it's all nothing at all, but a great pity it
ever happened, for if it hadn't happened, poor little children living
hundreds and hundreds of years afterwards would not be troubled about
it. I call it rubbish!" and with the word rubbish she tossed the little
book up, and down it came with a broken back.

Bab picked it up and held it with one corner. When she saw the
melancholy scrambling way in which the cover and the pages hung, she
went off into irresistible shouts of laughter--for Bab's laugh was as
loud and as hearty as her cry. Then she did her sums and wrote her copy,
and after that Maria brought in her dinner.

Bab clapped her hands for joy when she saw what the tray contained, and
then she began her dinner.

But now the lessons were over, the dinner was finished, and what was
poor little Bab to do for the rest of the time?

She went round the room, casting out first her right hand and then her
left, touching thus in turn everything in the apartment, but there was
nothing more interesting than a pen-wiper, a schoolroom inkstand, or a
grammar, so she called out "No, no, no" to everything, and then all of a
sudden down came her hand on a big book with scarlet and white binding,
and she gave a loud scream, a pirouet, and then said "Yes!"

Yes; I should think so. Why, it was Mr. Beresford's fairy book--the
beautiful book he was showing them last night.

Then she seized on the precious book, brought it over with quite a
struggle to the school desk, opened it there, and with elbows on table
and cheeks on hands, gave herself over to perfect enjoyment. And so it
was that we saw Miss Bab when our story began, sitting before the great
book enjoying herself.

Such beautiful, lovely pictures went round every page, with a little
verse set down right in the middle of the pictures. Fairies gorgeously
coloured, all twining together or mixing themselves up with butterflies
till you scarcely knew which was which, and not one bit of white paper
to be seen through or mid the brilliant creatures--actually a wide
border of fairies and butterflies, and nothing else, and the verse in
the middle was also in illuminated letters.

In her eagerness, hanging over the book to read it, Bab happened to lean
on the end of a pen standing up in art inkstand. She was too much
interested to know what it was, but it came spluttering out, and a
little speck of ink splashed on the white paper beyond the border.

"Oh, oh!" cried excited Bab; "i