than that," said Felicity kindly.

"Such as using tooth-powd--" but here Dan stopped abruptly, remembering
the Story Girl's plea for a beautiful month. Felicity coloured, but said
nothing--did not even LOOK anything.

"We HAVE had lots of fun together one way or another," said Cecily,
retrospectively.

"Just think how much we've laughed this last year or so," said the Story
Girl. "We've had good times together; but I think we'll have lots more
splendid years ahead."

"Eden is always behind us--Paradise always before," said Uncle
Blair, coming up in time to hear her. He said it with a sigh that was
immediately lost in one of his delightful smiles.

"I like Uncle Blair so much better than I expected to," Felicity
confided to me. "Mother says he's a rolling stone, but there really is
something very nice about him, although he says a great many things I
don't understand. I suppose the Story Girl will have a very gay time in
Paris."

"She's going to school and she'll have to study hard," I said.

"She says she's going to study for the stage," said Felicity. "Uncle
Roger thinks it is all right, and says she'll be very famous some day.
But mother thinks it's dreadful, and so do I."

"Aunt Julia is a concert singer," I said.

"Oh, that's very different. But I hope poor Sara will get on all right,"
sighed Felicity. "You never know what may happen to a person in those
foreign countries. And everybody says Paris is such a wicked place. But
we must hope for the best," she concluded in a resigned tone.

That evening the Story Girl and I drove the cows to pasture after
milking, and when we came home we sought out Uncle Blair in the orchard.
He was sauntering up and down Uncle Stephen's Walk, his hands clasped
behind him and his beautiful, youthful face uplifted to the western sky
where waves of night were breaking on a dim primrose shore of sunset.

"See that star over there in the south-west?" he said, as we joined him.
"The one just above that pine? An evening star shining over a dark
pine tree is the whitest thing in the universe--because it is LIVING
whiteness--whiteness possessing a soul. How full this old orchard is of
twilight! Do you know, I have been trysting here with ghosts."

"The Family Ghost?" I asked, very stupidly.

"No, not the Family Ghost. I never saw beautiful, broken-hearted Emily
yet. Your mother saw her once, Sara--that was a strange thing," he added
absently, as if to himself.

"Did mother rea