“Oh, Peter, that sounds dreadful,” said Cecily.  “Your own father!”

“Well,” said Peter defiantly, “if your own father had run away when you was a baby, and left your mother to earn her living by washing and working out, I guess you wouldn’t care much about him either.”

“Perhaps your father may come home some of these days with a huge fortune,” suggested the Story Girl.

“Perhaps pigs may whistle, but they’ve poor mouths for it,” was all the answer Peter deigned to this charming suggestion.

“There goes Mr. Campbell down the road,” said Dan.  “That’s his new mare.  Isn’t she a dandy?  She’s got a skin like black satin.  He calls her Betty Sherman.”

“I don’t think it’s very nice to call a horse after your own grandmother,” said Felicity.

“Betty Sherman would have thought it a compliment,” said the Story Girl.

“Maybe she would.  She couldn’t have been very nice herself, or she would never have gone and asked a man to marry her,” said Felicity.

“Why not?”

“Goodness me, it was dreadful!  Would YOU do such a thing yourself?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said the Story Girl, her eyes gleaming with impish laughter.  “If I wanted him DREADFULLY, and HE wouldn’t do the asking, perhaps I would.”

“I’d rather die an old maid forty times over,” exclaimed Felicity.

“Nobody as pretty as you will ever be an old maid, Felicity,” said Peter, who never put too fine an edge on his compliments.

Felicity tossed her golden tressed head and tried to look angry, but made a dismal failure of it.

“It wouldn’t be ladylike to ask any one to marry you, you know,” argued Cecily.

“I don’t suppose the Family Guide would think so,” agreed the Story Girl lazily, with some sarcasm in her voice.  The Story Girl never held the Family Guide in such reverence as did Felicity and Cecily.  They pored over the “etiquette column” every week, and could have told you on demand, just exactly what kind of gloves should be worn at a wedding, what you should say when introducing or being introduced, and how you ought to look when your best young man came to see you.

“They say Mrs. Richard Cook asked HER husband to marry her,” said Dan.

“Uncle Roger says she didn’t exactly ask him, but she helped the lame dog over the stile so slick that Richard was engaged to her before he knew what had happened to him,” said the Story Girl.  “I know a story about Mrs. Richard Cook’s grandmother.  She was one of those women who are always saying ‘I told you so—­’”

“Take notice, Felicity,” said Dan aside.