It was vacation, and there was not much to do that day; we were soon free to seek the orchard.  But the Story Girl would not come.  She had seated herself in the darkest, hottest corner of the kitchen, with a piece of old cotton in her hand.

“I am not going to play to-day,” she said, “and I’m not going to tell a single story.  Aunt Janet won’t let me put pebbles in my shoes, but I’ve put a thistle next my skin on my back and it sticks into me if I lean back the least bit.  And I’m going to work buttonholes all over this cotton.  I hate working buttonholes worse than anything in the world, so I’m going to work them all day.”

“What’s the good of working buttonholes on an old rag?” asked Felicity.

“It isn’t any good.  The beauty of penance is that it makes you feel uncomfortable.  So it doesn’t matter what you do, whether it’s useful or not, so long as it’s nasty.  Oh, I wonder how Sara is this morning.”

“Mother’s going down this afternoon,” said Felicity.  “She says none of us must go near the place till we know whether it is the measles or not.”

“I’ve thought of a great penance,” said Cecily eagerly.  “Don’t go to the missionary meeting to-night.”

The Story Girl looked piteous.

“I thought of that myself—­but I can’t stay home, Cecily.  It would be more than flesh and blood could endure.  I must hear that missionary speak.  They say he was all but eaten by cannibals once.  Just think how many new stories I’d have to tell after I’d heard him!  No, I must go, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  I’ll wear my school dress and hat.  That will be penance.  Felicity, when you set the table for dinner, put the broken-handled knife for me.  I hate it so.  And I’m going to take a dose of Mexican Tea every two hours.  It’s such dreadful tasting stuff—­but it’s a good blood purifier, so Aunt Janet can’t object to it.”

The Story Girl carried out her self-imposed penance fully.  All day she sat in the kitchen and worked buttonholes, subsisting on bread and water and Mexican Tea.

Felicity did a mean thing.  She went to work and made little raisin pies, right there in the kitchen before the Story Girl.  The smell of raisin pies is something to tempt an anchorite; and the Story Girl was exceedingly fond of them.  Felicity ate two in her very presence, and then brought the rest out to us in the orchard.  The Story Girl could see us through the window, carousing without stint on raisin pies and Uncle Edward’s cherries.  But she worked on at her buttonholes.  She would not look at the exciting serial in the new magazine Dan brought home from the post-office, neither would she open a letter from her father.  Pat came over, but his most seductive purrs won no notice from his mistress, who refused herself the pleasure of even patting him.