The Story Girl picked up her hat , which she had thrown down on the grass , and placed it defiantly on her brown curls . `` I 'm going in , '' she announced . `` I have to help Aunt Olivia ice a cake tonight , and you all seem more interested in dictionaries than stories . '' `` That 's not fair , '' I exclaimed . `` Dan and Felix and Sara Ray and Cecily and I have never said a word . It 's mean to punish us for what Peter and Felicity did . We want to hear the rest of the story . Never mind what a personality is but go on -- and , Peter , you young ass , keep still . '' `` I only wanted to know , '' muttered Peter sulkily . `` I DO know what personality is , but it 's hard to explain , '' said the Story Girl , relenting . `` It 's what makes you different from Dan , Peter , and me different from Felicity or Cecily . Miss Reade 's Aunt Una had a personality that was very uncommon . And she was beautiful , too , with white skin and night-black eyes and hair -- a ` moonlight beauty , ' Miss Reade called it . She used to keep a kind of a diary , and Miss Reade 's mother used to read parts of it to her . She wrote verses in it and they were lovely ; and she wrote descriptions of the old garden which she loved very much . Miss Reade said that everything in the garden , plot or shrub or tree , recalled to her mind some phrase or verse of her Aunt Una 's , so that the whole place seemed full of her , and her memory haunted the walks like a faint , sweet perfume . `` Una had , as I 've told you , a lover ; and they were to have been married on her twentieth birthday . Her wedding dress was to have been a gown of white brocade with purple violets in it . But a little while before it she took ill with fever and died ; and she was buried on her birthday instead of being married . It was just in the time of opening roses .
Her lover has been faithful to her ever since ; he has never married , and every June , on her XXXXX , he makes a pilgrimage to the old garden and sits for a long time in silence on the bench where he used to woo her on crimson eves and moonlight nights of long ago .
Miss birthday descriptions diary fever kind personality skin verses word