In the library there are the loveliest books on flowers—both editions of Curtis, the Botanical Magazine, two Sowerby's English Botanies, and lots more in foreign languages. Maid Margaret thinks she will go in for botany so as to get these. But I like best just reading books—or browsing among them, rather. For of course you can't really read forty thousand volumes, even if you knew all the languages they are written in.
There are sets of all the magazines that ever were: Annual Registers, Scots Magazines, Gentleman's, Blackwood's, Chamber's, Leisure Hour, Cassell's, Magazine of Art—oh, everything! And the library, being about eighty feet long altogether, is the loveliest place for wet Saturdays—so "mousey," and window-seaty, with big logs burning on a brass fireplace, and the storm pattering above and all about. It has a zinc roof, only nicely painted and covered with creepers. There is room enough for everybody to lie about, and read, and draw, all the time keeping out of Big Growly's way if he is working.
Even if he does see us, he only says, "Get out, Imps! I can't be bothered with you just now!"
Only if you are careful and have the kitchen key, you can tell by the growling and the "tick-tack" whereabouts the Ogre of Castle Bookworm is, and slip into another part. Best of all is the Old Observatory, where there is a bed in a little cabin, and windows all about, and a big brass telescope high overhead, with shelves and all sorts of fittings as in a ship.
It is first-rate, I tell you. Only you have to put the books you have been using back again exactly, or you will get Ursa Major after you, and he will fetch you out of your bed to do it, storming at you all the time. Then maybe he will forget, and show you the first edition of some book that there are only three or four of in all the world!
You don't really need to be afraid of Big Growly. It makes rather a noise while It lasts, but once It is finished, there is no more about it. It is like a thunderstorm which you hear sleepily among the hills in the night. All you have to do is just to pull the bed-clothes over your head and put your fingers in your ears. There is not the least danger, not really.
Altogether we are about as well off for Grown-ups as it is possible to be, and though lessons are seen to sharply enough—that is all in the day's work. While for the rest, we live less of the Double Life than other children have to do—that is, we don't have to "pretend good," and that makes all the difference.
And this brings me to the tale of Polly Pretend. That was what we called her. And by and by other people found her out, and did so too. And it is an awful thing to be going through the world with a name like that.
Yet Polly Pretend wasn't half a bad girl either. Indeed, if she had been left alone, she would have been quite nice. It wasn't her fault. Only this tale is a "terrible example" for parents and guardians. They put such things, like nasty medicine, in the books we have to read, and why shouldn't I hit back, when it is only my poor old Dear Diary that sees it? Till Mr. Dignus gets ready to print it, that is.
Polly Pretend had a father and mother, but worse than most. If ever they had been young, they had forgotten all about it. Polly mustn't run or romp, nor speak above her breath, nor climb a tree, nor do anything that makes life happy and really worth living.