“Well, you see,” said Mary, looking up at Aunt Nan’s portrait, “the more I stay in this library, the more I like Aunt Nan’s books, and the more I want to please Aunt Nan herself. I like her, Katy.”
“I don’t!” said Katy, eyeing the portrait sideways. “You never had her for a neighbor, you see.”
“She never did anything to you, did she?” asked Mary.
“No-o,” drawled Katy reluctantly. “She never did anything either good or bad to me. But—she was awfully queer!”
“Of course she was,” agreed Mary. “But that isn’t the worst thing in the world, to be queer. And she was awfully kind to me.— Say, Katy, don’t you like Shakespeare?”
“Not very well,” confessed Katy.
“Well, I do,” Mary asserted. “I haven’t read much of him, but I’m going to. Every time I look at that head of Shakespeare on the mantelpiece, I remember that it was my composition about Shakespeare that was at the bottom of almost everything nice that has happened in Crowfield. Why, if it hadn’t been for him, perhaps we shouldn’t have come to live here at all, and then I shouldn’t ever have known you, Katy Summers!”
“Gracious!” exclaimed Katy. “Wouldn’t that have been awful? Yes, I believe I do like him a little, since he did that. I wrote a composition about him once, too. It didn’t bring anything good in my direction. But then, it wasn’t a very good composition. I only got a C with it.”
“Well,” said Mary, “I feel as if I owe him something, and Aunt Nan something. And sooner or later I’m going to read everything he ever wrote.”
“Goodness!” said Katy. “Then you’ll never have time to read anything else, I guess. Look!”— She pointed around the walls. “Why, there are hundreds of Shakespeares. Hundreds and hundreds!”