"I hope it'll rain to-morrow," he said, gravely.
"It is kind of Miss Cecil," said nurse; and as Cecil left the nursery she added to herself, "it will be a comfort to her mother if she begins to take thought for the little ones, and I've always felt sure it was in her to do so, if only she could get into the way of it."
CHAPTER VIII.
"THE BEWITCHED TONGUE."
"Thou will not fail
To listen to a fairy tale."
Lewis Carroll.
It did rain the next day! And Cecil did not forget her promise. Just as the old nursery clock was striking four, a full hour still to her tea-time, she marched into the room with a little old brown book in her hand. I wonder if any of you have ever seen that little old book, or one like it, I would say? It was about the size of the first edition of 'Evenings at Home,' which some of you are sure to have in your book-cases. For I should think everybody's grandfathers and grandmothers had an 'Evenings at Home' among their few, dearly-prized children's books.
Do you know how very few those books were? You may have heard it, but I scarcely fancy you have ever thought over the great difference between yourselves and long-ago-children in this respect. Now-a-days, when you have galloped through all the brilliant blue and green and scarlet little volumes that have been given to you on birthdays and Christmas-days, you come with a melancholy face to your mother, and tell her you have "nothing to read." And then, most likely, when your mother goes to the library, she chooses a book for you out of the "juvenile department," and when it is done you get another, till you can hardly remember what you have read and what you haven't. But as for reading any book twice over, that is never to be thought of.
Not so was it long ago. Not only had no children many books, but everywhere children had the same! There was seldom any use in little friends lending to each other, for it was always the same thing over again: 'Evenings at Home,' 'Sandford and Merton,' 'Ornaments Discovered,' and so on.
You think, I daresay, that it must have been very stupid and tiresome to have so little variety, but I think you are in some ways mistaken. Children really read their books in those days; they put more of themselves into their reading, so that, stupid as these quaint old stories might seem to you now-a-days, they never seemed so then. What was wanting in them the children filled up out of their own fresh hearts and fancies, and however often they read and re-read them, they always found something new. They got to know the characters in their favourite stories like real friends, and would talk them over with their companions, and compare their opinions about them in a way that made each book as good, or better, than a dozen.