So I sit on the floor,
and sometimes I build with the books (particularly Stonehenge), and
sometimes I make people of them, and call them by the names on their
backs, and the ones in other languages we call foreigners, and Godfather
Gilpin tells me what countries they belong to. And sometimes I lie on my
face and read (for I could read when I was four years old), and
Godfather Gilpin tells me the hard words. The only rule he makes is,
that I must get all the books out of one shelf, so that they are easily
put away again. I may have any shelf I like, but I must not mix the
shelves up.
I always took care of the books, and never had any accident with any of
them till the day I dropped Jeremy Taylor's _Sermons_. It made me very
miserable, because I knew that Godfather Gilpin could never trust me so
much again.
However, if it had not happened, I should not have known anything about
the Brothers of Pity; so, perhaps (as Mrs. James, Godfather Gilpin's
house-keeper, says), "All's for the best," and "It's an ill wind that
blows nobody good."
It happened on a Sunday, I remember, and it was the day after the day on
which I had had the shelf in which all the books were alike. They were
all foreigners--Italians--and all their names were _Goldoni_, and there
were forty-seven of them, and they were all in white and gold.
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