big trees behind them are the twins’ trees—my mother and Uncle Felix, you know. The apples are so dead sweet that nobody but us children and the French boys can eat them. And that tall, slender tree over there, with the branches all growing straight up, is a seedling that came up of itself, and NOBODY can eat its apples, they are so sour and bitter. Even the pigs won’t eat them. Aunt Janet tried to make pies of them once, because she said she hated to see them going to waste. But she never tried again. She said it was better to waste apples alone than apples and sugar too. And then she tried giving them away to the French hired men, but they wouldn’t even carry them home.”
The Story Girl’s words fell on the morning air like pearls and diamonds. Even her prepositions and conjunctions had untold charm, hinting at mystery and laughter and magic bound up in everything she mentioned. Apple pies and sour seedlings and pigs became straightway invested with a glamour of romance.
“I like to hear you talk,” said Felix in his grave, stodgy way.
“Everybody does,” said the Story Girl coolly. “I’m glad you like the way I talk. But I want you to like ME, too—AS WELL as you like Felicity and Cecily. Not BETTER. I wanted that once but I’ve got over it. I found out in Sunday School, the day the minister taught our class, that it was selfish. But I want you to like me AS WELL.”
“Well, I will, for one,” said Felix emphatically. I think he was remembering that Felicity had called him fat.
Cecily now joined us. It appeared that it was Felicity’s morning to help prepare breakfast, therefore she could not come. We all went to Uncle Stephen’s Walk.
This was a double row of apple trees, running down the western side of the orchard. Uncle Stephen was the first born of Abraham and Elizabeth King. He had none of grandfather’s abiding love for woods and meadows and the kindly ways of the warm red earth. Grandmother King had been a Ward, and in Uncle Stephen the blood of the seafaring race claimed its own. To sea he must go, despite the pleadings and tears of a reluctant mother; and it was from the sea he came to set out his avenue in the orchard with trees brought from a foreign land.
Then he sailed away again—and the ship was never heard of more. The gray first came in grandmother’s brown hair in those months of waiting. The, for the first time, the orchard heard the sound of weeping and was consecrated by a sorrow.
“When the blossoms come out it’s wonderful to walk here,” said the Story Girl. “It’s like a dream of fairyland—as if you were walking in a king’s palace. The apples are delicious, and in winter it’s a splendid place for coasting.”
From the Walk we went to the Pulpit Stone—a huge gray boulder, as high as a man’s head, in the southeastern corner. It was straight and smooth in front, but sloped down in natural steps behind, with a ledge midway on which one could stand. It had played an important part in the games of our uncles and aunts, being fortified castle, Indian ambush, throne, pulpit, or concert platform, as occasion required. Uncle Edward had preached his first sermon at the age of eight from that old gray boulder; and Aunt Julia, whose voice was to delight thousands, sang her earliest madrigals there.
The Story Girl mounted to the ledge, sat on the rim, and looked at us. Pat sat gravely at its base and daintily washed his face with his black paws.
“Now for your stories about the orchard,” said I.
“There are two important ones,” said the Story Girl. “The story of the Poet Who Was Kissed, and the Tale of the Family Ghost. Which one shall I tell?”
“Tell them both,” said Felix greedily, “but tell the ghost one first.”
“I don’t know.” The Story Girl looked dubious. “That sort of story ought to be told in the twilight among the shadows. Then it would frighten the souls out of your bodies.”
We thought it might be more agreeable not to have the souls frightened out of our bodies, and we voted for the Family Ghost.
“Ghost stories are more comfortable in daytime,” said Felix.
The Story Girl began it and we listened avidly. Cecily, who had heard it many times before, listened just as eagerly as we did. She declared to me afterwards that no matter how often the Story Girl told a story it always seemed as new and exciting as if you had just heard it for the first time.
“Long, long ago,” began the Story Girl, her voice giving us an impression of remote antiquity, “even before Grandfather King was born, an orphan cousin of his lived here with his parents. Her name was Emily King. She was very small and very sweet. She had soft brown eyes that were too timid to look straight at anybody—like Cecily’s there—and long, sleek, brown curls—like mine; and she had a tiny birthmark like a pink butterfly on one cheek—right here.
“Of course, there was no orchard here then. It was just a field; but there was a clump of white birches in it, right where that big, spreading tree of Uncle Alec’s is now, and Emily liked to sit among the ferns under the birches and read or sew. She had a lover. His name was Malcolm Ward and he was as handsome as a prince. She loved him with all her heart and he loved her the same; but they had never spoken about it. They used to meet under the birches and talk about everything except love. One day he told her he was coming the next day to ask A VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION, and he wanted to find her under the birches when he came. Emily promised to meet him there. I am sure she stayed awake that night, thinking about it, and wondering what the important question would be, although she knew perfectly well. I would have. And the next day she dressed herself beautifully in her best pale blue muslin and sleeked her curls and went smiling to the birches. And while she was waiting there, thinking such lovely thoughts, a neighbour’s boy came running up—a boy who didn’t know about her romance—and cried out that Malcolm Ward had been killed by his gun going off accidentally. Emily just put her hands to her heart—so—and fell, all white and broken among the ferns. And when she came back to life she never cried or lamented. She was CHANGED. She was never, never like herself again; and she was never contented unless she was dressed in her blue muslin and waiting under the birches. She got paler and paler every day, but the pink butterfly grew redder, until it looked just like a stain of blood on her white cheek. When the winter came she died. But next spring”—the Story Girl dropped her voice to a whisper that was as audible and thrilling as her louder tones—“people began to tell that Emily was sometimes seen waiting under the birches still. Nobody knew just who told it first. But more than one person saw her. Grandfather saw her when he was a little boy. And my mother saw her once.”
“Did YOU ever see her?” asked Felix skeptically.
“No, but I shall some day, if I keep on believing in her,” said the Story Girl confidently.
“I wouldn’t like to see her. I’d be afraid,” said Cecily with a shiver.
“There wouldn’t be anything to be afraid of,” said the Story Girl reassuringly. “It’s not as if it were a strange ghost. It’s our own family ghost, so of course it wouldn’t hurt us.”
We were not so sure of this. Ghosts were unchancy folk, even if they were our family ghosts. The Story Girl had made the tale very real to us. We were glad we had not heard it in the evening. How could we ever have got back to the house through the shadows and swaying branches of a darkening orchard? As it was, we were almost afraid to look up it, lest we should see the waiting, blue-clad Emily under Uncle Alec’s tree. But all we saw was Felicity, tearing over the green sward, her curls streaming behind her in a golden cloud.
“Felicity’s afraid she’s missed something,” remarked the Story Girl in a tone of quiet
