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It was in the schoolroom that Philomène kept her toys. There was the dolls’ house and the dolls’ kitchen, and the musical box, and the paint-box with its palettes and saucers and brushes. Last, but by no means least, came the book-shelf. It held all Mrs Ewing’s stories, and all Mrs Molesworth’s, Grimm, and Hans Andersen, and many more besides. Philomène used to act all the stories out of these books, but it is dull work to be both players and audience yourself, and it needs an imagination bordering on genius to ride alone upon a bed, and persuade your heart of hearts that it is Pegasus, the wonderful winged horse.

“And nothing ever happens to me,” mused Philomène, “as it happens to people in books. I do not live in a chateau with a terrace and a raven, like Jeanne in ‘The Tapestry-Room,’ and when I play with the reels in Nurse’s work-box they do not behave in the least like Louisa’s reels in ‘Tell Me a Story.’ I suppose it is because I am just ordinary.”

It was a depressing thought, but facts could not be shelved. Philomène’s cuckoo clock certainly acted very differently from Griselda’s. So far from inviting her to climb up by the two long dangling chains, and take a seat opposite to him on a red velvet arm-chair, this disobliging bird uttered his “cuckoos” in a hasty, perfunctory manner, and then shut to the door of his house with a snap, as who should say, “That’s over till next time.”