The Old Nurse's Stocking-Basket

Every night when the children were tucked up in bed, the Old Nurse would pull out a pair of stockings from the mending-basket and while she threaded her needle she would look in her memory for a story that fitted the size of the hole. The children always stopped their bickering at once, for none of them wanted to miss her extraordinary stories of princes and princesses, Greek gods, sea captains and other wonderful characters she had come across in her hundreds of years as a children’s nurse. …