The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

stared back at her. Young, certainly not more than sixteen, sullen, untidy, her too-full face blotched with patches of crimson acne.
    “I’m Margie Hartwell.” The girl paused as if this explanation should be enough for anyone, and then she added reluctantly and as if compelled by Fredericka’s evident hostility, “I’ve come for some things Mom wanted from the storeroom.”
    Fredericka was about to forbid her to enter the house when she realized that she was behaving stupidly simply because she did not like the girl and her unannounced arrival. After all, Miss Hartwell had spoken of this child as her niece. With an effort, Fredericka managed to say nothing, but she turned away abruptly toward the kitchen and the more cheerful thought of coffee.
    Margie banged through the screen door and Fredericka could hear her heavy footsteps go up the stairs and into the room over the office which Philippine had called the personal storeroom and which she had discovered to be full of family possessions.
    This kind of behaviour might be all right for South Sutton, but it was not going to be all right for Fredericka Wing.
    By the time Margie returned, Fredericka was finishing her breakfast. The girl stood in the doorway, looking hungry, but Fredericka did not ask her in.
    “I wish,” she said stiffly, “that another time you would let me know when you want to come into the house. I live here now, you know.”
    “But Auntie said—”
    Fredericka cut her short. “It doesn’t matter what Miss Hartwell said. I’m in charge here now and I don’t like people banging in and out unasked.”
    The girl stared at her and the blotches on her face turned an angry red, but she said nothing. After a moment, she turned and went out the back door, slamming it deliberately behind her.
    And that’s that, Fredericka thought. Now, just because I’m tired and have a cold and was startled, I’ve had to antagonize that miserable child. She got up and went to the sink to wash the dishes. Outside, the hammock looked soggy and bedraggled. Should she have covered it with something? Oh, blast it, blast everything. If this place wasn’t so full of lunatics, she’d have started off on the right foot. As it was…
    But as the morning wore on, and Fredericka suffered no further disturbance, she began to feel better. Systematically checking stock, she found it very much to her own taste. Miss Hartwell might be scatterbrained but she certainly knew books.
    Her find of the morning was in the small secondhand books section in the room opposite the office—a shelf of the long out-of-print novels of Mary J. Holmes and several other Victorian women writers that Fredericka had been trying to track down for months. Now, if only she wasn’t too busy getting settled, she could get to work on her own reading and writing almost immediately. This thought cheered her so much that, somewhat to her own surprise, she began to sing through her short repertoire of hymns. The incipient cold did not help them, but Fredericka had forgotten that she had ever thought of a cold, or been depressed. The Hartwell Bookshop had suddenly become paradise on earth.
    She worked through the three rooms carefully and ended up in the Lending Library which she found in good order, as were the papers neatly stacked on the office desk. There was also a pile of books with a note in Miss Hartwell’s large scrawl that was now all too familiar to the bookshop’s new manager:
    These are for P. Mohun. Ordered ages ago. He’ll want them sooner than at once. Margie can take a note over to the college for him, or he’ll be in.
    Fredericka looked through the titles with quickened interest. It seemed that Peter Mohun—Colonel Peter Mohun—bought books on American military history before the Civil War—Indians and frontier fighting. Was that the subject he taught in the college then?
    There were two other books, each with a note on top. Kathleen Winsor from the lending library marked with the name “Catherine Clay” and Carl Van Doren’s Life of Franklin, marked “Roger Sutton.”
    Well, Fredericka thought, that ought to tell me something about the son and daughter of the first family of South Sutton. And, also, of course, a little more about this interesting man, Colonel Peter Mohun.
    A hesitant ray of sunlight flashed across the desk and as quickly retreated. Fredericka got up and went to the window. Yes, patches of blue sky. Perhaps it would be sensible to go out. What had