oval mirror draped in dotted muslin; a dainty writing-desk with everything convenient upon it; and in one corner was a low bookcase of white satinwood.  On the top of this case lay a card, “With the best wishes of John Bird,” and along the front of the upper shelf were painted the words:  “Come, tell us a story!” Below this there was a rich array of good things.  The Grimms, Laboulaye, and Hans Christian Andersen were all there.  Mrs. Ewing’s “Jackanapes” and Charles Kingsley’s “Water-Babies” jostled the “Seven Little Sisters” series; Hawthorne’s “Wonder-Book” lay close to Lamb’s “Tales from Shakespeare;” and Whittier’s “Child-Life in Prose and Poetry” stood between Mary Howitt’s “Children’s Year” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Child’s Garden of Verses.”

Polly sat upon the floor before the bookcase and gloated over her new treasures, each of which bore her name on the fly-leaf.

As her eye rose to the vase of snowy pampas plumes and the pictured Madonna and Child above the bookcase, it wandered still higher until it met a silver motto painted on a blue frieze that finished the top of the walls where they met the ceiling.

Polly walked slowly round the room, studying the illuminated letters:  “And they laid the Pilgrim in an upper chamber, and the name of the chamber was Peace.”

This brought the ready tears to Polly’s eyes.  “God seems to give me everything but what I want most,” she thought; “but since He gives me so much, I must not question any more:  I must not choose; I must believe that He wants me to be happy, after all, and I must begin and try to be good again.”

She did try to be good.  She came down to breakfast the next morning, announcing to Mrs. Bird, with her grateful morning kiss, that she meant to “live up to” her room.  “But it’s going to be difficult,” she confessed.  “I shall not dare to have a naughty thought in it; it seems as if it would be written somewhere on the whiteness!”

“You can come and be naughty in my bachelor den, Polly,” said Mr. Bird, smiling.  “Mrs. Bird does n’t waste any girlish frills and poetic decorations and mystical friezes on her poor brother-in-law!  He is done up in muddy browns, as befits his age and sex.”

Polly insisted on beginning her work the very next afternoon; but she had strength only for three appointments a week, and Mrs. Bird looked doubtfully after her as she walked away from the house with a languid gait utterly unlike her old buoyant step.

Edgar often came in the evenings, as did Tom and Blanche Mills, and Milly Foster; but though Polly was cheerful and composed, she seldom broke into her old flights of nonsense.

On other nights, when they were alone, she prepared for her hours of story-telling, and in this she was wonderfully helped by Mr. Bird’s suggestions and advice; for he was a student of literature in many languages, and delighted in bringing his treasures before so teachable a pupil.