Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/12

iv which she had read and reread, were three in number: the first, quite a large volume in leather covers, which had been her grandmother’s; the others, a red-bound book with one cover torn off, and two little rusty, dingy looking duodecimos, which any child nowadays would turn up her nose at sight of. These three books were the Bible, the Pilgrim’s Progress, and Arabian Nights’ Entertainment. Of the Bible she only cared to read the Old Testament. That she had read over and over, investing it meanwhile with the oriental landscape and atmosphere which she borrowed from the Arabian Nights, till she knew all its stories by heart.

I tell you all this that you may understand what a treasure this little girl found in rummaging the garret on this eventful rainy morning. For in an old chest, from way down at the bottom, she suddenly pulled out, as Jack Horner pulled the plum out of his Christmas pie, two little purple-covered books. They were so small—only about four inches long, three inches wide, and an inch thick—that from their size she instantly concluded they must be real &ldquo;