“Yes, do you remember them?”
“I don’t think I ever visited your family when you lived in that house,” Judy admitted, “but I did see some chalkware lambs in a shop up in North Farringdon.”
“They’re not uncommon. Whoever looted the house left us nothing but a few chairs, a bare table, and a kitchen stove. And the piano, but that was water-soaked and ruined. We sold the house and rented a furnished apartment in New York. My brother was married that year, so there was just Mother and me. She died soon afterwards. Losing everything was just too much for her,” the librarian finished.
“You never found out who did all that looting, did you?” Judy asked.
She knew the answer. It seemed to distress Mrs. Wheatley to talk about her former home. Like many of the people who used to live in Roulsville, she had moved away only to come back.
“We’re buying one of the new houses and gradually furnishing it with antiques,” she confided. “Bob can’t understand why I want them, but I guess I treasure old things for the same reason you do, Judy. Thank you for sharing your treasures with the children who come to the library. You, too, Holly. The sampler is yours, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it belonged to my great grandmother, Felicity Kane. Judy helped me find out who she was. I can help her with the October exhibit, too,” Holly offered. “There’s a map of the world among my uncle’s things. It’s the way people imagined it in the time of Columbus with pictures of sea monsters near what they thought was the edge of the world.”
“Lovely! Lovely!” Mrs. Wheatley exclaimed. “We’ve come a long way since then, haven’t we?”
“Full circle,” Holly said. “Then we were afraid of sea monsters. Now it’s each other.”
When the girls were outside the library Judy asked, “Why did you say we’re afraid of each other?”