It had given her gilded coaches and Cinderella ball-attire in her nursery days, and enchanted orchards whose trees bore all manner of confections.

It had bestowed beauty and fortune and accomplishments on her, and sent dashing cavaliers to seek her hand when she came to the romance-reading age.
Friends and social pleasures were hers at will when the lonely desert life grew irksome.

Whatever was dull the Midas touch of her imagination made golden, so now it was easy to close her eyes and conjure up a make-believe chum that for the time was as good as a real one.
Absorbed in her book, Ethelinda read on until the signal sounded for lights out.

Never before accustomed to such restrictions, she looked up impatiently.

She had forgotten where she was for the moment in the interest of her book.