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Excepting a few school-books and some out-of-date census reports, they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 "Æsop'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 them almost by
heart.

The little dog-eared books in the meeting-house proved poor reading
sometimes after such entertainment. So many of them were about