t effort, pulled herself into the room, and
flew to her mistress' arms.

"Where's Becky?" asked Anne, wondering why the tame crow did not
follow, for in spite of their constant feuds, the two pets were
inseparable.

Belinda blinked sagely, while from a shadowy corner of the room came a
sepulchral croak.

"Are you there, Becky?" called Anne, peering into the darkness, and
with a flap and a flutter, Becky swooped from the top of the bookcase,
where she had been perched for a half-hour, waiting for Anne to wake.

Anne's bookcase was the one thing of value in the little house. It was
of rich old mahogany, with diamond-shaped panes in its leaded doors,
and behind the doors were books--not many of them, but very choice
ones, culled from a fine library which had been sold when ruin came to
Anne's grandfather and father one disastrous year.

It happened, therefore, that Anne had read much of poetry and history,
and the lives of famous people, to say nothing of fairy-tales and
legends, so that in the companionship of her books and pets, she had
missed little in spite of her poverty and solitary life.

"How good it is to be at home," she said, as the sunlight, creeping
around the room, shone on the green cover of a much-thumbed book of
French fairy-tales, and then slanted off to touch the edge of a blue
and gold Tennyson; "how good it is to be at home."

"How good it is to be at home," she said again, as followed by Belinda
and Becky, she came, a half-hour later, into the sunlit kitchen, where
the little grandmother, smiling and rosy, was pouring the steaming
breakfast food into a blue bowl.

"I was afraid you might find it dull," said the little grandmother, as
she kissed her, "after the good times at the Judge's."

"Oh, I did have such lovely times," sighed Anne, blissfully. She had
sat up late in the moonlight the night before, telling her grandmother
of them. "But they didn't make up for you and Becky and Belinda and
the little gray house," and she hugged the little grandmother tightly
while Belinda and Becky circled around them in great excitement,
mingled with certain apprehensions for the waiting breakfast.

"But I do hate to start to school again," said Anne, when she finished
breakfast, and had given Belinda a saucer of milk and Becky a generous
piece of corn bread.

"Are the children going to speak their pieces this week?" asked Mrs.
Batcheller, as Anne tied on her hat and went out into the garden to
ga