tones and smell the pinks and lilies that
struggled up year after year above the neglected mounds. But that was
not their errand to-day. A little red bookcase inside the church was the
attraction. Betty had only lately discovered it, although it had stood
for years on a back bench in a cobwebby corner.

It held all that was left of a scattered Sunday-school library, that had
been in use two generations before. Queer little books they were,
time-yellowed and musty smelling, but to story-loving little Betty,
hungry for something new, they seemed a veritable gold-mine. She had
found that no key barred her way into this little red treasure-house of
a bookcase, and a board propped against the wall under the window
outside gave her an easy entrance into the church. Here she came day
after day, when her work was done, to pore over the musty old volumes of
tales forgotten long ago.

In Betty's little room under the roof at home was a pile of handsomely
bound books, lying on a chest beside her mother's Bible. They were
twelve in all, and had come in several different Christmas boxes, and
each one had Betty's name on the fly-leaf, with the date of the
Christmas on which it happened to be sent. Underneath was always
written: "From your loving godmother, Elizabeth Lloyd Sherman."

Excepting a few school-books and some out-of-date census reports, they
were the only books in the Appleton house. Betty guarded them like a
little dragon. They were the only things she owned that the children
were not allowed to touch. Even Davy, when he was permitted to look at
the wonderful pictures in her "Arabian Nights," or "Pilgrim's Progress,"
or "Mother Goose," had to sit with his hands behind his back while she
carefully turned the leaves. Besides these three, there was "Alice in
Wonderland," and "AEsop's Fables," there was "Robinson Crusoe," and
"Little Women," and two volumes of fairy tales in green and gold with a
gorgeous peacock on the cover. Eugene Field's poems had come in the last
box, with Riley's "Songs of Childhood" and Kipling's jungle tales.
Twelve beautiful books, all of Mrs. Sherman's giving, and they were like
twelve great windows to Betty, opening into a new strange world, far
away from the experiences of her every-day life.

She had read them over and over so many times that she always knew what
was coming next, even before she turned the page; and she had read them
to the other children so many times that they, too, knew the