“One loved the far corner
of the sofa.”
It was the Green and Gold Book.
Rosalie brought it. It belonged to her and to Alice and to Amanthus.
They lent it to Emmy Lou.
And the glamour opened and closed about Emmy Lou, and she knew—she knew it all—why the hair of Amanthus gleamed, why Alice flitted where others walked, why laughter dwelt in the cheek of Rosalie. The glamour opened and closed about Emmy Lou, and she and Rosalie and Alice and Amanthus moved in a world of their own—the world of the Green and Gold Book, for the Green and Gold Book was “The Book of Fairy Tales.”
The strange, the inexplicable, the meaningless, that hitherto one had thought the real—teachers, problems, such—they became the outer world, the things of small matter.
One loved the far corner of the sofa now, with the book in one’s lap, with one’s hair falling about one’s face and book, shutting out the unreal world and its people.
The real world lay between the covers of the Green and Gold Book—the real world and its people.
And the Princess was always Rosalie, and the Prince—ah! the Prince was the Prince. One had met one’s Rosalie, but not yet the Prince.