Dreams need to be nurtured and encouraged – and so do people who are alone in the world
BY HANNAH DOLBY
It was as she bent down to replace a book on the second shelf from the bottom that Miss Frobisher first noticed the interloper.
She briefly looked through the gap and saw a small blue eye staring at her. She put the book back quickly, pulled it out and peeked again. The eye had gone.
She moved further along the shelf to another gap, looked through it and saw a wild tuft of brown hair.
She whipped round the bookcase and grabbed the arm of a small boy kneeling on the floor.
“Sorry, miss,” he said. “I am not doing anything wrong. I am only looking at the books.”
“If you do not run, I shall release you,” Miss Frobisher said. He nodded and she regarded him curiously.
He was not a usual library patron; six or seven, thin, with grubby knees and a grey jumper fraying at the neck. He must have wriggled past the turnstile, perhaps to escape the summer heat outside.
The Norwood Free Public Library had only opened three years ago, in the summer of 1893. It was very grand, with shining tiled walls, oak bookcases and busts of Homer, Sir Walter Scott, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and other grand men looming from the balcony. Many books still had uncut pages, which she had to cut open with a paperknife.
The boy was lucky because The Librarian, who would have thrown him out onto the street with a kick and a slap for his trouble, had gone out for lunch. The building was open to all, but The Librarian favoured the moneyed classes.
“But this is the architecture section,” Miss Frobisher said. “Why aren’t you in the children’s section?”
She should not encourage him, but as an assistant librarian she was not paid enough to be severe.
“I like architecture,” the boy said. “Buildings. Escutcheons, pilasters, archivolts, entablature.” He said each word proudly, carefully.
“Those are . . . architectural words?” Miss Frobisher said, a little flummoxed.
“Yes, they are all bits of buildings, miss,” he said. “I love the descriptions.”
“Where do you live?” she asked.
He squirmed. “Godlingtons.”
“The orphanage?”
“Yes. It’s very grand. Wealthy people lived there, before. It has a tripartite façade, horseshoe swags; it’s built of granite. It will be there forever.”
He did not pronounce the architectural words quite correctly, as
