her and
a maiden aunt had descended out of the land which had until then given
forth only letters, birthday presents, and Christmas cards. And they had
proved to be not at all the idyllic creatures which these manifestations
had seemed to prophesy, but a pair of very interfering old ladies with a
manner of over-ruling Mary's gentle mother, brow-beating her genial
father and cloistering herself.

This morning had contributed another female assuming airs of instant
intimacy. She had gone up to the last remaining spare chamber, donned a
costume all of crackling white linen, and had introduced herself,
entirely uninvited, into the dim privacy of Mary's mother's room, whence
Mary had been sternly banished.

"Another aunt!" was the outcast's instant inference, as in a moment of
accountable preoccupation on the part of the elders she had escaped to
her own happy and familiar country--the world of out-of-doors--where
female relatives seldom intruded, and where the lovely things of life
were waiting.

When she had consumed all the green apples her constitution would
accept, and they seemed pitifully few to her more robust mind, she
descended from the source of her refreshment and set out upon a
comprehensive tour of her domain. She liked living upon the road to
Camelot. It made life interesting to be within measurable distance of
the knights and ladies who lived and played and loved in the
many-towered city of which one could gain so clear a view from the
topmost branches of the hickory tree in the upper pasture. She liked to
crouch in the elder bushes where a lane, winding and green-arched,
crossed a corner of the cornfield, and to wait, through the long, still
summer mornings for Lancelot or Galahad or Tristram or some other of her
friends to come pricking his way through the sunshine. She could hear
the clinking of his golden armor, the whinnying of his steed, the soft
brushing of the branches as they parted before his helmet or his spear;
the rustling of the daisies against his great white charger's feet. And
then there was the river "where the aspens dusk and quiver," and where
barges laden with sweet ladies passed and left ripples of foam on the
water and ripples of light laughter in the air as, brilliant and fair
bedight, they went winding down to Camelot.

This morning she revisited all these hallowed spots. She thrilled on the
very verge of the river and quivered amid the waving corn. She scaled
the sentinel hickor