Perkins choosing not to waste time teaching her what she already knew far better than he did. The only time she had recited it had been at the “dress rehearsal” two nights before, at which Sara Ray had not been present.

In the poem a Florentine lady of old time, wedded to a cold and cruel husband, had died, or was supposed to have died, and had been carried to “the rich, the beautiful, the dreadful tomb” of her proud family. In the night she wakened from her trance and made her escape. Chilled and terrified, she had made her way to her husband’s door, only to be driven away brutally as a restless ghost by the horror-stricken inmates. A similar reception awaited her at her father’s. Then she had wandered blindly through the streets of Florence until she had fallen exhausted at the door of the lover of her girlhood. He, unafraid, had taken her in and cared for her. On the morrow, the husband and father, having discovered the empty tomb, came to claim her. She refused to return to them and the case was carried to the court of law. The verdict given was that a woman who had been “to burial borne” and left for dead, who had been driven from her husband’s door and from her childhood home, “must be adjudged as dead in law and fact,” was no more daughter or wife, but was set free to form what new ties she would. The climax of the whole selection came in the line,

“The court pronounces the defendant–DEAD!” and the Story Girl was wont to render it with such dramatic intensity and power that the veriest dullard among her listeners could not have missed its force and significance.

She swept along through the poem royally, playing on the emotions of her audience as she had so often played on ours in the old orchard. Pity, terror, indignation, suspense, possessed her hearers in turn. In the court scene she surpassed herself. She was, in very truth, the Florentine judge, stern, stately, impassive. Her voice dropped into the solemnity of the all- important line,

“‘The court pronounces the defendant–‘”

She paused for a breathless moment, the better to bring out the tragic import of the last word.

“DEAD,” piped up Sara Ray in her shrill, plaintive little voice.

The effect, to use a hackneyed but convenient phrase, can better be imagined than described. Instead of the sigh of relieved tension that should have swept over the audience at the conclusion of the line, a burst of laughter greeted it. The Story Girl’s performance was completely spoiled. She dealt the luckless Sara a glance that would have slain her on the spot could glances kill, stumbled lamely and impotently through the few remaining lines of her recitation, and fled with crimson cheeks to hide her mortification in the little corner that had been curtained off for a dressing-room. Mr. Perkins looked things not lawful to be uttered, and the audience tittered at intervals for the rest of the performance.

Sara Ray alone remained serenely satisfied until the close of the concert, when we surrounded her with a whirlwind of reproaches.

“Why,” she stammered aghast, “what did I do? I–I thought she was stuck and that I ought to prompt her quick.”

“You little fool, she just paused for effect,” cried Felicity angrily. Felicity might be rather jealous of the Story Girl’s gift, but she was furious at beholding “one of our family” made ridiculous in such a fashion. “You have less sense than anyone I ever heard of, Sara Ray.”

Poor Sara dissolved in tears.

“I didn’t know. I thought she was stuck,” she wailed again.

She cried all the way home, but we did not try to comfort her. We felt quite out of patience with her. Even Cecily was seriously annoyed. This second blunder of Sara’s was too much even for her loyalty. We saw her turn in at her own gate and go sobbing up her lane with no relenting.

The Story Girl was home before us, having fled from the schoolhouse as soon as the programme was over. We tried to sympathize with her but she would not be sympathized with.

“Please don’t ever mention it to me again,” she said, with compressed lips. “I never want to be reminded of it. Oh, that little IDIOT!”

“She spoiled Peter’s sermon last summer and now she’s spoiled your recitation,” said Felicity. “I think it’s time we gave up associating with Sara Ray.”

“Oh, don’t be quite so hard on her,” pleaded Cecily. “Think of the life the poor child has to live at home. I know she’ll cry all night.”

“Oh, let’s go to bed,” growled Dan. “I’m good and ready for it. I’ve had enough of school concerts.”

CHAPTER XIX

BY WAY OF THE STARS

But for two of us the adventures of the night were not yet over. Silence settled down over the old house–the eerie, whisperful, creeping silence of night. Felix and Dan were already sound asleep; I was drifting near the coast o’ dreams when I was aroused by a light tap on the door.

“Bev, are you asleep?” came in the Story Girl’s whisper.

“No, what is it?”

“S-s-h. Get up and dress and come out. I want you.”

With a good deal of curiosity and some misgiving I obeyed. What was in the wind now? Outside in the hall I found the Story Girl, with a candle in her hand, and her hat and jacket.

