`` I 've an idea . Let us each get an exercise book and write down all our dreams , just as we dream them . We 'll see who 'll have the most interesting collection . And we 'll have them to read and laugh over when we 're old and gray . '' Instantly we all saw ourselves and each other by inner vision , old and gray -- all but the Story Girl . We could not picture her as old . Always , as long as she lived , so it seemed to us , must she have sleek brown curls , a voice like the sound of a harpstring in the wind , and eyes that were stars of eternal youth . CHAPTER XXII . THE DREAM BOOKS The next day the Story Girl coaxed Uncle Roger to take her to Markdale , and there she bought our dream books . They were ten cents apiece , with ruled pages and mottled green covers . My own lies open beside me as I write , its yellowed pages inscribed with the visions that haunted my childish slumbers on those nights of long ago . On the cover is pasted a lady 's visiting card , on which is written , `` The Dream Book of Beverley King . '' Cecily had a packet of visiting cards which she was hoarding against the day when she would be grown up and could put the calling etiquette of the Family Guide into practice ; but she generously gave us all one apiece for the covers of our dream books . As I turn the pages and glance over the na&iuml;ve records , each one beginning , `` Last night I dreamed , '' the past comes very vividly back to me . I see that bowery orchard , shining in memory with a soft glow of beauty -- `` the light that never was on land or sea , '' -- where we sat on those September evenings and wrote down our dreams , when the cares of the day were over and there was nothing to interfere with the pleasing throes of composition . Peter -- Dan -- Felix -- Cecily -- Felicity -- Sara Ray -- the Story Girl -- they are all around me once more , in the sweet-scented , fading grasses , each with open dream books and pencil in hand , now writing busily , now staring fixedly into space in search of some elusive word or phrase which might best describe the indescribable . I hear their laughing voices , I see their bright , unclouded eyes . In this little , old book , filled with cramped , boyish writing , there is a spell of white magic that sets the years at naught . Beverley King is a boy once more , writing down his dreams in the old King orchard on the homestead hill , blown over by musky winds . Opposite to him sits the Story Girl , with her scarlet rosetted head , her beautiful bare feet crossed before her , one slender hand propping her high , white brow , on either side of which fall her glossy curls .
There , to the right , is sweet Cecily of the dear , brown eyes , with a little bloated dictionary beside her -- XXXXX you dream of so many things you ca n't spell , or be expected to spell , when you are only eleven .
In On as at by for into like that to