Of course we did.  We all sat down at the roots of the firs.  Felix, having finally squared matters with his nose, turned around and listened also.  He would not look at Cecily, but every one else had forgiven her.

The Story Girl leaned that brown head of hers against the fir trunk behind her, and looked up at the apple-green sky through the dark boughs above us.  She wore, I remember, a dress of warm crimson, and she had wound around her head a string of waxberries, that looked like a fillet of pearls.  Her cheeks were still flushed with the excitement of the evening.  In the dim light she was beautiful, with a wild, mystic loveliness, a compelling charm that would not be denied.

“Many, many moons ago, an Indian tribe lived on the banks of a river in Nova Scotia.  One of the young braves was named Accadee.  He was the tallest and bravest and handsomest young man in the tribe—­”

“Why is it they’re always so handsome in stories?” asked Dan.  “Why are there never no stories about ugly people?”

“Perhaps ugly people never have stories happen to them,” suggested Felicity.

“I think they’re just as interesting as the handsome people,” retorted Dan.

“Well, maybe they are in real life,” said Cecily, “but in stories it’s just as easy to make them handsome as not.  I like them best that way.  I just love to read a story where the heroine is beautiful as a dream.”

“Pretty people are always conceited,” said Felix, who was getting tired of holding his tongue.

“The heroes in stories are always nice,” said Felicity, with apparent irrelevance.  “They’re always so tall and slender.  Wouldn’t it be awful funny if any one wrote a story about a fat hero—­or about one with too big a mouth?”

“It doesn’t matter what a man LOOKS like,” I said, feeling that Felix and Dan were catching it rather too hotly.  “He must be a good sort of chap and DO heaps of things.  That’s all that’s necessary.”

“Do any of you happen to want to hear the rest of my story?” asked the Story Girl in an ominously polite voice that recalled us to a sense of our bad manners.  We apologized and promised to behave better; she went on, appeased: 

“Accadee was all these things that I have mentioned, and he was the best hunter in the tribe besides.  Never an arrow of his that did not go straight to the mark.  Many and many a snow white moose he shot, and gave the beautiful skin to his sweetheart.  Her name was Shuben and she was as lovely as the moon when it rises from the sea, and as pleasant as a summer twilight.  Her eyes were dark and soft, her foot was as light as a breeze, and her voice sounded like a brook in the woods, or the wind that comes over the hills at night.  She and Accadee were very much in love with each other, and often they hunted together, for Shuben was almost as skilful with her bow and arrow as Accadee himself.  They had loved each other ever since they were small pappooses, and they had vowed to love each other as long as the river ran.