We were all up early the next morning, by candlelight. But early as it was we found the Story Girl in the kitchen when we went down, sitting on Rachel Ward's blue chest and looking important.  
"What do you think?" she exclaimed. "Peter has the ! He was dreadfully sick all night, and Uncle Roger had to go for the doctor. He was quite light-headed, and didn't know any one. Of course he's far too sick to be taken home, so his mother has come up to wait on him, and I'm to live over here until he is better."
 
This was bitter and sweet. We were sorry to hear that
Peter had the measles; but it would be jolly to have the Story
Girl living with us all the time. What orgies of story telling
we should have!
"I suppose we'll all have the measles now," Felicity. "And October is such an time for measles—there's so much to do."
 
"I don't believe any time is very convenient to have the measles," Cecily said.
 
"Oh, perhaps we won't have them," said the Story Girl cheerfully. "Peter caught them at Markdale, the last time he was home, his mother says."
 
"I don't want to catch the measles from Peter," said Felicity decidedly. "Fancy them from a hired boy!"
 
"Oh, Felicity, don't call Peter a hired boy when he's sick," protested Cecily.
 
During the next two days we were very busy—too busy to tell tales or listen to them. Only in the frosty dusk did we have time to wander afar in realms of gold with the Story Girl. She had recently been digging into a couple of old volumes of classic myths and northland which she had found in Aunt Olivia's ; and for us, god and goddess, laughing nymph and mocking satyr, norn and valkyrie, elf and troll, and "green folk" generally, were real creatures once again, inhabiting the and woods and meadows around us, until it seemed as if the Golden Age had returned to earth.
 
Then, on the third day, the Story Girl came to us with a very white face. She had been over to Uncle Roger's yard to hear the latest bulletin from the sick room. Hitherto they had been of a non-committal nature; but now it was only too evident that she had bad news.
 
"Peter is very, very sick," she said . "He has caught cold someway—and the measles have struck in—and—and—" the Story Girl her brown hands together—"the doctor is afraid he—he—won't get better."
 
We all stood around, stricken, incredulous.
 
"Do you mean," said Felix, finding voice at length, "that Peter is going to die?"
 
The Story Girl nodded miserably.
 
"They're afraid so."
 
Cecily sat down by her half filled basket and began to cry.
Felicity said violently that she didn't believe it.
"I can't pick another apple to-day and I ain't going to try," said Dan.
 
None of us could. We went to the grown-ups and told them so; and the grown-ups, with unaccustomed understanding and sympathy, told us that we need not. Then we roamed about in our wretchedness and tried to comfort one another. We avoided the ; it was for us too full of happy memories to accord with our bitterness of soul. Instead, we resorted to the spruce wood, where the and the sombre shadows and the soft, sighing of the wind in the branches over us did not jar harshly on our new sorrow.
 
We could not really believe that Peter was going to die—to DIE. Old people died. Grown-up people died. Even children of whom we had heard died. But that one of US—of our merry little band— should die was unbelievable. We could not believe it. And yet the possibility struck us in the face like a blow. We sat on the mossy stones under the dark old and gave ourselves up to wretchedness. We all, even Dan, cried, except the Story Girl.
 
"I don't see how you can be so unfeeling, Sara Stanley," said
Felicity reproachfully. "You've always been such friends with
Peter—and made out you thought so much of him—and now you ain't
shedding a tear for him."
I looked at the Story Girl's dry, piteous eyes, and suddenly remembered that I had never seen her cry. When she told us sad tales, in a voice with all the tears that had ever been shed, she had never shed one of her own.
 
"I can't cry," she said . "I wish I could. I've a dreadful feeling here—" she touched her slender throat—"and if I could cry I think it would make it better. But I can't."
 
"Maybe Peter will get better after all," said Dan, swallowing a . "I've heard of lots of people who went and got better after the doctor said they were going to die."
 
"While there's life there's hope, you know," said Felix. "We shouldn't cross bridges till we come to them."
 
"Those are only proverbs," said the Story Girl bitterly. "Proverbs are all very fine when there's nothing to worry you, but when you're in real trouble they're not a bit of help."
 
"Oh, I wish I'd never said Peter wasn't fit to associate with," moaned Felicity. "If he ever gets better I'll never say such a thing again—I'll never THINK it. He's just a lovely boy and twice as smart as lots that aren't hired out."
 
"He was always so polite and good-natured and obliging," sighed
Cecily.
"He was just a real gentleman," said the Story Girl.
 
"There ain't many fellows as fair and square as Peter," said Dan.
 
"And such a worker," said Felix.
 
"Uncle Roger says he never had a boy he could depend on like
Peter," I said.
"It's too late to be saying all these nice things about him now," said the Story Girl. "He won't ever know how much we thought of him. It's too late."
 
"If he gets better I'll tell him," said Cecily .
 
"I wish I hadn't boxed his ears that day he tried to kiss me," went on Felicity, who was evidently raking her conscience for past offences in regard to Peter. "Of course I couldn't be expected to let a hir—to let a boy kiss me. But I needn't have been so cross about it. I might have been more . And I told him I just hated him. That wasn't true, but I s'pose he'll die thinking it is. Oh, dear me, what makes people say things they've got to be so sorry for afterwards?"
 
"I suppose if Peter d-d-dies he'll go to heaven anyhow," Cecily. "He's been real good all this summer, but he isn't a church member."
 
"He's a Presbyterian, you know," said Felicity . Her tone expressed her conviction that that would carry Peter through if anything would. "We're none of us church members. But of course Peter couldn't be sent to the bad place. That would be ridiculous. What would they do with him there, when he's so good and polite and honest and kind?"
 
"Oh, I think he'll be all right, too," sighed Cecily, "but you know he never did go to church and Sunday School before this summer."
 
"Well, his father run away, and his mother was too busy earning a living to bring him up right," argued Felicity. "Don't you suppose that anybody, even God, would make allowances for that?"
 
"Of course Peter will go to heaven," said the Story Girl. "He's not grown up enough to go anywhere else. Children always go to heaven. But I don't want him to go there or anywhere else. I want him to stay right here. I know heaven must be a splendid place, but I'm sure Peter would rather be here, having fun with us."
 
"Sara Stanley," Felicity. "I should think you wouldn't say such things at such a solemn time. You're such a queer girl."
 
"Wouldn't you rather be here yourself than in heaven?" said the Story Girl bluntly. "Wouldn't you now, Felicity King? Tell the truth, 'cross your heart."
 
But Felicity took refuge from this inconvenient question in tears.
 
"If we could only DO something to help Peter!" I said . "It seems dreadful not to be able to do a single thing."
 
"There's one thing we can do," said Cecily gently. "We can pray for him."
 
"So we can," I agreed.
 
"I'm going to pray like sixty," said Felix energetically.
 
"We'll have to be awful good, you know," warned Cecily. "There's no use praying if you're not good."
 
"That will be easy," sighed Felicity. "I don't feel a bit like being bad. If anythin............