Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/214

204 Laurel flushed.

The librarian began returning the drawers to their places with emphatic little jerks and shoves. Then, glancing at Laurel sharply, she remarked, "Why, you've picked them from A to Z! What book is it you're hunting for, anyway?"

Laurel was forced to answer. "I wasn't hunting for any special book."

"What were you doing, then?"

"I was just looking at the titles for fun," Laurel murmured.

The librarian gave her a withering look. "The card catalogue is not fun. It's for use," she reprimanded. "It's not a toy. It's a tool. Don't ever play with it again."

Once out on the street Laurel said to herself, fighting with tears she could not control, "I'll never go near it again! I'll never go into the building again!"

It was six months before her hunger for books overcame her fear of being recognized, and humiliated a second time.

spent many hours in the trolley-cars in Boston. Her mother decided it was too late in the year to attempt to place her in any private school (of course public schools were no more to be considered in Boston than in Milhampton), but Mr. Hinckly said Boston was full of splendid institutions that specialized in about every subject that existed, and he could arrange for Laurel to take up courses of instruction in almost any of them.