“A nice way to talk to your sister when you may be dead in an hour’s time!” retorted Felicity, in tears between her anger and her real alarm about Dan.

But in an hour’s time Dan was still in good health, and announced his intention of going to bed.  He went, and was soon sleeping as peacefully as if he had nothing on either conscience or stomach.  But Felicity declared she meant to keep the water hot until all danger was past; and we sat up to keep her company.  We were sitting there when Uncle Roger walked in at eleven o’clock.

“What on earth are you young fry doing up at this time of night?” he asked angrily.  “You should have been in your beds two hours ago.  And with a roaring fire on a night that’s hot enough to melt a brass monkey!  Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“It’s because of Dan,” explained Felicity wearily.  “He went and et more of the bad berries—­a whole lot of them—­and we were sure he’d be sick again.  But he hasn’t been yet, and now he’s asleep.”

“Is that boy stark, staring mad?” said Uncle Roger.

“It was Felicity’s fault,” cried Cecily, who always took Dan’s part through evil report and good report.  “She told him she guessed he’d learned a lesson and wouldn’t do what she’d told him not to again.  So he went and et them because she vexed him so.”

“Felicity King, if you don’t watch out you’ll grow up into the sort of woman who drives her husband to drink,” said Uncle Roger gravely.

“How could I tell Dan would act so like a mule!” cried Felicity.

“Get off to bed, every one of you.  It’s a thankful man I’ll be when your father and mother come home.  The wretched bachelor who undertakes to look after a houseful of children like you is to be pitied.  Nobody will ever catch me doing it again.  Felicity, is there anything fit to eat in the pantry?”

That last question was the most unkindest cut of all.  Felicity could have forgiven Uncle Roger anything but that.  It really was unpardonable.  She confided to me as we climbed the stairs that she hated Uncle Roger.  Her red lips quivered and the tears of wounded pride brimmed over in her beautiful blue eyes.  In the dim candle-light she looked unbelievably pretty and appealing.  I put my arm about her and gave her a cousinly salute.

“Never you mind him, Felicity,” I said.  “He’s only a grown-up.”

CHAPTER XVI.  THE GHOSTLY BELL

Friday was a comfortable day in the household of King.  Everybody was in good humour.  The Story Girl sparkled through several tales that ranged from the afrites and jinns of Eastern myth, through the piping days of chivalry, down to the homely anecdotes of Carlisle workaday folks.  She was in turn an Oriental princess behind a silken veil, the bride who followed her bridegroom to the wars of Palestine disguised as a page, the gallant lady who ransomed her diamond necklace by dancing a coranto with a highwayman on a moonlit heath, and “Buskirk’s girl” who joined the Sons and Daughters of Temperance “just to see what was into it;” and in each impersonation she was so thoroughly the thing impersonated that it was a matter of surprise to us when she emerged from each our own familiar Story Girl again.