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The Golden Road

by L. M. Montgomery · English · Gutenberg #316 · 434,342 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Golden Road

Author: L. M. Montgomery


        
Release date: July 5, 2008 [eBook #316]
                Most recently updated: March 17, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/316

Credits: John Hamm and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN ROAD ***




THE GOLDEN ROAD

By L. M. Montgomery


     “Life was a rose-lipped comrade
      With purple flowers dripping from her fingers.”
                                         --The Author.


               TO
               THE MEMORY OF
               Aunt Mary Lawson
               WHO TOLD ME MANY OF THE TALES
               REPEATED BY THE
               STORY GIRL




FOREWORD


Once upon a time we all walked on the golden road. It was a fair
highway, through the Land of Lost Delight; shadow and sunshine were
blessedly mingled, and every turn and dip revealed a fresh charm and a
new loveliness to eager hearts and unspoiled eyes.

On that road we heard the song of morning stars; we drank in fragrances
aerial and sweet as a May mist; we were rich in gossamer fancies and
iris hopes; our hearts sought and found the boon of dreams; the years
waited beyond and they were very fair; life was a rose-lipped comrade
with purple flowers dripping from her fingers.

We may long have left the golden road behind, but its memories are the
dearest of our eternal possessions; and those who cherish them as such
may haply find a pleasure in the pages of this book, whose people are
pilgrims on the golden road of youth.




THE GOLDEN ROAD




CHAPTER I. A NEW DEPARTURE


“I’ve thought of something amusing for the winter,” I said as we
drew into a half-circle around the glorious wood-fire in Uncle Alec’s
kitchen.

It had been a day of wild November wind, closing down into a wet, eerie
twilight. Outside, the wind was shrilling at the windows and around the
eaves, and the rain was playing on the roof. The old willow at the gate
was writhing in the storm and the orchard was a place of weird music,
born of all the tears and fears that haunt the halls of night. But
little we cared for the gloom and the loneliness of the outside world;
we kept them at bay with the light of the fire and the laughter of our
young lips.

We had been having a splendid game of Blind-Man’s Buff. That is, it
had been splendid at first; but later the fun went out of it because we
found that Peter was, of malice prepense, allowing himself to be
caught too easily, in order that he might have the pleasure of catching
Felicity--which he never failed to do, no matter how tightly his eyes
were bound. What remarkable goose said that love is blind? Love can see
through five folds of closely-woven muffler with ease!

“I’m getting tired,” said Cecily, whose breath was coming rather quickly
and whose pale cheeks had bloomed into scarlet. “Let’s sit down and get
the Story Girl to tell us a story.”

But as we dropped into our places the Story Girl shot a significant
glance at me which intimated that this was the psychological moment for
introducing the scheme she and I had been secretly developing for some
days. It was really the Story Girl’s idea and none of mine. But she had
insisted that I should make the suggestion as coming wholly from myself.

“If you don’t, Felicity won’t agree to it. You know yourself, Bev, how
contrary she’s been lately over anything I mention. And if she goes
against it Peter will too--the ninny!--and it wouldn’t be any fun if we
weren’t all in it.”

“What is it?” asked Felicity, drawing her chair slightly away from
Peter’s.

“It is this. Let us get up a newspaper of our own--write it all
ourselves, and have all we do in it. Don’t you think we can get a lot of
fun out of it?”

Everyone looked rather blank and amazed, except the Story Girl. She knew
what she had to do, and she did it.

“What a silly idea!” she exclaimed, with a contemptuous toss of her long
brown curls. “Just as if WE could get up a newspaper!”

Felicity fired up, exactly as we had hoped.

“I think it’s a splendid idea,” she said enthusiastically. “I’d like to
know why we couldn’t get up as good a newspaper as they have in town!
Uncle Roger says the Daily Enterprise has gone to the dogs--all the news
it prints is that some old woman has put a shawl on her head and gone
across the road to have tea with another old woman. I guess we could do
better than that. You needn’t think, Sara Stanley, that nobody but you
can do anything.”

“I think it would be great fun,” said Peter decidedly. “My Aunt Jane
helped edit a paper when she was at Queen’s Academy, and she said it was
very amusing and helped her a great deal.”

The Story Girl could hide her delight only by dropping her eyes and
frowning.

“Bev wants to be editor,” she said, “and I don’t see how he can, with no
experience. Anyhow, it would be a lot of trouble.”

“Some people are so afraid of a little bother,” retorted Felicity.

“I think it would be nice,” said Cecily timidly, “and none of us have
any experience of being editors, any more than Bev, so that wouldn’t
matter.”

“Will it be printed?” asked Dan.

“Oh, no,” I said. “We can’t have it printed. We’ll just have to write it
out--we can buy foolscap from the teacher.”

“I don’t think it will be much of a newspaper if it isn’t printed,” said
Dan scornfully.

“It doesn’t matter very much what YOU think,” said Felicity.

“Thank you,” retorted Dan.

“Of course,” said the Story Girl hastily, not wishing to have Dan turned
against our project, “if all the rest of you want it I’ll go in for it
too. I daresay it would be real good fun, now that I come to think of
it. And we’ll keep the copies, and when we become famous they’ll be
quite valuable.”

“I wonder if any of us ever will be famous,” said Felix.

“The Story Girl will be,” I said.

“I don’t see how she can be,” said Felicity skeptically. “Why, she’s
just one of us.”

“Well, it’s decided, then, that we’re to have a newspaper,” I resumed
briskly. “The next thing is to choose a name for it. That’s a very
important thing.”

“How often are you going to publish it?” asked Felix.

“Once a month.”

“I thought newspapers came out every day, or every week at least,” said
Dan.

“We couldn’t have one every week,” I explained. “It would be too much
work.”

“Well, that’s an argument,” admitted Dan. “The less work you can get
along with the better, in my opinion. No, Felicity, you needn’t say it.
I know exactly what you want to say, so save your breath to cool your
porridge. I agree with you that I never work if I can find anything else
to do.”


    “‘Remember it is harder still
      To have no work to do,”’


quoted Cecily reprovingly.

“I don’t believe THAT,” rejoined Dan. “I’m like the Irishman who said he
wished the man who begun work had stayed and finished it.”

“Well, is it decided that Bev is to be editor?” asked Felix.

“Of course it is,” Felicity answered for everybody.

“Then,” said Felix, “I move that the name be The King Monthly Magazine.”

“That sounds fine,” said Peter, hitching his chair a little nearer
Felicity’s.

“But,” said Cecily timidly, “that will leave out Peter and the Story
Girl and Sara Ray, just as if they didn’t have a share in it. I don’t
think that would be fair.”

“You name it then, Cecily,” I suggested.

“Oh!” Cecily threw a deprecating glance at the Story Girl and Felicity.
Then, meeting the contempt in the latter’s gaze, she raised her head
with unusual spirit.

“I think it would be nice just to call it Our Magazine,” she said. “Then
we’d all feel as if we had a share in it.”

“Our Magazine it will be, then,” I said. “And as for having a share in
it, you bet we’ll all have a share in it. If I’m to be editor you’ll all
have to be sub-editors, and have charge of a department.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” protested Cecily.

“You must,” I said inexorably. “‘England expects everyone to do his
duty.’ That’s our motto--only we’ll put Prince Edward Island in place of
England. There must be no shirking. Now, what departments will we have?
We must make it as much like a real newspaper as we can.”

“Well, we ought to have an etiquette department, then,” said Felicity.
“The Family Guide has one.”

“Of course we’ll have one,” I said, “and Dan will edit it.”

“Dan!” exclaimed Felicity, who had fondly expected to be asked to edit
it herself.

“I can run an etiquette column as well as that idiot in the Family
Guide, anyhow,” said Dan defiantly. “But you can’t have an etiquette
department unless questions are asked. What am I to do if nobody asks
any?”

“You must make some up,” said the Story Girl. “Uncle Roger says that is
what the Family Guide man does. He says it is impossible that there can
be as many hopeless fools in the world as that column would stand for
otherwise.”

“We want you to edit the household department, Felicity,” I said, seeing
a cloud lowering on that fair lady’s brow. “Nobody can do that as well
as you. Felix will edit the jokes and the Information Bureau, and Cecily
must be fashion editor. Yes, you must, Sis. It’s easy as wink. And the
Story Girl will attend to the personals. They’re very important. Anyone
can contribute a personal, but the Story Girl is to see there are some
in every issue, even if she has to make them up, like Dan with the
etiquette.”

“Bev will run the scrap book department, besides the editorials,” said
the Story Girl, seeing that I was too modest to say it myself.

“Aren’t you going to have a story page?” asked Peter.

“We will, if you’ll be fiction and poetry editor,” I said.

Peter, in his secret soul, was dismayed, but he would not blanch before
Felicity.

“All right,” he said, recklessly.

“We can put anything we like in the scrap book department,” I explained,
“but all the other contributions must be original, and all must have the
name of the writer signed to them, except the personals. We must all do
our best. Our Magazine is to be ‘a feast of reason and flow of soul.”’

I felt that I had worked in two quotations with striking effect. The
others, with the exception of the Story Girl, looked suitably impressed.

“But,” said Cecily, reproachfully, “haven’t you anything for Sara Ray to
do? She’ll feel awful bad if she is left out.”

I had forgotten Sara Ray. Nobody, except Cecily, ever did remember
Sara Ray unless she was on the spot. But we decided to put her in as
advertising manager. That sounded well and really meant very little.

“Well, we’ll go ahead then,” I said, with a sigh of relief that the
project had been so easily launched. “We’ll get the first issue out
about the first of January. And whatever else we do we mustn’t let Uncle
Roger get hold of it. He’d make such fearful fun of it.”

“I hope we can make a success of it,” said Peter moodily. He had been
moody ever since he was entrapped into being fiction editor.

“It will be a success if we are determined to succeed,” I said. “‘Where
there is a will there is always a way.’”

“That’s just what Ursula Townley said when her father locked her in her
room the night she was going to run away with Kenneth MacNair,” said the
Story Girl.

We pricked up our ears, scenting a story.

“Who were Ursula Townley and Kenneth MacNair?” I asked.

“Kenneth MacNair was a first cousin of the Awkward Man’s grandfather,
and Ursula Townley was the belle of the Island in her day. Who do you
suppose told me the story--no, read it to me, out of his brown book?”

“Never the Awkward Man himself!” I exclaimed incredulously.

“Yes, he did,” said the Story Girl triumphantly. “I met him one day
last week back in the maple woods when I was looking for ferns. He was
sitting by the spring, writing in his brown book. He hid it when he saw
me and looked real silly; but after I had talked to him awhile I just
asked him about it, and told him that the gossips said he wrote poetry
in it, and if he did would he tell me, because I was dying to know. He
said he wrote a little of everything in it; and then I begged him to
read me something out of it, and he read me the story of Ursula and
Kenneth.”

“I don’t see how you ever had the face,” said Felicity; and even Cecily
looked as if she thought the Story Girl had gone rather far.

“Never mind that,” cried Felix, “but tell us the story. That’s the main
thing.”

“I’ll tell it just as the Awkward Man read it, as far as I can,” said
the Story Girl, “but I can’t put all his nice poetical touches in,
because I can’t remember them all, though he read it over twice for me.”




CHAPTER II. A WILL, A WAY AND A WOMAN


“One day, over a hundred years ago, Ursula Townley was waiting for
Kenneth MacNair in a great beechwood, where brown nuts were falling
and an October wind was making the leaves dance on the ground like
pixy-people.”

“What are pixy-people?” demanded Peter, forgetting the Story Girl’s
dislike of interruptions.

“Hush,” whispered Cecily. “That is only one of the Awkward Man’s
poetical touches, I guess.”

“There were cultivated fields between the grove and the dark blue gulf;
but far behind and on each side were woods, for Prince Edward Island a
hundred years ago was not what it is today. The settlements were few and
scattered, and the population so scanty that old Hugh Townley boasted
that he knew every man, woman and child in it.

“Old Hugh was quite a noted man in his day. He was noted for
several things--he was rich, he was hospitable, he was proud, he was
masterful--and he had for daughter the handsomest young woman in Prince
Edward Island.

“Of course, the young men were not blind to her good looks, and she had
so many lovers that all the other girls hated her--”

“You bet!” said Dan, aside--

“But the only one who found favour in her eyes was the very last man she
should have pitched her fancy on, at least if old Hugh were the
judge. Kenneth MacNair was a dark-eyed young sea-captain of the next
settlement, and it was to meet him that Ursula stole to the beechwood on
that autumn day of crisp wind and ripe sunshine. Old Hugh had forbidden
his house to the young man, making such a scene of fury about it that
even Ursula’s high spirit quailed. Old Hugh had really nothing against
Kenneth himself; but years before either Kenneth or Ursula was born,
Kenneth’s father had beaten Hugh Townley in a hotly contested election.
Political feeling ran high in those days, and old Hugh had never
forgiven the MacNair his victory. The feud between the families dated
from that tempest in the provincial teapot, and the surplus of votes
on the wrong side was the reason why, thirty years after, Ursula had to
meet her lover by stealth if she met him at all.”

“Was the MacNair a Conservative or a Grit?” asked Felicity.

“It doesn’t make any difference what he was,” said the Story Girl
impatiently. “Even a Tory would be romantic a hundred years ago. Well,
Ursula couldn’t see Kenneth very often, for Kenneth lived fifteen miles
away and was often absent from home in his vessel. On this particular
day it was nearly three months since they had met.

“The Sunday before, young Sandy MacNair had been in Carlyle church. He
had risen at dawn that morning, walked bare-footed for eight miles along
the shore, carrying his shoes, hired a harbour fisherman to row him over
the channel, and then walked eight miles more to the church at Carlyle,
less, it is to be feared, from a zeal for holy things than that he might
do an errand for his adored brother, Kenneth. He carried a letter which
he contrived to pass into Ursula’s hand in the crowd as the people came
out. This letter asked Ursula to meet Kenneth in the beechwood the
next afternoon, and so she stole away there when suspicious father and
watchful stepmother thought she was spinning in the granary loft.”

“It was very wrong of her to deceive her parents,” said Felicity primly.

The Story Girl couldn’t deny this, so she evaded the ethical side of the
question skilfully.

“I am not telling you what Ursula Townley ought to have done,” she said
loftily. “I am only telling you what she DID do. If you don’t want to
hear it you needn’t listen, of course. There wouldn’t be many stories to
tell if nobody ever did anything she shouldn’t do.

“Well, when Kenneth came, the meeting was just what might have been
expected between two lovers who had taken their last kiss three months
before. So it was a good half-hour before Ursula said,

“‘Oh, Kenneth, I cannot stay long--I shall be missed. You said in your
letter that you had something important to talk of. What is it?’

“‘My news is this, Ursula. Next Saturday morning my vessel, The Fair
Lady, with her captain on board, sails at dawn from Charlottetown
harbour, bound for Buenos Ayres. At this season this means a safe and
sure return--next May.’

“‘Kenneth!’ cried Ursula. She turned pale and burst into tears. ‘How can
you think of leaving me? Oh, you are cruel!’

“‘Why, no, sweetheart,’ laughed Kenneth. ‘The captain of The Fair Lady
will take his bride with him. We’ll spend our honeymoon on the high
seas, Ursula, and the cold Canadian winter under southern palms.’

“‘You want me to run away with you, Kenneth?’ exclaimed Ursula.

“‘Indeed, dear girl, there’s nothing else to do!’

“‘Oh, I cannot!’ she protested. ‘My father would--’

“‘We’ll not consult him--until afterward. Come, Ursula, you know there’s
no other way. We’ve always known it must come to this. YOUR father will
never forgive me for MY father. You won’t fail me now. Think of the
long parting if you send me away alone on such a voyage. Pluck up your
courage, and we’ll let Townleys and MacNairs whistle their mouldy feuds
down the wind while we sail southward in The Fair Lady. I have a plan.’

“‘Let me hear it,’ said Ursula, beginning to get back her breath.

“‘There is to be a dance at The Springs Friday night. Are you invited,
Ursula?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Good. I am not--but I shall be there--in the fir grove behind the
house, with two horses. When the dancing is at its height you’ll steal
out to meet me. Then ‘tis but a fifteen mile ride to Charlottetown,
where a good minister, who is a friend of mine, will be ready to marry
us. By the time the dancers have tired their heels you and I will be on
our vessel, able to snap our fingers at fate.’

“‘And what if I do not meet you in the fir grove?’ said Ursula, a little
impertinently.

“‘If you do not, I’ll sail for South America the next morning, and many
a long year will pass ere Kenneth MacNair comes home again.’

“Perhaps Kenneth didn’t mean that, but Ursula thought he did, and it
decided her. She agreed to run away with him. Yes, of course that was
wrong, too, Felicity. She ought to have said, ‘No, I shall be married
respectably from home, and have a wedding and a silk dress and
bridesmaids and lots of presents.’ But she didn’t. She wasn’t as prudent
as Felicity King would have been.”

“She was a shameless hussy,” said Felicity, venting on the long-dead
Ursula that anger she dare not visit on the Story Girl.

“Oh, no, Felicity dear, she was just a lass of spirit. I’d have done the
same. And when Friday night came she began to dress for the dance with
a brave heart. She was to go to The Springs with her uncle and aunt,
who were coming on horseback that afternoon, and would then go on to The
Springs in old Hugh’s carriage, which was the only one in Carlyle then.
They were to leave in time to reach The Springs before nightfall, for
the October nights were dark and the wooded roads rough for travelling.

“When Ursula was ready she looked at herself in the glass with a good
deal of satisfaction. Yes, Felicity, she was a vain baggage, that same
Ursula, but that kind didn’t all die out a hundred years ago. And she
had good reason for being vain. She wore the sea-green silk which had
been brought out from England a year before and worn but once--at the
Christmas ball at Government House. A fine, stiff, rustling silk it was,
and over it shone Ursula’s crimson cheeks and gleaming eyes, and masses
of nut brown hair.

“As she turned from the glass she heard her father’s voice below, loud
and angry. Growing very pale, she ran out into the hall. Her father was
already half way upstairs, his face red with fury. In the hall below
Ursula saw her step-mother, looking troubled and vexed. At the door
stood Malcolm Ramsay, a homely neighbour youth who had been courting
Ursula in his clumsy way ever since she grew up. Ursula had always hated
him.

“‘Ursula!’ shouted old Hugh, ‘come here and tell this scoundrel he lies.
He says that you met Kenneth MacNair in the beechgrove last Tuesday.
Tell him he lies! Tell him he lies!’

“Ursula was no coward. She looked scornfully at poor Ramsay.

“‘The creature is a spy and a tale-bearer,’ she said, ‘but in this he
does not lie. I DID meet Kenneth MacNair last Tuesday.’

“‘And you dare to tell me this to my face!’ roared old Hugh. ‘Back to
your room, girl! Back to your room and stay there! Take off that finery.
You go to no more dances. You shall stay in that room until I choose to
let you out. No, not a word! I’ll put you there if you don’t go. In with
you--ay, and take your knitting with you. Occupy yourself with that this
evening instead of kicking your heels at The Springs!’