“Where are you going?” I whispered in amazement.

“Hush. I’ve got to go to the school and you must come with me. I left my coral necklace there. The clasp came loose and I was so afraid I’d lose it that I took it off and put it in the bookcase. I was feeling so upset when the concert was over that I forgot all about it.”

The coral necklace was a very handsome one which had belonged to the Story Girl’s mother. She had never been permitted to wear it before, and it had only been by dint of much coaxing that she had induced Aunt Janet to let her wear it to the concert.

“But there’s no sense in going for it in the dead of night,” I objected. “It will be quite safe. You can go for it in the morning.”

“Lizzie Paxton and her daughter are going to clean the school tomorrow, and I heard Lizzie say tonight she meant to be at it by five o’clock to get through before the heat of the day. You know perfectly well what Liz Paxton’s reputation is. If she finds that necklace I’ll never see it again. Besides, if I wait till the morning, Aunt Janet may find out that I left it there and she’d never let me wear it again. No, I’m going for it now. If you’re afraid,” added the Story Girl with delicate scorn, “of course you needn’t come.”

Afraid! I’d show her!

“Come on,” I said.

We slipped out of the house noiselessly and found ourselves in the unutterable solemnity and strangeness of a dark night. It was a new experience, and our hearts thrilled and our nerves tingled to the charm of it. Never had we been abroad before at such an hour. The world around us was not the world of daylight. ‘Twas an alien place, full of weird, evasive enchantment and magicry.

Only in the country can one become truly acquainted with the night. There it has the solemn calm of the infinite. The dim wide fields lie in silence, wrapped in the holy mystery of darkness. A wind, loosened from wild places far away, steals out to blow over dewy, star-lit, immemorial hills. The air in the pastures is sweet with the hush of dreams, and one may rest here like a child on its mother’s breast.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” breathed the Story Girl as we went down the long hill. “Do you know, I can forgive Sara Ray now. I thought tonight I never could–but now it doesn’t matter any more. I can even see how funny it was. Oh, wasn’t it funny? ‘DEAD’ in that squeaky little voice of Sara’s! I’ll just behave to her tomorrow as if nothing had happened. It seems so long ago now, here in the night.”

Neither of us ever forgot the subtle delight of that stolen walk. A spell of glamour was over us. The breezes whispered strange secrets of elf-haunted glens, and the hollows where the ferns grew were brimmed with mystery and romance. Ghostlike scents crept out of the meadows to meet us, and the fir wood before we came to the church was a living sweetness of Junebells growing in abundance.

Junebells have another and more scientific name, of course. But who could desire a better name than Junebells? They are so perfect in their way that they seem to epitomize the very scent and charm of the forest, as if the old wood’s daintiest thoughts had materialized in blossom; and not all the roses by Bendameer’s stream are as fragrant as a shallow sheet of Junebells under the boughs of fir.

There were fireflies abroad that night, too, increasing the gramarye of it. There is certainly something a little supernatural about fireflies. Nobody pretends to understand them. They are akin to the tribes of fairy, survivals of the elder time when the woods and hills swarmed with the little green folk. It is still very easy to believe in fairies when you see those goblin lanterns glimmering among the fir tassels.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” said the Story Girl in rapture. “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. I’m glad I left my necklace. And I am glad you are with me, Bev. The others wouldn’t understand so well. I like you because I don’t have to talk to you all the time. It’s so nice to walk with someone you don’t have to talk to. Here is the graveyard. Are you frightened to pass it, Bev?”

“No, I don’t think I’m frightened,” I answered slowly, “but I have a queer feeling.”

“So have I. But it isn’t fear. I don’t know what it is. I feel as if something was reaching out of the graveyard to hold me– something that wanted life–I don’t like it–let’s hurry. But isn’t it strange to think of all the dead people in there who were once alive like you and me. I don’t feel as if I could EVER die. Do you?”

“No, but everybody must. Of course we go on living afterwards, just the same. Don’t let’s talk of such things here,” I said hurriedly.

When we reached the school I contrived to open a window. We scrambled in, lighted a lamp and found the missing necklace. The Story Girl stood on the platform and gave an imitation of the catastrophe of the evening that made me shout with laughter. We prowled around for sheer delight over being there at an unearthly hour when everybody supposed we were sound asleep in our beds. It was with regret that we left, and we walked home as slowly as we could to prolong the adventure.

