per and half a page in her book with upward
strokes fine and hair-like, and downward strokes black and heavy. Emmy
Lou ate her dinner alone.

At supper she spoke. Emmy Lou generally spoke conclusions and, unless
pressed, did not enter into the processes of her reasoning.

"I don't want to go to school any more."

Aunt Cordelia looked shocked. Aunt Louise looked stern. Uncle Charlie
looked at Emmy Lou.

"That sounds more natural," said Uncle Charlie, but nobody listened.

"She's been missing," said Aunt Louise.

"She's growing too fast," said Aunt Cordelia, who had just been ripping
two tucks out of Emmy Lou's last winter's dress; "she can't be well."

So Emmy Lou was taken to the doctor, who gave her a tonic. And following
this, she all at once regained her usual cheerful little state of mind,
and expressed no more unwillingness to go to school.

But it was not the tonic.

[Illustration: "One loved the far corner of the sofa."]

It was the Green and Gold Book.

Rosalie brought it. It belonged to her and to Alice and to Amanthus.

They lent it to Emmy Lou.

And the glamour opened and closed about Emmy Lou, and she knew--she knew
it all--why the hair of Amanthus gleamed, why Alice flitted where others
walked, why laughter dwelt in the cheek of Rosalie. The glamour opened
and closed about Emmy Lou, and she and Rosalie and Alice and Amanthus
moved in a world of their own--the world of the Green and Gold Book, for
the Green and Gold Book was "The Book of Fairy Tales."

The strange, the inexplicable, the meaningless, that hitherto one had
thought the real--teachers, problems, such--they became the outer world,
the things of small matter.

One loved the far corner of the sofa now, with the book in one's lap,
with one's hair falling about one's face and book, shutting out the
unreal world and its people.

The real world lay between the covers of the Green and Gold Book--the
real world and its people.

And the Princess was always Rosalie, and the Prince--ah! the Prince was
the Prince. One had met one's Rosalie, but not yet the Prince.

One could not talk of these things except to Rosalie. Hattie would not
understand. One was glad when Rosalie told them to Alice and Amanthus,
but one could not tell one's self.

And Miss Lizzie? Miss Lizzie had stepped all at once into her proper
place. One had not understood before. One would not want Miss Lizzie
different. It was right and natural to Miss Lizzie's conditio