Sometimes the little girl tried to make up an ending to the story, but always the grandmother would shake her head. "No, no," she would cry, "that's not it. What was it? What was it? Ah, if I could but remember!" She worried and fretted so over the story that Ellen was always sorry to have her begin it. Sometimes the old grandmother almost cried. Now as the child stood looking through the window at the rainy world outside, her thoughts were upon the story, for the grandmother had been very unhappy over it all day; Ellen had not been able to get her to talk or think of anything else. The house was very quiet, for it was afternoon. The mother was busy in the sewing-room, grandmother was taking a nap, and nurse was crooning softly to the baby in the room across the hall. Ellen had come to the nursery to get a book of jingles; she was going to read aloud to her mother. Now as she turned from the window it occurred to her that she would put the bookcase in order before she went down to the sewing-room. That was just the thing to do on a rainy day. She sat down before the shelves and began pulling the books out, now and then opening one to look at a picture or to straighten a bookmarker. The nursery walls were covered with a flowered paper, and when Ellen had almost emptied the shelves she noticed that the paper back of them was of a different color from that on the rest of the room. It had not faded. The blue color between the vines looked soft and cloudlike, too, and almost as though it would melt away at a touch. Ellen put her hand back to feel it. Instead of touching a hard, cold wall as she had expected, her hand went right through between the vines as though there were nothing there. Ellen rose to her knees and put both hands across the shelf. She found she could draw the vines aside just as though they were real. She even thought she caught a glimpse of skies and trees between them. In haste she sprang to her feet and pushed the bookcase to one side so that she could squeeze in behind it. She caught hold of the wall-paper vines and drew them aside, and then she stepped right through the wall and into the world beyond. _Chapter Two_ _Beyond the Wall_ It was not raining at all beyond the wall. Overhead was a soft, mild sky, neither sunny nor cloudy. Before her stretched a grassy green meadow, and far away in the distance was a dark line of forest. Just at the foot of the meadow was a little house. It was such a curious little house that Ellen went nearer to look at it. It was not set solidly upon the ground, but stood upon four fowls' legs, so that you could look clear under it; and the roof was covered with shining feathers that overlapped like feathers upon the back of a duck. Beside the door, hitched to a post by a bridle just as a horse might be, was an enormous white gander.