An open fire burned in the little grate, and a big white and silver rattan chair was drawn cosily before it.

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.