t into the
blue room, and the beah that Malcolm and Keith had tied to the bed-post
rose up out of the dah'k and frightened us neahly to death."

"We had some lively times that winter with Virginia and the boys,"
answered Miss Allison. "I kept a record of some of their sorriest
mishaps. Wait a minute until I speak to the housemaid, and I'll see if I
can find it."

Miss Allison had been wondering how she could best entertain Lloyd, but
the problem was solved when she found the journal, in which she had
written the history of the eventful winter when her sister's little
daughter Virginia and her brother's two boys had been left in her
charge. Lloyd had taken part in many of the mischievous adventures, and
she sat smiling over the novelty of hearing herself described with all
the imperious ways, naughty temper, and winning charm that had been hers
at the age of eight.

"It is like looking at an old photograph of oneself," she said, after
awhile. "It seems so strange to be one of the characters in a book, and
listen to stories about oneself."

"That reminds me of the game I spoke of," said Miss Allison. "I invented
it when I was about your age. I had just read 'Cranford,' and the story
of life in that simple little village seemed so charming to me that I
wished with all my heart I could step into the book and be one of the
characters, and meet all the people that lived between its covers. Then
I heard some one say that there were more interesting happenings and
queer characters in Lloydsboro Valley than in Cranford. So I began to
look around for them. I pretended that I was the heroine of a book
called 'Lloydsboro Valley,' and all that summer I looked upon the people
I met as characters in the same story.

"It happened that all my young friends were away that summer, and it
would have been very lonely but for my new game. The organist went away,
and, although I was only fifteen, I took her place and played the little
cabinet organ we used then in church and Sunday school. That threw me
much with the older people, for I had to go to choir-practice to play
the organ, and also attend the missionary teas. Gradually they drew me
into a sewing-circle that was in existence then, and a reading club. I
found it was true that my own little village really had far more
interesting people in it than any I had read about, and I learned to
love all the dear, cranky, gossipy old characters in it, because I
studied them so closely that