We hadn’t a doubt of it.  If anybody could freeze the blood in our veins this girl with the wonderful voice could.  But it was a May morning, and our young blood was running blithely in our veins.  We suggested a visit to the orchard would be more agreeable.

“All right.  I know stories about it, too,” she said, as we walked across the yard, followed by Paddy of the waving tail.  “Oh, aren’t you glad it is spring?  The beauty of winter is that it makes you appreciate spring.”

The latch of the gate clicked under the Story Girl’s hand, and the next moment we were in the King orchard.

CHAPTER III.  LEGENDS OF THE OLD ORCHARD

Outside of the orchard the grass was only beginning to grow green; but here, sheltered by the spruce hedges from uncertain winds and sloping to southern suns, it was already like a wonderful velvet carpet; the leaves on the trees were beginning to come out in woolly, grayish clusters; and there were purple-pencilled white violets at the base of the Pulpit Stone.

“It’s all just as father described it,” said Felix with a blissful sigh, “and there’s the well with the Chinese roof.”

We hurried over to it, treading on the spears of mint that were beginning to shoot up about it.  It was a very deep well, and the curb was of rough, undressed stones.  Over it, the queer, pagoda-like roof, built by Uncle Stephen on his return from a voyage to China, was covered with yet leafless vines.

“It’s so pretty, when the vines leaf out and hang down in long festoons,” said the Story Girl.  “The birds build their nests in it.  A pair of wild canaries come here every summer.  And ferns grow out between the stones of the well as far down as you can see.  The water is lovely.  Uncle Edward preached his finest sermon about the Bethlehem well where David’s soldiers went to get him water, and he illustrated it by describing his old well at the homestead—­this very well—­and how in foreign lands he had longed for its sparkling water.  So you see it is quite famous.”

“There’s a cup just like the one that used to be here in father’s time,” exclaimed Felix, pointing to an old-fashioned shallow cup of clouded blue ware on a little shelf inside the curb.

“It is the very same cup,” said the Story Girl impressively.  “Isn’t it an amazing thing?  That cup has been here for forty years, and hundreds of people have drunk from it, and it has never been broken.  Aunt Julia dropped it down the well once, but they fished it up, not hurt a bit except for that little nick in the rim.  I think it is bound up with the fortunes of the King family, like the Luck of Edenhall in Longfellow’s poem.  It is the last cup of Grandmother King’s second best set.  Her best set is still complete.  Aunt Olivia has it.  You must get her to show it to you.  It’s so pretty, with red berries all over it, and the funniest little pot-bellied cream jug.  Aunt Olivia never uses it except on a family anniversary.”