family, like the Luck of Edenhall in Longfellow's poem. It is
the last cup of Grandmother King's second best set. Her best set
is still complete. Aunt Olivia has it. You must get her to show
it to you. It's so pretty, with red berries all over it, and the
funniest little pot-bellied cream jug. Aunt Olivia never uses it
except on a family anniversary."

We took a drink from the blue cup and then went to find our
birthday trees. We were rather disappointed to find them quite
large, sturdy ones. It seemed to us that they should still be in
the sapling stage corresponding to our boyhood.

"Your apples are lovely to eat," the Story Girl said to me, "but
Felix's are only good for pies. Those two big trees behind them
are the twins' trees--my mother and Uncle Felix, you know. The
apples are so dead sweet that nobody but us children and the
French boys can eat them. And that tall, slender tree over
there, with the branches all growing straight up, is a seedling
that came up of itself, and NOBODY can eat its apples, they are
so sour and bitter. Even the pigs won't eat them. Aunt Janet
tried to make pies of them once, because she said she hated to
see them going to waste. But she never tried again. She said it
was better to waste apples alone than apples and sugar too. And
then she tried giving them away to the French hired men, but they
wouldn't even carry them home."

The Story Girl's words fell on the morning air like pearls and
diamonds. Even her prepositions and conjunctions had untold
charm, hinting at mystery and laughter and magic bound up in
everything she mentioned. Apple pies and sour seedlings and pigs