_The Two Children in the Wood_ afforded ampler scope for moral contrasts. Addison’s praise had included even the pretty fiction of the robins, on the authority of Horace and his doves; but the makers of toy-books were not satisfied with this. They expunged the robins and prepared two prose versions of the ballad, one expanding the story into a novel of domestic life, and the other marring it with a happy ending.[39]