the stairs and
through the halls, half scolding her but not cross. "It's a wonder the
gobble sirs didn't come after you. If you'd been carried off now! It's
awful cold. I'd sleep in my stockings and they'll be good and warm in
the morning."

Marilla hustled off her clothes, wrapped herself in an old blanket and
tumbled into bed in a little heap. But there was some mysterious music
floating through her brain and a fragrance in the air. The Prince
smiled down into her eyes, and the fairy godmother she should always
believe in. For she had been to real fairy land; that was the truth.

CHAPTER II

JACK

The Bordens were nice, ordinary people enjoying life in a commonplace
way. There was Mr. Jack Borden, the junior partner in a fairly
successful law firm, his wife an averagely nice, sensible body, Miss
Florence, her husband's sister, a bright girl of three and twenty,
whose lover was in South America on a five years' contract, with one
year yet to serve.

After the twins were born they tried a grown nursemaid who bored them
by sitting around when she was upstairs and making many excuses to get
down to the kitchen, where she disputed with Bridget who declared one
or the other of them must go, and they simply could not give up
Bridget. The babies slept a good deal of the time and only cried when
they were hungry. The mother and aunt thought them the dearest things
and their father was as proud of them as a man could well be. If it
wasn't for giving them an airing now and then--but when it came
pleasant weather they _must_ be taken out.

Aunt Hetty Vanderveer who was queer and going on to eighty, who
couldn't live with a relative for they always wanted to borrow her
money, got tangled up in a house on which she had a mortgage, and
called her grandnephew, Mr. John Borden to her rescue. She took the
house and persuaded them to come there, and she would live with them
on certain conditions. She was to have the third floor front room and
the store room, get her breakfast and tea and take dinner with them
though it was their luncheon. Night dinners she despised. She
entertained herself sewing patchwork, a dressmaker sent her bags of
silk pieces; knitting baby socks and stockings and reading novels.
They did get along very well though it made a good deal of running up
and down.

The spare room and Bridget's room was on this floor. On the second,
two sleeping chambers, the nursery and the bath. Down stairs a long
p