“here’s a letter for you from father,” said felix, tossing it to me as he came through the orchard gate. we had been picking apples all day, but were taking a mid-afternoon rest around the well, with a cup of its sparkling cold water to refresh us.
i opened the letter rather indifferently, for father, with all his excellent and lovable traits, was but a poor correspondent; his letters were usually very brief and very unimportant.
this letter was brief enough, but it was freighted with a message of weighty import. i sat gazing stupidly at the sheet after i had read it until felix exclaimed,
“bev, what’s the matter with you? what’s in that letter?”
“father is coming home,” i said dazedly. “he is to leave south america in a fortnight and will be here in november to take us back to toronto.”
everybody gasped. sara ray, of course, began to cry, which aggravated me unreasonably.
“well,” said felix, when he got his second wind, “i’ll be awful glad to see father again, but i tell you i don’t like the thought of leaving here.”
i felt exactly the same but, in view of sara ray’s tears, admit it i would not; so i sat in grum silence while the other tongues wagged.
“if i were not going away myself i’d feel just terrible,” said the story girl. “even as it is i’m real sorry. i’d like to be able to think of you as all here together when i’m gone, having good times and writing me about them.”
“it’ll be awfully dull when you fellows go,” muttered dan.
“i’m sure i don’t know what we’re ever going to do here this winter,” said felicity, with the calmness of despair.
“thank goodness there are no more fathers to come back,” breathed cecily with a vicious earnestness that made us all laugh, even in the midst of our dismay.
we worked very half-heartedly the rest of the day, and it was not until we assembled in the orchard in the evening that our spirits recovered something like their wonted level. it was clear and slightly frosty; the sun had declined behind a birch on a distant hill and it seemed a tree with a blazing heart of fire. the great golden willow at the lane gate was laughter-shaken in the wind of evening. even amid all the changes of our shifting world we could not be hopelessly low-spirited—except sara ray, who was often so, and peter, who was rarely so. but peter had been sorely vexed in spirit for several days. the time was approaching for the october issue of our magazine and he had no genuine fiction ready for it. he had taken so much to heart felicity’s taunt that his stories were all true that he had determined to have a really-truly false one in the next number. but the difficulty was to get anyone to write it. he had asked the story girl to do it, but she refused; then he appealed to me and i shirked. finally peter determined to write a story himself.
“it oughtn’t to be any harder than writing a poem and i managed that,” he said dolefully.
he worked at it in the evenings in the granary loft, and the rest of us forebore to question him concerning it, because he evidently disliked talking about his literary efforts. but this evening i had to ask him if he would soon have it ready, as i wanted to make up the paper.
“it’s done,” said peter, with an air of gloomy triumph. “it don’t amount to much, but anyhow i made it all out of my own head. not one word of it was ever printed or told before, and nobody can say there was.”
“then i guess we have all the stuff in and i’ll have our magazine ready to read by tomorrow night,” i said.
“i s’pose it will be the last one we’ll have,” sighed cecily. “we can’t carry it on after you all go, and it has been such fun.”
“bev will be a real newspaper editor some day,” declared the story girl, on whom the spirit of prophecy suddenly descended that night.
she was swinging on the bough of an apple tree, with a crimson shawl wrapped about her head, and her eyes were bright with roguish fire.
“how do you know he will?” asked felicity.
“oh, i can tell futures,” answered the story girl mysteriously. “i know what’s going to happen to all of you. shall i tell you?”
“do, just for the fun of it,” i said. “then some day we’ll know just how near you came to guessing right. go on. what else about me?”
“you’ll write books, too, and travel all over the world,” continued the story girl. “felix will be fat to the end of his life, and he will be a grandfather before he is fifty, and he will wear a long black beard.”
“i won’t,” cried felix disgustedly. “i hate whiskers. maybe i can’t help the grandfather part, but i can help having a beard.”
“you can’t. it’s written in the stars.”
“‘tain’t. the stars can’t prevent me from shaving.”
“won’t grandpa felix sound awful funny?” reflected felicity.
“peter will be a minister,” went on the story girl.
“well, i might be something worse,” remarked peter, in a not ungratified tone.
“dan will be a farmer and will marry a girl whose name begins with k and he will have eleven children. and he’ll vote grit.”
“i won’t,” cried scandalized dan. “you don’t know a thing about it. catch me ever voting grit! as for the rest of it—i don’t care. farming’s well enough, though i’d rather be a sailor.”
“don’t talk such nonsense,” protested felicity sharply. “what on earth do you want to be a sailor for and be drowned?”
“all sailors aren’t drowned,” said dan.
“most of them are. look at uncle stephen.”
“you ain’t sure he was drowned.”
“well, he disappeared, and that is worse.”
“how do you know? disappearing might be real easy.”
“it’s not very easy for your family.”
“hush, let’s hear the rest of the predictions,” said cecily.
“felicity,” resumed the story girl gravely, “will marry a minister.”
sara ray giggled and felicity blushed. peter tried hard not to look too self-consciously delighted.
“she will be a perfect housekeeper and will teach a sunday school class and be very happy all her life.”
“will her husband be happy?” queried dan solemnly.
“i guess he’ll be as happy as your wife,” retorted felicity reddening.
“he’ll be the happiest man in the world,” declared peter warmly.
“what about me?” asked sara ray.
the story girl looked rather puzzled. it was so hard to imagine sara ray as having any kind of future. yet sara was plainly anxious to have her fortune told and must be gratified.
“you’ll be married,” said the story girl recklessly, “and you’ll live to be nearly a hundred years old, and go to dozens of funerals and have a great many sick spells. you will learn not to cry after you are seventy; but your husband will never go to church.”
“i’m glad you warned me,” said sara ray solemnly, “because now i know i’ll make him promise before i marry him that he will go.”
“he won’t keep the promise,” said the story girl, shaking her head. “but it is getting cold and cecily is coughing. let us go in.”
“you haven’t told my fortune,” protested cecily disappointedly.
the story girl looked very tenderly at cecily—at the smooth little brown head, at the soft, shining eyes, at the cheeks that were often over-rosy after slight exertion, at the little sunburned hands that were always busy doing faithful work or quiet kindnesses. a very strange look came over the story girl’s face; her eyes grew sad and far-reaching, as if of a verity they pierced beyond the mists of hidden years.
“i couldn’t tell any fortune half good enough for you, dearest,” she said, slipping her arm round cecily. “you deserve everything good and lovely. but you know i’ve only been in fun—of course i don’t know anything about what’s going to happen to us.”
“perhaps you know more than you think for,” said sara ray, who seemed much pleased with her fortune and anxious to believe it, despite the husband who wouldn’t go to church.
“but i’d like to be told my fortune, even in fun,” persisted cecily.
“everybody you meet will love you as long as you live.” said the story girl. “there that’s the very nicest fortune i can tell you, and it will come true whether the others do or not, and now we must go in.”
we went, cecily still a little disappointed. in later years i often wondered why the story girl refused to tell her fortune that night. did some strange gleam of foreknowledge fall for a moment across her mirth-making? did she realize in a flash of prescience that there was no earthly future for our sweet cecily? not for her were to be the lengthening shadows or the fading garland. the end was to come while the rainbow still sparkled on her wine of life, ere a single petal had fallen from her rose of joy. long life was before all the others who trysted that night in the old homestead orchard; but cecily’s maiden feet were never to leave the golden road.
