prised that he should want to. It was indeed a most
delightful place to lie in. The bear-skin was soft and in every way
comfortable and comforting. The fireplace itself was one of those huge
hospitable affairs that might pass in some apartment houses in our narrow
cooped-up city streets for a butler's pantry or small reception room--in
fact in the summer time Tom used to sit in the fireplace and pretend he
was in his office transacting business with such of his sister's dolls as
could be induced to visit him there; giving orders to imaginary clerks and
bookkeepers and keeping an equally fanciful office boy continually on the
run. And then apart from the rug and the fireplace it was a beautiful
room in which they were. Tom's father was very fond of books, and,
although he was a great many years older than Tom, he had not forgotten
how to enjoy the very same kind of books that Tom liked. He was not
ashamed to have one little niche of his library filled with the stories
which had delighted him in his boyhood days, and which still continued to
please him, and, of course, this lent an additional charm to the library
in Tom's eyes. It held his heroes, and on some of those drowsy nights when
the only sounds to break the stillness of the room were the scratching of
his father's pen, the soft humming of some little tune by his mother
sitting and sewing by the evening lamp, and the fierce crackling of the
burning logs, Tom could almost see these heroes stepping down from the
shelves and like so many phantoms flitting in and about the room. In fact,
upon one occasion, Tom is convinced he did see these very people having a
dance upon the great tiled hearth--but of that you shall hear later.

There were many other things in the library beside his heroes that
interested Tom. There was a little Japanese ivory god that used to sit up
on the mantel shelf and gaze wisely at him, as much as to say, "Dear me,
boy, what a lot I could tell you if I only would!" Then, too, there was a
very handsome vase on top of one of the book-cases that had two remarkable
dragons climbing up its sides, the tail of one of them so fixed that if
anyone chose to use the vase for a pitcher the tail would make a very
convenient handle, at which the other dragon always appeared to be
laughing heartily, which he had no reason to do, because his own tail was
not arranged any too gracefully. But the things that, next to Jack the
Giant Killer, and Beauty and the Beast,