“He snatched a roll of gray stocking from the hall table and flung
it into Ursula’s room. Ursula knew she would have to follow it, or be
picked up and carried in like a naughty child. So she gave the miserable
Ramsay a look that made him cringe, and swept into her room with her
head in the air. The next moment she heard the door locked behind
her. Her first proceeding was to have a cry of anger and shame and
disappointment. That did no good, and then she took to marching up and
down her room. It did not calm her to hear the rumble of the carriage
out of the gate as her uncle and aunt departed.

“‘Oh, what’s to be done?’ she sobbed. ‘Kenneth will be furious. He will
think I have failed him and he will go away hot with anger against me.
If I could only send a word of explanation I know he would not leave me.
But there seems to be no way at all--though I have heard that there’s
always a way when there’s a will. Oh, I shall go mad! If the window
were not so high I would jump out of it. But to break my legs or my neck
would not mend the matter.’

“The afternoon passed on. At sunset Ursula heard hoof-beats and ran to
the window. Andrew Kinnear of The Springs was tying his horse at the
door. He was a dashing young fellow, and a political crony of old Hugh.
No doubt he would be at the dance that night. Oh, if she could get
speech for but a moment with him!

“When he had gone into the house, Ursula, turning impatiently from the
window, tripped and almost fell over the big ball of homespun yarn
her father had flung on the floor. For a moment she gazed at it
resentfully--then, with a gay little laugh, she pounced on it. The next
moment she was at her table, writing a brief note to Kenneth MacNair.
When it was written, Ursula unwound the gray ball to a considerable
depth, pinned the note on it, and rewound the yarn over it. A gray
ball, the color of the twilight, might escape observation, where a white
missive fluttering down from an upper window would surely be seen by
someone. Then she softly opened her window and waited.

“It was dusk when Andrew went away. Fortunately old Hugh did not come to
the door with him. As Andrew untied his horse Ursula threw the ball with
such good aim that it struck him, as she had meant it to do, squarely on
the head. Andrew looked up at her window. She leaned out, put her finger
warningly on her lips, pointed to the ball, and nodded. Andrew, looking
somewhat puzzled, picked up the ball, sprang to his saddle, and galloped
off.

“So far, well, thought Ursula. But would Andrew understand? Would he
have wit enough to think of exploring the big, knobby ball for its
delicate secret? And would he be at the dance after all?

“The evening dragged by. Time had never seemed so long to Ursula. She
could not rest or sleep. It was midnight before she heard the patter of
a handful of gravel on her window-panes. In a trice she was leaning out.
Below in the darkness stood Kenneth MacNair.

“‘Oh, Kenneth, did you get my letter? And is it safe for you to be
here?’

“‘Safe enough. Your father is in bed. I’ve waited two hours down the
road for his light to go out, and an extra half-hour to put him to
sleep. The horses are there. Slip down and out, Ursula. We’ll make
Charlottetown by dawn yet.’

“‘That’s easier said than done, lad. I’m locked in. But do you go out
behind the new barn and bring the ladder you will find there.’

“Five minutes later, Miss Ursula, hooded and cloaked, scrambled
soundlessly down the ladder, and in five more minutes she and Kenneth
were riding along the road.

“‘There’s a stiff gallop before us, Ursula,’ said Kenneth.

“‘I would ride to the world’s end with you, Kenneth MacNair,’ said
Ursula. Oh, of course she shouldn’t have said anything of the sort,
Felicity. But you see people had no etiquette departments in those days.
And when the red sunlight of a fair October dawn was shining over the
gray sea The Fair Lady sailed out of Charlottetown harbour. On her deck
stood Kenneth and Ursula MacNair, and in her hand, as a most precious
treasure, the bride carried a ball of gray homespun yarn.”

“Well,” said Dan, yawning, “I like that kind of a story. Nobody goes and
dies in it, that’s one good thing.”

“Did old Hugh forgive Ursula?” I asked.

“The story stopped there in the brown book,” said the Story Girl, “but
the Awkward Man says he did, after awhile.”

“It must be rather romantic to be run away with,” remarked Cecily,
wistfully.

“Don’t you get such silly notions in your head, Cecily King,” said
Felicity, severely.




CHAPTER III. THE CHRISTMAS HARP


Great was the excitement in the houses of King as Christmas drew nigh.
The air was simply charged with secrets. Everybody was very penurious
for weeks beforehand and hoards were counted scrutinizingly every day.
Mysterious pieces of handiwork were smuggled in and out of sight, and
whispered consultations were held, about which nobody thought of being
jealous, as might have happened at any other time. Felicity was in her
element, for she and her mother were deep in preparations for the
day. Cecily and the Story Girl were excluded from these doings
with indifference on Aunt Janet’s part and what seemed ostentatious
complacency on Felicity’s. Cecily took this to heart and complained to
me about it.

“I’m one of this family just as much as Felicity is,” she said, with as
much indignation as Cecily could feel, “and I don’t think she need
shut me out of everything. When I wanted to stone the raisins for the
mince-meat she said, no, she would do it herself, because Christmas
mince-meat was very particular--as if I couldn’t stone raisins right!
The airs Felicity puts on about her cooking just make me sick,”
 concluded Cecily wrathfully.

“It’s a pity she doesn’t make a mistake in cooking once in a while
herself,” I said. “Then maybe she wouldn’t think she knew so much more
than other people.”

All parcels that came in the mail from distant friends were taken charge
of by Aunts Janet and Olivia, not to be opened until the great day of
the feast itself. How slowly the last week passed! But even watched pots
will boil in the fulness of time, and finally Christmas day came, gray
and dour and frost-bitten without, but full of revelry and rose-red
mirth within. Uncle Roger and Aunt Olivia and the Story Girl came over
early for the day; and Peter came too, with his shining, morning face,
to be hailed with joy, for we had been afraid that Peter would not be
able to spend Christmas with us. His mother had wanted him home with
her.

“Of course I ought to go,” Peter had told me mournfully, “but we won’t
have turkey for dinner, because ma can’t afford it. And ma always cries
on holidays because she says they make her think of father. Of course
she can’t help it, but it ain’t cheerful. Aunt Jane wouldn’t have cried.
Aunt Jane used to say she never saw the man who was worth spoiling her
eyes for. But I guess I’ll have to spend Christmas at home.”

At the last moment, however, a cousin of Mrs. Craig’s in Charlottetown
invited her for Christmas, and Peter, being given his choice of going or
staying, joyfully elected to stay. So we were all together, except Sara
Ray, who had been invited but whose mother wouldn’t let her come.

“Sara Ray’s mother is a nuisance,” snapped the Story Girl. “She just
lives to make that poor child miserable, and she won’t let her go to the
party tonight, either.”

“It is just breaking Sara’s heart that she can’t,” said Cecily
compassionately. “I’m almost afraid I won’t enjoy myself for thinking of
her, home there alone, most likely reading the Bible, while we’re at the
party.”

“She might be worse occupied than reading the Bible,” said Felicity
rebukingly.

“But Mrs. Ray makes her read it as a punishment,” protested Cecily.
“Whenever Sara cries to go anywhere--and of course she’ll cry
tonight--Mrs. Ray makes her read seven chapters in the Bible. I wouldn’t
think that would make her very fond of it. And I’ll not be able to talk
the party over with Sara afterwards--and that’s half the fun gone.”

“You can tell her all about it,” comforted Felix.

“Telling isn’t a bit like talking it over,” retorted Cecily. “It’s too
one-sided.”

We had an exciting time opening our presents. Some of us had more than
others, but we all received enough to make us feel comfortably that we
were not unduly neglected in the matter. The contents of the box which
the Story Girl’s father had sent her from Paris made our eyes stick out.
It was full of beautiful things, among them another red silk dress--not
the bright, flame-hued tint of her old one, but a rich, dark crimson,
with the most distracting flounces and bows and ruffles; and with it
were little red satin slippers with gold buckles, and heels that made
Aunt Janet hold up her hands in horror. Felicity remarked scornfully
that she would have thought the Story Girl would get tired wearing red
so much, and even Cecily commented apart to me that she thought when
you got so many things all at once you didn’t appreciate them as much as
when you only got a few.

“I’d never get tired of red,” said the Story Girl. “I just love it--it’s
so rich and glowing. When I’m dressed in red I always feel ever so much
cleverer than in any other colour. Thoughts just crowd into my brain
one after the other. Oh, you darling dress--you dear, sheeny, red-rosy,
glistening, silky thing!”

She flung it over her shoulder and danced around the kitchen.

“Don’t be silly, Sara,” said Aunt Janet, a little stiffly. She was a
good soul, that Aunt Janet, and had a kind, loving heart in her ample
bosom. But I fancy there were times when she thought it rather hard
that the daughter of a roving adventurer--as she considered him--like
Blair Stanley should disport herself in silk dresses, while her own
daughters must go clad in gingham and muslin--for those were the days
when a feminine creature got one silk dress in her lifetime, and seldom
more than one.

The Story Girl also got a present from the Awkward Man--a little,
shabby, worn volume with a great many marks on the leaves.

“Why, it isn’t new--it’s an old book!” exclaimed Felicity. “I didn’t
think the Awkward Man was mean, whatever else he was.”

“Oh, you don’t understand, Felicity,” said the Story Girl patiently.
“And I don’t suppose I can make you understand. But I’ll try. I’d ten
times rather have this than a new book. It’s one of his own, don’t you
see--one that he has read a hundred times and loved and made a friend
of. A new book, just out of a shop, wouldn’t be the same thing at all.
It wouldn’t MEAN anything. I consider it a great compliment that he has
given me this book. I’m prouder of it than of anything else I’ve got.”

“Well, you’re welcome to it,” said Felicity. “I don’t understand and I
don’t want to. I wouldn’t give anybody a Christmas present that wasn’t
new, and I wouldn’t thank anybody who gave me one.”

Peter was in the seventh heaven because Felicity had given him a
present--and, moreover, one that she had made herself. It was a bookmark
of perforated cardboard, with a gorgeous red and yellow worsted goblet
worked on it, and below, in green letters, the solemn warning, “Touch
Not The Cup.” As Peter was not addicted to habits of intemperance, not
even to looking on dandelion wine when it was pale yellow, we did not
exactly see why Felicity should have selected such a device. But Peter
was perfectly satisfied, so nobody cast any blight on his happiness by
carping criticism. Later on Felicity told me she had worked the bookmark
for him because his father used to drink before he ran away.

“I thought Peter ought to be warned in time,” she said.

Even Pat had a ribbon of blue, which he clawed off and lost half an hour
after it was tied on him. Pat did not care for vain adornments of the
body.

We had a glorious Christmas dinner, fit for the halls of Lucullus, and
ate far more than was good for us, none daring to make us afraid on that
one day of the year. And in the evening--oh, rapture and delight!--we
went to Kitty Marr’s party.

It was a fine December evening; the sharp air of morning had mellowed
until it was as mild as autumn. There had been no snow, and the long
fields, sloping down from the homestead, were brown and mellow. A weird,
dreamy stillness had fallen on the purple earth, the dark fir woods, the
valley rims, the sere meadows. Nature seemed to have folded satisfied
hands to rest, knowing that her long wintry slumber was coming upon her.

At first, when the invitations to the party had come, Aunt Janet had
said we could not go; but Uncle Alec interceded in our favour, perhaps
influenced thereto by Cecily’s wistful eyes. If Uncle Alec had a
favourite among his children it was Cecily, and he had grown even more
indulgent towards her of late. Now and then I saw him looking at her
intently, and, following his eyes and thought, I had, somehow, seen that
Cecily was paler and thinner than she had been in the summer, and that
her soft eyes seemed larger, and that over her little face in moments of
repose there was a certain languor and weariness that made it very sweet
and pathetic. And I heard him tell Aunt Janet that he did not like to
see the child getting so much the look of her Aunt Felicity.

“Cecily is perfectly well,” said Aunt Janet sharply. “She’s only growing
very fast. Don’t be foolish, Alec.”

But after that Cecily had cups of cream where the rest of us got only
milk; and Aunt Janet was very particular to see that she had her rubbers
on whenever she went out.

On this merry Christmas evening, however, no fears or dim foreshadowings
of any coming event clouded our hearts or faces. Cecily looked brighter
and prettier than I had ever seen her, with her softly shining eyes and
the nut brown gloss of her hair. Felicity was too beautiful for words;
and even the Story Girl, between excitement and the crimson silk array,
blossomed out with a charm and allurement more potent than any regular
loveliness--and this in spite of the fact that Aunt Olivia had tabooed
the red satin slippers and mercilessly decreed that stout shoes should
be worn.

“I know just how you feel about it, you daughter of Eve,” she said, with
gay sympathy, “but December roads are damp, and if you are going to
walk to Marrs’ you are not going to do it in those frivolous Parisian
concoctions, even with overboots on; so be brave, dear heart, and show
that you have a soul above little red satin shoes.”

“Anyhow,” said Uncle Roger, “that red silk dress will break the hearts
of all the feminine small fry at the party. You’d break their spirits,
too, if you wore the slippers. Don’t do it, Sara. Leave them one wee
loophole of enjoyment.”

“What does Uncle Roger mean?” whispered Felicity.

“He means you girls are all dying of jealousy because of the Story
Girl’s dress,” said Dan.

“I am not of a jealous disposition,” said Felicity loftily, “and she’s
entirely welcome to the dress--with a complexion like that.”

But we enjoyed that party hugely, every one of us. And we enjoyed the
walk home afterwards, through dim, enshadowed fields where silvery
star-beams lay, while Orion trod his stately march above us, and a red
moon climbed up the black horizon’s rim. A brook went with us part of
the way, singing to us through the dark--a gay, irresponsible vagabond
of valley and wilderness.

Felicity and Peter walked not with us. Peter’s cup must surely have
brimmed over that Christmas night. When we left the Marr house, he had
boldly said to Felicity, “May I see you home?” And Felicity, much to our
amazement, had taken his arm and marched off with him. The primness
of her was indescribable, and was not at all ruffled by Dan’s hoot of
derision. As for me, I was consumed by a secret and burning desire to
ask the Story Girl if I might see HER home; but I could not screw my
courage to the sticking point. How I envied Peter his easy, insouciant
manner! I could not emulate him, so Dan and Felix and Cecily and the
Story Girl and I all walked hand in hand, huddling a little closer
together as we went through James Frewen’s woods--for there are strange
harps in a fir grove, and who shall say what fingers sweep them? Mighty
and sonorous was the music above our heads as the winds of the night
stirred the great boughs tossing athwart the starlit sky. Perhaps it was
that aeolian harmony which recalled to the Story Girl a legend of elder
days.

“I read such a pretty story in one of Aunt Olivia’s books last night,”
 she said. “It was called ‘The Christmas Harp.’ Would you like to hear
it? It seems to me it would just suit this part of the road.”

“There isn’t anything about--about ghosts in it, is there?” said Cecily
timidly.

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t tell a ghost story here for anything. I’d frighten
myself too much. This story is about one of the shepherds who saw the
angels on the first Christmas night. He was just a youth, and he loved
music with all his heart, and he longed to be able to express the melody
that was in his soul. But he could not; he had a harp and he often tried
to play on it; but his clumsy fingers only made such discord that
his companions laughed at him and mocked him, and called him a madman
because he would not give it up, but would rather sit apart by himself,
with his arms about his harp, looking up into the sky, while they
gathered around their fire and told tales to wile away their long night
vigils as they watched their sheep on the hills. But to him the thoughts
that came out of the great silence were far sweeter than their mirth;
and he never gave up the hope, which sometimes left his lips as a
prayer, that some day he might be able to express those thoughts in
music to the tired, weary, forgetful world. On the first Christmas night
he was out with his fellow shepherds on the hills. It was chill and
dark, and all, except him, were glad to gather around the fire. He sat,
as usual, by himself, with his harp on his knee and a great longing in
his heart. And there came a marvellous light in the sky and over the
hills, as if the darkness of the night had suddenly blossomed into a
wonderful meadow of flowery flame; and all the shepherds saw the angels
and heard them sing. And as they sang, the harp that the young shepherd
held began to play softly by itself, and as he listened to it he
realized that it was playing the same music that the angels sang
and that all his secret longings and aspirations and strivings were
expressed in it. From that night, whenever he took the harp in his
hands, it played the same music; and he wandered all over the world
carrying it; wherever the sound of its music was heard hate and discord
fled away and peace and good-will reigned. No one who heard it could
think an evil thought; no one could feel hopeless or despairing or
bitter or angry. When a man had once heard that music it entered into
his soul and heart and life and became a part of him for ever. Years
went by; the shepherd grew old and bent and feeble; but still he
roamed over land and sea, that his harp might carry the message of the
Christmas night and the angel song to all mankind. At last his strength
failed him and he fell by the wayside in the darkness; but his harp
played as his spirit passed; and it seemed to him that a Shining One
stood by him, with wonderful starry eyes, and said to him, ‘Lo, the
music thy harp has played for so many years has been but the echo of the
love and sympathy and purity and beauty in thine own soul; and if at any
time in the wanderings thou hadst opened the door of that soul to evil
or envy or selfishness thy harp would have ceased to play. Now thy life
is ended; but what thou hast given to mankind has no end; and as long as
the world lasts, so long will the heavenly music of the Christmas harp
ring in the ears of men.’ When the sun rose the old shepherd lay dead by
the roadside, with a smile on his face; and in his hands was a harp with
all its strings broken.”

We left the fir woods as the tale was ended, and on the opposite hill
was home. A dim light in the kitchen window betokened that Aunt Janet
had no idea of going to bed until all her young fry were safely housed
for the night.

“Ma’s waiting up for us,” said Dan. “I’d laugh if she happened to go to
the door just as Felicity and Peter were strutting up. I guess she’ll be
cross. It’s nearly twelve.”

“Christmas will soon be over,” said Cecily, with a sigh. “Hasn’t it
been a nice one? It’s the first we’ve all spent together. Do you suppose
we’ll ever spend another together?”

“Lots of ‘em,” said Dan cheerily. “Why not?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Cecily, her footsteps lagging somewhat.
“Only things seem just a little too pleasant to last.”

“If Willy Fraser had had as much spunk as Peter, Miss Cecily King
mightn’t be so low spirited,” quoth Dan, significantly.

Cecily tossed her head and disdained reply. There are really some
remarks a self-respecting young lady must ignore.




CHAPTER IV. NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS


If we did not have a white Christmas we had a white New Year. Midway
between the two came a heavy snowfall. It was winter in our orchard of
old delights then,--so truly winter that it was hard to believe summer
had ever dwelt in it, or that spring would ever return to it. There were
no birds to sing the music of the moon; and the path where the apple
blossoms had fallen were heaped with less fragrant drifts. But it was a
place of wonder on a moonlight night, when the snowy arcades shone
like avenues of ivory and crystal, and the bare trees cast fairy-like
traceries upon them. Over Uncle Stephen’s Walk, where the snow had
fallen smoothly, a spell of white magic had been woven. Taintless and
wonderful it seemed, like a street of pearl in the new Jerusalem.

On New Year’s Eve we were all together in Uncle Alec’s kitchen, which
was tacitly given over to our revels during the winter evenings. The
Story Girl and Peter were there, of course, and Sara Ray’s mother had
allowed her to come up on condition that she should be home by eight
sharp. Cecily was glad to see her, but the boys never hailed her arrival
with over-much delight, because, since the dark began to come down
early, Aunt Janet always made one of us walk down home with her. We
hated this, because Sara Ray was always so maddeningly self-conscious
of having an escort. We knew perfectly well that next day in school she
would tell her chums as a “dead” secret that “So-and-So King saw her
home” from the hill farm the night before. Now, seeing a young lady home
from choice, and being sent home with her by your aunt or mother are two
entirely different things, and we thought Sara Ray ought to have sense
enough to know it.

