In this thank you letter for a birthday gift, 11-year-old Mary Gladstone expresses how much she loves reading while her younger sister, Helen, revels in rainy-day play in the castle library. Their addressee is teen sister Agnes who was trying to ground herself in the daily norms of home life even while experiencing the exoticism of Greek orthodoxy. This post explores Frances Hodgson Burnett's perception of the scarcity of truly magical Victorian children's literature as compared to the rich imaginative experiences of the Gladstones, who embraced moral tales in life and literature.