affecting to consider them great delicacies.  The fad was at once taken up by the Carlisle schoolgirls.  Timothy roots quite ousted “sours” and young raspberry sprouts, both of which had the real merit of being quite toothsome, while timothy roots were tough and tasteless.  But timothy roots were fashionable, therefore timothy roots must be eaten.  Pecks of them must have been devoured in Carlisle that summer.

Pat was there also, padding about from one to the other on his black paws, giving us friendly pokes and rubs.  We all made much of him except Felicity, who would not take any notice of him because he was the Story Girl’s cat.

We boys were sprawling on the grass.  Our morning chores were done and the day was before us.  We should have been feeling very comfortable and happy, but, as a matter of fact, we were not particularly so.

The Story Girl was sitting on the mint beside the well-house, weaving herself a wreath of buttercups.  Felicity was sipping from the cup of clouded blue with an overdone air of unconcern.  Each was acutely and miserably conscious of the other’s presence, and each was desirous of convincing the rest of us that the other was less than nothing to her.  Felicity could not succeed.  The Story Girl managed it better.  If it had not been for the fact that in all our foregatherings she was careful to sit as far from Felicity as possible, we might have been deceived.

We had not passed a very pleasant week.  Felicity and the Story Girl had not been “speaking” to each other, and consequently there had been something rotten in the state of Denmark.  An air of restraint was over all our games and conversations.

On the preceding Monday Felicity and the Story Girl had quarrelled over something.  What the cause of the quarrel was I cannot tell because I never knew.  It remained a “dead secret” between the parties of the first and second part forever.  But it was more bitter than the general run of their tiffs, and the consequences were apparent to all.  They had not spoken to each other since.

This was not because the rancour of either lasted so long.  On the contrary it passed speedily away, not even one low descending sun going down on their wrath.  But dignity remained to be considered.  Neither would “speak first,” and each obstinately declared that she would not speak first, no, not in a hundred years.  Neither argument, entreaty, nor expostulation had any effect on those two stubborn girls, nor yet the tears of sweet Cecily, who cried every night about it, and mingled in her pure little prayers fervent petitions that Felicity and the Story Girl might make up.

“I don’t know where you expect to go when you die, Felicity,” she said tearfully, “if you don’t forgive people.”

“I have forgiven her,” was Felicity’s answer, “but I am not going to speak first for all that.”

“It’s very wrong, and, more than that, it’s so uncomfortable,” complained Cecily.  “It spoils everything.”