Outside there was a vivid rose of sunset behind the cold hills of fir,
and the long reaches of snowy fields glowed fairily pink in the western
light. The drifts along the edges of the meadows and down the lane
looked as if a series of breaking waves had, by the lifting of a
magician’s wand, been suddenly transformed into marble, even to their
toppling curls of foam.

Slowly the splendour died, giving place to the mystic beauty of a winter
twilight when the moon is rising. The hollow sky was a cup of blue. The
stars came out over the white glens and the earth was covered with a
kingly carpet for the feet of the young year to press.

“I’m so glad the snow came,” said the Story Girl. “If it hadn’t the New
Year would have seemed just as dingy and worn out as the old. There’s
something very solemn about the idea of a New Year, isn’t there? Just
think of three hundred and sixty-five whole days, with not a thing
happened in them yet.”

“I don’t suppose anything very wonderful will happen in them,” said
Felix pessimistically. To Felix, just then, life was flat, stale and
unprofitable because it was his turn to go home with Sara Ray.

“It makes me a little frightened to think of all that may happen in
them,” said Cecily. “Miss Marwood says it is what we put into a year,
not what we get out of it, that counts at last.”

“I’m always glad to see a New Year,” said the Story Girl. “I wish we
could do as they do in Norway. The whole family sits up until midnight,
and then, just as the clock is striking twelve, the father opens the
door and welcomes the New Year in. Isn’t it a pretty custom?”

“If ma would let us stay up till twelve we might do that too,” said Dan,
“but she never will. I call it mean.”

“If I ever have children I’ll let them stay up to watch the New Year
in,” said the Story Girl decidedly.

“So will I,” said Peter, “but other nights they’ll have to go to bed at
seven.”

“You ought to be ashamed, speaking of such things,” said Felicity, with
a scandalized face.

Peter shrank into the background abashed, no doubt believing that he had
broken some Family Guide precept all to pieces.

“I didn’t know it wasn’t proper to mention children,” he muttered
apologetically.

“We ought to make some New Year resolutions,” suggested the Story Girl.
“New Year’s Eve is the time to make them.”

“I can’t think of any resolutions I want to make,” said Felicity, who
was perfectly satisfied with herself.

“I could suggest a few to you,” said Dan sarcastically.

“There are so many I would like to make,” said Cecily, “that I’m afraid
it wouldn’t be any use trying to keep them all.”

“Well, let’s all make a few, just for the fun of it, and see if we can
keep them,” I said. “And let’s get paper and ink and write them out.
That will make them seem more solemn and binding.”

“And then pin them up on our bedroom walls, where we’ll see them every
day,” suggested the Story Girl, “and every time we break a resolution
we must put a cross opposite it. That will show us what progress we are
making, as well as make us ashamed if we have too many crosses.”

“And let’s have a Roll of Honour in Our Magazine,” suggested Felix, “and
every month we’ll publish the names of those who keep their resolutions
perfect.”

“I think it’s all nonsense,” said Felicity. But she joined our circle
around the table, though she sat for a long time with a blank sheet
before her.

“Let’s each make a resolution in turn,” I said. “I’ll lead off.”

And, recalling with shame certain unpleasant differences of opinion I
had lately had with Felicity, I wrote down in my best hand,

“I shall try to keep my temper always.”

“You’d better,” said Felicity tactfully.

It was Dan’s turn next.

“I can’t think of anything to start with,” he said, gnawing his
penholder fiercely.

“You might make a resolution not to eat poison berries,” suggested
Felicity.

“You’d better make one not to nag people everlastingly,” retorted Dan.

“Oh, don’t quarrel the last night of the old year,” implored Cecily.

“You might resolve not to quarrel any time,” suggested Sara Ray.

“No, sir,” said Dan emphatically. “There’s no use making a resolution
you CAN’T keep. There are people in this family you’ve just GOT to
quarrel with if you want to live. But I’ve thought of one--I won’t do
things to spite people.”

Felicity--who really was in an unbearable mood that night--laughed
disagreeably; but Cecily gave her a fierce nudge, which probably
restrained her from speaking.

“I will not eat any apples,” wrote Felix.

“What on earth do you want to give up eating apples for?” asked Peter in
astonishment.

“Never mind,” returned Felix.

“Apples make people fat, you know,” said Felicity sweetly.

“It seems a funny kind of resolution,” I said doubtfully. “I think our
resolutions ought to be giving up wrong things or doing right ones.”

“You make your resolutions to suit yourself and I’ll make mine to suit
myself,” said Felix defiantly.

“I shall never get drunk,” wrote Peter painstakingly.

“But you never do,” said the Story Girl in astonishment.

“Well, it will be all the easier to keep the resolution,” argued Peter.

“That isn’t fair,” complained Dan. “If we all resolved not to do the
things we never do we’d all be on the Roll of Honour.”

“You let Peter alone,” said Felicity severely. “It’s a very good
resolution and one everybody ought to make.”

“I shall not be jealous,” wrote the Story Girl.

“But are you?” I asked, surprised.

The Story Girl coloured and nodded. “Of one thing,” she confessed, “but
I’m not going to tell what it is.”

“I’m jealous sometimes, too,” confessed Sara Ray, “and so my first
resolution will be ‘I shall try not to feel jealous when I hear the
other girls in school describing all the sick spells they’ve had.’”

“Goodness, do you want to be sick?” demanded Felix in astonishment.

“It makes a person important,” explained Sara Ray.

“I am going to try to improve my mind by reading good books and
listening to older people,” wrote Cecily.

“You got that out of the Sunday School paper,” cried Felicity.

“It doesn’t matter where I got it,” said Cecily with dignity. “The main
thing is to keep it.”

“It’s your turn, Felicity,” I said.

Felicity tossed her beautiful golden head.

“I told you I wasn’t going to make any resolutions. Go on yourself.”

“I shall always study my grammar lesson,” I wrote--I, who loathed
grammar with a deadly loathing.

“I hate grammar too,” sighed Sara Ray. “It seems so unimportant.”

Sara was rather fond of a big word, but did not always get hold of the
right one. I rather suspected that in the above instance she really
meant uninteresting.

“I won’t get mad at Felicity, if I can help it,” wrote Dan.

“I’m sure I never do anything to make you mad,” exclaimed Felicity.

“I don’t think it’s polite to make resolutions about your sisters,” said
Peter.

“He can’t keep it anyway,” scoffed Felicity. “He’s got such an awful
temper.”

“It’s a family failing,” flashed Dan, breaking his resolution ere the
ink on it was dry.

“There you go,” taunted Felicity.

“I’ll work all my arithmetic problems without any help,” scribbled
Felix.

“I wish I could resolve that, too,” sighed Sara Ray, “but it wouldn’t be
any use. I’d never be able to do those compound multiplication sums the
teacher gives us to do at home every night if I didn’t get Judy Pineau
to help me. Judy isn’t a good reader and she can’t spell AT ALL, but you
can’t stick her in arithmetic as far as she went herself. I feel sure,”
 concluded poor Sara, in a hopeless tone, “that I’ll NEVER be able to
understand compound multiplication.”


          “‘Multiplication is vexation,
               Division is as bad,
           The rule of three perplexes me,
               And fractions drive me mad,’”


quoted Dan.

“I haven’t got as far as fractions yet,” sighed Sara, “and I hope I’ll
be too big to go to school before I do. I hate arithmetic, but I am
PASSIONATELY fond of geography.”

“I will not play tit-tat-x on the fly leaves of my hymn book in church,”
 wrote Peter.

“Mercy, did you ever do such a thing?” exclaimed Felicity in horror.

Peter nodded shamefacedly.

“Yes--that Sunday Mr. Bailey preached. He was so long-winded, I got
awful tired, and, anyway, he was talking about things I couldn’t
understand, so I played tit-tat-x with one of the Markdale boys. It was
the day I was sitting up in the gallery.”

“Well, I hope if you ever do the like again you won’t do it in OUR pew,”
 said Felicity severely.

“I ain’t going to do it at all,” said Peter. “I felt sort of mean all
the rest of the day.”

“I shall try not to be vexed when people interrupt me when I’m telling
stories,” wrote the Story Girl. “but it will be hard,” she added with a
sigh.

“I never mind being interrupted,” said Felicity.

“I shall try to be cheerful and smiling all the time,” wrote Cecily.

“You are, anyway,” said Sara Ray loyally.

“I don’t believe we ought to be cheerful ALL the time,” said the Story
Girl. “The Bible says we ought to weep with those who weep.”

“But maybe it means that we’re to weep cheerfully,” suggested Cecily.

“Sorter as if you were thinking, ‘I’m very sorry for you but I’m mighty
glad I’m not in the scrape too,’” said Dan.

“Dan, don’t be irreverent,” rebuked Felicity.

“I know a story about old Mr. and Mrs. Davidson of Markdale,” said
the Story Girl. “She was always smiling and it used to aggravate her
husband, so one day he said very crossly, ‘Old lady, what ARE you
grinning at?’ ‘Oh, well, Abiram, everything’s so bright and pleasant,
I’ve just got to smile.’

“Not long after there came a time when everything went wrong--the crop
failed and their best cow died, and Mrs. Davidson had rheumatism; and
finally Mr. Davidson fell and broke his leg. But still Mrs. Davidson
smiled. ‘What in the dickens are you grinning about now, old lady?’
he demanded. ‘Oh, well, Abiram,’ she said, ‘everything is so dark and
unpleasant I’ve just got to smile.’ ‘Well,’ said the old man crossly, ‘I
think you might give your face a rest sometimes.’”

“I shall not talk gossip,” wrote Sara Ray with a satisfied air.

“Oh, don’t you think that’s a little TOO strict?” asked Cecily
anxiously. “Of course, it’s not right to talk MEAN gossip, but the
harmless kind doesn’t hurt. If I say to you that Emmy MacPhail is going
to get a new fur collar this winter, THAT is harmless gossip, but if I
say I don’t see how Emmy MacPhail can afford a new fur collar when her
father can’t pay my father for the oats he got from him, that would be
MEAN gossip. If I were you, Sara, I’d put MEAN gossip.”

Sara consented to this amendment.

“I will be polite to everybody,” was my third resolution, which passed
without comment.

“I’ll try not to use slang since Cecily doesn’t like it,” wrote Dan.

“I think some slang is real cute,” said Felicity.

“The Family Guide says it’s very vulgar,” grinned Dan. “Doesn’t it, Sara
Stanley?”

“Don’t disturb me,” said the Story Girl dreamily. “I’m just thinking a
beautiful thought.”

“I’ve thought of a resolution to make,” cried Felicity. “Mr. Marwood
said last Sunday we should always try to think beautiful thoughts and
then our lives would be very beautiful. So I shall resolve to think a
beautiful thought every morning before breakfast.”

“Can you only manage one a day?” queried Dan.

“And why before breakfast?” I asked.

“Because it’s easier to think on an empty stomach,” said Peter, in all
good faith. But Felicity shot a furious glance at him.

“I selected that time,” she explained with dignity, “because when I’m
brushing my hair before my glass in the morning I’ll see my resolution
and remember it.”

“Mr. Marwood meant that ALL our thoughts ought to be beautiful,” said
the Story Girl. “If they were, people wouldn’t be afraid to say what
they think.”

“They oughtn’t to be afraid to, anyhow,” said Felix stoutly. “I’m going
to make a resolution to say just what I think always.”

“And do you expect to get through the year alive if you do?” asked Dan.

“It might be easy enough to say what you think if you could always be
sure just what you DO think,” said the Story Girl. “So often I can’t be
sure.”

“How would you like it if people always said just what they think to
you?” asked Felicity.

“I’m not very particular what SOME people think of me,” rejoined Felix.

“I notice you don’t like to be told by anybody that you’re fat,”
 retorted Felicity.

“Oh, dear me, I do wish you wouldn’t all say such sarcastic things to
each other,” said poor Cecily plaintively. “It sounds so horrid the last
night of the old year. Dear knows where we’ll all be this night next
year. Peter, it’s your turn.”

“I will try,” wrote Peter, “to say my prayers every night regular, and
not twice one night because I don’t expect to have time the next,--like
I did the night before the party,” he added.

“I s’pose you never said your prayers until we got you to go to church,”
 said Felicity--who had had no hand in inducing Peter to go to church,
but had stoutly opposed it, as recorded in the first volume of our
family history.

“I did, too,” said Peter. “Aunt Jane taught me to say my prayers. Ma
hadn’t time, being as father had run away; ma had to wash at night same
as in day-time.”

“I shall learn to cook,” wrote the Story Girl, frowning.

“You’d better resolve not to make puddings of--” began Felicity, then
stopped as suddenly as if she had bitten off the rest of her sentence
and swallowed it. Cecily had nudged her, so she had probably remembered
the Story Girl’s threat that she would never tell another story if she
was ever twitted with the pudding she had made from sawdust. But we all
knew what Felicity had started to say and the Story Girl dealt her a
most uncousinly glance.

“I will not cry because mother won’t starch my aprons,” wrote Sara Ray.

“Better resolve not to cry about anything,” said Dan kindly.

Sara Ray shook her head forlornly.

“That would be too hard to keep. There are times when I HAVE to cry.
It’s a relief.”

“Not to the folks who have to hear you,” muttered Dan aside to Cecily.

“Oh, hush,” whispered Cecily back. “Don’t go and hurt her feelings the
last night of the old year. Is it my turn again? Well, I’ll resolve not
to worry because my hair is not curly. But, oh, I’ll never be able to
help wishing it was.”

“Why don’t you curl it as you used to do, then?” asked Dan.

“You know very well that I’ve never put my hair up in curl papers since
the time Peter was dying of the measles,” said Cecily reproachfully. “I
resolved then I wouldn’t because I wasn’t sure it was quite right.”

“I will keep my finger-nails neat and clean,” I wrote. “There, that’s
four resolutions. I’m not going to make any more. Four’s enough.”

“I shall always think twice before I speak,” wrote Felix.

“That’s an awful waste of time,” commented Dan, “but I guess you’ll need
to if you’re always going to say what you think.”

“I’m going to stop with three,” said Peter.

“I will have all the good times I can,” wrote the Story Girl.

“THAT’S what I call sensible,” said Dan.

“It’s a very easy resolution to keep, anyhow,” commented Felix.

“I shall try to like reading the Bible,” wrote Sara Ray.

“You ought to like reading the Bible without trying to,” exclaimed
Felicity.

“If you had to read seven chapters of it every time you were naughty I
don’t believe you would like it either,” retorted Sara Ray with a flash
of spirit.

“I shall try to believe only half of what I hear,” was Cecily’s
concluding resolution.

“But which half?” scoffed Dan.

“The best half,” said sweet Cecily simply.

“I’ll try to obey mother ALWAYS,” wrote Sara Ray, with a tremendous
sigh, as if she fully realized the difficulty of keeping such a
resolution. “And that’s all I’m going to make.”

“Felicity has only made one,” said the Story Girl.

“I think it better to make just one and keep it than make a lot and
break them,” said Felicity loftily.

She had the last word on the subject, for it was time for Sara Ray to
go, and our circle broke up. Sara and Felix departed and we watched
them down the lane in the moonlight--Sara walking demurely in one runner
track, and Felix stalking grimly along in the other. I fear the romantic
beauty of that silver shining night was entirely thrown away on my
mischievous brother.

And it was, as I remember it, a most exquisite night--a white poem, a
frosty, starry lyric of light. It was one of those nights on which one
might fall asleep and dream happy dreams of gardens of mirth and
song, feeling all the while through one’s sleep the soft splendour and
radiance of the white moon-world outside, as one hears soft, far-away
music sounding through the thoughts and words that are born of it.

As a matter of fact, however, Cecily dreamed that night that she saw
three full moons in the sky, and wakened up crying with the horror of
it.




CHAPTER V. THE FIRST NUMBER OF “OUR MAGAZINE”


The first number of Our Magazine was ready on New Year’s Day, and we
read it that evening in the kitchen. All our staff had worked nobly and
we were enormously proud of the result, although Dan still continued
to scoff at a paper that wasn’t printed. The Story Girl and I read it
turnabout while the others, except Felix, ate apples. It opened with a
short


EDITORIAL

With this number Our Magazine makes its first bow to the public. All
the editors have done their best and the various departments are full of
valuable information and amusement. The tastefully designed cover is by
a famous artist, Mr. Blair Stanley, who sent it to us all the way from
Europe at the request of his daughter. Mr. Peter Craig, our enterprising
literary editor, contributes a touching love story. (Peter, aside, in
a gratified pig’s whisper: “I never was called ‘Mr.’ before.”) Miss
Felicity King’s essays on Shakespeare is none the worse for being an
old school composition, as it is new to most of our readers. Miss
Cecily King contributes a thrilling article of adventure. The various
departments are ably edited, and we feel that we have reason to be proud
of Our Magazine. But we shall not rest on our oars. “Excelsior” shall
ever be our motto. We trust that each succeeding issue will be better
than the one that went before. We are well aware of many defects, but
it is easier to see them than to remedy them. Any suggestion that would
tend to the improvement of Our Magazine will be thankfully received,
but we trust that no criticism will be made that will hurt anyone’s
feelings. Let us all work together in harmony, and strive to make Our
Magazine an influence for good and a source of innocent pleasure, and
let us always remember the words of the poet.


  “The heights by great men reached and kept
     Were not attained by sudden flight,
   But they, while their companions slept,
     Were toiling upwards in the night.”


(Peter, IMPRESSIVELY:--“I’ve read many a worse editorial in the
Enterprise.”)


ESSAY ON SHAKESPEARE

Shakespeare’s full name was William Shakespeare. He did not always spell
it the same way. He lived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and wrote a
great many plays. His plays are written in dialogue form. Some people
think they were not written by Shakespeare but by another man of the
same name. I have read some of them because our school teacher says
everybody ought to read them, but I did not care much for them. There
are some things in them I cannot understand. I like the stories of
Valeria H. Montague in the Family Guide ever so much better. They are
more exciting and truer to life. Romeo and Juliet was one of the plays I
read. It was very sad. Juliet dies and I don’t like stories where people
die. I like it better when they all get married especially to dukes and
earls. Shakespeare himself was married to Anne Hatheway. They are both
dead now. They have been dead a good while. He was a very famous man.

                                     FELICITY KING.


(PETER, MODESTLY: “I don’t know much about Shakespeare myself but I’ve
got a book of his plays that belonged to my Aunt Jane, and I guess I’ll
have to tackle him as soon as I finish with the Bible.”)


