“Now leave somebody else,” Delia suggested restlessly. “Leave Margaret Amelia tell.” So we turned to her. Margaret Amelia considered solemnly--perhaps it was her faculty for gravity that made us always look up to her--and took up the tale: “One morning he met a witch. And he said, ‘Witch, I wish you would--would give me something to eat. I’m very hungry.’ So the witch took him to her kitchen and gave him a bowl of porridge, and it was hot and burned his mouth, and he asked for a drink of water, and--and--” “What was the use of having her a witch if _that_ was all he was going to ask her?” demanded Mary Elizabeth. “They _always_ have witches in the best stories,” Margaret Amelia contended, “and anyway, that’s all I’m going to tell.” Delia took up the tale uninvited. “And he got his drink of water, pumped up polite by the witch herself, and she was going to put a portion in it. But while she was looking in the top drawer for the portion, the sun went away. And--” This time it was I who intervened. “‘Portion!’” I said with superiority. “Who ever heard of anybody drinking a _portion_? That word is _potient_.” Delia was plainly taken aback. “You’re thinking of long division,” she said feebly. “I’m thinking of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’” I responded with dignity. “They had one, in the tomb, where Tybalt, all bloody--” “Don’t say that one--don’t say it!” cried Margaret Amelia. “I can see that one awful after the light is out. Go on, somebody, quick.” To take up her share of the story, Betty Rodman refused, point-blank. I think that her admission to our group must have been principally on the credentials of sistership to one of us, a basis at once pathetic and lovely. “I never can think of anything to have happen,” Betty complained, “and if I make something happen, then it ends up the story.” Calista had a nail in her shoe, and was too much absorbed in pounding it down with a stone to be approached; so, when we had all minutely examined the damage which the nail had wrought, it was my turn to take up the tale. And then the thing happened which was always happening to me: I could think of nothing to have the story do. At night, and when I was alone, I could dream out the most fascinating adventures, but with expectant faces--or a clean pad--before me, I was dumb and powerless. “I don’t feel like telling one just now,” said I, the proposer of the game, and went on digging leaves out of a crevice in the rotting rail. So Mary Elizabeth serenely took up the tale where she had left it.