“No-o,” drawled Katy reluctantly. “She never did anything either good or bad to me. But—she was awfully queer!”

“Of course she was,” agreed Mary. “But that isn’t the worst thing in the world, to be queer. And she was awfully kind to me.— Say, Katy, don’t you like Shakespeare?”

“Not very well,” confessed Katy.

[39]“Well, I do,” Mary asserted. “I haven’t read much of him, but I’m going to. Every time I look at that head of Shakespeare on the mantelpiece, I remember that it was my composition about Shakespeare that was at the bottom of almost everything nice that has happened in Crowfield. Why, if it hadn’t been for him, perhaps we shouldn’t have come to live here at all, and then I shouldn’t ever have known you, Katy Summers!”

[39]

“Gracious!” exclaimed Katy. “Wouldn’t that have been awful? Yes, I believe I do like him a little, since he did that. I wrote a composition about him once, too. It didn’t bring anything good in my direction. But then, it wasn’t a very good composition. I only got a C with it.”

“Well,” said Mary, “I feel as if I owe him something, and Aunt Nan something. And sooner or later I’m going to read everything he ever wrote.”

“Goodness!” said Katy. “Then you’ll never have time to read anything else, I guess. Look!”— She pointed around the walls. “Why, there are hundreds of Shakespeares. Hundreds and hundreds!”

“They are mostly different editions of the same thing,” said Mary wisely. “I shan’t have[40] to read every edition. There aren’t so very many books by him, really. Not more than thirty, I think. I’ve been looking at this little red set that’s so easy to handle and has such nice notes. I like the queer spelling. I’m going to read ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ first. I think that’s what Aunt Nan meant.”

[40]

“What do you mean by ‘what Aunt Nan meant’?” asked Katy curiously. “Has she written you another letter?” Mary had told her about the will.

“No, not exactly,” confessed Mary. “But see what I found just now when I finished reading ‘Shakespeare the Boy,’—the book that was lying on her desk with that first note she wrote me.” And she opened the volume which she held in her hand at the last page. Below the word “Finis” were penned in a delicate, old-fashioned writing these words:—

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