“Last night I ate a piece of mince pie,” she said, “and a lot of pickles, and two grape jelly tarts.  But I guess I overdid it, because I got real sick and couldn’t sleep at all, so of course I didn’t have any dreams.  I should have stopped with the pie and pickles and left the tarts alone.  Peter did, and he had an elegant dream that Peg Bowen caught him and put him on to boil alive in that big black pot that hangs outside her door.  He woke up before the water got hot, though.  Well, Miss Felicity, you’re pretty smart.  But how will you like to walk to Sunday School with a boy who wears patched trousers?”

“I won’t have to,” said Felicity triumphantly.  “Peter is having a new suit made.  It’s to be ready by Saturday.  I knew that before I promised.”

Having discovered how to produce exciting dreams, we all promptly followed the example of Peter and the Story Girl.

“There is no chance for me to have any horrid dreams,” lamented Sara Ray, “because ma won’t let me having anything at all to eat before I go to bed.  I don’t think it’s fair.”

“Can’t you hide something away through the day as we do?” asked Felicity.

“No.”  Sara shook her fawn-coloured head mournfully.  “Ma always keeps the pantry locked, for fear Judy Pineau will treat her friends.”

For a week we ate unlawful lunches and dreamed dreams after our own hearts—­and, I regret to say, bickered and squabbled incessantly throughout the daytime, for our digestions went out of order and our tempers followed suit.  Even the Story Girl and I had a fight—­something that had never happened before.  Peter was the only one who kept his normal poise.  Nothing could upset that boy’s stomach.

One night Cecily came into the pantry with a large cucumber, and proceeded to devour the greater part of it.  The grown-ups were away that evening, attending a lecture at Markdale, so we ate our snacks openly, without any recourse to ways that were dark.  I remember I supped that night off a solid hunk of fat pork, topped off with a slab of cold plum pudding.

“I thought you didn’t like cucumber, Cecily,” Dan remarked.

“Neither I do,” said Cecily with a grimace.  “But Peter says they’re splendid for dreaming.  He et one that night he had the dream about being caught by cannibals.  I’d eat three cucumbers if I could have a dream like that.”

Cecily finished her cucumber, and then drank a glass of milk, just as we heard the wheels of Uncle Alec’s buggy rambling over the bridge in the hollow.  Felicity quickly restored pork and pudding to their own places, and by the time Aunt Janet came in we were all in our respective beds.  Soon the house was dark and silent.  I was just dropping into an uneasy slumber when I heard a commotion in the girls’ room across the hall.

Their door opened and through our own open door I saw Felicity’s white-clad figure flit down the stairs to Aunt Janet’s room.  From the room she had left came moans and cries.