“—­And she was very stubborn.  Soon after she was married she and her husband quarrelled about an apple tree they had planted in their orchard.  The label was lost.  He said it was a Fameuse and she declared it was a Yellow Transparent.  They fought over it till the neighbours came out to listen.  Finally he got so angry that he told her to shut up.  They didn’t have any Family Guide in those days, so he didn’t know it wasn’t polite to say shut up to your wife.  I suppose she thought she would teach him manners, for would you believe it?  That woman did shut up, and never spoke one single word to her husband for five years.  And then, in five years’ time, the tree bore apples, and they WERE Yellow Transparents.  And then she spoke at last.  She said, ’I told you so.’”

“And did she talk to him after that as usual?” asked Sara Ray.

“Oh, yes, she was just the same as she used to be,” said the Story Girl wearily.  “But that doesn’t belong to the story.  It stops when she spoke at last.  You’re never satisfied to leave a story where it should stop, Sara Ray.”

“Well, I always like to know what happens afterwards,” said Sara Ray.

“Uncle Roger says he wouldn’t want a wife he could never quarrel with,” remarked Dan.  “He says it would be too tame a life for him.”

“I wonder if Uncle Roger will always stay a bachelor,” said Cecily.

“He seems real happy,” observed Peter.

“Ma says that it’s all right as long as he is a bachelor because he won’t take any one,” said Felicity, “but if he wakes up some day and finds he is an old bachelor because he can’t get any one it’ll have a very different flavour.”

“If your Aunt Olivia was to up and get married what would your Uncle Roger do for a housekeeper?” asked Peter.

“Oh, but Aunt Olivia will never be married now,” said Felicity.  “Why, she’ll be twenty-nine next January.”

“Well, o’ course, that’s pretty old,” admitted Peter, “but she might find some one who wouldn’t mind that, seeing she’s so pretty.”

“It would be awful splendid and exciting to have a wedding in the family, wouldn’t it?” said Cecily.  “I’ve never seen any one married, and I’d just love to.  I’ve been to four funerals, but not to one single wedding.”

“I’ve never even got to a funeral,” said Sara Ray gloomily.

“There’s the wedding veil of the proud princess,” said Cecily, pointing to a long drift of filmy vapour in the southwestern sky.

“And look at that sweet pink cloud below it,” added Felicity.

“Maybe that little pink cloud is a dream, getting all ready to float down into somebody’s sleep,” suggested the Story Girl.

“I had a perfectly awful dream last night,” said Cecily, with a shudder of remembrance.  “I dreamed I was on a desert island inhabited by tigers and natives with two heads.”

“Oh!” the Story Girl looked at Cecily half reproachfully.  “Why couldn’t you tell it better than that?  If I had such a dream I could tell it so that everybody else would feel as if they had dreamed it, too.”