lly see her?" whispered the Story Girl.

"Well, she always believed she did. Who knows?"

"Do you think there are such things as ghosts, Uncle Blair?" I asked
curiously.

"I never saw any, Beverley."

"But you said you were trysting with ghosts here this evening," said the
Story Girl.

"Oh, yes--the ghosts of the old years. I love this orchard because of
its many ghosts. We are good comrades, those ghosts and I; we walk and
talk--we even laugh together--sorrowful laughter that has sorrow's own
sweetness. And always there comes to me one dear phantom and wanders
hand in hand with me--a lost lady of the old years."

"My mother?" said the Story Girl very softly.

"Yes, your mother. Here, in her old haunts, it is impossible for me to
believe that she can be dead--that her LAUGHTER can be dead. She was the
gayest, sweetest thing--and so young--only three years older than you,
Sara. Yonder old house had been glad because of her for eighteen years
when I met her first."

"I wish I could remember her," said the Story Girl, with a little sigh.
"I haven't even a picture of her. Why didn't you paint one, father?"

"She would never let me. She had some queer, funny, half-playful,
half-earnest superstition about it. But I always meant to when she would
become willing to let me. And then--she died. Her twin brother Felix
died the same day. There was something strange about that, too. I was
holding her in my arms and she was looking up at me; suddenly she looked
past me and gave a little start. 'Felix!' she said. For a moment
she trembled and then she smiled and looked up at me again a little
beseechingly. 'Felix has come for me, dear,' she said. 'We were always
together before you came--you must not mind--you must be glad I do not
have to go alone.' Well, who knows? But she left me, Sara--she left me."

There was that in Uncle Blair's voice that kept us silent for a time.
Then the Story Girl said, still very softly:

"What did mother look like, father? I don't look the least little bit
like her, do I?"

"No, I wish you did, you brown thing. Your mother's face was as white as
a wood-lily, with only a faint dream of rose in her cheeks. She had the
eyes of one who always had a song in her heart--blue as a mist, those
eyes were. She had dark lashes, and a little red mouth that quivered
when she was very sad or very happy like a crimson rose too rudely
shaken by the wind. She was as slim and lithe as a young, white-stemmed