an, only to a few.

"What are they, dear? I love fairy stories, you know."

Doris was keeping her voice cool and calm.

"Why, Mary says there is a Rock on a big mountain that is--bewitched!
And everything near it is, too. She says things grow on it and you look
at them and they are alive, and you can--can, well, use them! Mary saw a
road once and just went up on it--it was a bewitched road, and she
got--lost!" Joan's eyes widened. "Mary says she'll have to find her way
back somehow, and if Nancy and I are naughty, she'll go and find it at
once! Nancy is afraid, but I told Mary I'd follow her!

"And then Mary said that once she just longed and longed for a doll--she
had never had one--and she saw The Ship on The Rock and she went up to
it--that was before she got lost on the road--and she asked the captain
of The Ship for a doll, and he said he would send one to her. And she
went home and that very night--that _very_ night, Aunt Dorrie, she
looked in a room where she heard a funny noise and she saw a live doll!
And while she was looking she saw a tall big lady bring in another. You
see, when The Rock gets alive, everything is alive and Mary had forgot
that--and so the dolls were--were babies. Nancy believes that, but
I--tried it on Nancy's dolls--and it isn't true!"

The rain outside beat wildly against the windows; the wind lashed the
vines and roared down the chimney.

"Are--you asleep, Aunt Dorrie?" The silence awed Joan.

"No, dear heart. I am just thinking."

And so Doris was--thinking that she was walking in the dark. Her own
small flashlight had seemed enough to guide her, and here she discovered
that it had only shown her one path, the one she had chosen, and all the
other paths--Mary's, Nancy's, and Joan's--had been disregarded.

Suddenly it seemed as dangerous to have too much faith as too little.

"I want you, Joan, dear, to go up and play, now, with Nancy. See if you
cannot take all the old games and make a new one. That would be such a
pleasant thing to do."

"Must I, Auntie Dorrie? I'd rather stay here close to you. It's a new
game. I like it here."

It was hard to send the small, clinging thing away, but Doris was firm.

Once alone, she closed her eyes and let her hands fall, palms upward, on
her lap. She felt tired and perplexed. There had come a parting of the
ways. Apparently the ninth year was a dangerous year. What must she do?
Was Mary more ignorant than she seemed or--more knowing? Wha