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.



CHAPTER XXXI