The Story of Opal

f her parents, whom she lost before her fifth year, she is sure of nothing except that they loved

they wished their little daughter to learn, both of the world about her and of that older world of legend and history, with which the diarist shows such capricious and entertaining familiarity. These book

ometimes of longer passages in French, and from her ready use of scientific terms. It is, perhaps, a fair inference that her

her mother's care was carried on by an older woman, possibly a governess, from whom, within a year, she was taken and, after recovering from a serious illness, given

pters we shall see that her life, apart from the gay tranquillity of her spirit, was not a happy one. Her friends were the animals

he diary and tore it into a myriad of fragments. The work of years seemed destroyed, but Opal, who had treasured its unde