“A rich man in Toronto has a floral clock in his garden,” I said.  “It looks just like the face of a clock, and there are flowers in it that open at every hour, so that you can always tell the time.”

“Oh, I wish we had one here,” exclaimed Cecily.

“What would be the use of it?” asked the Story Girl a little disdainfully.  “Nobody ever wants to know the time in a garden.”

I slipped away at this point, suddenly remembering that it was time to take a dose of magic seed.  I had bought it from Billy Robinson three days before in school.  Billy had assured me that it would make me grow fast.

I was beginning to feel secretly worried because I did not grow.  I had overheard Aunt Janet say I was going to be short, like Uncle Alec.  Now, I loved Uncle Alec, but I wanted to be taller than he was.  So when Billy confided to me, under solemn promise of secrecy, that he had some “magic seed,” which would make boys grow, and would sell me a box of it for ten cents, I jumped at the offer.  Billy was taller than any boy of his age in Carlisle, and he assured me it all came from taking magic seed.

“I was a regular runt before I begun,” he said, “and look at me now.  I got it from Peg Bowen.  She’s a witch, you know.  I wouldn’t go near her again for a bushel of magic seed.  It was an awful experience.  I haven’t much left, but I guess I’ve enough to do me till I’m as tall as I want to be.  You must take a pinch of the seed every three hours, walking backward, and you must never tell a soul you’re taking it, or it won’t work.  I wouldn’t spare any of it to any one but you.”

I felt deeply grateful to Billy, and sorry that I had not liked him better.  Somehow, nobody did like Billy Robinson over and above.  But I vowed I would like him in future.  I paid him the ten cents cheerfully and took the magic seed as directed, measuring myself carefully every day by a mark on the hall door.  I could not see any advance in growth yet, but then I had been taking it only three days.

One day the Story Girl had an inspiration.

“Let us go and ask the Awkward Man and Mr. Campbell for a contribution to the library fund,” she said.  “I am sure no one else has asked them, because nobody in Carlisle is related to them.  Let us all go, and if they give us anything we’ll divide it equally among us.”

It was a daring proposition, for both Mr. Campbell and the Awkward Man were regarded as eccentric personages; and Mr. Campbell was supposed to detest children.  But where the Story Girl led we would follow to the death.  The next day being Saturday, we started out in the afternoon.