Mother Knew Best by Dorothy Scannell

Author:Dorothy Scannell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2015-12-10T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Purely Platonic

Joining the public library was a red-letter day for me. It was one department then with no books for small children. Choosing a book was a difficult task for a beginner, for books were entered in catalogues under code numbers, long numbers they seemed to me. Hundreds of corresponding numbers were displayed behind the glass windows on the library walls. There were never enough catalogues and much time was spent in waiting one’s turn for a catalogue. Then having chosen a book the glass windows would have to be searched for the number. If the number was blue, one was in luck, but if red, the book was out, and back to the catalogue which of course someone else had then, always such a slow person it seemed to me. At first I did not understand the catalogues, and my reading consisted of Mistress of the Upper Sixth, Fifth Form at St…, Terror of the School, until I discovered different authors. I left my normal world and lived in a world of fantasy. I was deaf to all other sounds and Mother sometimes got cross because I would not put my book down for one moment. We had possessed one dog-eared book that all the family had read and cried over. Froggie’s Little Brother.

Froggie and his little brother were orphans living in a garret. Froggie had scoured the streets for a crust of bread. His little brother was dying and one knew it wouldn’t be long before Froggie, too, breathed his last. He found a stale crust of bread in the gutter and was feeding it to his little brother to save his life, when out of the wainscotting came their only friend in life, a mouse; this friend too was starving and with great emotion Froggie’s little brother said, ‘Feed the mouse.’ One knew as the mouse was eating this rich repast, Froggie’s little brother would gasp his last, followed by a slow dying Froggie. At this point my sobs became uncontrollable. Mother thought she had got used to this torture with my eight brothers and sisters, but my broken heart was one to beat all others and one day she snatched the book from me and fed it to the copper fire fearing I would make myself ill.

Now Mother would be unable to treat the library books in this fashion, for defilement was not allowed and a punishable offence. We read at school, of course, but this was not a real pleasure, for all reading was aloud and as we read paragraphs in turn one had to keep pace with the slowest reader. Many times I tried to dash on secretly, but I could never keep the place in the book with my finger and was always being called out to read; being so many pages ahead, I was unable to discover where the previous girl had left off, to the anger of the teacher. I used to pray they would have examinations in silent reading.

I

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