I'm goin' to make my reading count for something aftah this.

It was dreadfully mawtifyin' to find out that I was so ignorant, and how much there is in the world to know, that I had nevah even heard of." That afternoon, in the big Liverpool hotel, the trunks were packed for the last time.
"Seems something like the night befo' Christmas," said the Little Colonel, as she counted the packages piled on the floor beside her trunk.

They were the presents that she had chosen for the friends at home.
"Nineteen, twenty," she went on counting, "and that music box for Mom Beck makes twenty-one, and the souvenir spoons for the Walton girls make twenty-five.

Oh, I didn't show you these," she said.
"This is Allison's," she explained, opening a little box.

"See the caldron and the bells on the handle?
I got this in Denmark.