THE STORY OF AN ELOPEMENT FROM CHURCH

This is a true story. It happened in Markdale to an uncle of my mothers.
He wanted to marry Miss Jemima Parr. Felicity says Jemima is not a
romantic name for a heroin of a story but I cant help it in this case
because it is a true story and her name realy was Jemima. My mothers
uncle was named Thomas Taylor. He was poor at that time and so the
father of Miss Jemima Parr did not want him for a soninlaw and told him
he was not to come near the house or he would set the dog on him. Miss
Jemima Parr was very pretty and my mothers uncle Thomas was just crazy
about her and she wanted him too. She cried almost every night after
her father forbid him to come to the house except the nights she had to
sleep or she would have died. And she was so frightened he might try to
come for all and get tore up by the dog and it was a bull-dog too that
would never let go. But mothers uncle Thomas was too cute for that. He
waited till one day there was preaching in the Markdale church in the
middle of the week because it was sacrament time and Miss Jemima Parr
and her family all went because her father was an elder. My mothers
uncle Thomas went too and set in the pew just behind Miss Jemima Parrs
family. When they all bowed their heads at prayer time Miss Jemima Parr
didnt but set bolt uprite and my mothers uncle Thomas bent over and
wispered in her ear. I dont know what he said so I cant right it but
Miss Jemima Parr blushed that is turned red and nodded her head. Perhaps
some people may think that my mothers uncle Thomas shouldent of wispered
at prayer time in church but you must remember that Miss Jemima Parrs
father had thretened to set the dog on him and that was hard lines when
he was a respektable young man though not rich. Well when they were
singing the last sam my mothers uncle Thomas got up and went out very
quitely and as soon as church was out Miss Jemima Parr walked out too
real quick. Her family never suspekted anything and they hung round
talking to folks and shaking hands while Miss Jemima Parr and my mothers
uncle Thomas were eloping outside. And what do you suppose they eloped
in. Why in Miss Jemima Parrs fathers slay. And when he went out they
were gone and his slay was gone also his horse. Of course my mothers
uncle Thomas didnt steal the horse. He just borroed it and sent it home
the next day. But before Miss Jemima Parrs father could get another rig
to follow them they were so far away he couldent catch them before they
got married. And they lived happy together forever afterwards. Mothers
uncle Thomas lived to be a very old man. He died very suddent. He felt
quite well when he went to sleep and when he woke up he was dead.

                                       PETER CRAIG.


MY MOST EXCITING ADVENTURE

The editor says we must all write up our most exciting adventure for Our
Magazine. My most exciting adventure happened a year ago last November.
I was nearly frightened to death. Dan says he wouldn’t of been scared
and Felicity says she would of known what it was but it’s easy to talk.

It happened the night I went down to see Kitty Marr. I thought when I
went that Aunt Olivia was visiting there and I could come home with her.
But she wasn’t there and I had to come home alone. Kitty came a piece
of the way but she wouldn’t come any further than Uncle James Frewen’s
gate. She said it was because it was so windy she was afraid she would
get the tooth-ache and not because she was frightened of the ghost of
the dog that haunted the bridge in Uncle James’ hollow. I did wish she
hadn’t said anything about the dog because I mightn’t of thought about
it if she hadn’t. I had to go on alone thinking of it. I’d heard the
story often but I’d never believed in it. They said the dog used to
appear at one end of the bridge and walk across it with people and
vanish when he got to the other end. He never tried to bite anyone but
one wouldn’t want to meet the ghost of a dog even if one didn’t believe
in him. I knew there was no such thing as ghosts and I kept saying a
paraphrase over to myself and the Golden Text of the next Sunday School
lesson but oh, how my heart beat when I got near the hollow! It was so
dark. You could just see things dim-like but you couldn’t see what they
were. When I got to the bridge I walked along sideways with my back to
the railing so I couldn’t think the dog was behind me. And then just in
the middle of the bridge I met something. It was right before me and
it was big and black, just about the size of a Newfoundland dog, and
I thought I could see a white nose. And it kept jumping about from one
side of the bridge to the other. Oh, I hope none of my readers will ever
be so frightened as I was then. I was too frightened to run back because
I was afraid it would chase me and I couldn’t get past it, it moved so
quick, and then it just made one spring right on me and I felt its claws
and I screamed and fell down. It rolled off to one side and laid there
quite quiet but I didn’t dare move and I don’t know what would have
become of me if Amos Cowan hadn’t come along that very minute with a
lantern. And there was me sitting in the middle of the bridge and that
awful thing beside me. And what do you think it was but a big umbrella
with a white handle? Amos said it was his umbrella and it had blown away
from him and he had to go back and get the lantern to look for it. I
felt like asking him what on earth he was going about with an umbrella
open when it wasent raining. But the Cowans do such queer things. You
remember the time Jerry Cowan sold us God’s picture. Amos took me right
home and I was thankful for I don’t know what would have become of me
if he hadn’t come along. I couldn’t sleep all night and I never want to
have any more adventures like that one.

                                      CECILY KING.


PERSONALS

Mr. Dan King felt somewhat indisposed the day after Christmas--probably
as the result of too much mince pie. (DAN, INDIGNANTLY:--“I wasn’t. I
only et one piece!”)

Mr. Peter Craig thinks he saw the Family Ghost on Christmas Eve. But
the rest of us think all he saw was the white calf with the red tail.
(PETER, MUTTERING SULKILY:--“It’s a queer calf that would walk up on end
and wring its hands.”)

Miss Cecily King spent the night of Dec. 20th with Miss Kitty Marr. They
talked most of the night about new knitted lace patterns and their beaus
and were very sleepy in school next day. (CECILY, SHARPLY:--“We never
mentioned such things!”)

Patrick Grayfur, Esq., was indisposed yesterday, but seems to be
enjoying his usual health to-day.

The King family expect their Aunt Eliza to visit them in January. She
is really our great-aunt. We have never seen her but we are told she is
very deaf and does not like children. So Aunt Janet says we must make
ourselves scarece when she comes.

Miss Cecily King has undertaken to fill with names a square of the
missionary quilt which the Mission Band is making. You pay five cents
to have your name embroidered in a corner, ten cents to have it in
the centre, and a quarter if you want it left off altogether. (CECILY,
INDIGNANTLY:--“That isn’t the way at all.”)


ADS.

WANTED--A remedy to make a fat boy thin. Address, “Patient Sufferer,
care of Our Magazine.”

(FELIX, SOURLY:--“Sara Ray never got that up. I’ll bet it was Dan. He’d
better stick to his own department.”)


HOUSEHOLD DEPARTMENT

Mrs. Alexander King killed all her geese the twentieth of December. We
all helped pick them. We had one Christmas Day and will have one every
fortnight the rest of the winter.

The bread was sour last week because mother wouldn’t take my advice. I
told her it was too warm for it in the corner behind the stove.

Miss Felicity King invented a new recete for date cookies recently,
which everybody said were excelent. I am not going to publish it though,
because I don’t want other people to find it out.

ANXIOUS INQUIRER:--If you want to remove inkstains place the stain
over steam and apply salt and lemon juice. If it was Dan who sent this
question in I’d advise him to stop wiping his pen on his shirt sleeves
and then he wouldn’t have so many stains.

                                     FELICITY KING.


ETIQUETTE DEPARTMENT


F-l-x:--Yes, you should offer your arm to a lady when seeing her home,
but don’t keep her standing too long at the gate while you say good
night.

(FELIX, ENRAGED:--“I never asked such a question.”)

C-c-l-y:--No, it is not polite to use “Holy Moses” or “dodgasted” in
ordinary conversation.

(Cecily had gone down cellar to replenish the apple plate, so this
passed without protest.)

S-r-a:--No, it isn’t polite to cry all the time. As to whether you
should ask a young man in, it all depends on whether he went home with
you of his own accord or was sent by some elderly relative.

F-l-t-y:--It does not break any rule of etiquette if you keep a button
off your best young man’s coat for a keepsake. But don’t take more than
one or his mother might miss them.

                                          DAN KING.


FASHION NOTES

Knitted mufflers are much more stylish than crocheted ones this winter.
It is nice to have one the same colour as your cap.

Red mittens with a black diamond pattern on the back are much run after.
Em Frewen’s grandma knits hers for her. She can knit the double diamond
pattern and Em puts on such airs about it, but I think the single
diamond is in better taste.

The new winter hats at Markdale are very pretty. It is so exciting to
pick a hat. Boys can’t have that fun. Their hats are so much alike.

                                       CECILY KING.


FUNNY PARAGRAPHS

This is a true joke and really happened.

There was an old local preacher in New Brunswick one time whose name was
Samuel Clask. He used to preach and pray and visit the sick just like a
regular minister. One day he was visiting a neighbour who was dying and
he prayed the Lord to have mercy on him because he was very poor and
had worked so hard all his life that he hadn’t much time to attend to
religion.

“And if you don’t believe me, O Lord,” Mr. Clask finished up with, “just
take a look at his hands.”

                                        FELIX KING.


GENERAL INFORMATION BUREAU

DAN:--Do porpoises grow on trees or vines?

Ans. Neither. They inhabit the deep sea.

                                        FELIX KING.


(DAN, AGGRIEVED:--“Well, I’d never heard of porpoises and it sounded
like something that grew. But you needn’t have gone and put it in the
paper.”

FELIX:--“It isn’t any worse than the things you put in about me that I
never asked at all.”

CECILY, SOOTHINGLY:--“Oh, well, boys, it’s all in fun, and I think Our
Magazine is perfectly elegant.”

FELICITY, FAILING TO SEE THE STORY GIRL AND BEVERLEY EXCHANGING WINKS
BEHIND HER BACK:--“It certainly is, though SOME PEOPLE were so opposed
to starting it.”)


What harmless, happy fooling it all was! How we laughed as we read and
listened and devoured apples! Blow high, blow low, no wind can ever
quench the ruddy glow of that faraway winter night in our memories. And
though Our Magazine never made much of a stir in the world, or was the
means of hatching any genius, it continued to be capital fun for us
throughout the year.




CHAPTER VI. GREAT-AUNT ELIZA’S VISIT


It was a diamond winter day in February--clear, cold, hard, brilliant.
The sharp blue sky shone, the white fields and hills glittered, the
fringe of icicles around the eaves of Uncle Alec’s house sparkled. Keen
was the frost and crisp the snow over our world; and we young fry of the
King households were all agog to enjoy life--for was it not Saturday,
and were we not left all alone to keep house?

Aunt Janet and Aunt Olivia had had their last big “kill” of market
poultry the day before; and early in the morning all our grown-ups set
forth to Charlottetown, to be gone the whole day. They left us many
charges as usual, some of which we remembered and some of which we
forgot; but with Felicity in command none of us dared stray far out of
line. The Story Girl and Peter came over, of course, and we all agreed
that we would haste and get the work done in the forenoon, that we might
have an afternoon of uninterrupted enjoyment. A taffy-pull after dinner
and then a jolly hour of coasting on the hill field before supper were
on our programme. But disappointment was our portion. We did manage to
get the taffy made but before we could sample the result satisfactorily,
and just as the girls were finishing with the washing of the dishes,
Felicity glanced out of the window and exclaimed in tones of dismay,

“Oh, dear me, here’s Great-aunt Eliza coming up the lane! Now, isn’t
that too mean?”

We all looked out to see a tall, gray-haired lady approaching the house,
looking about her with the slightly puzzled air of a stranger. We had
been expecting Great-aunt Eliza’s advent for some weeks, for she was
visiting relatives in Markdale. We knew she was liable to pounce down on
us any time, being one of those delightful folk who like to “surprise”
 people, but we had never thought of her coming that particular day. It
must be confessed that we did not look forward to her visit with any
pleasure. None of us had ever seen her, but we knew she was very deaf,
and had very decided opinions as to the way in which children should
behave.

“Whew!” whistled Dan. “We’re in for a jolly afternoon. She’s deaf as a
post and we’ll have to split our throats to make her hear at all. I’ve a
notion to skin out.”

“Oh, don’t talk like that, Dan,” said Cecily reproachfully. “She’s old
and lonely and has had a great deal of trouble. She has buried three
husbands. We must be kind to her and do the best we can to make her
visit pleasant.”

“She’s coming to the back door,” said Felicity, with an agitated glance
around the kitchen. “I told you, Dan, that you should have shovelled the
snow away from the front door this morning. Cecily, set those pots
in the pantry quick--hide those boots, Felix--shut the cupboard door,
Peter--Sara, straighten up the lounge. She’s awfully particular and ma
says her house is always as neat as wax.”

To do Felicity justice, while she issued orders to the rest of us,
she was flying busily about herself, and it was amazing how much was
accomplished in the way of putting the kitchen in perfect order during
the two minutes in which Great-aunt Eliza was crossing the yard.

“Fortunately the sitting-room is tidy and there’s plenty in the pantry,”
 said Felicity, who could face anything undauntedly with a well-stocked
larder behind her.

Further conversation was cut short by a decided rap at the door.
Felicity opened it.

“Why, how do you do, Aunt Eliza?” she said loudly.

A slightly bewildered look appeared on Aunt Eliza’s face. Felicity
perceived she had not spoken loudly enough.

“How do you do, Aunt Eliza,” she repeated at the top of her voice.
“Come in--we are glad to see you. We’ve been looking for you for ever so
long.”

“Are your father and mother at home?” asked Aunt Eliza, slowly.

“No, they went to town today. But they’ll be home this evening.”

“I’m sorry they’re away,” said Aunt Eliza, coming in, “because I can
stay only a few hours.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” shouted poor Felicity, darting an angry glance at
the rest of us, as if to demand why we didn’t help her out. “Why, we’ve
been thinking you’d stay a week with us anyway. You MUST stay over
Sunday.”

“I really can’t. I have to go to Charlottetown tonight,” returned Aunt
Eliza.

“Well, you’ll take off your things and stay to tea, at least,” urged
Felicity, as hospitably as her strained vocal chords would admit.

“Yes, I think I’ll do that. I want to get acquainted with my--my nephews
and nieces,” said Aunt Eliza, with a rather pleasant glance around our
group. If I could have associated the thought of such a thing with my
preconception of Great-aunt Eliza I could have sworn there was a twinkle
in her eye. But of course it was impossible. “Won’t you introduce
yourselves, please?”

Felicity shouted our names and Great-aunt Eliza shook hands all round.
She performed the duty grimly and I concluded I must have been mistaken
about the twinkle. She was certainly very tall and dignified and
imposing--altogether a great-aunt to be respected.

Felicity and Cecily took her to the spare room and then left her in the
sitting-room while they returned to the kitchen, to discuss the matter
in family conclave.

“Well, and what do you think of dear Aunt Eliza?” asked Dan.

“S-s-s-sh,” warned Cecily, with a glance at the half-open hall door.

“Pshaw,” scoffed Dan, “she can’t hear us. There ought to be a law
against anyone being as deaf as that.”

“She’s not so old-looking as I expected,” said Felix. “If her hair
wasn’t so white she wouldn’t look much older than your mother.”

“You don’t have to be very old to be a great-aunt,” said Cecily. “Kitty
Marr has a great-aunt who is just the same age as her mother. I expect
it was burying so many husbands turned her hair white. But Aunt Eliza
doesn’t look just as I expected she would either.”

“She’s dressed more stylishly than I expected,” said Felicity. “I
thought she’d be real old-fashioned, but her clothes aren’t too bad at
all.”

“She wouldn’t be bad-looking if ‘tweren’t for her nose,” said Peter.
“It’s too long, and crooked besides.”

“You needn’t criticize our relations like that,” said Felicity tartly.

“Well, aren’t you doing it yourselves?” expostulated Peter.

“That’s different,” retorted Felicity. “Never you mind Great-aunt
Eliza’s nose.”

“Well, don’t expect me to talk to her,” said Dan, “‘cause I won’t.”

“I’m going to be very polite to her,” said Felicity. “She’s rich. But
how are we to entertain her, that’s the question.”

“What does the Family Guide say about entertaining your rich, deaf old
aunt?” queried Dan ironically.

“The Family Guide says we should be polite to EVERYBODY,” said Cecily,
with a reproachful look at Dan.

“The worst of it is,” said Felicity, looking worried, “that there isn’t
a bit of old bread in the house and she can’t eat new, I’ve heard father
say. It gives her indigestion. What will we do?”

“Make a pan of rusks and apologize for having no old bread,” suggested
the Story Girl, probably by way of teasing Felicity. The latter,
however, took it in all good faith.

“The Family Guide says we should never apologize for things we can’t
help. It says it’s adding insult to injury to do it. But you run over
home for a loaf of stale bread, Sara, and it’s a good idea about the
rusks. I’ll make a panful.”

“Let me make them,” said the Story Girl, eagerly. “I can make real good
rusks now.”

“No, it wouldn’t do to trust you,” said Felicity mercilessly. “You
might make some queer mistake and Aunt Eliza would tell it all over the
country. She’s a fearful old gossip. I’ll make the rusks myself. She
hates cats, so we mustn’t let Paddy be seen. And she’s a Methodist, so
mind nobody says anything against Methodists to her.”

“Who’s going to say anything, anyhow?” asked Peter belligerently.

“I wonder if I might ask her for her name for my quilt square?”
 speculated Cecily. “I believe I will. She looks so much friendlier than
I expected. Of course she’ll choose the five-cent section. She’s an
estimable old lady, but very economical.”

“Why don’t you say she’s so mean she’d skin a flea for its hide and
tallow?” said Dan. “That’s the plain truth.”

“Well, I’m going to see about getting tea,” said Felicity, “so the rest
of you will have to entertain her. You better go in and show her the
photographs in the album. Dan, you do it.”

“Thank you, that’s a girl’s job,” said Dan. “I’d look nice sitting up
to Aunt Eliza and yelling out that this was Uncle Jim and ‘tother Cousin
Sarah’s twins, wouldn’t I? Cecily or the Story Girl can do it.”

“I don’t know all the pictures in your album,” said the Story Girl
hastily.

“I s’pose I’ll have to do it, though I don’t like to,” sighed Cecily.
“But we ought to go in. We’ve left her alone too long now. She’ll think
we have no manners.”

Accordingly we all filed in rather reluctantly. Great-aunt Eliza
was toasting her toes--clad, as we noted, in very smart and shapely
shoes--at the stove and looking quite at her ease. Cecily, determined to
do her duty even in the face of such fearful odds as Great-aunt Eliza’s
deafness, dragged a ponderous, plush-covered album from its corner and
proceeded to display and explain the family photographs. She did her
brave best but she could not shout like Felicity, and half the time, as
she confided to me later on, she felt that Great-aunt Eliza did not hear
one word she said, because she didn’t seem to take in who the people
were, though, just like all deaf folks, she wouldn’t let on. Great-aunt
Eliza certainly didn’t talk much; she looked at the photographs in
silence, but she smiled now and then. That smile bothered me. It was so
twinkly and so very un-great-aunt-Elizaish. But I felt indignant with
her. I thought she might have shown a little more appreciation of
Cecily’s gallant efforts to entertain.

It was very dull for the rest of us. The Story Girl sat rather sulkily
in her corner; she was angry because Felicity would not let her make
the rusks, and also, perhaps, a little vexed because she could not charm
Great-aunt Eliza with her golden voice and story-telling gift. Felix
and I looked at each other and wished ourselves out in the hill field,
careering gloriously adown its gleaming crust.

