The children’s room of the Library was very still. Once in a while a murmur arose at the delivery desk, or some squeaky-shoed small feet crossed from open shelves to reading table. Occasionally a helpful child leaned across to another and whispered, “That’s a dandy book. Have you read the rest of them?” But all of these minor sounds were blended into the general effect of stillness and seclusion; and they did not even reach the ears of a small boy named Wendell, who bent over a large volume on one of the low round tables. He did not hear the footfalls nor the murmurs; he knew nothing of the rumble of traffic that rose through the windows; he was not even conscious of gathering dusk, though the librarian began to snap on lights in dark corners. Wendell read on and on, giving an excellent imitation of a bookworm. Absorbed as he was in his book, you probably picture him as a slight, pale little chap, somewhat underweight for his ten years, with pale cheeks, a bulging brow, large horn spectacles, completely immersed in a volume of Emerson’s Essays. Not at all. He had a round, brown face, a strong, lithe body, excellent arm and leg muscles, and nice brown eyes that were in unusually good condition because he never overworked them on school books. He had never opened Emerson’s Essays in his life, and the large volume that just now held his attention so completely was a book of fairy tales. Wendell never read anything but fairy tales, unless it happened to be “required reading” at the select school for boys that he attended. In fairy tales he reveled. He read them in bed with the light on at night. He read them before breakfast and thus made himself late at school. He hid them behind his geography in study periods. He took them to Sunday school till his teacher found it out. He read them in the street when he went on an errand and greatly irritated traffic policemen by trying to cross the street, reading. Altogether, it was proverbial in Wendell’s family that he could always be kept out of mischief by a fairy tale. But oh! what low marks he did get in school! For he didn’t like to study. He liked baseball and swimming and roller-skating, but he didn’t like the capitals of the United States, nor dates, nor fractions. Particularly he didn’t like fractions. Thoroughly entranced, he read on till another boy reached across in front of his page to get a book lying on the table. The interruption roused him. He glanced up, saw that the lights were on and the afternoon waning, reluctantly rose and returned his volume to the shelves, and sauntered out with two books of fairy tales under his arm.