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
an