The house stood on rising ground, and the nursery was at the top of the house-except of course for the attics above-so there was a good view from the two large windows. This was a great comfort to the children during the weeks they were busy getting better from a long, very long, illness, or illnesses. For they had been so unwise as to get measles, and scarlet fever, and something else-I am not sure if it was whooping-cough or chicken-pox-all mixed up together Don't you think they might have been content with one at a time? Their mamma thought so, and the doctor thought so, and most of all,...

"Maitre Corbeau, sur un arbre perche." La Fontaine. It was so cold. Ah, so very cold So thought the old raven as he hobbled up and down the terrace walk at the back of the house-the walk that was so pleasant in summer, with its pretty view of the lower garden, gay with the bright, stiffly-arranged flowerbeds, so pleasantly warm and yet shady with the old trees overhead, where the raven's second cousins, the rooks, managed their affairs, not without a good deal of chatter about it, it must be confessed. "Silly creatures," the raven was in the habit of calling them with contempt-all to...

I think the best beginning is the morning that grandpapa sent for us to come down to the study. Tib and Gerald, don't think so. They say I should begin by telling our names, and how old we were, and all that-at least, Gerald says so; Tib isn't quite sure. Tib very often isn't quite sure. She has got too grand ideas, and if she were going to write a story, she would make it like poetry, very difficult to understand, and awfully long words, and lots about feelings and sorrows and mysteries. I like mysteries, too-I think they are very interesting, and I have one to tell about, as you will see,...

The blinds had been drawn down for some time in the back parlour behind Mr. Fairchild's shop in Pier Street, the principal street in the little town of Seacove. And the gas was lighted, though it was not turned up very high. It was a great thing to have gas; it had not been known at Seacove till recently. For the time of which I am writing is now a good many years ago, thirty or forty at least. Seacove, though a small place, was not so out-of-the-way in some respects as many actually larger towns, for it was a seaport, though not a very important one. Ships came in from all parts of the...

The way was long. Lay of the Last Minstrel. Little Leonore pressed her face against the window of the railway carriage and tried hard to see out. But it was no use. It all looked so dark and black, all the darker and blacker for the glimmer of the rain-drops trickling down thickly outside, and reflecting the feeble light of the lamp in the roof of the compartment. Leonore sighed deeply. She was very tired, more tired than she knew, for she did not feel sleepy, or as if she would give anything to be undressed and go to bed. On the contrary, she wished with all her heart that it was daylight,...

"Those never loved Who dream that they 'loved once.'"-E. B. Browning. "You won't be long any way, dear Auntie?" said Sylvia with a little sigh. "I don't half like your going. Couldn't you wait till the day after to-morrow?" "Or at least take me with you," said Molly, Sylvia's younger sister, eagerly. Auntie hesitated-she glanced up at as much of the sky as could be seen through the lace-shrouded windows of their pretty Paris salon-it was already beginning to grow dusky, for though only half-past three, it was the thirty-first of December, and a dull day-and then turned with decision towards...

"But how did you come to us, you dear? God thought about you, and so I am here " G. Macdonald. His real name was Fabian. But he was never called anything but Carrots. There were six of them. Jack, Cecil, Louise, Maurice, commonly called Mott, Floss, dear, dear Floss, whom he loved best of all, a long way the best of all, and lastly Carrots. Why Carrots should have come to have his history written I really cannot say. I must leave you, who understand such things a good deal better than I, you, children, for whom the history is written, to find out. I can give you a few reasons why Carrots'...

Once upon a time-a fairly long ago time-there lived in a neat little cottage two young girls who were sisters. If you had gone to see them on a bright warm summer's day, I daresay you would have envied them and their life and their lot. For they were pretty and healthy and they loved each other dearly, and the cottage was charming to look at, in its dress of clustering roses and honeysuckle and traveller's joy, and other sweet and beautiful climbing, flowering plants. Furthermore, it stood in a little garden filled with treasures of different kinds, pansies, of which there was a great...

Chrissie Fortescue sat looking at her toes. They were pretty little toes, pink and plump and even. But she was not looking at them in admiration. And indeed this morning they were scarcely as pretty as usual, for they were rapidly becoming blue and crimson, instead of merely pink, and though blue and crimson are charming colours in themselves, they are not seen to advantage on toes. It was wintry weather, as you will already, I daresay, have guessed, and very cold indeed, and as the unpleasant consciousness of this made itself felt more and more plainly, Chrissie's face grew crosser and...

It was before the days of sailor suits and knickerbockers. Nowadays boys would make great fun of the quaint little men in tight-fitting jackets, and trousers buttoning on above them, that many people still living can remember well, for it is not so very long ago after all. And whatever the difference in their clothes, the boys of then were in themselves very like the boys of now-queer, merry, thoughtless fellows for the most part, living in the pleasant present, caring much less for the past or the future than their girl-companions, seldom taking trouble of any kind to heart, or if they did,...