But presently a little amusement came our way. Dan, who was sitting
behind Great-aunt Eliza, and consequently out of her view, began making
comments on Cecily’s explanation of this one and that one among the
photographs. In vain Cecily implored him to stop. It was too good fun
to give up. For the next half-hour the dialogue ran after this fashion,
while Peter and Felix and I, and even the Story Girl, suffered agonies
trying to smother our bursts of laughter--for Great-aunt Eliza could see
if she couldn’t hear:

CECILY, SHOUTING:--“That is Mr. Joseph Elliott of Markdale, a second
cousin of mother’s.”

DAN:--“Don’t brag of it, Sis. He’s the man who was asked if somebody
else said something in sincerity and old Joe said ‘No, he said it in my
cellar.’”

CECILY:--“This isn’t anybody in our family. It’s little Xavy Gautier who
used to be hired with Uncle Roger.”

DAN:--“Uncle Roger sent him to fix a gate one day and scolded him
because he didn’t do it right, and Xavy was mad as hops and said ‘How
you ‘spect me to fix dat gate? I never learned jogerfy.’”

CECILY, WITH AN ANGUISHED GLANCE AT DAN:--“This is Great-uncle Robert
King.”

DAN:--“He’s been married four times. Don’t you think that’s often
enough, dear great-aunty?”

CECILY:--“(Dan!!) This is a nephew of Mr. Ambrose Marr’s. He lives out
west and teaches school.”

DAN:--“Yes, and Uncle Roger says he doesn’t know enough not to sleep in
a field with the gate open.”

CECILY:--“This is Miss Julia Stanley, who used to teach in Carlisle a
few years ago.”

DAN:--“When she resigned the trustees had a meeting to see if they’d ask
her to stay and raise her supplement. Old Highland Sandy was alive then
and he got up and said, ‘If she for go let her for went. Perhaps she for
marry.’”

CECILY, WITH THE AIR OF A MARTYR:--“This is Mr. Layton, who used to
travel around selling Bibles and hymn books and Talmage’s sermons.”

DAN:--“He was so thin Uncle Roger used to say he always mistook him for
a crack in the atmosphere. One time he stayed here all night and went to
prayer meeting and Mr. Marwood asked him to lead in prayer. It had been
raining ‘most every day for three weeks, and it was just in haymaking
time, and everybody thought the hay was going to be ruined, and old
Layton got up and prayed that God would send gentle showers on the
growing crops, and I heard Uncle Roger whisper to a fellow behind
me, ‘If somebody don’t choke him off we won’t get the hay made this
summer.’”

CECILY, IN EXASPERATION:--“(Dan, shame on you for telling such
irreverent stories.) This is Mrs. Alexander Scott of Markdale. She has
been very sick for a long time.”

DAN:--“Uncle Roger says all that keeps her alive is that she’s scared
her husband will marry again.”

CECILY:--“This is old Mr. James MacPherson who used to live behind the
graveyard.”

DAN:--“He’s the man who told mother once that he always made his own
iodine out of strong tea and baking soda.”

CECILY:--“This is Cousin Ebenezer MacPherson on the Markdale road.”

DAN:--“Great temperance man! He never tasted rum in his life. He took
the measles when he was forty-five and was crazy as a loon with them,
and the doctor ordered them to give him a dose of brandy. When he
swallowed it he looked up and says, solemn as an owl, ‘Give it to me
oftener and more at a time.’”

CECILY, IMPLORINGLY:--“(Dan, do stop. You make me so nervous I don’t
know what I’m doing.) This is Mr. Lemuel Goodridge. He is a minister.”

DAN:--“You ought to see his mouth. Uncle Roger says the drawing string
has fell out of it. It just hangs loose--so fashion.”

Dan, whose own mouth was far from being beautiful, here gave an
imitation of the Rev. Lemuel’s, to the utter undoing of Peter, Felix,
and myself. Our wild guffaws of laughter penetrated even Great-aunt
Eliza’s deafness, and she glanced up with a startled face. What we would
have done I do not know had not Felicity at that moment appeared in the
doorway with panic-stricken eyes and exclaimed,

“Cecily, come here for a moment.”

Cecily, glad of even a temporary respite, fled to the kitchen and we
heard her demanding what was the matter.

“Matter!” exclaimed Felicity, tragically. “Matter enough! Some of you
left a soup plate with molasses in it on the pantry table and Pat got
into it and what do you think? He went into the spare room and walked
all over Aunt Eliza’s things on the bed. You can see his tracks plain as
plain. What in the world can we do? She’ll be simply furious.”

I looked apprehensively at Great-aunt Eliza; but she was gazing
intently at a picture of Aunt Janet’s sister’s twins, a most stolid,
uninteresting pair; but evidently Great-aunt Eliza found them amusing
for she was smiling widely over them.

“Let us take a little clean water and a soft bit of cotton,” came
Cecily’s clear voice from the kitchen, “and see if we can’t clean the
molasses off. The coat and hat are both cloth, and molasses isn’t like
grease.”

“Well, we can try, but I wish the Story Girl would keep her cat home,”
 grumbled Felicity.

The Story Girl here flew out to defend her pet, and we four boys sat on,
miserably conscious of Great-aunt Eliza, who never said a word to us,
despite her previously expressed desire to become acquainted with us.
She kept on looking at the photographs and seemed quite oblivious of our
presence.

Presently the girls returned, having, as transpired later, been so
successful in removing the traces of Paddy’s mischief that it was not
deemed necessary to worry Great-aunt Eliza with any account of it.
Felicity announced tea and, while Cecily conveyed Great-aunt Eliza out
to the dining-room, lingered behind to consult with us for a moment.

“Ought we to ask her to say grace?” she wanted to know.

“I know a story,” said the Story Girl, “about Uncle Roger when he was
just a young man. He went to the house of a very deaf old lady and when
they sat down to the table she asked him to say grace. Uncle Roger had
never done such a thing in his life and he turned as red as a beet
and looked down and muttered, ‘E-r-r, please excuse me--I--I’m not
accustomed to doing that.’ Then he looked up and the old lady said
‘Amen,’ loudly and cheerfully. She thought Uncle Roger was saying grace
all the time.”

“I don’t think it’s right to tell funny stories about such things,” said
Felicity coldly. “And I asked for your opinion, not for a story.”

“If we don’t ask her, Felix must say it, for he’s the only one who can,
and we must have it, or she’d be shocked.”

“Oh, ask her--ask her,” advised Felix hastily.

She was asked accordingly and said grace without any hesitation, after
which she proceeded to eat heartily of the excellent supper Felicity had
provided. The rusks were especially good and Great-aunt Eliza ate three
of them and praised them. Apart from that she said little and during the
first part of the meal we sat in embarrassed silence. Towards the last,
however, our tongues were loosened, and the Story Girl told us a tragic
tale of old Charlottetown and a governor’s wife who had died of a broken
heart in the early days of the colony.

“They say that story isn’t true,” said Felicity. “They say what she
really died of was indigestion. The Governor’s wife who lives there now
is a relation of our own. She is a second cousin of father’s but we’ve
never seen her. Her name was Agnes Clark. And mind you, when father was
a young man he was dead in love with her and so was she with him.”

“Who ever told you that?” exclaimed Dan.

“Aunt Olivia. And I’ve heard ma teasing father about it, too. Of course,
it was before father got acquainted with mother.”

“Why didn’t your father marry her?” I asked.

“Well, she just simply wouldn’t marry him in the end. She got over being
in love with him. I guess she was pretty fickle. Aunt Olivia said father
felt awful about it for awhile, but he got over it when he met ma.
Ma was twice as good-looking as Agnes Clark. Agnes was a sight for
freckles, so Aunt Olivia says. But she and father remained real good
friends. Just think, if she had married him we would have been the
children of the Governor’s wife.”

“But she wouldn’t have been the Governor’s wife then,” said Dan.

“I guess it’s just as good being father’s wife,” declared Cecily
loyally.

“You might think so if you saw the Governor,” chuckled Dan. “Uncle Roger
says it would be no harm to worship him because he doesn’t look like
anything in the heavens above or on the earth beneath or the waters
under the earth.”

“Oh, Uncle Roger just says that because he’s on the opposite side of
politics,” said Cecily. “The Governor isn’t really so very ugly. I saw
him at the Markdale picnic two years ago. He’s very fat and bald and
red-faced, but I’ve seen far worse looking men.”

“I’m afraid your seat is too near the stove, Aunt Eliza,” shouted
Felicity.

Our guest, whose face was certainly very much flushed, shook her head.

“Oh, no, I’m very comfortable,” she said. But her voice had the effect
of making us uncomfortable. There was a queer, uncertain little sound
in it. Was Great-aunt Eliza laughing at us? We looked at her sharply
but her face was very solemn. Only her eyes had a suspicious appearance.
Somehow, we did not talk much more the rest of the meal.

When it was over Great-aunt Eliza said she was very sorry but she must
really go. Felicity politely urged her to stay, but was much relieved
when Great-aunt Eliza adhered to her intention of going. When Felicity
took her to the spare room Cecily slipped upstairs and presently came
back with a little parcel in her hand.

“What have you got there?” demanded Felicity suspiciously.

“A--a little bag of rose-leaves,” faltered Cecily. “I thought I’d give
them to Aunt Eliza.”

“The idea! Don’t you do such a thing,” said Felicity contemptuously.
“She’d think you were crazy.”

“She was awfully nice when I asked her for her name for the quilt,”
 protested Cecily, “and she took a ten-cent section after all. So I’d
like to give her the rose-leaves--and I’m going to, too, Miss Felicity.”

Great-aunt Eliza accepted the little gift quite graciously, bade us
all good-bye, said she had enjoyed herself very much, left messages for
father and mother, and finally betook herself away. We watched her cross
the yard, tall, stately, erect, and disappear down the lane. Then,
as often aforetime, we gathered together in the cheer of the red
hearth-flame, while outside the wind of a winter twilight sang through
fair white valleys brimmed with a reddening sunset, and a faint, serene,
silver-cold star glimmered over the willow at the gate.

“Well,” said Felicity, drawing a relieved breath, “I’m glad she’s gone.
She certainly is queer, just as mother said.”

“It’s a different kind of queerness from what I expected, though,” said
the Story Girl meditatively. “There’s something I can’t quite make out
about Aunt Eliza. I don’t think I altogether like her.”

“I’m precious sure I don’t,” said Dan.

“Oh, well, never mind. She’s gone now and that’s the last of it,” said
Cecily comfortingly.

But it wasn’t the last of it--not by any manner of means was it! When
our grown-ups returned almost the first words Aunt Janet said were,

“And so you had the Governor’s wife to tea?”

We all stared at her.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Felicity. “We had nobody to tea
except Great-aunt Eliza. She came this afternoon and--”

“Great-aunt Eliza? Nonsense,” said Aunt Janet. “Aunt Eliza was in town
today. She had tea with us at Aunt Louisa’s. But wasn’t Mrs. Governor
Lesley here? We met her on her way back to Charlottetown and she told
us she was. She said she was visiting a friend in Carlisle and thought
she’d call to see father for old acquaintance sake. What in the world
are all you children staring like that for? Your eyes are like saucers.”

“There was a lady here to tea,” said Felicity miserably, “but we thought
it was Great-aunt Eliza--she never SAID she wasn’t--I thought she acted
queer--and we all yelled at her as if she was deaf--and said things to
each other about her nose--and Pat running over her clothes--”

“She must have heard all you said while I was showing her the
photographs, Dan,” cried Cecily.

“And about the Governor at tea time,” chuckled unrepentant Dan.

“I want to know what all this means,” said Aunt Janet sternly.

She knew in due time, after she had pieced the story together from
our disjointed accounts. She was horrified, and Uncle Alec was mildly
disturbed, but Uncle Roger roared with laughter and Aunt Olivia echoed
it.

“To think you should have so little sense!” said Aunt Janet in a
disgusted tone.

“I think it was real mean of her to pretend she was deaf,” said
Felicity, almost on the verge of tears.

“That was Agnes Clark all over,” chuckled Uncle Roger. “How she must
have enjoyed this afternoon!”

She had enjoyed it, as we learned the next day, when a letter came from
her.

“Dear Cecily and all the rest of you,” wrote the Governor’s wife, “I
want to ask you to forgive me for pretending to be Aunt Eliza. I
suspect it was a little horrid of me, but really I couldn’t resist the
temptation, and if you will forgive me for it I will forgive you for the
things you said about the Governor, and we will all be good friends. You
know the Governor is a very nice man, though he has the misfortune not
to be handsome.

“I had just a splendid time at your place, and I envy your Aunt Eliza
her nephews and nieces. You were all so nice to me, and I didn’t dare
to be a bit nice to you lest I should give myself away. But I’ll make
up for that when you come to see me at Government House, as you all must
the very next time you come to town. I’m so sorry I didn’t see Paddy,
for I love pussy cats, even if they do track molasses over my clothes.
And, Cecily, thank you ever so much for that little bag of pot-pourri.
It smells like a hundred rose gardens, and I have put it between the
sheets for my very sparest room bed, where you shall sleep when you come
to see me, you dear thing. And the Governor wants you to put his name on
the quilt square, too, in the ten-cent section.

“Tell Dan I enjoyed his comments on the photographs very much. They were
quite a refreshing contrast to the usual explanations of ‘who’s who.’
And Felicity, your rusks were perfection. Do send me your recipe for
them, there’s a darling.

“Yours most cordially,

                                AGNES CLARK LESLEY.


“Well, it was decent of her to apologize, anyhow,” commented Dan.

“If we only hadn’t said that about the Governor,” moaned Felicity.

“How did you make your rusks?” asked Aunt Janet. “There was no
baking-powder in the house, and I never could get them right with soda
and cream of tartar.”

“There was plenty of baking-powder in the pantry,” said Felicity.

“No, there wasn’t a particle. I used the last making those cookies
Thursday morning.”

“But I found another can nearly full, away back on the top shelf,
ma,--the one with the yellow label. I guess you forgot it was there.”

Aunt Janet stared at her pretty daughter blankly. Then amazement gave
place to horror.

“Felicity King!” she exclaimed. “You don’t mean to tell me that you
raised those rusks with the stuff that was in that old yellow can?”

“Yes, I did,” faltered Felicity, beginning to look scared. “Why, ma,
what was the matter with it?”

“Matter! That stuff was TOOTH-POWDER, that’s what it was. Your Cousin
Myra broke the bottle her tooth-powder was in when she was here last
winter and I gave her that old can to keep it in. She forgot to take it
when she went away and I put it on that top shelf. I declare you must
all have been bewitched yesterday.”

Poor, poor Felicity! If she had not always been so horribly vain over
her cooking and so scornfully contemptuous of other people’s aspirations
and mistakes along that line, I could have found it in my heart to pity
her.

The Story Girl would have been more than human if she had not betrayed a
little triumphant amusement, but Peter stood up for his lady manfully.

“The rusks were splendid, anyhow, so what difference does it make what
they were raised with?”

Dan, however, began to taunt Felicity with her tooth-powder rusks, and
kept it up for the rest of his natural life.

“Don’t forget to send the Governor’s wife the recipe for them,” he said.

Felicity, with eyes tearful and cheeks crimson from mortification,
rushed from the room, but never, never did the Governor’s wife get the
recipe for those rusks.




CHAPTER VII. WE VISIT COUSIN MATTIE’S


One Saturday in March we walked over to Baywater, for a long-talked-of
visit to Cousin Mattie Dilke. By the road, Baywater was six miles away,
but there was a short cut across hills and fields and woods which was
scantly three. We did not look forward to our visit with any particular
delight, for there was nobody at Cousin Mattie’s except grown-ups who
had been grown up so long that it was rather hard for them to remember
they had ever been children. But, as Felicity told us, it was necessary
to visit Cousin Mattie at least once a year, or else she would be
“huffed,” so we concluded we might as well go and have it over.

“Anyhow, we’ll get a splendiferous dinner,” said Dan. “Cousin Mattie’s a
great cook and there’s nothing stingy about her.”

“You are always thinking of your stomach,” said Felicity pleasantly.

“Well, you know I couldn’t get along very well without it, darling,”
responded Dan who, since New Year’s, had adopted a new method of
dealing with Felicity--whether by way of keeping his resolution or
because he had discovered that it annoyed Felicity far more than angry
retorts, deponent sayeth not. He invariably met her criticisms with a
good-natured grin and a flippant remark with some tender epithet tagged
on to it. Poor Felicity used to get hopelessly furious over it.

Uncle Alec was dubious about our going that day. He looked abroad on
the general dourness of gray earth and gray air and gray sky, and said
a storm was brewing. But Cousin Mattie had been sent word that we were
coming, and she did not like to be disappointed, so he let us go,
warning us to stay with Cousin Mattie all night if the storm came on
while we were there.

We enjoyed our walk--even Felix enjoyed it, although he had been
appointed to write up the visit for Our Magazine and was rather weighed
down by the responsibility of it. What mattered it though the world
were gray and wintry? We walked the golden road and carried spring time
in our hearts, and we beguiled our way with laughter and jest, and the
tales the Story Girl told us--myths and legends of elder time.

The walking was good, for there had lately been a thaw and everything
was frozen. We went over fields, crossed by spidery trails of gray
fences, where the withered grasses stuck forlornly up through the
snow; we lingered for a time in a group of hill pines, great, majestic
tree-creatures, friends of evening stars; and finally struck into the
belt of fir and maple which intervened between Carlisle and Baywater.
It was in this locality that Peg Bowen lived, and our way lay near her
house though not directly in sight of it. We hoped we would not meet
her, for since the affair of the bewitchment of Paddy we did not know
quite what to think of Peg; the boldest of us held his breath as we
passed her haunts, and drew it again with a sigh of relief when they
were safely left behind.

The woods were full of the brooding stillness that often precedes a
storm, and the wind crept along their white, cone-sprinkled floors with
a low, wailing cry. Around us were solitudes of snow, arcades picked out
in pearl and silver, long avenues of untrodden marble whence sprang the
cathedral columns of the firs. We were all sorry when we were through
the woods and found ourselves looking down into the snug, commonplace,
farmstead-dotted settlement of Baywater.

“There’s Cousin Mattie’s house--that big white one at the turn of the
road,” said the Story Girl. “I hope she has that dinner ready, Dan. I’m
hungry as a wolf after our walk.”

“I wish Cousin Mattie’s husband was still alive,” said Dan. “He was an
awful nice old man. He always had his pockets full of nuts and apples.
I used to like going there better when he was alive. Too many old women
don’t suit me.”

“Oh, Dan, Cousin Mattie and her sisters-in-law are just as nice and kind
as they can be,” reproached Cecily.

“Oh, they’re kind enough, but they never seem to see that a fellow gets
over being five years old if he only lives long enough,” retorted Dan.

“I know a story about Cousin Mattie’s husband,” said the Story Girl.
“His name was Ebenezer, you know--”

“Is it any wonder he was thin and stunted looking?” said Dan.

“Ebenezer is just as nice a name as Daniel,” said Felicity.

“Do you REALLY think so, my angel?” inquired Dan, in honey-sweet tones.

“Go on. Remember your second resolution,” I whispered to the Story Girl,
who was stalking along with an outraged expression.

The Story Girl swallowed something and went on.

