adfully cross, and
wouldn't look at my Christmas things; and after a while he asked me if I
should like to live in the Forest of Arden. I was so surprised I stopped
crying, and he told me that when we were brave and happy, we made a
pleasant place for ourselves, where lovely things could happen, and when
we were cross and miserable we made a desert for ourselves, where pleasant
things couldn't possibly come about, just as if you want flowers to grow,
you have to have good soil.

"Cousin Louis can tell things in a very interesting way, and by and by I
began to feel ashamed, and I made up my mind to try it; and when I told
father, he said he would try too, and we found it was really true,
Maurice. He and Cousin Louis and I--oh, we had such good times! We even
told the president about it, and Cousin Louis said he was going to start a
secret society of the Forest of Arden. Then he was ill, and everything
stopped.

"I know it isn't easy to stay in the Forest always, particularly when you
are dreadfully lonesome, but the magician says if you keep on trying you
will find the good in it after a while."

"How can there be good in bad things?" Maurice demanded.

"Did you read what was in my book? I know it by heart. 'If we choose, we
may walk always in the Forest, where the birds sing and the sunlight sifts
through the trees, where, although we sometimes grow footsore and hungry,
we know that the goal is sure.' That means it will all come right in the
end. Don't you know how, in the story, the people who hated each other all
came to be friends in the Forest?"

The sun travelling around the beech tree encroached upon their
resting-place, and Maurice proposed moving farther down the slope. "Tell
me about the secret society," he said, as they again settled themselves.

"It was a very nice plan," Rosalind answered, clasping her knees and
looking up into the tree top. "He told me about it one evening when he
wasn't well and had to lie on the sofa, while father did the proofs. Only
those could belong who made the best of things and knew the secret of the
Forest. We were sure the president would join because he had had a great
trouble and was very brave; and there was Mrs. Brown, who had lost all her
money, and kept house for us. Then, I didn't have anything much to be
brave about, but I have since, for I did so want to go with father and
Cousin Louis. Perhaps that doesn't seem much," she added apologetically,
"'but small things c