Harriet the Spy, Double Agent by Louise Fitzhugh

Author:Louise Fitzhugh [Gold, Maya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-42109-8
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2005-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

Harriet woke up the next day with her mind full of questions. She looked at the flashlight on her night table, which the night before had flashed its usual nine-thirty semaphore, just as if nothing were different. Everything’s different, she thought. Her parents had been upset with her lengthy midday disappearance (though not as upset as they would have been if they’d known where she had gone, she consoled herself). Harriet had had enough presence of mind to place a call to Janie, urging her to say, if and when questioned, that they’d been together.

“Where were you really?” Janie had asked.

“That’s classified. Urgent spy business.”

“Oh.” Janie’s voice flattened. “That.” But she had agreed to hold up the story, so Harriet’s only transgression was not having let her parents know in advance where she’d be for three hours. For this, she’d been grounded, and had to spend all day in her house doing homework, no TV, no phone calls. It would be a dull Sunday.

Good time to catch up on my notebooks, she thought. Sometimes Harriet liked to sit down and reread a volume or two to see if she’d failed to report anything of significance. Now she resolved to go all the way back to the first time she’d met Annie, aka Rosarita Sauvage.

Harriet brushed her teeth, dressed, and went down to the kitchen for breakfast. Morning light slanted in from the street-level windows in front and the snow-covered garden in back. She poured cornflakes into her favorite bowl and reached into the fruit bowl for a banana. On the counter beside it, she spotted a letter in Ole Golly’s unmistakable back-slanted handwriting, with the dark and light strokes of a chiseled calligraphy pen. It must have arrived in yesterday’s mail, she thought. Why didn’t anyone tell me? She ripped the envelope open and read.

Dear Harriet, Ole Golly had written,

I can no more explain falling in love than I could explain how to breathe. Both are involuntary and both are essential. Poets have pondered the subject for centuries.

Mr. H. L. Mencken edited a superb dictionary of quotations, grouped by topic rather than author. The entries for love run a full sixteen pages. I will leave you with just this one, from Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “Whoever lives true life, will love true love.”

As ever,

Catherine Golly Waldenstein

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