. There was a girlish dressing-table with its 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
gai