“Let’s never tell anyone,” said the Story Girl, as we reached home. “Let’s just have it as a secret between us for ever and ever–something that nobody else knows a thing about but you and me.”

“We’d better keep it a secret from Aunt Janet anyhow,” I whispered, laughing. “She’d think we were both crazy.”

“It’s real jolly to be crazy once in a while,” said the Story Girl.

CHAPTER XX

EXTRACTS FROM OUR MAGAZINE

EDITORIAL

As will be seen there is no Honour Roll in this number. Even Felicity has thought all the beautiful thoughts that can be thought and cannot think any more. Peter has never got drunk but, under existing circumstances, that is not greatly to his credit. As for our written resolutions they have silently disappeared from our chamber walls and the place that once knew them knows them no more for ever. (PETER, PERPLEXEDLY: “Seems to me I’ve heard something like that before.”) It is very sad but we will all make some new resolutions next year and maybe it will be easier to keep those.

THE STORY OF THE LOCKET THAT WAS BAKED

This was a story my Aunt Jane told me about her granma when she was a little girl. Its funny to think of baking a locket, but it wasn’t to eat. She was my great granma but Ill call her granma for short. It happened when she was ten years old. Of course she wasent anybodys granma then. Her father and mother and her were living in a new settlement called Brinsley. Their nearest naybor was a mile away. One day her Aunt Hannah from Charlottetown came and wanted her ma to go visiting with her. At first granma’s ma thought she couldent go because it was baking day and granma’s pa was away. But granma wasent afraid to stay alone and she knew how to bake the bread so she made her ma go and her Aunt Hannah took off the handsome gold locket and chain she was waring round her neck and hung it on granmas and told her she could ware it all day. Granma was awful pleased for she had never had any jewelry. She did all the chores and then was needing the loaves when she looked up and saw a tramp coming in and he was an awful villenus looking tramp. He dident even pass the time of day but just set down on a chair. Poor granma was awful fritened and she turned her back on him and went on needing the loaf cold and trembling– that is, granma was trembling not the loaf. She was worried about the locket. She didn’t know how she could hide it for to get anywhere she would have to turn round and pass him.

All of a suddent she thought she would hide it in the bread. She put her hand up and pulled it hard and quick and broke the fastening and needed it right into the loaf. Then she put the loaf in the pan and set it in the oven.

The tramp hadent seen her do it and then he asked for something to eat. Granma got him up a meal and when hed et it he began prowling about the kitchen looking into everything and opening the cubbord doors. Then he went into granma’s mas room and turned the buro drawers and trunk inside out and threw the things in them all about. All he found was a purse with a dollar in it and he swore about it and took it and went away. When granma was sure he was really gone she broke down and cried. She forgot all about the bread and it burned as black as coal. When she smelled it burning granma run and pulled it out. She was awful scared the locket was spoiled but she sawed open the loaf and it was there safe and sound. When her Aunt Hannah came back she said granma deserved the locket because she had saved it so clever and she gave it to her and grandma always wore it and was very proud of it. And granma used to say that was the only loaf of bread she ever spoiled in her life.

PETER CRAIG.

(FELICITY: “Those stories are all very well but they are only true stories. It’s easy enough to write true stories. I thought Peter was appointed fiction editor, but he has never written any fiction since the paper started. That’s not MY idea of a fiction editor. He ought to make up stories out of his own head.” PETER, SPUNKILY: “I can do it, too, and I will next time. And it ain’t easier to write true stories. It’s harder, ’cause you have to stick to facts.” FELICITY: “I don’t believe you could make up a story.” PETER: “I’ll show you!”)

MY MOST EXCITING ADVENTURE

It’s my turn to write it but I’m SO NERVOUS. My worst adventure happened TWO YEARS AGO. It was an awful one. I had a striped ribbon, striped brown and yellow and I LOST IT. I was very sorry for it was a handsome ribbon and all the girls in school were jealous of it. (FELICITY: “I wasn’t. I didn’t think it one bit pretty.” CECILY: “Hush!”) I hunted everywhere but I couldn’t find it. Next day was Sunday and I was running into the house by the front door and I saw SOMETHING LYING ON THE STEP and I thought it was my ribbon and I made a grab at it as I passed. But, oh, it was A SNAKE! Oh, I can never describe how I felt when I felt that awful thing WRIGGLING IN MY HAND. I let it go and SCREAMED AND SCREAMED, and ma was cross at me for yelling on Sunday and made me read seven chapters in the Bible but I didn’t mind that much after