“Cousin Ebenezer had a horror of borrowing. He thought it was simply
a dreadful disgrace to borrow ANYTHING. Well, you know he and Cousin
Mattie used to live in Carlisle, where the Rays now live. This was when
Grandfather King was alive. One day Cousin Ebenezer came up the hill and
into the kitchen where all the family were. Uncle Roger said he looked
as if he had been stealing sheep. He sat for a whole hour in the kitchen
and hardly spoke a word, but just looked miserable. At last he got up
and said in a desperate sort of way, ‘Uncle Abraham, can I speak with
you in private for a minute?’ ‘Oh, certainly,’ said grandfather, and
took him into the parlour. Cousin Ebenezer shut the door, looked
all around him and then said imploringly, ‘MORE PRIVATE STILL.’ So
grandfather took him into the spare room and shut that door. He was
getting frightened. He thought something terrible must have happened
Cousin Ebenezer. Cousin Ebenezer came right up to grandfather, took
hold of the lapel of his coat, and said in a whisper, ‘Uncle Abraham,
CAN--YOU--LEND--ME--AN--AXE?’”

“He needn’t have made such a mystery about it,” said Cecily, who had
missed the point entirely, and couldn’t see why the rest of us were
laughing. But Cecily was such a darling that we did not mind her lack of
a sense of humour.

“It’s kind of mean to tell stories like that about people who are dead,”
 said Felicity.

“Sometimes it’s safer than when they’re alive though, sweetheart,”
 commented Dan.

We had our expected good dinner at Cousin Mattie’s--may it be counted
unto her for righteousness. She and her sisters-in-law, Miss Louisa
Jane and Miss Caroline, were very kind to us. We had quite a nice time,
although I understood why Dan objected to them when they patted us
all on the head and told us whom we resembled and gave us peppermint
lozenges.




CHAPTER VIII. WE VISIT PEG BOWEN


We left Cousin Mattie’s early, for it still looked like a storm, though
no more so than it had in the morning. We intended to go home by a
different path--one leading through cleared land overgrown with scrub
maple, which had the advantage of being farther away from Peg Bowen’s
house. We hoped to be home before it began to storm, but we had hardly
reached the hill above the village when a fine, driving snow began to
fall. It would have been wiser to have turned back even then; but we
had already come a mile and we thought we would have ample time to reach
home before it became really bad. We were sadly mistaken; by the time
we had gone another half-mile we were in the thick of a bewildering,
blinding snowstorm. But it was by now just as far back to Cousin
Mattie’s as it was to Uncle Alec’s, so we struggled on, growing more
frightened at every step. We could hardly face the stinging snow, and we
could not see ten feet ahead of us. It had turned bitterly cold and
the tempest howled all around us in white desolation under the
fast-darkening night. The narrow path we were trying to follow soon
became entirely obliterated and we stumbled blindly on, holding to each
other, and trying to peer through the furious whirl that filled the air.
Our plight had come upon us so suddenly that we could not realize it.
Presently Peter, who was leading the van because he was supposed to know
the path best, stopped.

“I can’t see the road any longer,” he shouted. “I don’t know where we
are.”

We all stopped and huddled together in a miserable group. Fear filled
our hearts. It seemed ages ago that we had been snug and safe and warm
at Cousin Mattie’s. Cecily began to cry with cold. Dan, in spite of her
protests, dragged off his overcoat and made her put it on.

“We can’t stay here,” he said. “We’ll all freeze to death if we do. Come
on--we’ve got to keep moving. The snow ain’t so deep yet. Take hold of
my hand, Cecily. We must all hold together. Come, now.”

“It won’t be nice to be frozen to death, but if we get through alive
think what a story we’ll have to tell,” said the Story Girl between her
chattering teeth.

In my heart I did not believe we would ever get through alive. It was
almost pitch dark now, and the snow grew deeper every moment. We were
chilled to the heart. I thought how nice it would be to lie down and
rest; but I remembered hearing that that was fatal, and I endeavoured to
stumble on with the others. It was wonderful how the girls kept up, even
Cecily. It occurred to me to be thankful that Sara Ray was not with us.

But we were wholly lost now. All around us was a horror of great
darkness. Suddenly Felicity fell. We dragged her up, but she declared
she could not go on--she was done out.

“Have you any idea where we are?” shouted Dan to Peter.

“No,” Peter shouted back, “the wind is blowing every which way. I
haven’t any idea where home is.”

Home! Would we ever see it again? We tried to urge Felicity on, but she
only repeated drowsily that she must lie down and rest. Cecily, too,
was reeling against me. The Story Girl still stood up staunchly and
counselled struggling on, but she was numb with cold and her words were
hardly distinguishable. Some wild idea was in my mind that we must dig a
hole in the snow and all creep into it. I had read somewhere that people
had thus saved their lives in snowstorms. Suddenly Felix gave a shout.

“I see a light,” he cried.

“Where? Where?” We all looked but could see nothing.

“I don’t see it now but I saw it a moment ago,” shouted Felix. “I’m sure
I did. Come on--over in this direction.”

Inspired with fresh hope we hurried after him. Soon we all saw the
light--and never shone a fairer beacon. A few more steps and, coming
into the shelter of the woodland on the further side, we realized where
we were.

“That’s Peg Bowen’s house,” exclaimed Peter, stopping short in dismay.

“I don’t care whose house it is,” declared Dan. “We’ve got to go to it.”

“I s’pose so,” acquiesced Peter ruefully. “We can’t freeze to death even
if she is a witch.”

“For goodness’ sake don’t say anything about witches so close to her
house,” gasped Felicity. “I’ll be thankful to get in anywhere.”

We reached the house, climbed the flight of steps that led to that
mysterious second story door, and Dan rapped. The door opened promptly
and Peg Bowen stood before us, in what seemed exactly the same costume
she had worn on the memorable day when we had come, bearing gifts, to
propitiate her in the matter of Paddy.

“Behind her was a dim room scantly illumined by the one small candle
that had guided us through the storm; but the old Waterloo stove was
colouring the gloom with tremulous, rose-red whorls of light, and warm
and cosy indeed seemed Peg’s retreat to us snow-covered, frost-chilled,
benighted wanderers.

“Gracious goodness, where did yez all come from?” exclaimed Peg. “Did
they turn yez out?”

“We’ve been over to Baywater, and we got lost in the storm coming back,”
 explained Dan. “We didn’t know where we were till we saw your light.
I guess we’ll have to stay here till the storm is over--if you don’t
mind.”

“And if it won’t inconvenience you,” said Cecily timidly.

“Oh, it’s no inconvenience to speak of. Come in. Well, yez HAVE got some
snow on yez. Let me get a broom. You boys stomp your feet well and shake
your coats. You girls give me your things and I’ll hang them up. Guess
yez are most froze. Well, sit up to the stove and git het up.”

Peg bustled away to gather up a dubious assortment of chairs, with backs
and rungs missing, and in a few minutes we were in a circle around her
roaring stove, getting dried and thawed out. In our wildest flights
of fancy we had never pictured ourselves as guests at the witch’s
hearth-stone. Yet here we were; and the witch herself was actually
brewing a jorum of ginger tea for Cecily, who continued to shiver long
after the rest of us were roasted to the marrow. Poor Sis drank that
scalding draught, being in too great awe of Peg to do aught else.

“That’ll soon fix your shivers,” said our hostess kindly. “And now I’ll
get yez all some tea.”

“Oh, please don’t trouble,” said the Story Girl hastily.

“‘Tain’t any trouble,” said Peg briskly; then, with one of the sudden
changes to fierceness which made her such a terrifying personage, “Do
yez think my vittels ain’t clean?”

“Oh, no, no,” cried Felicity quickly, before the Story Girl could speak,
“none of us would ever think THAT. Sara only meant she didn’t want you
to go to any bother on our account.”

“It ain’t any bother,” said Peg, mollified. “I’m spry as a cricket this
winter, though I have the realagy sometimes. Many a good bite I’ve had
in your ma’s kitchen. I owe yez a meal.”

No more protests were made. We sat in awed silence, gazing with timid
curiosity about the room, the stained, plastered walls of which were
well-nigh covered with a motley assortment of pictures, chromos, and
advertisements, pasted on without much regard for order or character.

We had heard much of Peg’s pets and now we saw them. Six cats occupied
various cosy corners; one of them, the black goblin which had so
terrified us in the summer, blinked satirically at us from the centre of
Peg’s bed. Another, a dilapidated, striped beastie, with both ears and
one eye gone, glared at us from the sofa in the corner. A dog, with only
three legs, lay behind the stove; a crow sat on a roost above our
heads, in company with a matronly old hen; and on the clock shelf were
a stuffed monkey and a grinning skull. We had heard that a sailor had
given Peg the monkey. But where had she got the skull? And whose was it?
I could not help puzzling over these gruesome questions.

Presently tea was ready and we gathered around the festal board--a board
literally as well as figuratively, for Peg’s table was the work of her
own unskilled hands. The less said about the viands of that meal, and
the dishes they were served in, the better. But we ate them--bless you,
yes!--as we would have eaten any witch’s banquet set before us. Peg
might or might not be a witch--common sense said not; but we knew she
was quite capable of turning every one of us out of doors in one of
her sudden fierce fits if we offended her; and we had no mind to trust
ourselves again to that wild forest where we had fought a losing fight
with the demon forces of night and storm.

But it was not an agreeable meal in more ways than one. Peg was not
at all careful of anybody’s feelings. She hurt Felix’s cruelly as she
passed him his cup of tea.

“You’ve gone too much to flesh, boy. So the magic seed didn’t work,
hey?”

How in the world had Peg found out about that magic seed? Felix looked
uncommonly foolish.

“If you’d come to me in the first place I’d soon have told you how to
get thin,” said Peg, nodding wisely.

“Won’t you tell me now?” asked Felix eagerly, his desire to melt his too
solid flesh overcoming his dread and shame.

“No, I don’t like being second fiddle,” answered Peg with a crafty
smile. “Sara, you’re too scrawny and pale--not much like your ma. I knew
her well. She was counted a beauty, but she made no great things of a
match. Your father had some money but he was a tramp like meself. Where
is he now?”

“In Rome,” said the Story Girl rather shortly.

“People thought your ma was crazy when she took him. But she’d a right
to please herself. Folks is too ready to call other folks crazy. There’s
people who say I’M not in my right mind. Did yez ever”--Peg fixed
Felicity with a piercing glance--“hear anything so ridiculous?”

“Never,” said Felicity, white to the lips.

“I wish everybody was as sane as I am,” said Peg scornfully. Then she
looked poor Felicity over critically. “You’re good-looking but proud.
And your complexion won’t wear. It’ll be like your ma’s yet--too much
red in it.”

“Well, that’s better than being the colour of mud,” muttered Peter, who
wasn’t going to hear his lady traduced, even by a witch. All the thanks
he got was a furious look from Felicity, but Peg had not heard him and
now she turned her attention to Cecily.

“You look delicate. I daresay you’ll never live to grow up.”

Cecily’s lip trembled and Dan’s face turned crimson.

“Shut up,” he said to Peg. “You’ve no business to say such things to
people.”

I think my jaw dropped. I know Peter’s and Felix’s did. Felicity broke
in wildly.

“Oh, don’t mind him, Miss Bowen. He’s got SUCH a temper--that’s just the
way he talks to us all at home. PLEASE excuse him.”

“Bless you, I don’t mind him,” said Peg, from whom the unexpected seemed
to be the thing to expect. “I like a lad of spurrit. And so your father
run away, did he, Peter? He used to be a beau of mine--he seen me home
three times from singing school when we was young. Some folks said he
did it for a dare. There’s such a lot of jealousy in the world, ain’t
there? Do you know where he is now?”

“No,” said Peter.

“Well, he’s coming home before long,” said Peg mysteriously.

“Who told you that?” cried Peter in amazement.

“Better not ask,” responded Peg, looking up at the skull.

If she meant to make the flesh creep on our bones she succeeded. But
now, much to our relief, the meal was over and Peg invited us to draw
our chairs up to the stove again.

“Make yourselves at home,” she said, producing her pipe from her pocket.
“I ain’t one of the kind who thinks their houses too good to live in.
Guess I won’t bother washing the dishes. They’ll do yez for breakfast if
yez don’t forget your places. I s’pose none of yez smokes.”

“No,” said Felicity, rather primly.

“Then yez don’t know what’s good for yez,” retorted Peg, rather
grumpily. But a few whiffs of her pipe placated her and, observing
Cecily sigh, she asked her kindly what was the matter.

“I’m thinking how worried they’ll be at home about us,” explained
Cecily.

“Bless you, dearie, don’t be worrying over that. I’ll send them word
that yez are all snug and safe here.”

“But how can you?” cried amazed Cecily.

“Better not ask,” said Peg again, with another glance at the skull.

An uncomfortable silence followed, finally broken by Peg, who introduced
her pets to us and told how she had come by them. The black cat was her
favourite.

“That cat knows more than I do, if yez’ll believe it,” she said proudly.
“I’ve got a rat too, but he’s a bit shy when strangers is round. Your
cat got all right again that time, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” said the Story Girl.

“Thought he would,” said Peg, nodding sagely. “I seen to that. Now,
don’t yez all be staring at the hole in my dress.”

“We weren’t,” was our chorus of protest.

“Looked as if yez were. I tore that yesterday but I didn’t mend it. I
was brought up to believe that a hole was an accident but a patch was a
disgrace. And so your Aunt Olivia is going to be married after all?”

This was news to us. We felt and looked dazed.

“I never heard anything of it,” said the Story Girl.

“Oh, it’s true enough. She’s a great fool. I’ve no faith in husbands.
But one good thing is she ain’t going to marry that Henry Jacobs of
Markdale. He wants her bad enough. Just like his presumption,--thinking
himself good enough for a King. His father is the worst man alive. He
chased me off his place with his dog once. But I’ll get even with him
yet.”

Peg looked very savage, and visions of burned barns floated through our
minds.

“He’ll be punished in hell, you know,” said Peter timidly.

“But I won’t be there to see that,” rejoined Peg. “Some folks say I’ll
go there because I don’t go to church oftener. But I don’t believe it.”

“Why don’t you go?” asked Peter, with a temerity that bordered on
rashness.

“Well, I’ve got so sunburned I’m afraid folks might take me for an
Injun,” explained Peg, quite seriously. “Besides, your minister makes
such awful long prayers. Why does he do it?”

“I suppose he finds it easier to talk to God than to people,” suggested
Peter reflectively.

“Well, anyway, I belong to the round church,” said Peg comfortably, “and
so the devil can’t catch ME at the corners. I haven’t been to Carlisle
church for over three years. I thought I’d a-died laughing the last time
I was there. Old Elder Marr took up the collection that day. He’d on a
pair of new boots and they squeaked all the way up and down the aisles.
And every time the boots squeaked the elder made a face, like he had
toothache. It was awful funny. How’s your missionary quilt coming on,
Cecily?”

Was there anything Peg didn’t know?

“Very well,” said Cecily.

“You can put my name on it, if you want to.”

“Oh, thank you. Which section--the five-cent one or the ten-cent one?”
 asked Cecily timidly.

“The ten-cent one, of course. The best is none too good for me. I’ll
give you the ten cents another time. I’m short of change just now--not
being as rich as Queen Victory. There’s her picture up there--the one
with the blue sash and diamint crown and the lace curting on her head.
Can any of yez tell me this--is Queen Victory a married woman?”

“Oh, yes, but her husband is dead,” answered the Story Girl.

“Well, I s’pose they couldn’t have called her an old maid, seeing she
was a queen, even if she’d never got married. Sometimes I sez to myself,
‘Peg, would you like to be Queen Victory?’ But I never know what
to answer. In summer, when I can roam anywhere in the woods and the
sunshine--I wouldn’t be Queen Victory for anything. But when it’s winter
and cold and I can’t git nowheres--I feel as if I wouldn’t mind changing
places with her.”

Peg put her pipe back in her mouth and began to smoke fiercely. The
candle wick burned long, and was topped by a little cap of fiery red
that seemed to wink at us like an impish gnome. The most grotesque
shadow of Peg flickered over the wall behind her. The one-eyed cat
remitted his grim watch and went to sleep. Outside the wind screamed
like a ravening beast at the window. Suddenly Peg removed her pipe from
her mouth, bent forward, gripped my wrist with her sinewy fingers until
I almost cried out with pain, and gazed straight into my face. I felt
horribly frightened of her. She seemed an entirely different creature. A
wild light was in her eyes, a furtive, animal-like expression was on
her face. When she spoke it was in a different voice and in different
language.

“Do you hear the wind?” she asked in a thrilling whisper. “What IS the
wind? What IS the wind?”

“I--I--don’t know,” I stammered.

“No more do I,” said Peg, “and nobody knows. Nobody knows what the wind
is. I wish I could find out. I mightn’t be so afraid of the wind if I
knew what it was. I am afraid of it. When the blasts come like that I
want to crouch down and hide me. But I can tell you one thing about the
wind--it’s the only free thing in the world--THE--ONLY--FREE--THING.
Everything else is subject to some law, but the wind is FREE. It bloweth
where it listeth and no man can tame it. It’s free--that’s why I
love it, though I’m afraid of it. It’s a grand thing to be free--free
free--free!”

Peg’s voice rose almost to a shriek. We were dreadfully frightened, for
we knew there were times when she was quite crazy and we feared one of
her “spells” was coming on her. But with a swift movement she turned
the man’s coat she wore up over her shoulders and head like a hood,
completely hiding her face. Then she crouched forward, elbows on knees,
and relapsed into silence. None of us dared speak or move. We sat thus
for half an hour. Then Peg jumped up and said briskly in her usual tone,

“Well, I guess yez are all sleepy and ready for bed. You girls can sleep
in my bed over there, and I’ll take the sofy. Yez can put the cat off if
yez like, though he won’t hurt yez. You boys can go downstairs. There’s
a big pile of straw there that’ll do yez for a bed, if yez put your
coats on. I’ll light yez down, but I ain’t going to leave yez a light
for fear yez’d set fire to the place.”

Saying good-night to the girls, who looked as if they thought their last
hour was come, we went to the lower room. It was quite empty, save for a
pile of fire wood and another of clean straw. Casting a stealthy glance
around, ere Peg withdrew the light, I was relieved to see that there
were no skulls in sight. We four boys snuggled down in the straw. We did
not expect to sleep, but we were very tired and before we knew it our
eyes were shut, to open no more till morning. The poor girls were not
so fortunate. They always averred they never closed an eye. Four things
prevented them from sleeping. In the first place Peg snored loudly; in
the second place the fitful gleams of firelight kept flickering over the
skull for half the night and making gruesome effects on it; in the third
place Peg’s pillows and bedclothes smelled rankly of tobacco smoke; and
in the fourth place they were afraid the rat Peg had spoken of might
come out to make their acquaintance. Indeed, they were sure they heard
him skirmishing about several times.

When we wakened in the morning the storm was over and a young morning
was looking through rosy eyelids across a white world. The little
clearing around Peg’s cabin was heaped with dazzling drifts, and we
boys fell to and shovelled out a road to her well. She gave us
breakfast--stiff oatmeal porridge without milk, and a boiled egg apiece.
Cecily could NOT eat her porridge; she declared she had such a bad
cold that she had no appetite; a cold she certainly had; the rest of us
choked our messes down and after we had done so Peg asked us if we had
noticed a soapy taste.

“The soap fell into the porridge while I was making it,” she said.
“But,”--smacking her lips,--“I’m going to make yez an Irish stew for
dinner. It’ll be fine.”

