His long , shadowy cloak is blowing around him . He pipes -- he pipes -- and we must follow -- Jem and Carl and Jerry and I -- round and round the world . Listen -- listen -- ca n't you hear his wild music ? '' The girls shivered . `` You know you 're only pretending , '' protested Mary Vance , `` and I wish you would n't . You make it too real . I hate that old Piper of yours . '' But Jem sprang up with a gay laugh . He stood up on a little hillock , tall and splendid , with his open brow and his fearless eyes . There were thousands like him all over the land of the maple . `` Let the Piper come and welcome , '' he cried , waving his hand . `` I 'LL follow him gladly round and round the world . '' CHAPTER I GLEN `` NOTES '' AND OTHER MATTERS It was a warm , golden-cloudy , lovable afternoon . In the big living-room at Ingleside Susan Baker sat down with a certain grim satisfaction hovering about her like an aura ; it was four o'clock and Susan , who had been working incessantly since six that morning , felt that she had fairly earned an hour of repose and gossip . Susan just then was perfectly happy ; everything had gone almost uncannily well in the kitchen that day . Dr. Jekyll had not been Mr. Hyde and so had not grated on her nerves ; from where she sat she could see the pride of her heart -- the bed of peonies of her own planting and culture , blooming as no other peony plot in Glen St. Mary ever did or could bloom , with peonies crimson , peonies silvery pink , peonies white as drifts of winter snow . Susan had on a new black silk blouse , quite as elaborate as anything Mrs. Marshall Elliott ever wore , and a white starched apron , trimmed with complicated crocheted lace fully five inches wide , not to mention insertion to match . Therefore Susan had all the comfortable consciousness of a well-dressed woman as she opened her copy of the Daily Enterprise and prepared to read the Glen `` Notes '' which , as Miss Cornelia had just informed her , filled half a column of it and mentioned almost everybody at Ingleside . There was a big , black headline on the front page of the Enterprise , stating that some Archduke Ferdinand or other had been assassinated at a place bearing the weird name of Sarajevo , but Susan tarried not over uninteresting , immaterial stuff like that ; she was in quest of something really vital . Oh , here it was -- `` Jottings from Glen St. Mary . ''
Susan settled down keenly , reading each one over aloud XXXXX extract all possible gratification from it .
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