Florence and Giles Read Online Free PDF Page A

I could not continue with the same book in the afternoon. I resolved therefore to make a smugglery of books in the tower (where there was little chance of detection anyway), which would remain there until they were finished, and for my reading day to be of two separate parts. I libraried the mornings away on solid books, philosophy, history and the like; I also began toteach myself languages and to work up a passable knowledge of French, Italian, Latin and Greek, although I would not vouch for my accent in the two former, never having heard either of them spoke; the afternoons were my fantasy time, appropriate for my tower. I indulged myself in Mrs Radcliffe, ancient myths and Edgar Allan Poe. The only fly in my ointment here, though, was that I must never let my concentration lapse, must never surrender myself too much to the words that swam before my eyes and in my head and distract myself to my doom.
    On the day after I first occupied my tower, I morninged out up the drive, measuring how long it would take Theo Van Hoosier to walk its length, from the moment he first visibled from the tower, to the moment when he vanished from view under the front porch of the house. How did I work out the time, I who had no timepiece? I counted it out, second by second, and to make sure my seconds were all the right length I figured them thus: one Shakespeare, two Shakespeare, three Shakespeare. In this way I reckoned that young Van Hoosier would be in view for four and a half minutes. Thus, when I set out for the tower room after lunch I would first sneak into the drawing room, which has a direct view of the drive, and make sure Van Hoosier was not in view. If he was not, then I had four and a half minutes to get to the tower, otherwise, if I took any longer and he should appear unviewed at the precise moment my back was turned when I set off, he could have reached the front door and be out of view again before I was at my post and so occasion all the dangerous calling and searching for me. Let me tell you, it was a stretch to make it to the tower in that time. If I happened to meet John or Mary or Meg or Mrs Grouse and they delayed me for even a few seconds it impossibled my journey in the allotted time and so meant I had to goback and check the drive and start once more from the beginning. Not only that, all the while I had to be one-Shakespearing-two-Shakespearing and if someone should speak to me and I should lose my number, then it was back to the drawing board – that is the drawing room – all over again.
    By the time I reached the bottom of the tower staircase I was usually up to two hundred-Shakespeare and it was touch and go whether I could climb the outside of the staircase, haul myself over the banisters, take off my shoes (for fear of my running feet booming out on the uncarpeted treads) and get to the tower room in time. On one occasion I just made it, peeped through the window and saw Van Hoosier’s hat disappearing under the front porch, so that I had to tear back down the staircase, haul myself back over the banisters, climb down the outside bit and get myself into the main corridor all over again before they started hollering for me. But then, no one had ever told me having a secret life was going to be easy.

4
    That first day when it snowed I figured myself likely weather-proofed against the Van Hoosier boy, but I had made the very mistake that all too many people made with me (who would have thought I had two book nests? who would have thought I Frenched and Shakespeared?), namely I judged him by appearances. I figured him a spineless sort of tall weed, who would buckle in two without his starched shirt to hold him upright. So I grudged an admiration for him that day when I upglanced the drive from the drawing room (I had not then found my tower refuge, of course) and saw him Wenceslasing his way through the drifted snow. A dogged and doglike devotion to me, I realised, worth so much more than his doggerel could