An Irish stew concocted by Peg! No wonder Dan said hastily,

“You are very kind but we’ll have to go right home.”

“Yez can’t walk,” said Peg.

“Oh, yes, we can. The drifts are so hard they’ll carry, and the snow
will be pretty well blown off the middle of the fields. It’s only
three-quarters of a mile. We boys will go home and get a pung and come
back for you girls.”

But the girls wouldn’t listen to this. They must go with us, even
Cecily.

“Seems to me yez weren’t in such a hurry to leave last night,” observed
Peg sarcastically.

“Oh, it’s only because they’ll be so anxious about us at home, and it’s
Sunday and we don’t want to miss Sunday School,” explained Felicity.

“Well, I hope your Sunday School will do yez good,” said Peg, rather
grumpily. But she relented again at the last and gave Cecily a wishbone.

“Whatever you wish on that will come true,” she said. “But you only have
the one wish, so don’t waste it.”

“We’re so much obliged to you for all your trouble,” said the Story Girl
politely.

“Never mind the trouble. The expense is the thing,” retorted Peg grimly.

“Oh!” Felicity hesitated. “If you would let us pay you--give you
something--”

“No, thank yez,” responded Peg loftily. “There is people who take money
for their hospitality, I’ve heerd, but I’m thankful to say I don’t
associate with that class. Yez are welcome to all yez have had here, if
yez ARE in a big hurry to get away.”

She shut the door behind us with something of a slam, and her black
cat followed us so far, with stealthy, furtive footsteps, that we were
frightened of it. Eventually it turned back; then, and not till then,
did we feel free to discuss our adventure.

“Well, I’m thankful we’re out of THAT,” said Felicity, drawing a long
breath. “Hasn’t it just been an awful experience?”

“We might all have been found frozen stark and stiff this morning,”
 remarked the Story Girl with apparent relish.

“I tell you, it was a lucky thing we got to Peg Bowen’s,” said Dan.

“Miss Marwood says there is no such thing as luck,” protested Cecily.
“We ought to say it was Providence instead.”

“Well, Peg and Providence don’t seem to go together very well, somehow,”
 retorted Dan. “If Peg is a witch it must be the Other One she’s in co.
with.”

“Dan, it’s getting to be simply scandalous the way you talk,” said
Felicity. “I just wish ma could hear you.”

“Is soap in porridge any worse than tooth-powder in rusks, lovely
creature?” asked Dan.

“Dan, Dan,” admonished Cecily, between her coughs, “remember it’s
Sunday.”

“It seems hard to remember that,” said Peter. “It doesn’t seem a mite
like Sunday and it seems awful long since yesterday.”

“Cecily, you’ve got a dreadful cold,” said the Story Girl anxiously.

“In spite of Peg’s ginger tea,” added Felix.

“Oh, that ginger tea was AWFUL,” exclaimed poor Cecily. “I thought I’d
never get it down--it was so hot with ginger--and there was so much of
it! But I was so frightened of offending Peg I’d have tried to drink it
all if there had been a bucketful. Oh, yes, it’s very easy for you all
to laugh! You didn’t have to drink it.”

“We had to eat two meals, though,” said Felicity with a shiver. “And I
don’t know when those dishes of hers were washed. I just shut my eyes
and took gulps.”

“Did you notice the soapy taste in the porridge?” asked the Story Girl.

“Oh, there were so many queer tastes about it I didn’t notice one more
than another,” answered Felicity wearily.

“What bothers me,” remarked Peter absently, “is that skull. Do you
suppose Peg really finds things out by it?”

“Nonsense! How could she?” scoffed Felix, bold as a lion in daylight.

“She didn’t SAY she did, you know,” I said cautiously.

“Well, we’ll know in time if the things she said were going to happen
do,” mused Peter.

“Do you suppose your father is really coming home?” queried Felicity.

“I hope not,” answered Peter decidedly.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Felicity severely.

“No, I oughtn’t. Father got drunk all the time he was home, and wouldn’t
work and was bad to mother,” said Peter defiantly. “She had to support
him as well as herself and me. I don’t want to see any father coming
home, and you’d better believe it. Of course, if he was the right sort
of a father it’d be different.”

“What I would like to know is if Aunt Olivia is going to be married,”
 said the Story Girl absently. “I can hardly believe it. But now that
I think of it--Uncle Roger has been teasing her ever since she was in
Halifax last summer.”

“If she does get married you’ll have to come and live with us,” said
Cecily delightedly.

Felicity did not betray so much delight and the Story Girl remarked with
a weary little sigh that she hoped Aunt Olivia wouldn’t. We all felt
rather weary, somehow. Peg’s predictions had been unsettling, and our
nerves had all been more or less strained during our sojourn under her
roof. We were glad when we found ourselves at home.

The folks had not been at all troubled about us, but it was because they
were sure the storm had come up before we would think of leaving Cousin
Mattie’s and not because they had received any mysterious message from
Peg’s skull. We were relieved at this, but on the whole, our adventure
had not done much towards clearing up the vexed question of Peg’s
witchcraft.




CHAPTER IX. EXTRACTS FROM THE FEBRUARY AND MARCH NUMBERS OF “OUR
MAGAZINE”


RESOLUTION HONOUR ROLL

Miss Felicity King.


HONOURABLE MENTION

Mr. Felix King. Mr. Peter Craig. Miss Sara Ray.


EDITORIAL

The editor wishes to make a few remarks about the Resolution Honour
Roll. As will be seen, only one name figures on it. Felicity says she
has thought a beautiful thought every morning before breakfast without
missing one morning, not even the one we were at Peg Bowen’s. Some of
our number think it not fair that Felicity should be on the honour
roll (FELICITY, ASIDE: “That’s Dan, of course.”) when she only made one
resolution and won’t tell us what any of the thoughts were. So we
have decided to give honourable mention to everybody who has kept one
resolution perfect. Felix has worked all his arithmetic problems by
himself. He complains that he never got more than a third of them
right and the teacher has marked him away down; but one cannot keep
resolutions without some inconvenience. Peter has never played tit-tat-x
in church or got drunk and says it wasn’t as bad as he expected. (PETER,
INDIGNANTLY: “I never said it.” CECILY, SOOTHINGLY: “Now, Peter, Bev
only meant that as a joke.”) Sara Ray has never talked any mean gossip,
but does not find conversation as interesting as it used to be. (SARA
RAY, WONDERINGLY: “I don’t remember of saying that.”)

Felix did not eat any apples until March, but forgot and ate seven the
day we were at Cousin Mattie’s. (FELIX: “I only ate five!”) He soon
gave up trying to say what he thought always. He got into too much
trouble. We think Felix ought to change to old Grandfather King’s rule.
It was, “Hold your tongue when you can, and when you can’t tell the
truth.” Cecily feels she has not read all the good books she might,
because some she tried to read were very dull and the Pansy books were
so much more interesting. And it is no use trying not to feel bad
because her hair isn’t curly and she has marked that resolution out.
The Story Girl came very near to keeping her resolution to have all the
good times possible, but she says she missed two, if not three, she
might have had. Dan refuses to say anything about his resolutions and
so does the editor.


PERSONALS

We regret that Miss Cecily King is suffering from a severe cold.

Mr. Alexander Marr of Markdale died very suddenly last week. We never
heard of his death till he was dead.

Miss Cecily King wishes to state that she did not ask the question about
“Holy Moses” and the other word in the January number. Dan put it in for
a mean joke.

The weather has been cold and fine. We have only had one bad storm. The
coasting on Uncle Roger’s hill continues good.

Aunt Eliza did not favour us with a visit after all. She took cold and
had to go home. We were sorry that she had a cold but glad that she had
to go home. Cecily said she thought it wicked of us to be glad. But when
we asked her “cross her heart” if she wasn’t glad herself she had to say
she was.

Miss Cecily King has got three very distinguished names on her quilt
square. They are the Governor and his wife and a witch’s.

The King family had the honour of entertaining the Governor’s wife to
tea on February the seventeenth. We are all invited to visit Government
House but some of us think we won’t go.

A tragic event occurred last Tuesday. Mrs. James Frewen came to tea and
there was no pie in the house. Felicity has not yet fully recovered.

A new boy is coming to school. His name is Cyrus Brisk and his folks
moved up from Markdale. He says he is going to punch Willy Fraser’s head
if Willy keeps on thinking he is Miss Cecily King’s beau.

(CECILY: “I haven’t ANY beau! I don’t mean to think of such a thing for
at least eight years yet!”)

Miss Alice Reade of Charlottetown Royalty has come to Carlisle to teach
music. She boards at Mr. Peter Armstrong’s. The girls are all going to
take music lessons from her. Two descriptions of her will be found in
another column. Felix wrote one, but the girls thought he did not do her
justice, so Cecily wrote another one. She admits she copied most of the
description out of Valeria H. Montague’s story Lord Marmaduke’s First,
Last, and Only Love; or the Bride of the Castle by the Sea, but says
they fit Miss Reade better than anything she could make up.


HOUSEHOLD DEPARTMENT

Always keep the kitchen tidy and then you needn’t mind if company comes
unexpectedly.

ANXIOUS INQUIRER: We don’t know anything that will take the stain out
of a silk dress when a soft-boiled egg is dropped on it. Better not wear
your silk dress so often, especially when boiling eggs.

Ginger tea is good for colds.

OLD HOUSEKEEPER: Yes, when the baking-powder gives out you can use
tooth-powder instead.

(FELICITY: “I never wrote that! I don’t care, I don’t think it’s fair
for other people to be putting things in my department!”)

Our apples are not keeping well this year. They are rotting; and besides
father says we eat an awful lot of them.

PERSEVERANCE: I will give you the recipe for dumplings you ask for.
But remember it is not everyone who can make dumplings, even from the
recipe. There’s a knack in it.

If the soap falls into the porridge do not tell your guests about it
until they have finished eating it because it might take away their
appetite.

                              FELICITY KING.


ETIQUETTE DEPARTMENT

P-r C-g:--Do not criticize people’s noses unless you are sure they can’t
hear you, and don’t criticize your best girl’s great-aunt’s nose in any
case.

(FELICITY, TOSSING HER HEAD: “Oh, my! I s’pose Dan thought that was
extra smart.”)

C-y K-g:--When my most intimate friend walks with another girl and
exchanges lace patterns with her, what ought I to do? Ans. Adopt a
dignified attitude.

F-y K-g:--It is better not to wear your second best hat to church, but
if your mother says you must it is not for me to question her decision.

(FELICITY: “Dan just copied that word for word out of the Family Guide,
except about the hat part.”)

P-r C-g:--Yes, it would be quite proper to say good evening to the
family ghost if you met it.

F-x K-g:--No, it is not polite to sleep with your mouth open. What’s
more, it isn’t safe. Something might fall into it.

                                          DAN KING.


FASHION NOTES

Crocheted watch pockets are all the rage now. If you haven’t a watch
they do to carry your pencil in or a piece of gum.

It is stylish to have hair ribbons to match your dress. But it is hard
to match gray drugget. I like scarlet for that.

It is stylish to pin a piece of ribbon on your coat the same colour as
your chum wears in her hair. Mary Martha Cowan saw them doing it in town
and started us doing it here. I always wear Kitty’s ribbon and Kitty
wears mine, but the Story Girl thinks it is silly.

                                       CECILY KING.


AN ACCOUNT OF OUR VISIT TO COUSIN MATTIE’S

We all walked over to Cousin Mattie’s last week. They were all well
there and we had a fine dinner. On our way back a snow-storm came up and
we got lost in the woods. We didn’t know where we were or nothing. If we
hadn’t seen a light I guess we’d all have been frozen and snowed over,
and they would never have found us till spring and that would be very
sad. But we saw a light and made for it and it was Peg Bowen’s. Some
people think she is a witch and it’s hard to tell, but she was real
hospitable and took us all in. Her house was very untidy but it was
warm. She has a skull. I mean a loose skull, not her own. She lets on it
tells her things, but Uncle Alec says it couldn’t because it was only an
Indian skull that old Dr. Beecham had and Peg stole it when he died,
but Uncle Roger says he wouldn’t trust himself with Peg’s skull for
anything. She gave us supper. It was a horrid meal. The Story Girl says
I must not tell what I found in the bread and butter because it would
be too disgusting to read in Our Magazine but it don’t matter because
we were all there, except Sara Ray, and know what it was. We stayed all
night and us boys slept in straw. None of us had ever slept on straw
before. We got home in the morning. That is all I can write about our
visit to Cousin Mattie’s.

                                        FELIX KING.


MY WORST ADVENTURE

It’s my turn to write it so I suppose I must. I guess my worst adventure
was two years ago when a whole lot of us were coasting on Uncle Rogers
hill. Charlie Cowan and Fred Marr had started, but half-way down their
sled got stuck and I run down to shove them off again. Then I stood
there just a moment to watch them with my back to the top of the hill.
While I was standing there Rob Marr started Kitty and Em Frewen off on
his sled. His sled had a wooden tongue in it and it slanted back over
the girls’ heads. I was right in the way and they yelled to me to get
out, but just as I heard them it struck me. The sled took me between the
legs and I was histed back over the tongue and dropped in a heap behind
before I knew what had happened to me. I thought a tornado had struck
me. The girls couldn’t stop though they thought I was killed, but Rob
came tearing down and helped me up. He was awful scared but I wasn’t
killed nor my back wasn’t broken but my nose bled something awful and
kept on bleeding for three days. Not all the time but by spells.

                                          DAN KING.


THE STORY OF HOW CARLISLE GOT ITS NAME

This is a true story to. Long ago there was a girl lived in charlotte
town. I dont know her name so I cant right it and maybe it is just as
well for Felicity might think it wasnt romantik like Miss Jemima Parrs.
She was awful pretty and a young englishman who had come out to make his
fortune fell in love with her and they were engaged to be married the
next spring. His name was Mr. Carlisle. In the winter he started off to
hunt cariboo for a spell. Cariboos lived on the island then. There aint
any here now. He got to where it is Carlisle now. It wasn’t anything
then only woods and a few indians. He got awful sick and was sick for
ever so long in a indian camp and only an old micmac squaw to wait on
him. Back in town they all thought he was dead and his girl felt bad for
a little while and then got over it and took up with another beau. The
girls say that wasnt romantik but I think it was sensible but if it had
been me that died I’d have felt bad if she forgot me so soon. But he
hadnt died and when he got back to town he went right to her house
and walked in and there she was standing up to be married to the other
fellow. Poor Mr. Carlisle felt awful. He was sick and week and it went
to his head. He just turned and run and run till he got back to the old
micmac’s camp and fell in front of it. But the indians had gone because
it was spring and it didnt matter because he really was dead this time
and people come looking for him from town and found him and buryed him
there and called the place after him. They say the girl was never happy
again and that was hard lines on her but maybe she deserved it.

                                       PETER CRAIG.


MISS ALICE READE

Miss Alice Reade is a very pretty girl. She has kind of curly blackish
hair and big gray eyes and a pale face. She is tall and thin but her
figure is pretty fair and she has a nice mouth and a sweet way of
speaking. The girls are crazy about her and talk about her all the time.

                                        FELIX KING.


BEAUTIFUL ALICE

That is what we girls call Miss Reade among ourselves. She is divinely
beautiful. Her magnificent wealth of raven hair flows back in glistening
waves from her sun-kissed brow. (DAN: “If Felix had said she was
sunburned you’d have all jumped on him.” (CECILY, COLDLY: “Sun-kissed
doesn’t mean sunburned.” DAN: “What does it mean then?” CECILY,
EMBARRASSED: “I--I don’t know. But Miss Montague says the Lady
Geraldine’s brow was sun-kissed and of course an earl’s daughter
wouldn’t be sunburned. “THE STORY GIRL: “Oh, don’t interrupt the reading
like this. It spoils it.”) Her eyes are gloriously dark and deep, like
midnight lakes mirroring the stars of heaven. Her features are like
sculptured marble and her mouth is a trembling, curving Cupid’s bow.
(PETER, ASIDE: “What kind of a thing is that?”) Her creamy skin is as
fair and flawless as the petals of a white lily. Her voice is like the
ripple of a woodland brook and her slender form is matchless in its
symmetry. (DAN: “That’s Valeria’s way of putting it, but Uncle Roger
says she don’t show her feed much.” FELICITY: “Dan! if Uncle Roger is
vulgar you needn’t be!”) Her hands are like a poet’s dreams. She dresses
so nicely and looks so stylish in her clothes. Her favourite colour is
blue. Some people think she is stiff and some say she is stuck-up, but
she isn’t a bit. It’s just that she is different from them and they
don’t like it. She is just lovely and we adore her.)

                                       CECILY KING.




CHAPTER X. DISAPPEARANCE OF PADDY


As I remember, the spring came late that year in Carlisle. It was May
before the weather began to satisfy the grown-ups. But we children were
more easily pleased, and we thought April a splendid month because the
snow all went early and left gray, firm, frozen ground for our rambles
and games. As the days slipped by they grew more gracious; the hillsides
began to look as if they were thinking of mayflowers; the old orchard
was washed in a bath of tingling sunshine and the sap stirred in the
big trees; by day the sky was veiled with delicate cloud drift, fine and
filmy as woven mist; in the evenings a full, low moon looked over the
valleys, as pallid and holy as some aureoled saint; a sound of laughter
and dream was on the wind and the world grew young with the mirth of
April breezes.

“It’s so nice to be alive in the spring,” said the Story Girl one
twilight as we swung on the boughs of Uncle Stephen’s walk.

“It’s nice to be alive any time,” said Felicity, complacently.

“But it’s nicer in the spring,” insisted the Story Girl. “When I’m dead
I think I’ll FEEL dead all the rest of the year, but when spring comes
I’m sure I’ll feel like getting up and being alive again.”

“You do say such queer things,” complained Felicity. “You won’t be
really dead any time. You’ll be in the next world. And I think it’s
horrid to talk about people being dead anyhow.”

“We’ve all got to die,” said Sara Ray solemnly, but with a certain
relish. It was as if she enjoyed looking forward to something in which
nothing, neither an unsympathetic mother, nor the cruel fate which had
made her a colourless little nonentity, could prevent her from being the
chief performer.

“I sometimes think,” said Cecily, rather wearily, “that it isn’t so
dreadful to die young as I used to suppose.”

She prefaced her remark with a slight cough, as she had been all too apt
to do of late, for the remnants of the cold she had caught the night we
were lost in the storm still clung to her.

“Don’t talk such nonsense, Cecily,” cried the Story Girl with unwonted
sharpness, a sharpness we all understood. All of us, in our hearts,
though we never spoke of it to each other, thought Cecily was not as
well as she ought to be that spring, and we hated to hear anything said
which seemed in any way to touch or acknowledge the tiny, faint shadow
which now and again showed itself dimly athwart our sunshine.

“Well, it was you began talking of being dead,” said Felicity angrily.
“I don’t think it’s right to talk of such things. Cecily, are you sure
your feet ain’t damp? We ought to go in anyhow--it’s too chilly out here
for you.”

“You girls had better go,” said Dan, “but I ain’t going in till old
Isaac Frewen goes. I’ve no use for him.”

“I hate him, too,” said Felicity, agreeing with Dan for once in her
life. “He chews tobacco all the time and spits on the floor--the horrid
pig!”

