The Golden Road | Page 5

make some up," said the Story Girl. "Uncle Roger says that
is what the Family Guide man does. He says it is impossible that there
can be as many hopeless fools in the world as that column would stand
for otherwise."
"We want you to edit the household department, Felicity," I said,
seeing a cloud lowering on that fair lady's brow. "Nobody can do that
as well as you. Felix will edit the jokes and the Information Bureau,
and Cecily must be fashion editor. Yes, you must, Sis. It's easy as wink.
And the Story Girl will attend to the personals. They're very important.
Anyone can contribute a personal, but the Story Girl is to see there are
some in every issue, even if she has to make them up, like Dan with the
etiquette."
"Bev will run the scrap book department, besides the editorials," said
the Story Girl, seeing that I was too modest to say it myself.
"Aren't you going to have a story page?" asked Peter.
"We will, if you'll be fiction and poetry editor," I said.

Peter, in his secret soul, was dismayed, but he would not blanch before
Felicity.
"All right," he said, recklessly.
"We can put anything we like in the scrap book department," I
explained, "but all the other contributions must be original, and all must
have the name of the writer signed to them, except the personals. We
must all do our best. Our Magazine is to be 'a feast of reason and flow
of soul."'
I felt that I had worked in two quotations with striking effect. The
others, with the exception of the Story Girl, looked suitably impressed.
"But," said Cecily, reproachfully, "haven't you anything for Sara Ray to
do? She'll feel awful bad if she is left out."
I had forgotten Sara Ray. Nobody, except Cecily, ever did remember
Sara Ray unless she was on the spot. But we decided to put her in as
advertising manager. That sounded well and really meant very little.
"Well, we'll go ahead then," I said, with a sigh of relief that the project
had been so easily launched. "We'll get the first issue out about the first
of January. And whatever else we do we mustn't let Uncle Roger get
hold of it. He'd make such fearful fun of it."
"I hope we can make a success of it," said Peter moodily. He had been
moody ever since he was entrapped into being fiction editor.
"It will be a success if we are determined to succeed," I said. "'Where
there is a will there is always a way.'"
"That's just what Ursula Townley said when her father locked her in
her room the night she was going to run away with Kenneth MacNair,"
said the Story Girl.
We pricked up our ears, scenting a story.
"Who were Ursula Townley and Kenneth MacNair?" I asked.

"Kenneth MacNair was a first cousin of the Awkward Man's
grandfather, and Ursula Townley was the belle of the Island in her day.
Who do you suppose told me the story--no, read it to me, out of his
brown book?"
"Never the Awkward Man himself!" I exclaimed incredulously.
"Yes, he did," said the Story Girl triumphantly. "I met him one day last
week back in the maple woods when I was looking for ferns. He was
sitting by the spring, writing in his brown book. He hid it when he saw
me and looked real silly; but after I had talked to him awhile I just
asked him about it, and told him that the gossips said he wrote poetry in
it, and if he did would he tell me, because I was dying to know. He said
he wrote a little of everything in it; and then I begged him to read me
something out of it, and he read me the story of Ursula and Kenneth."
"I don't see how you ever had the face," said Felicity; and even Cecily
looked as if she thought the Story Girl had gone rather far.
"Never mind that," cried Felix, "but tell us the story. That's the main
thing."
"I'll tell it just as the Awkward Man read it, as far as I can," said the
Story Girl, "but I can't put all his nice poetical touches in, because I
can't remember them all, though he read it over twice for me."

CHAPTER II
A WILL, A WAY AND A WOMAN
"One day, over a hundred years ago, Ursula Townley was waiting for
Kenneth MacNair in a great beechwood, where brown nuts were falling
and an October wind was making the leaves dance on the ground like
pixy-people."
"What are pixy-people?" demanded Peter, forgetting the Story Girl's
dislike of interruptions.

"Hush," whispered Cecily. "That is only one of the Awkward Man's