Awake and Dreaming - Kit Pearson [57]
After lunch Sharon finally took her to a large building downtown. “I’ll be in the magazine department, Theo. I’ll come and get you in an hour—will that be long enough for your project?”
“I hope so,” said Theo. When Sharon had walked away, she looked around the library desperately. Where should she begin?
First she went to the children’s department and found both novels by Cecily Stone. She examined them quickly, but they didn’t have dust jackets and there was no author information inside. The one she hadn’t read was called The Huntleys of Hurley Hall. Clutching it to her, Theo approached the children’s information desk. “Excuse me.”
A man looked up; he was cutting out pink paper pigs and printing names on them. “Yes?”
“Do you have any information about a writer called Cecily Stone?”
“Hmmm … she sounds familiar. Is she Canadian?”
“She lived in Victoria!” said Theo indignantly. “She wrote this book.” She showed it to him.
“I’ll ask the children’s librarian—I’m just a clerk.” He went away and returned with a glamorous-looking woman wearing lots of make-up and jewellery. “So you want to find out about our Cecily! We’re rarely asked about her. I’m afraid I can’t give you much information. She wasn’t very well known. I’m sure she would have been if she’d lived longer, poor woman. Follow me and I’ll show you what we have.”
She took Theo to the adult reference section and sat her down with a file folder labelled STONE, CECILY and a fat book with a place marked in it. Theo looked at the book first; it contained short biographies of Canadian writers. There wasn’t much more about Cecily than had been on the jacket flap, except for calling her “a promising writer for the young.” But it was exciting to read the address of the Kaldors’ house as her residence.
She opened the file. It was disappointingly thin. There were a few short reviews of the books, each complimenting the author for setting stories in British Columbia. A photocopy of a newspaper clipping announced the “untimely death of Miss Cecily Margaret Stone, daughter of the prominent Victoria lawyer, the late Mr. Giles Stone. Miss Stone was a writer of children’s novels, a career she began later in life. She was a member of the Garden Society and had a special interest in heritage roses.”
“It’s not much, is it?” The fancy librarian was leaning over Theo, her bracelets jingling. “She didn’t have any relatives and nobody published any memoirs of her. All that’s left are the books. Are you doing a school project on her? I think her books are quite good, even if they are rather dated for modern kids.”
“I loved the one I read,” said Theo fiercely.
The librarian looked apologetic. “I’m glad. I bet Cecily would be happy to know that someone’s still reading them. I hope you like the other one just as much.”
Theo found out how to get a library card. She checked out the book and she and Sharon went home.
SHE MANAGED to get halfway through The Huntleys of Hurley Hall before dinner. The story took place at the turn of the century, in a large house on the Gorge in Victoria. It was about four brothers and sisters—Frank, Louise, Perry and Gwyneth—who found a secret passage.
Theo adored it. Nothing much happened, but the children seemed so happy, like the ones in the books about families she’d read in Vancouver. They had their bad times—there was an embarrassing episode when Gwyneth, Theo’s favourite, fell into a pond at a birthday party—but they were such a secure, united family. Like the Kaldors …
Sharon called her to get ready; they were going to Mandy’s for dinner. “Can I take my book?” asked Theo.
“You are reading a lot now, aren’t you? I suppose so, but don’t read at the table.”
Theo sat impatiently through the meal. Sharon and Mandy were talking about a man at work they both had a crush on, but all Theo could think about was the Huntleys. After dinner she almost reached the end of the book