“And yet his brother is an elder in the church,” said Sara Ray
wonderingly.

“I know a story about Isaac Frewen,” said the Story Girl. “When he was
young he went by the name of Oatmeal Frewen and he got it this way. He
was noted for doing outlandish things. He lived at Markdale then and he
was a great, overgrown, awkward fellow, six feet tall. He drove over to
Baywater one Saturday to visit his uncle there and came home the next
afternoon, and although it was Sunday he brought a big bag of oatmeal in
the wagon with him. When he came to Carlisle church he saw that service
was going on there, and he concluded to stop and go in. But he didn’t
like to leave his oatmeal outside for fear something would happen to it,
because there were always mischievous boys around, so he hoisted the bag
on his back and walked into church with it and right to the top of the
aisle to Grandfather King’s pew. Grandfather King used to say he
would never forget it to his dying day. The minister was preaching and
everything was quiet and solemn when he heard a snicker behind him.
Grandfather King turned around with a terrible frown--for you know in
those days it was thought a dreadful thing to laugh in church--to rebuke
the offender; and what did he see but that great, hulking young Isaac
stalking up the aisle, bending a little forward under the weight of a
big bag of oatmeal? Grandfather King was so amazed he couldn’t laugh,
but almost everyone else in the church was laughing, and grandfather
said he never blamed them, for no funnier sight was ever seen. Young
Isaac turned into grandfather’s pew and thumped the bag of oatmeal down
on the seat with a thud that cracked it. Then he plumped down beside
it, took off his hat, wiped his face, and settled back to listen to the
sermon, just as if it was all a matter of course. When the service was
over he hoisted his bag up again, marched out of church, and drove home.
He could never understand why it made so much talk; but he was known by
the name of Oatmeal Frewen for years.”

Our laughter, as we separated, rang sweetly through the old orchard and
across the far, dim meadows. Felicity and Cecily went into the house
and Sara Ray and the Story Girl went home, but Peter decoyed me into the
granary to ask advice.

“You know Felicity has a birthday next week,” he said, “and I want to
write her an ode.”

“A--a what?” I gasped.

“An ode,” repeated Peter, gravely. “It’s poetry, you know. I’ll put it
in Our Magazine.”

“But you can’t write poetry, Peter,” I protested.

“I’m going to try,” said Peter stoutly. “That is, if you think she won’t
be offended at me.”

“She ought to feel flattered,” I replied.

“You never can tell how she’ll take things,” said Peter gloomily. “Of
course I ain’t going to sign my name, and if she ain’t pleased I won’t
tell her I wrote it. Don’t you let on.”

I promised I wouldn’t and Peter went off with a light heart. He said he
meant to write two lines every day till he got it done.

Cupid was playing his world-old tricks with others than poor Peter that
spring. Allusion has been made in these chronicles to one, Cyrus Brisk,
and to the fact that our brown-haired, soft-voiced Cecily had found
favour in the eyes of the said Cyrus. Cecily did not regard her conquest
with any pride. On the contrary, it annoyed her terribly to be teased
about Cyrus. She declared she hated both him and his name. She was as
uncivil to him as sweet Cecily could be to anyone, but the gallant Cyrus
was nothing daunted. He laid determined siege to Cecily’s young heart by
all the methods known to love-lorn swains. He placed delicate tributes
of spruce gum, molasses taffy, “conversation” candies and decorated
slate pencils on her desk; he persistently “chose” her in all school
games calling for a partner; he entreated to be allowed to carry her
basket from school; he offered to work her sums for her; and rumour had
it that he had made a wild statement to the effect that he meant to
ask if he might see her home some night from prayer meeting. Cecily was
quite frightened that he would; she confided to me that she would rather
die than walk home with him, but that if he asked her she would be too
bashful to say no. So far, however, Cyrus had not molested her out of
school, nor had he as yet thumped Willy Fraser--who was reported to be
very low in his spirits over the whole affair.

And now Cyrus had written Cecily a letter--a love letter, mark you.
Moreover, he had sent it through the post-office, with a real stamp
on it. Its arrival made a sensation among us. Dan brought it from the
office and, recognizing the handwriting of Cyrus, gave Cecily no peace
until she showed us the letter. It was a very sentimental and rather
ill-spelled epistle in which the inflammable Cyrus reproached her in
heart-rending words for her coldness, and begged her to answer his
letter, saying that if she did he would keep the secret “in violets.”
 Cyrus probably meant “inviolate” but Cecily thought it was intended for
a poetical touch. He signed himself “your troo lover, Cyrus Brisk” and
added in a postcript that he couldn’t eat or sleep for thinking of her.

“Are you going to answer it?” asked Dan.

“Certainly not,” said Cecily with dignity.

“Cyrus Brisk wants to be kicked,” growled Felix, who never seemed to be
any particular friend of Willy Fraser’s either. “He’d better learn how
to spell before he takes to writing love letters.”

“Maybe Cyrus will starve to death if you don’t,” suggested Sara Ray.

“I hope he will,” said Cecily cruelly. She was truly vexed over the
letter; and yet, so contradictory a thing is the feminine heart, even at
twelve years old, I think she was a little flattered by it also. It was
her first love letter and she confided to me that it gives you a very
queer feeling to get it. At all events--the letter, though unanswered,
was not torn up. I feel sure Cecily preserved it. But she walked past
Cyrus next morning at school with a frozen countenance, evincing not the
slightest pity for his pangs of unrequited affection. Cecily winced when
Pat caught a mouse, visited a school chum the day the pigs were killed
that she might not hear their squealing, and would not have stepped on a
caterpillar for anything; yet she did not care at all how much she made
the brisk Cyrus suffer.

Then, suddenly, all our spring gladness and Maytime hopes were blighted
as by a killing frost. Sorrow and anxiety pervaded our days and
embittered our dreams by night. Grim tragedy held sway in our lives for
the next fortnight.

Paddy disappeared. One night he lapped his new milk as usual at Uncle
Roger’s dairy door and then sat blandly on the flat stone before it,
giving the world assurance of a cat, sleek sides glistening, plumy tail
gracefully folded around his paws, brilliant eyes watching the stir and
flicker of bare willow boughs in the twilight air above him. That was
the last seen of him. In the morning he was not.

At first we were not seriously alarmed. Paddy was no roving Thomas,
but occasionally he vanished for a day or so. But when two days passed
without his return we became anxious, the third day worried us greatly,
and the fourth found us distracted.

“Something has happened to Pat,” the Story Girl declared miserably. “He
never stayed away from home more than two days in his life.”

“What could have happened to him?” asked Felix.

“He’s been poisoned--or a dog has killed him,” answered the Story Girl
in tragic tones.

Cecily began to cry at this; but tears were of no avail. Neither was
anything else, apparently. We searched every nook and cranny of barns
and out-buildings and woods on both the King farms; we inquired far and
wide; we roved over Carlisle meadows calling Paddy’s name, until Aunt
Janet grew exasperated and declared we must stop making such exhibitions
of ourselves. But we found and heard no trace of our lost pet. The Story
Girl moped and refused to be comforted; Cecily declared she could not
sleep at night for thinking of poor Paddy dying miserably in some corner
to which he had dragged his failing body, or lying somewhere mangled and
torn by a dog. We hated every dog we saw on the ground that he might be
the guilty one.

“It’s the suspense that’s so hard,” sobbed the Story Girl. “If I just
knew what had happened to him it wouldn’t be QUITE so hard. But I don’t
know whether he’s dead or alive. He may be living and suffering, and
every night I dream that he has come home and when I wake up and find
it’s only a dream it just breaks my heart.”

“It’s ever so much worse than when he was so sick last fall,” said
Cecily drearily. “Then we knew that everything was done for him that
could be done.”

We could not appeal to Peg Bowen this time. In our desperation we would
have done it, but Peg was far away. With the first breath of spring she
was up and off, answering to the lure of the long road. She had not
been seen in her accustomed haunts for many a day. Her pets were gaining
their own living in the woods and her house was locked up.




CHAPTER XI. THE WITCH’S WISHBONE


When a fortnight had elapsed we gave up all hope.

“Pat is dead,” said the Story Girl hopelessly, as we returned one
evening from a bootless quest to Andrew Cowan’s where a strange gray
cat had been reported--a cat which turned out to be a yellowish brown
nondescript, with no tail to speak of.

“I’m afraid so,” I acknowledged at last.

“If only Peg Bowen had been at home she could have found him for us,”
 asserted Peter. “Her skull would have told her where he was.”

“I wonder if the wishbone she gave me would have done any good,” cried
Cecily suddenly. “I’d forgotten all about it. Oh, do you suppose it’s
too late yet?”

“There’s nothing in a wishbone,” said Dan impatiently.

“You can’t be sure. She TOLD me I’d get the wish I made on it. I’m going
to try whenever I get home.”

“It can’t do any harm, anyhow,” said Peter, “but I’m afraid you’ve left
it too late. If Pat is dead even a witch’s wishbone can’t bring him back
to life.”

“I’ll never forgive myself for not thinking about it before,” mourned
Cecily.

As soon as we got home she flew to the little box upstairs where she
kept her treasures, and brought therefrom the dry and brittle wishbone.

“Peg told me how it must be done. I’m to hold the wishbone with both
hands, like this, and walk backward, repeating the wish nine times. And
when I’ve finished the ninth time I’m to turn around nine times, from
right to left, and then the wish will come true right away.”

“Do you expect to see Pat when you finish turning?” said Dan
skeptically.

None of us had any faith in the incantation except Peter, and, by
infection, Cecily. You never could tell what might happen. Cecily
took the wishbone in her trembling little hands and began her backward
pacing, repeating solemnly, “I wish that we may find Paddy alive, or
else his body, so that we can bury him decently.” By the time Cecily
had repeated this nine times we were all slightly infected with the
desperate hope that something might come of it; and when she had
made her nine gyrations we looked eagerly down the sunset lane, half
expecting to see our lost pet. But we saw only the Awkward Man turning
in at the gate. This was almost as surprising as the sight of Pat
himself would have been; but there was no sign of Pat and hope flickered
out in every breast but Peter’s.

“You’ve got to give the spell time to work,” he expostulated. “If Pat
was miles away when it was wished it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect to
see him right off.”

But we of little faith had already lost that little, and it was a very
disconsolate group which the Awkward Man presently joined.

He was smiling--his rare, beautiful smile which only children ever
saw--and he lifted his hat to the girls with no trace of the shyness and
awkwardness for which he was notorious.

“Good evening,” he said. “Have you little people lost a cat lately?”

We stared. Peter said “I knew it!” in a triumphant pig’s whisper. The
Story Girl started eagerly forward.

“Oh, Mr. Dale, can you tell us anything of Paddy?” she cried.

“A silver gray cat with black points and very fine marking?”

“Yes, yes!”

“Alive?”

“Yes.”

“Well, doesn’t that beat the Dutch!” muttered Dan.

But we were all crowding about the Awkward Man, demanding where and when
he had found Paddy.

“You’d better come over to my place and make sure that it really is your
cat,” suggested the Awkward Man, “and I’ll tell you all about finding
him on the way. I must warn you that he is pretty thin--but I think
he’ll pull through.”

We obtained permission to go without much difficulty, although the
spring evening was wearing late, for Aunt Janet said she supposed none
of us would sleep a wink that night if we didn’t. A joyful procession
followed the Awkward Man and the Story Girl across the gray, star-litten
meadows to his home and through his pine-guarded gate.

“You know that old barn of mine back in the woods?” said the Awkward
Man. “I go to it only about once in a blue moon. There was an old barrel
there, upside down, one side resting on a block of wood. This morning
I went to the barn to see about having some hay hauled home, and I had
occasion to move the barrel. I noticed that it seemed to have been
moved slightly since my last visit, and it was now resting wholly on the
floor. I lifted it up--and there was a cat lying on the floor under it.
I had heard you had lost yours and I took it this was your pet. I was
afraid he was dead at first. He was lying there with his eyes closed;
but when I bent over him he opened them and gave a pitiful little mew;
or rather his mouth made the motion of a mew, for he was too weak to
utter a sound.”

“Oh, poor, poor Paddy,” said tender-hearted Cecily tearfully.

“He couldn’t stand, so I carried him home and gave him just a little
milk. Fortunately he was able to lap it. I gave him a little more at
intervals all day, and when I left he was able to crawl around. I think
he’ll be all right, but you’ll have to be careful how you feed him for a
few days. Don’t let your hearts run away with your judgment and kill him
with kindness.”

“Do you suppose any one put him under that barrel?” asked the Story
Girl.

“No. The barn was locked. Nothing but a cat could get in. I suppose
he went under the barrel, perhaps in pursuit of a mouse, and somehow
knocked it off the block and so imprisoned himself.”

Paddy was sitting before the fire in the Awkward Man’s clean, bare
kitchen. Thin! Why, he was literally skin and bone, and his fur was dull
and lustreless. It almost broke our hearts to see our beautiful Paddy
brought so low.

“Oh, how he must have suffered!” moaned Cecily.

“He’ll be as prosperous as ever in a week or two,” said the Awkward Man
kindly.

The Story Girl gathered Paddy up in her arms. Most mellifluously did he
purr as we crowded around to stroke him; with friendly joy he licked our
hands with his little red tongue; poor Paddy was a thankful cat; he was
no longer lost, starving, imprisoned, helpless; he was with his comrades
once more and he was going home--home to his old familiar haunts of
orchard and dairy and granary, to his daily rations of new milk and
cream, to the cosy corner of his own fireside. We trooped home joyfully,
the Story Girl in our midst carrying Paddy hugged against her shoulder.
Never did April stars look down on a happier band of travellers on the
golden road. There was a little gray wind out in the meadows that
night, and it danced along beside us on viewless, fairy feet, and sang
a delicate song of the lovely, waiting years, while the night laid her
beautiful hands of blessing over the world.

“You see what Peg’s wishbone did,” said Peter triumphantly.

“Now, look here, Peter, don’t talk nonsense,” expostulated Dan. “The
Awkward Man found Paddy this morning and had started to bring us word
before Cecily ever thought of the wishbone. Do you mean to say you
believe he wouldn’t have come walking up our lane just when he did if
she had never thought of it?”

“I mean to say that I wouldn’t mind if I had several wishbones of the
same kind,” retorted Peter stubbornly.

“Of course I don’t think the wishbone had really anything to do with
our getting Paddy back, but I’m glad I tried it, for all that,” remarked
Cecily in a tone of satisfaction.

“Well, anyhow, we’ve got Pat and that’s the main thing,” said Felix.

“And I hope it will be a lesson to him to stay home after this,”
 commented Felicity.

“They say the barrens are full of mayflowers,” said the Story Girl. “Let
us have a mayflower picnic tomorrow to celebrate Paddy’s safe return.”




CHAPTER XII. FLOWERS O’ MAY


Accordingly we went a-maying, following the lure of dancing winds to a
certain westward sloping hill lying under the spirit-like blue of spring
skies, feathered over with lisping young pines and firs, which cupped
little hollows and corners where the sunshine got in and never got out
again, but stayed there and grew mellow, coaxing dear things to bloom
long before they would dream of waking up elsewhere.

‘Twas there we found our mayflowers, after faithful seeking. Mayflowers,
you must know, never flaunt themselves; they must be sought as
becomes them, and then they will yield up their treasures to the
seeker--clusters of star-white and dawn-pink that have in them the very
soul of all the springs that ever were, re-incarnated in something it
seems gross to call perfume, so exquisite and spiritual is it.

We wandered gaily over the hill, calling to each other with laughter
and jest, getting parted and delightfully lost in that little pathless
wilderness, and finding each other unexpectedly in nooks and dips and
sunny silences, where the wind purred and gentled and went softly. When
the sun began to hang low, sending great fan-like streamers of radiance
up to the zenith, we foregathered in a tiny, sequestered valley, full
of young green fern, lying in the shadow of a wooded hill. In it was a
shallow pool--a glimmering green sheet of water on whose banks nymphs
might dance as blithely as ever they did on Argive hill or in Cretan
dale. There we sat and stripped the faded leaves and stems from our
spoil, making up the blossoms into bouquets to fill our baskets with
sweetness. The Story Girl twisted a spray of divinest pink in her brown
curls, and told us an old legend of a beautiful Indian maiden who died
of a broken heart when the first snows of winter were falling, because
she believed her long-absent lover was false. But he came back in the
spring time from his long captivity; and when he heard that she was dead
he sought her grave to mourn her, and lo, under the dead leaves of the
old year he found sweet sprays of a blossom never seen before, and
knew that it was a message of love and remembrance from his dark-eyed
sweet-heart.

“Except in stories Indian girls are called squaws,” remarked practical
Dan, tying his mayflowers together in one huge, solid, cabbage-like
bunch. Not for Dan the bother of filling his basket with the loose
sprays, mingled with feathery elephant’s-ears and trails of creeping
spruce, as the rest of us, following the Story Girl’s example, did. Nor
would he admit that ours looked any better than his.

“I like things of one kind together. I don’t like them mixed,” he said.

“You have no taste,” said Felicity.

“Except in my mouth, best beloved,” responded Dan.

“You do think you are so smart,” retorted Felicity, flushing with anger.

“Don’t quarrel this lovely day,” implored Cecily.

“Nobody’s quarrelling, Sis. I ain’t a bit mad. It’s Felicity. What on
earth is that at the bottom of your basket, Cecily?”

“It’s a History of the Reformation in France,” confessed poor Cecily,
“by a man named D-a-u-b-i-g-n-y. I can’t pronounce it. I heard Mr.
Marwood saying it was a book everyone ought to read, so I began it
last Sunday. I brought it along today to read when I got tired picking
flowers. I’d ever so much rather have brought Ester Reid. There’s so
much in the history I can’t understand, and it is so dreadful to read of
people being burned to death. But I felt I OUGHT to read it.”

“Do you really think your mind has improved any?” asked Sara Ray
seriously, wreathing the handle of her basket with creeping spruce.

“No, I’m afraid it hasn’t one bit,” answered Cecily sadly. “I feel that
I haven’t succeeded very well in keeping my resolutions.”

“I’ve kept mine,” said Felicity complacently.

“It’s easy to keep just one,” retorted Cecily, rather resentfully.

“It’s not so easy to think beautiful thoughts,” answered Felicity.

“It’s the easiest thing in the world,” said the Story Girl, tiptoeing to
the edge of the pool to peep at her own arch reflection, as some nymph
left over from the golden age might do. “Beautiful thoughts just crowd
into your mind at times.”

“Oh, yes, AT TIMES. But that’s different from thinking one REGULARLY at
a given hour. And mother is always calling up the stairs for me to hurry
up and get dressed, and it’s VERY hard sometimes.”

“That’s so,” conceded the Story Girl. “There ARE times when I can’t
think anything but gray thoughts. Then, other days, I think pink and
blue and gold and purple and rainbow thoughts all the time.”

“The idea! As if thoughts were coloured,” giggled Felicity.

“Oh, they are!” cried the Story Girl. “Why, I can always SEE the colour
of any thought I think. Can’t you?”

“I never heard of such a thing,” declared Felicity, “and I don’t believe
it. I believe you are just making that up.”

“Indeed I’m not. Why, I always supposed everyone thought in 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 

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