Celia Grant, a lady fallen on hard times, lives in a grotty apartment building in London, supporting herself financially. One day she happens upon the young man in the adjoining room contemplating suicide, and saves his life, which he never forgets: 'I did not know her name until you told me just now; I saw her for only a few minutes; those few minutes, and her angelic goodness, changed the whole current of my life.'

Ernest Albert Savage (1877-1966) was Principal Librarian of Edinburgh Public Libraries from 1922 to 1942, President of the Scottish Library Association from 1929 to 1931, and President of the Library Association in 1936. He wrote extensively on libraries and library science. Savage had a career-long concern with the training and professional status of librarians.

Books for girls are frankly suggestive, their value lying in their kindling power. Among the girls of all sorts who may read this story, there will be, here and there, one who loves right words. It is for the sake of such an occasional reader that the poems mentioned have been included. The schools sometimes lead their pupils to believe that English literature, like Latin, belongs to the past. But there are, here and now, "musicians of the word" who, partly because they are living, can touch our hearts as none of the dead-and-gone ones can. If through these pages some girl finds her way to the little green volume of Singing Leaves, or the sweet stories of Daphne and King Sylvaine and Queen Aimée, Catherine Smith and her friends will have done the world of girls a service worth the doing.