“My OWN DEAREST Cecily,” ran Sara’s letter.  “I have just heard the sad news about POOR DEAR PETER.  I can’t describe MY FEELINGS.  They are DREADFUL.  I have been crying ALL THE AFTERNOON.  I wish I could FLY to you, but ma will not let me.  She is afraid I will catch the measles, but I would rather have the measles A DOZEN TIMES OVER than be sepparated from you all like this.  But I have felt, ever since the Judgment Sunday that I MUST OBEY MA BETTER than I used to do.  If ANYTHING HAPPENS to Peter and you are let see him BEFORE IT HAPPENS give him MY LOVE and tell him HOW SORRY I AM, and that I hope we will ALL meet in A BETTER WORLD Everything in school is about the same.  The master is awful cross by spells.  Jimmy Frewen walked home with Nellie Bowan last night from prayer-meeting and HER ONLY FOURTEEN.  Don’t you think it horrid BEGINNING SO YOUNG?  YOU AND ME would NEVER do anything like that till we were GROWN UP, would we?  Willy Fraser looks SO LONESOME in school these days.  I must stop for ma says I waste FAR TOO MUCH TIME writing letters.  Tell Judy ALL THE NEWS for me.

“Your OWN TRUE FRIEND,
“SARA RAY.

“P.S.  Oh I DO hope Peter will get better.  Ma is going to get me a new brown dress for the winter. 
“S.  R.”

When evening came we went to our seats under the whispering, sighing fir trees.  It was a beautiful night—­clear, windless, frosty.  Some one galloped down the road on horseback, lustily singing a comic song.  How dared he?  We felt that it was an insult to our wretchedness.  If Peter were going to—­going to—­well, if anything happened to Peter, we felt so miserably sure that the music of life would be stilled for us for ever.  How could any one in the world be happy when we were so unhappy?

Presently Aunt Olivia came down the long twilight arcade.  Her bright hair was uncovered and she looked slim and queen-like in her light dress.  We thought Aunt Olivia very pretty then.  Looking back from a mature standpoint I realize that she must have been an unusually beautiful woman; and she looked her prettiest as she stood under the swaying boughs in the last faint light of the autumn dusk and smiled down at our woebegone faces.

“Dear, sorrowful little people, I bring you glad tidings of great joy,” she said.  “The doctor has just been here, and he finds Peter much better, and thinks he will pull through after all.”

We gazed up at her in silence for a few moments.  When we had heard the news of Paddy’s recovery we had been noisy and jubilant; but we were very quiet now.  We had been too near something dark and terrible and menacing; and though it was thus suddenly removed the chill and shadow of it were about us still.  Presently the Story Girl, who had been standing up, leaning against a tall fir, slipped down to the ground in a huddled fashion and broke into a very passion of weeping.  I had never heard any one cry so, with dreadful, rending sobs.  I was used to hearing girls cry.  It was as much Sara Ray’s normal state as any other, and even Felicity and Cecily availed themselves occasionally of the privilege of sex.  But I had never heard any girl cry like this.  It gave me the same unpleasant sensation which I had felt one time when I had seen my father cry.