time entranced over
her own happy choice, "The Adventures of Peter Rabbit," with colored
pictures dotting it satisfactorily. The Liberry Teacher knew that it was
her duty to go over and hypnotize the child into reading something which
would lead more directly to Browning and Strindberg. But she didn't.

"Poor little wop!" she thought unacademically. "Let her be happy in her
own way!"

And the Liberry Teacher herself went on being unhappy in _her_ own way.

"I'm just a battered bisque doll!" she repeated to herself bitterly.

But she was wrong. One is apt to exaggerate things on a workaday
Saturday afternoon. She looked more like a pretty bisque figurine; slim
and clear-cut, and a little neglected, perhaps, by its owners, and
dressed in working clothes instead of the pretty draperies it should
have had; but needing only a touch or so, a little dusting, so to speak,
to be as good as ever.

"Eva _never_ was as pretty as I was!" her rebellious thoughts went on.
You think things, you know, that you'd never say aloud. "I'm sick of
elevating the public! I'm sick of working hard fifty-one weeks out of
fifty-two for board and lodging and carfare and shirtwaists and the
occasional society of a few girls who don't get any more out of life
than I do! I'm sick of libraries, and of being efficient! I want to be a
real girl! Oh, I wish--I wish I had a lot of money, and a rose-garden,
and a _husband_!"

The Liberry Teacher was aghast at herself. She hadn't meant to wish such
a very unmaidenly thing so hard. She jumped up and dashed across the
room and began frantically to shelf-read books, explaining meanwhile
with most violent emphasis to the listening Destinies:

"I didn't--oh, I _didn_'t mean a _real_ husband. It isn't that I yearn
to be married to some good man, like an old maid or a Duchess novel.
I--I just want all the lovely things Eva has, or any girl that _marries_
them, without any trouble but taking care of a man. One man _couldn't_
but be easier than a whole roomful of library babies. I want to be
looked after, and have time to keep pretty, and a chance to make
friends, and lovely frocks with lots of lace on them, and just months
and months and months when I never had to do anything by a
clock--and--and a rose-garden!"

This last idea was dangerous. It isn't a good thing, if you want to be
contented with your lot, to think of rose-gardens in a stuffy city
library o' Saturdays; especially when where you were brought