-"and," added the Story Girl, with the joy of a connoisseur who
has found a rare gem, "the sweetest little story connected with it. And
I saw the hero of the story too."

"Where was the heroine?" queried Cecily.

"She is dead."

"Oh, of course she'd have to die," exclaimed Dan in disgust. "I'd like a
story where somebody lived once in awhile."

"I've told you heaps of stories where people lived," retorted the Story
Girl. "If this heroine hadn't died there wouldn't have been any story.
She was Miss Reade's aunt and her name was Una, and I believe she must
have been just like Miss Reade herself. Miss Reade told me all about
her. When we went into the garden I saw in one corner of it an old stone
bench arched over by a couple of pear trees and all grown about with
grass and violets. And an old man was sitting on it--a bent old man with
long, snow-white hair and beautiful sad blue eyes. He seemed very lonely
and sorrowful and I wondered that Miss Reade didn't speak to him. But
she never let on she saw him and took me away to another part of the
garden. After awhile he got up and went away and then Miss Reade said,
'Come over to Aunt Una's seat and I will tell you about her and her
lover--that man who has just gone out.'

"'Oh, isn't he too old for a lover?' I said.

"Beautiful Alice laughed and said it was forty years since he had been
her Aunt Una's lover. He had been a tall, handsome young man then, and
her Aunt Una was a beautiful girl of nineteen.

"We went over and sat down and Miss Reade told me all about her. She
said that when she was a child she had heard much of her Aunt Una--that
she seemed to have been one of those people who are not soon forgotten,
whose personality seems to linger about the scenes of their lives long
after they have passed away."

"What is a personality? Is it another word for ghost?" asked Peter.

"No," said the Story Girl shortly. "I can't stop in a story to explain
words."

"I don't believe you know what it is yourself," said Felicity.

The Story Girl picked up her hat, which she had thrown down on the
grass, and placed it defiantly on her brown curls.

"I'm going in," she announced. "I have to help Aunt Olivia ice a cake
tonight, and you all seem more interested in dictionaries than stories."

"That's not fair," I exclaimed. "Dan and Felix and Sara Ray and Cecily
and I have never said a word. It's mean to punish us for what Peter and
Felicity did. We want to hear the rest of