Read Online Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright - Free Book Online

books; we’ll be able to tell our children and grandchildren about it. I hope we stay here all night!”
    â€œOh gee,” sobbed Citronella. She wished with all her heart that she hadn’t read Duchess Olga; it was too scary. She simply had no courage left. If only she had picked out a good peaceful book about boarding school girls or something, she wouldn’t be so frightened now. Suddenly she had such a terrible thought that she stopped crying.
    â€œGarnet!” she cried. “Do you know what day it is? Saturday! That means we’ll be here till day after tomorrow. We’ll starve!”
    Garnet’s excitement went flat. It would be awful to stay in here as long as that.
    â€œLet’s bang on the windows,” she suggested. “Maybe someone will come.”
    They banged on the glass and shouted at the tops of their lungs. But the library was some distance from the street, and the thick maples deadened the noise they made. Blaiseville people were peacefully eating their suppers and never heard a sound.
    Slowly the dusk sifted into the room. The bookcases looked tall and solemn, and the pictures on the wall were solemn too: steel engravings of Napoleon at Elba, and Washington Crossing the Delaware.
    There was no telephone in the library and no electric light. There were gas fixtures but Garnet and Citronella could not find any matches. They rummaged through Miss Pentland’s desk but it was full of useless things like filing cards, rubber stamps, elastic bands and neat little rolls of string.
    Citronella pounced upon a chocolate bar in a pigeonhole.
    â€œWe won’t starve right away anyhow,” she said, brightening a little. “I don’t think Miss Pentland would mind if we ate it, do you?”
    â€œWe’ll buy her another when we get out,” said Garnet; so they divided it and stood, sadly munching, at the window nearest the street.
    The twilight deepened.
    â€œWho is that!” cried Garnet suddenly. They saw a dim, small figure slowly approaching on the cement walk that led to the library door. The person seemed to be bowing.
    Citronella began thumping on the window joyously. “It’s Opal Clyde, bouncing her ball,” she said. “Yell, Garnet. Yell and bang.”
    They both yelled and banged; and Opal after a scared glance at the dark window scurried down the path as fast as she could go, without coming nearer to see what was making the noise.
    â€œDo you think she’ll tell someone?” asked Citronella anxiously.
    â€œOh, she thought it was a spook,” said Garnet in disgust. “Probably no one will believe her if she does.”
    They watched hopefully. All over Blaiseville the street lamps blossomed suddenly with light, but only a faint gleam penetrated the maple leaves. The two girls heard cars coming and going and faint shouts of children playing in back yards. They pounded and called till they were hoarse and their knuckles ached. But nobody came.
    After a while they gave it up as a bad job and returned to the window seat.
    The room was very dark now; strange, unknown and filled with shadows. It was as though it wakened at nightfall; as though it breathed and wakened and began to wait. There were tiny creaking sounds and rustlings, and airy scamperings of mouse feet.
    â€œI don’t like it,” whispered Citronella. “I don’t like it all: My own voice scares me. I don’t dare talk out loud.”
    â€œNeither do I,” murmured Garnet. “I feel as if all those books were alive and listening.”
    â€œI wonder why our folks don’t come after us,” said Citronella.
    â€œThey don’t know where we are, that’s why!” answered Garnet. “They don’t even know we came to town: and we didn’t tell Mr. Freebody that we were going to the library.”
    â€œI wish I’d never learned to read,” sighed Citronella. “I wish I was some kind of animal and