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.
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.”
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.
“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.