"I can go all the way on the cars," she said to herself. "Nothing could happen to me, and I can't ask Aunt Zélie when she isn't here." Trying to satisfy her conscience in this way, she found her pocket-book and started out. It happened that she saw nobody she knew as she waited on the corner for the car, feeling very independent.
The afternoon was cold and cloudy, and the ride seemed longer than usual.
"I wish I had asked Dora to come with me," she thought; "I shall have to hurry to get hack before dark."
"I want to go to the library just a minute, Bruce," she said to the man who opened the door.
He looked somewhat surprised to see her alone, but made no comment, only replying, "I am afraid it is rather cold there; we are having the furnace cleaned to-day."
"I only want to get a book. I'm not going to stay. And you needn't wait, Bruce. I can let myself out," she said.
The library was at the end of the hall, almost opposite the front door, but somewhat cut off from the rest of the house, as it communicated with no other room.
As Louise entered she pushed the door to behind her. Yes, there was the volume she wanted on the table. Taking it up and turning to go, her eyes fell on the corner where Uncle William kept his story books—books intended for his young guests, which he very much enjoyed reading himself sometimes, and to which he was constantly adding. As there seemed to be some new ones, Louise sat down to examine them, and before she knew it became absorbed. When at length she looked up it was beginning to grow dark.
"Dear me! what will Aunt Zélie say? I must hurry," she exclaimed, and running to the door she stopped in bewilderment, for there wasn't any knob, and yet it was securely latched. She was very much puzzled. For a few minutes it seemed rather funny to be fastened up in Uncle William's library, but when all her attempts to open the door failed it did not seem so much like a joke. She tried pounding on it, but any noise such small hands might make could not be heard twenty feet away. Louise soon realized this; the servants she knew were on the other side of the house and might not come near the library till the next day. She thought of the windows, and tried them one after another, standing on tiptoe on the sill, but she could not move the fastenings. The one that faced the street was too far back for any possibility of attracting the attention of passers-by.
"What shall I do? They won't know what has become of me," she said. She wondered if Bruce would not come to turn on the light in the hall, only to be disappointed again, for when she peeped through the keyhole it was already burning. Again and again she tried to move the latch with a pen-knife, and then with a paper-cutter, but without success.