Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/14

vi Remembering her latest loss, therefore, the child concluded that at present no one should share the secret of the Shakespeare books. So she devised many hiding-places for them, and used to read them at night, and in the gray dawn of morning in her little bed, and out of school hours in the broad sunny window-seat in the attic, where she had a secure retreat.

I cannot tell you how eagerly this little girl devoured these books. No child of the present age would understand her delight, they have such plenty of new books, such a surfeit of literature. But to her, these two volumes were better than Aladdin’s lamp or his ring. One of them contained “Macbeth,” “Winter’s Tale,” and “The Merchant of Venice;” the other, “Romeo and Juliet” and “King Lear.” There were other plays beside, but these were the ones which interested her, and she forgets what others were there. The dear little books have been lost long ago, the girl is now a grown woman, but years after, when she had a boy who had eyes and ears hungry for stories too, she used to tell this eager little