To Margaret Ostler with love from E. Nesbit Peggy, you came from the heath and moor, And you brought their airs through my open door; You brought the blossom of youth to blow In the Latin Quarter of S...

There were three of them⁠—Jerry, Jimmy, and Kathleen. Of course, Jerry’s name was Gerald, and not Jeremiah, whatever you may think; and Jimmy’s name was James; and Kathleen was never called by her nam...

When you are young so many things are difficult to believe, and yet the dullest people will tell you that they are true⁠—such things, for instance, as that the earth goes round the sun, and that it is...

Those of my readers who have gone about much with an invisible companion will not need to be told how awkward the whole business is. For one thing, however much you may have been convinced that your c...

The difficulty was not only that Gerald had got the ring on and couldn’t get it off, and was therefore invisible, but that Mabel, who had been invisible and therefore possible to be smuggled into the ...

“Search and research proving vain,” said Gerald, when every corner of the bedroom had been turned out and the ring had not been found, “the noble detective hero of our tale remarked that he would have...

Johnson was the hero of the hour. It was he who had tracked the burglars, laid his plans, and recovered the lost silver. He had not thrown the stone⁠—public opinion decided that Mabel and her aunt mus...

“Can you recommend me to a good hotel?” The speaker had no inside to his head. Gerald had the best of reasons for knowing it. The speaker’s coat had no shoulders inside it⁠—only the crossbar that a ja...

It was but too plain. The unfortunate bailiff must have opened the door before the spell had faded, while yet the Ugly-Wuglies were something more than mere coats and hats and sticks. They had rushed ...

There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs forever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real. And when once people have found one of th...

“If,” said Kathleen, sitting disconsolate in her marble, “if I am really a statue come alive, I wonder you’re not afraid of me.” “I’ve got the ring,” said Mabel with decision. “Cheer up, dear! you wil...

It was show-day at Yalding Castle, and it seemed good to the children to go and visit Mabel, and, as Gerald put it, to mingle unsuspected with the crowd; to gloat over all the things which they knew a...

It would be interesting, no doubt, to describe the feelings of Lord Yalding as he followed Mabel and Jimmy through his ancestral halls, but I have no means of knowing at all what he felt. Yet one must...