Read it through once

But one day “the dear mamma” was absent and could not administer the customary reward, with the result that papa had to read the “Children in the Wood,” though not before he had searched the shelves to find the, to him, unfamiliar volumes. Following which search and labour he was easily constrained by the petted child to hand over the book to Nancy, that she might read extracts whenever called upon. And when Nancy, as was inevitable, waxed weary of the “Children in the Wood,” she gradually took to reading other of the ballads; “and as from three years old I grew to be four or five, I learned to read them myself, and the book became the delight of my childhood, as it is now the solace of my age.”