The Brownie has had our house all to himself for ever so long, for Wendy and I have been away. We went to a lovely place down by the sea where we learned to swim, and now if you come to see us you’ll find that we’re not the children we used to be, but little girls grown taller and taller.

In all the weeks we were gone the Brownie did not send us one letter, and when we came home and asked him about it, he said the reason was we had no last name. One day, he said, he sat on our desk and wrote a long, long letter and then he addressed an envelope — that is, he wrote “The Misses Alice-Heidi and Wendy —” and then he stopped. “Why,” said he, “I can’t send this fine letter because I don’t know their last names. So far as I know, they haven’t any!”

It is perfectly true — we never have had a last name. So Wendy and I sat right down and thought about it. We tried Carroll, Spyri, Barrie — but suddenly Wendy said “Don’t you think our house ought to have a name, too, so our letters could come straight to us instead of going to The Bookshop office and waiting until some one thinks to bring them to us?” 

After a long time of trying and writing down, we shouted at the same moment, Wendy and I — GREENAWAY! So you must remember that now we’re Alice-Heidi and Wendy Greenaway and our house is Greenaway House.  

(The Horn Book Editor just looked over my shoulder and said “Two pages and a quarter and not a book mentioned yet!” But I’m coming to books, although I wish Wendy and I could write all about our summer by the sea!) 

When we had unpacked our trunks and settled our things we began going about the shop, and everywhere we looked were new books and new books. We took great piles into Greenaway House and we’ve read and read and read.  

Wendy says we must begin with “Rice to Rice Pudding,” and to tell you first of all that it’s a very hungry book because it’s all about things to eat — rice, butter, cocoanut, peanuts, ham, sugar, wheat, and honey. If you can’t read the words the pictures tell you the story, and you must learn to say it fast because there’s the same kind of gallop to it as in “This is the house that Jack built,” only “Rice to Rice Pudding” goes like this: 

“This is the country of China.
This is the rice that grows in the country of China.
This is the water that floods the rice, that grows in the country of China.
This is the farmer who plows through the water that floods the rice, that grows in the country of China.” 

I must say that Wendy and the Brownie and I do like books that have things to eat in them. — Every one of Miss Potter’s has good things to eat and pretty cups and saucers. So when we looked into “St. David Walks Again” and read on the first page “The liner was like a huge long pier” — we said, “Oh, this is about a long journey on the sea. I think we’ll like it”; and a little farther down when we read “Grandfather’s English lawyer looked at the two children in his charge and said: 

“‘What about tea, my dears? What about tea?’ And they went below into what looked like a tremendously busy tea shop, and grandfather’s English lawyer said again: 

“‘What about eggs, my dears? What about eggs?’” — Why, then we just knew we’d like the book. But we had no idea how much we were going to like it.  

It tells how David and Felicity Hoblyn went from America to live with their grandfather in a little village of Cornwall. Their American mother and their English father had died, and their father’s father had promised to care for them. But he did not wish to see them. He lived in a great dark house on the side of a great dark hill with a little fishing village snuggled at its foot. The house was full of ancient grandeur and house and village were called Hoblyn Hill. The house had seen exciting days and long ago another David, a boy of thirteen, just a year older than our David, had gathered men “from Mullion, from Truro, from Penzance, and from Land’s End,” and when the right day came, led the attack, and died helping to drive the Spaniards out of Cornwall. After his death the Cornishmen had kept Sir David’s diary on a stand in their chapel; life at Hoblyn Hills had prospered; it had become the greatest fishing village on the Cornish coast; and every night the ghost of little Sir David walked the terrace to see that all was well. And then one day the diary was stolen. Little David ceased to walk the terrace, the pilchards did not come to Hoblyn Bay, and the fishermen grew lazy and did not mend their nets or go to sea. And up in the great house, Sir Ramon, the grandfather, lived in the past entirely and would have nothing to do with today. 

Now, of course, this is only the beginning, for most of the story is about what happened when David and Felicity arrived in America to live with nice, jolly Nannie in a square little house at the foot of the garden, but never to see their grandfather or go near the great house. But Wendy and I don’t like to be told too much about a book and we must not tell you any more — except that David was very brave, and Felicity, too, and they changed things.  

We liked every bit of this book, even the descriptions. It has that queer something that we hear people talking so much about in The Bookshop — I can’t think of the word they use. Wendy and I have discussed it a lot and we know it’s something you feel in a book, but you can’t describe. You know when it’s there and when it isn’t there. It’s there in the books we like; more in some than in others. The only trouble with “St. David Walks Again” is that it makes Wendy and me long for adventures of our own. We feel brave and we’d like to do brave things, not just read about them. 

Oh, I was going to write about “The House at Pooh Corner,” “Little Dog Toby,” and lots of other books, but we’ve used up our space so, we can only say that we love Pooh and Piglet and Eeyore and Christopher Robin, too — we love them so much that we enjoy reading about them even in dull places. There are funny spots in “Pooh Corner” — but “Winnie the Pooh” is our favorite. Wendy keeps “Little Dog Toby” on our bed all the time. She says she must write a story for the Little Library. The Brownie says he has written one!

From the November 1928 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.