As far as writing them down was concerned, I believe that I, Beverley King, carried off the palm.  I was considered to possess a pretty knack of composition.  But the Story Girl went me one better even there, because, having inherited something of her father’s talent for drawing, she illustrated her dreams with sketches that certainly caught the spirit of them, whatever might be said of their technical excellence.  She had an especial knack for drawing monstrosities; and I vividly recall the picture of an enormous and hideous lizard, looking like a reptile of the pterodactyl period, which she had dreamed of seeing crawl across the roof of the house.  On another occasion she had a frightful dream—­at least, it seemed frightful while she told us and described the dreadful feeling it had given her—­of being chased around the parlour by the ottoman, which made faces at her.  She drew a picture of the grimacing ottoman on the margin of her dream book which so scared Sara Ray when she beheld it that she cried all the way home, and insisted on sleeping that night with Judy Pineau lest the furniture take to pursuing her also.

Sara Ray’s own dreams never amounted to much.  She was always in trouble of some sort—­couldn’t get her hair braided, or her shoes on the right feet.  Consequently, her dream book was very monotonous.  The only thing worth mentioning in the way of dreams that Sara Ray ever achieved was when she dreamed that she went up in a balloon and fell out.

“I expected to come down with an awful thud,” she said shuddering, “but I lit as light as a feather and woke right up.”

“If you hadn’t woke up you’d have died,” said Peter with a dark significance.  “If you dream of falling and DON’T wake you DO land with a thud and it kills you.  That’s what happens to people who die in their sleep.”

“How do you know?” asked Dan skeptically.  “Nobody who died in his sleep could ever tell it.”

“My Aunt Jane told me so,” said Peter.

“I suppose that settles it,” said Felicity disagreeably.

“You always say something nasty when I mention my Aunt Jane,” said Peter reproachfully.

“What did I say that was nasty?” cried Felicity.  “I didn’t say a single thing.”

“Well, it sounded nasty,” said Peter, who knew that it is the tone that makes the music.

“What did your Aunt Jane look like?” asked Cecily sympathetically.  “Was she pretty?”

“No,” conceded Peter reluctantly, “she wasn’t pretty—­but she looked like the woman in that picture the Story Girl’s father sent her last week—­the one with the shiny ring round her head and the baby in her lap.  I’ve seen Aunt Jane look at me just like that woman looks at her baby.  Ma never looks so.  Poor ma is too busy washing.  I wish I could dream of my Aunt Jane.  I never do.”

“‘Dream of the dead, you’ll hear of the living,’” quoted Felix oracularly.

“I dreamed last night that I threw a lighted match into that keg of gunpowder in Mr. Cook’s store at Markdale,” said Peter.  “It blew up—­and everything blew up—­and they fished me out of the mess—­but I woke up before I’d time to find out if I was killed or not.”