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