Christabel was delighted to find that she behaved, like other little girls in books, with the greatest courage and cleverness. Whenever an adventure was going on she always managed to get out of every difficulty, and she saved the lives of several of the other people in the book by her bravery. The strange thing was that she found it quite easy to be brave; while she was a little girl in real life she had not found it easy at all.
"I do hope the book has a happy ending," she thought sometimes.
She wished very much that she could peep into the end of the book, as she used to do when she was a little girl in real life. Meantime every chapter was more exciting than the last. Of course Christabel did not know whether she would escape from the savages at all. Perhaps they were going to eat her. That would not be a happy ending to the book, she felt.
After a great many terrible dangers, she managed to escape; for a ship sailed into the bay at the right moment, and took her home to England. This was the end of the book. The person who was reading it shut it up with a bang—and Christabel went to sleep.
By-and-by, some one else took up the book and began to read it. Then Christabel woke up and found herself at the beginning of the story. After so many adventures she was rather tired, and did not feel inclined to begin them all over again. But that was just what she had to do. Being captured by pirates is not nearly so exciting when you know you can only escape from them by a cold, wet shipwreck; and when you are shipwrecked you are not very anxious to scramble ashore when you know there are a large number of fierce savages waiting for you!
"This is rather tiresome," thought Christabel.
She was very glad when the person who was reading the book shut it up again, and she was allowed to go quietly to sleep.
But her sleep was not long. Every time any one began to read the book poor Christabel was obliged to wake up and go through all her troubles again. She soon became horribly tired of being shipwrecked.
"Have I got to spend the rest of my life with pirates and savages?" she asked herself in despair.
It was especially annoying that they were always the same pirates and savages, who said always exactly the same things. Christabel soon knew the whole book by heart. She wished sometimes she could be one of the pirates for a change, instead of being always a little girl.