[Maud Montgomery and her foster brothers] 'read the "Wide Awake" magazines the boys' aunt sent them for a while - the last instalment of a serial Maud was reading was due when the magazines stopped coming. The boys thought this was a huge joke...(thirty years later she came across bound copies of "Wide Awake" and was finally able to finish reading that story). They told ghost stories. In school Well won the teacher's prize for being the best in arithmetic that winter, a copy of Hans Andersen's fairytales. Maud was enchanted by the book. Then she won a collection of fairytales for being top student most often and it had a story in it called "The Honey Stew of the Countess" Bertha which "abounded in ghosts" and she liked it even better'.