Transcriber Notes:
Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate. Thus the page number of the illustration might not match the page number in the List of Illustrations, and the order of illustrations may not be the same in the List of Illustrations and in the book.
Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted.
On the title page, a quotation mark was added before "Ester Ried".
On page 46, "conisdered" was replaced with "considered".
On page 70, a period was added after "Mrs".
On page 73, "reëstablished" was replaced with "reestablished".
On page 228, the quotation mark after "let him in" was removed.