Free The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

read those ten pages. I guess it’s because I have to read it.”
    “Why do you have to read it?” Robin asked. “You don’t go to school in the summertime, do you?”
    “ No, but I was awful in English last year, and Mother wants me to get good grades so I can go to a boarding school back East, where she used to go. So she said I had to read all these Junior Classics things this summer. When I say I’ve read one, she makes me tell her all about it. So now I can tell her all about Ivanhoe.”
    “That isn’t exactly honest,” Robin said, but she couldn’t help smiling.
    “ Don’t worry about it. You didn’t keep me from reading it, because I wouldn’t have read it anyhow. And I won’t lie about it. I’ll just say, ‘I’m ready to tell you about Ivanhoe now,’ and everyone will be happy.”
    They both laughed. Then Gwen puckered up her forehead and looked at Robin intently. “You don’t have any accent,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but it sounded like one.
    Robin had almost forgotten about being careful and was just having fun the way you have fun with anyone, but now she felt herself stiffen. “Accent?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
    “I mean you don’t talk like an — like you were from Oklahoma. Didn’t you come from the dust bowl?”
    Robin got up. “No,” she said, “I didn’t live in the dust bowl. But I’ve lived in a Model T for three years. I have to go home now.” She started for the door.
    “Look, don’t go getting mad. It’s just that most of the people who travel around after harvest jobs haven’t been in California very long. I just wondered, that’s all.”
    Robin stopped. She knew that people asked questions for all sorts of reasons, but something made her feel that Gwen really was just curious — and interested. The first thing Robin knew she was sitting on the bed telling Gwen all about her family and how things used to be in Fresno. How Dad had studied to be a musician, but his father had died and he had had to come back home to run the dairy for his mother. How he met Mama, who was very young and pretty and worked as an usherette in a movie theater in Fresno, and they were married. Then Dad’s mother died too, but he couldn’t go back to studying because babies started coming along: Rudy and Theda and Robin and Cary. Then there was the depression, and Dad had pneumonia, and the house and dairy and everything had had to be sold. Dad had held another job for a little while, but he got sick again; and Shirley was born, and she was sick all the time too. Finally there wasn’t any money to pay the rent, and they’d heard about jobs in the crops in the Sacramento Valley. So they’d packed everything in the Model T and headed north. And that’s the way it had been ever since.
    “Gee!” Gwen said. “That’s too bad. But some of it sounds like fun. I mean camping out and all.”
    Robin didn’t really agree, but she said, “Well, maybe. But not as much fun as when you do it because you want to.”
    “ I guess not. Nothing’s much fun if you have to do it. It’s the same way with reading.” Gwen rolled over and propped her feet on their white sandals on the head of the bed. “And I’ll bet your mother hated the camping. Mine would. She wouldn’t stand for it a minute.”
    Robin was surprised to see that Gwen was serious. She didn’t seem to see that what she’d said was funny. It was like saying that her mother wouldn’t stand for earthquakes. “I don’t know whether Mama hates it or not,” Robin said. “I don’t think she believes it, really. Mama thinks everything turns out the way it does in the movies. She always thinks everything’s going to be all right in a day or two.”
    There was the sound of footsteps in the hall, and the door was opened by a tall woman with short blond hair. She was wearing white gloves and a big round hat. Gwen said, “Hi, Mom,” without even looking around. The woman said hello and smiled at Robin, but it