An August evening, calm, golden, dewless, can be very lovely. At sunset, Felicity, Cecily, and Sara Ray, Dan, Felix, and I were in the , sitting on the cool grasses at the base of the Pulpit Stone. In the west was a field of crocus sky over which pale cloud blossoms were .
Uncle Roger had gone to the station to meet the travellers, and the dining-room table was spread with a feast of fat things.
"It's been a jolly week, take it all round," said Felix, "but I'm glad the grown-ups are coming back to-night, especially Uncle Alec."
"I wonder if they'll bring us anything," said Dan.
"I'm thinking long to hear all about the wedding," said Felicity, who was braiding timothy stalks into a collar for Pat.
"You girls are always thinking about weddings and getting married," said Dan contemptuously.
"We ain't," said Felicity indignantly. "I am NEVER going to get married. I think it is just , so there!"
"I guess you think it would be a good deal horrider not to be," said Dan.
"It depends on who you're married to," said Cecily gravely, seeing that Felicity reply. "If you got a man like father it would be all right. But S'POSEN you got one like Andrew ? He's so mean and cross to his wife that she tells him every day she wishes she'd never set eyes on him."
"Perhaps that's WHY he's mean and cross," said Felix.
"I tell you it isn't always the man's fault," said Dan darkly. "When I get married I'll be good to my wife, but I mean to be boss. When I open my mouth my word will be law."
"If your word is as big as your mouth I guess it will be," said
Felicity cruelly.
"I pity the man who gets you, Felicity King, that's all," retorted
Dan.
"Now, don't fight," Cecily.
"Who's fighting?" demanded Dan. "Felicity thinks she can say anything she likes to me, but I'll show her different."
Probably, in spite of Cecily's efforts, a bitter would have resulted between Dan and Felicity, had not a diversion been effected at that moment by the Story Girl, who came slowly down Uncle Stephen's Walk.
"Just look how the Story Girl has got herself up!" said Felicity.
"Why, she's no more than decent!"
The Story Girl was barefooted and barearmed, having rolled the sleeves of her pink gingham up to her shoulders. Around her waist was twisted a girdle of the blood-red roses that bloomed in Aunt Olivia's garden; on her curls she wore a chaplet of them; and her hands were full of them.
She paused under the outmost tree, in a golden-green gloom, and laughed at us over a big branch. Her wild, subtle, nameless charm clothed her as with a garment. We always remembered the picture she made there; and in later days when we read Tennyson's poems at a college desk, we knew exactly how an oread, peering through the green leaves on some haunted of many fountained Ida, must look.
"Felicity," said the Story Girl reproachfully, "what have you been doing to Peter? He's up there sulking in the granary, and he won't come down, and he says it's your fault. You must have hurt his feelings dreadfully."
"I don't know about his feelings," said Felicity, with an angry toss of her shining head, "but I guess I made his ears all right. I boxed them both good and hard."
"Oh, Felicity! What for?"
"Well, he tried to kiss me, that's what for!" said Felicity, turning very red. "As if I would let a hired boy kiss me! I guess Master Peter won't try anything like that again in a hurry."
The Story Girl came out of her shadows and sat down beside us on the grass.
"Well, in that case," she said gravely, "I think you did right to slap his ears—not because he is a hired boy, but because it would be impertinent in ANY boy. But talking of kissing makes me think of a story I found in Aunt Olivia's scrapbook the other day. Wouldn't you like to hear it? It is called, 'How Kissing Was Discovered.'"
"Wasn't kissing always discovered?" asked Dan.
"Not according to this story. It was just discovered accidentally."
"Well, let's hear about it," said Felix, "although I think kissing's awful silly, and it wouldn't have mattered much if it hadn't ever been discovered."
The Story Girl scattered her roses around her on the grass, and clasped her slim hands over her knees. Gazing dreamily afar at the sky between the apple trees, as if she were looking back to the merry days of the world's gay youth, she began, her voice giving to the words and fancies of the old tale the of hoar frost and the crystal sparkle of dew.
"It happened long, long ago in Greece—where so many other beautiful things happened. Before that, nobody had ever heard of kissing. And then it was just discovered in the twinkling of an eye. And a man wrote it down and the account has been preserved ever since.
"There was a young shepherd named Glaucon—a very handsome young shepherd—who lived in a little village called Thebes. It became a very great and famous city afterwards, but at this time it was only a little village, very quiet and simple. Too quiet for Glaucon's . He grew tired of it, and he thought he would like to go away from home and see something of the world. So he took his knapsack and his shepherd's , and wandered away until he came to Thessaly. That is the land of the gods' hill, you know. The name of the hill was Olympus. But it has nothing to do with this story. This happened on another mountain—Mount Pelion.
"Glaucon hired himself to a wealthy man who had a great many sheep. And every day Glaucon had to lead the sheep up to pasture on Mount Pelion, and watch them while they ate. There was nothing else to do, and he would have found the time very long, if he had not been able to play on a . So he played very often and very beautifully, as he sat under the trees and watched the wonderful blue sea afar off, and thought about Aglaia.
"Aglaia was his master's daughter. She was so sweet and beautiful that Glaucon fell in love with her the very moment he first saw her; and when he was not playing his flute on the mountain he was thinking about Aglaia, and dreaming that some day he might have flocks of his own, and a dear little cottage down in the valley where he and Aglaia might live.
"Aglaia had fallen in love with Glaucon just as he had w............