hrew an annoyed glance at me. She did not like to have
her dramatic announcements forestalled.

"I don't say that it is about Miss Reade or that it isn't. You must just
wait till the evening."

"I wonder what it is," speculated Cecily, as the Story Girl left the
room.

"I don't believe it's much of anything," said Felicity, beginning to
clear away the breakfast dishes. "The Story Girl always likes to make so
much out of so little. Anyhow, I don't believe Miss Reade is going to be
married. She hasn't any beaus around here and Mrs. Armstrong says
she's sure she doesn't correspond with anybody. Besides, if she was she
wouldn't be likely to tell the Story Girl."

"Oh, she might. They're such friends, you know," said Cecily.

"Miss Reade is no better friends with her than she is with me and you,"
retorted Felicity.

"No, but sometimes it seems to me that she's a different kind of friend
with the Story Girl than she is with me and you," reflected Cecily. "I
can't just explain what I mean."

"No wonder. Such nonsense," sniffed Felicity. "It's only some girl's
secret, anyway," said Dan, loftily. "I don't feel much interest in it."

But he was on hand with the rest of us that evening, interest or no
interest, in Uncle Stephen's Walk, where the ripening apples were
beginning to glow like jewels among the boughs.

"Now, are you going to tell us your news?" asked Felicity impatiently.

"Miss Reade IS going to be married," said the Story Girl. "She told me
so last night. She is going to be married in a fortnight's time."

"Who to?" exclaimed the girls.

"To"--the Story Girl threw a defiant glance at me as if to say, "You
can't spoil the surprise of THIS, anyway,"--"to--the Awkward Man."

For a few moments amazement literally held us dumb.

"You're not in earnest, Sara Stanley?" gasped Felicity at last.

"Indeed I am. I thought you'd be astonished. But I wasn't. I've
suspected it all summer, from little things I've noticed. Don't you
remember that evening last spring when I went a piece with Miss Reade
and told you when I came back that a story was growing? I guessed it
from the way the Awkward Man looked at her when I stopped to speak to
him over his garden fence."

"But--the Awkward Man!" said Felicity helplessly. "It doesn't seem
possible. Did Miss Reade tell you HERSELF?"

"Yes."

"I suppose it must be true then. But how did it ever come about? He's
SO shy and awkward. How did he ever manage to get up enough