Free Nancy and Plum by Betty MacDonald Page B

don’t have children or their children are grown up.”
    Miss Waverly said, “Oh, I know but what are you going todo? Mrs. Monday won’t give out any information and you can’t take the children away from her without their parents’ or guardians’ consent. All we can do is to make the little time they spend with us as happy as possible. My only trouble is that every single time I plan a picnic or a play or anything that is going to be fun, Mrs. Monday manages to keep the children home. All except Marybelle, of course, she has and does everything.”
    Miss Appleby said, “She is the only child I ever have any trouble with here in the library. Speaking of trouble, it’s almost time for the children, so I’d better get busy.”
    So, here they were out on the lawn and Miss Appleby was just finishing
The Secret Garden
.
    “ ‘Across the lawn came the Master of Misselthwaite and he looked as many of them had never seen him. And by his side with his head up in the air and his eyes full of laughter walked as strongly and steadily as any boy in Yorkshire—Master Colin!’
    “And that,” said Miss Appleby, “is the end of
The Secret Garden
. ”
    “May I take it home and read it over again?” asked Nancy.
    “But, Nancy,” Miss Appleby said, “you’ve read
The Secret Garden
four times already.”
    Nancy said, “I don’t care. When I read it I forget I live at Mrs. Monday’s and I run on the moors with Dickon and I go through those hundred rooms with Mary and I look at books with Colin.”
    Miss Appleby said, “That’s the wonderful thing aboutreading. You can go anywhere in the world, you can live a hundred, even a thousand different lives, you can learn about everything.”
    Plum said, “To be a librarian do you have to read every book there is?”
    Miss Appleby said, “Goodness no. But I have read a great many. Probably more than a thousand.”
    Plum said, “How many books had you read when you were almost nine, like me?”
    Miss Appleby said, “Well, when I was nine years old I lived with my grandmother and grandfather, who were very, very strict, very, very industrious people who didn’t believe in wasting a single minute. Unfortunately they considered reading wasting time, and so I had to do all my reading secretly. I went to a little country school and the teacher, who was very understanding, used to keep me after school supposedly to clean the blackboards, but in reality so that I could curl up by the stove and read. She loaned me all of her books and I read
Black Beauty, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Treasure Island, Heidi, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Anne of Green Gables, Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, The Jungle Book, The Water Babies, Timothy’s Quest, Tom Sawyer
and
Huckleberry Finn, Dandelion Cottage, The Live Dolls, Sara Crewe, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Toby Tyler, The Secret Garden, Pinocchio, Robinson Crusoe, King Arthur, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist
and, of course, all of the fairy tales.”
    Nancy said, “Did your grandfather find out?”
    Miss Appleby said, “Yes he did. One day a blizzard was blowing up and he came to school to get me and found me curled up in a chair by the stove reading
Sara Crewe
. He said, ‘Evangeline Appleby, you are a wicked little girl and you have deliberately deceived me. You led your grandmother and me to believe that you had to stay after school to help the teacher and now I find you wasting your time reading. I am going to give you a whipping when you get home.’
    “Ordinarily I was scared to death of my grandfather, who was a tall, stern old man. But this day I had just gotten to the part in
Sara Crewe
after Sara’s father dies, when Miss Minchin is being horrible to Sara and Sara is up in the attic hungry and cold, talking to her doll Emily and she says, ‘When people are insulting you, there is nothing so good for them as not to say a word—just to look at them and
think
 … there’s nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you