much pleased, and wagged his tail, and licked our faces all
round. So we told him to come and see us very often.

He did not, but we do not think it was his fault. He is chained up so
much.

One day Arthur and I were walking down the road outside the Old
Squire's stables, and Saxon smelt us, and we could hear him run and
rattle his chain, and he gave deep, soft barks.

Arthur laughed. He said, "Do you hear Saxon, Mary? Now I dare say the
Old Squire thinks he smells tramps and wants to bite them. He doesn't
know that Saxon smells his new sister and brother, and wishes he could
go out walking with them in Mary's Meadow."

CHAPTER III.

Nothing comforted us so much whilst Mother and Chris were away as
being allowed to play in the library.

We were not usually allowed to be there so often, but when we asked
Father he gave us leave to amuse ourselves there at the time when
Mother would have had us with her, provided that we did not bother him
or hurt the books. We did not hurt the books, and in the end we were
allowed to go there as much as we liked.

We have plenty of books of our own, and we have new ones very often:
on birthdays and at Christmas. Sometimes they are interesting, and
sometimes they are disappointing. Most of them have pretty pictures.
It was because we had been rather unlucky for some time, and had had
disappointing ones on our birthdays, that Arthur said 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,
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 behin