d to me, "Look
here, Mary, I'm not going to read any books now but grown-up ones,
unless it is an Adventure Book. I'm sick of books for young people,
there's so much _stuff_ in them."

We call it _stuff_ when there seems to be going to be a story and it
comes to nothing but talk; and we call it _stuff_ when there is a very
interesting picture, and you read to see what it is about, and the
reading does not tell you, or tells you wrong.

Both Arthur and Christopher had had disappointments in their books on
their birthdays.

Arthur jumped at his book at first, because there were Japanese
pictures in it, and Uncle Charley had just been staying with us, and
had brought beautiful Japanese pictures with him, and had told us
Japanese fairy tales, and they were as good as Bechstein. So Arthur
was full of Japan.

The most beautiful picture of all was of a stork, high up in a tall
pine tree, and the branches of the pine tree, and the cones, and the
pine needles were most beautifully drawn; and there was a nest with
young storks in it, and behind the stork and the nest and the tall
pine the sun was blazing with all his rays. And Uncle Charley told us
the story to it, and it was called "the Nest of the Stork."

So when Arthur saw a stork standing among pine needles in his new book
he shouted with delight, though the pine needles were rather badly
done, with thick strokes. But presently he said, "It's not nearly so
good a stork as Uncle Charley's. And where's the stem of the pine? It
looks as if the stork were on the ground and on the top of the pine
tree too, and there's no nest. And there's no sun. And, oh! Mary, what
do you think is written under it? '_Crane and Water-reeds_.' Well, I
do call that a sell!"

Christopher's disappointment was quite as bad. Mother gave him a book
with very nice pictures, particularly of beasts. The chief reason she
got it for him was that there was such a very good picture of a toad,
and Chris is so fond of toads. For months he made friends with one in
the garden. It used to crawl away from him, and he used to creep after
it, talking to it, and then it used to half begin, to crawl up the
garden wall, and stand so, on its hind legs, and let Chris rub its
wrinkled back. The toad in the picture was exactly like Christopher's
toad, and he ran about the house with the book in his arms begging us
to read him the story about Dear Toady.

We were all busy but Arthur, and he said, "I want to go on wit