It's Your Fairy Tale, You Know

IT’S YOUR FAIRY TALE, YOU KNOW
ELIZABETH RHODES JACKSON
Illustrated by L. E. W. KATTELLE Copyright, 1922 By B. J. BRIMMER COMPANY First Impression, November, 1922 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AMBROSE PRESS, INC. Norwood, Mass.

Absorbed as he was in his book, you probably picture him as a slight, pale little chap, somewhat underweight for his ten years, with pale cheeks, a bulging brow, large horn spectacles, completely immersed in a volume of Emerson’s Essays. Not at all. He had a round, brown face, a strong, lithe body, excellent arm and leg muscles, and nice brown eyes that were in unusually good condition because he never overworked them on school books. He had never opened Emerson’s Essays in his life, and the large volume that just now held his attention so completely was a book of fairy tales.
Wendell never read anything but fairy tales, unless it happened to be “required reading” at the select school for boys that he attended. In fairy tales he reveled. He read them in bed with the light on at night. He read them before breakfast and thus made himself late at school. He hid them behind his geography in study periods. He took them to Sunday school till his teacher found it out. He read them in the street when he went on an errand and greatly irritated traffic policemen by trying to cross the street, reading. Altogether, it was proverbial in Wendell’s family that he could always be kept out of mischief by a fairy tale. But oh! what low marks he did get in school!
For he didn’t like to study. He liked baseball and swimming and roller-skating, but he didn’t like the capitals of the United States, nor dates, nor fractions. Particularly he didn’t like fractions.
Thoroughly entranced, he read on till another boy reached across in front of his page to get a book lying on the table. The interruption roused him. He glanced up, saw that the lights were on and the afternoon waning, reluctantly rose and returned his volume to the shelves, and sauntered out with two books of fairy tales under his arm.