Miss Reade told me all about her . When we went into the garden I saw in one corner of it an old stone bench arched over by a couple of pear trees and all grown about with grass and violets . And an old man was sitting on it -- a bent old man with long , snow-white hair and beautiful sad blue eyes . He seemed very lonely and sorrowful and I wondered that Miss Reade did n't speak to him . But she never let on she saw him and took me away to another part of the garden . After awhile he got up and went away and then Miss Reade said , ` Come over to Aunt Una 's seat and I will tell you about her and her lover -- that man who has just gone out . ' '' ` Oh , is n't he too old for a lover ? ' I said . `` Beautiful Alice laughed and said it was forty years since he had been her Aunt Una 's lover . He had been a tall , handsome young man then , and her Aunt Una was a beautiful girl of nineteen . `` We went over and sat down and Miss Reade told me all about her . She said that when she was a child she had heard much of her Aunt Una -- that she seemed to have been one of those people who are not soon forgotten , whose personality seems to linger about the scenes of their lives long after they have passed away . '' `` What is a personality ? Is it another word for ghost ? '' asked Peter . `` No , '' said the Story Girl shortly . `` I ca n't stop in a story to explain words . '' `` I do n't believe you know what it is yourself , '' said Felicity . 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 XXXXX help Aunt Olivia ice a cake tonight , and you all seem more interested in dictionaries than stories . ''
After about by in into on since that to with