ld get into the way of it."

CHAPTER VIII.

"THE BEWITCHED TONGUE."

"Thou will not fail
To listen to a fairy tale."

_Lewis Carroll._

It _did_ rain the next day! And Cecil did not forget her promise. Just
as the old nursery clock was striking four, a full hour still to her
tea-time, she marched into the room with a little old brown book in her
hand. I wonder if any of you have ever seen that little old book, or one
like it, I would say? It was about the size of the first edition of
'Evenings at Home,' which some of you are sure to have in your
book-cases. For I should think _everybody's_ grandfathers and
grandmothers had an 'Evenings at Home' among their few, dearly-prized
children's books.

Do you know how very few those books were? You may have heard it, but I
scarcely fancy you have ever thought over the great difference between
yourselves and long-ago-children in this respect. Now-a-days, when you
have galloped through all the brilliant blue and green and scarlet
little volumes that have been given to you on birthdays and
Christmas-days, you come with a melancholy face to your mother, and tell
her you have "nothing to read." And then, most likely, when your mother
goes to the library, she chooses a book for you out of the "juvenile
department," and when it is done you get another, till you can hardly
remember what you have read and what you haven't. But as for reading any
book twice over, _that_ is never to be thought of.

Not so was it long ago. Not only had no children many books, but
everywhere children had the same! There was seldom any use in little
friends lending to each other, for it was always the same thing over
again: 'Evenings at Home,' 'Sandford and Merton,' 'Ornaments
Discovered,' and so on.

You think, I daresay, that it must have been very stupid and tiresome to
have so little variety, but _I_ think you are in some ways mistaken.
Children really _read_ their books in those days; they put more of
themselves into their reading, so that, stupid as these quaint old
stories might seem to you now-a-days, they never seemed so then. What
was wanting in them the children filled up out of their own fresh hearts
and fancies, and however often they read and re-read them, they always
found something new. They got to know the characters in their favourite
stories like real friends, and would talk them over with their
companions, and compare their opinions ab