Anne’s bookcase was the one thing of value in the little house.  It was of rich old mahogany, with diamond-shaped panes in its leaded doors, and behind the doors were books—­not many of them, but very choice ones, culled from a fine library which had been sold when ruin came to Anne’s grandfather and father one disastrous year.

It happened, therefore, that Anne had read much of poetry and history, and the lives of famous people, to say nothing of fairy-tales and legends, so that in the companionship of her books and pets, she had missed little in spite of her poverty and solitary life.

“How good it is to be at home,” she said, as the sunlight, creeping around the room, shone on the green cover of a much-thumbed book of French fairy-tales, and then slanted off to touch the edge of a blue and gold Tennyson; “how good it is to be at home.”

“How good it is to be at home,” she said again, as followed by Belinda and Becky, she came, a half-hour later, into the sunlit kitchen, where the little grandmother, smiling and rosy, was pouring the steaming breakfast food into a blue bowl.

“I was afraid you might find it dull,” said the little grandmother, as she kissed her, “after the good times at the Judge’s.”

“Oh, I did have such lovely times,” sighed Anne, blissfully.  She had sat up late in the moonlight the night before, telling her grandmother of them.  “But they didn’t make up for you and Becky and Belinda and the little gray house,” and she hugged the little grandmother tightly while Belinda and Becky circled around them in great excitement, mingled with certain apprehensions for the waiting breakfast.

“But I do hate to start to school again,” said Anne, when she finished breakfast, and had given Belinda a saucer of milk and Becky a generous piece of corn bread.

“Are the children going to speak their pieces this week?” asked Mrs. Batcheller, as Anne tied on her hat and went out into the garden to gather some roses for the teacher.

“Yes, on Saturday,” said Anne; “it’s going to be awfully nice.  I have asked Launcelot and Judy to come to the entertainment, and they have promised to.”

“I am going to be ‘Cinderella’ in the tableaux,” she went on, as her grandmother brought out the tiny lunch-basket and handed it to her, “and Nannie and Amelia are to be the haughty sisters.  We haven’t found any boy yet for the prince.  I wish Launcelot went to school.”

“He knows all that Miss Mary could teach him now,” said the little grandmother; “his father is preparing him for college, if they ever get money enough to send him there.”

“Well, if Launcelot’s violets sell as well next winter as they did this, he can go, ’specially if his mother keeps her boarders all summer.  He told me so the other day, grandmother.”

“But he would make a lovely prince,” she sighed.  “Judy is going to lend me a dress.  She has a trunk full of fancy costumes.”