The Harriet Bean 3-Book Omnibus Read Free Page B

lost touch,” he said. “I’ve got one or two addresses somewhere, but it’s all so long ago.”
    I was determined to persevere.
    “Please, let’s try,” I said. “Please, let’s see if we can do it.”
    “I’ll think about it,” my father said. “Maybe.”
    Over the next few days, I thought about little else. My father, though, appeared to forget about it all and seemed rather surprised when I asked him for the addresses he had told me about.
    “I want to write to my aunts,” I said to him. “Could you give me those addresses you had?”
    He looked at me vaguely. “Aunts? Oh yes, of course, all those aunts.” He frowned. “I don’t think the addresses will be any use. They’re from about ten years ago.”
    I insisted that I still wanted to try, and, grumbling under his breath about being disturbed, he went off to search in a drawer of his desk. His desk was always overflowing with bits of paper, and I was astonished that he ever managed to find anything there.
    At last he came back with a scrap of paper.
    “This is the only one I can find,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to the others.”
    I took the piece of paper with trembling hands. The name Veronica was written at the top, and underneath there was the number of a house and a street in a town with a name I had never heard before. I fetched my diary and carefully transferred the information to a page at the back. The search had begun.
    I did not write a long letter to Aunt Veronica. All I did was introduce myself and tell her that the only reason why I had not written before was that my father had never told me of her existence.
    “You must have thought me very rude,” I wrote, “not even to send you a Christmas card. But it really is my father’s fault. Now I am writing to make up for it all.”
    I sent the letter, dropping it into the mailbox with a silent wish that it would find its destination. Then, for the next ten days, I eagerly awaited the arrival of the mailman.
    “Anything for me?” I asked as he made his way up the garden path.
    The answer was always the same.
    “Nothing today. Sorry.”
    Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. And then…
    When the mailman handed me the letter, I could hardly believe that it had really come. I examined the postmark and caught my breath as I saw that it was from the very town I had written. It was a letter from Aunt Veronica—that was all it could be.
    There was a single page inside. “Dear Harriet Bean,” I read. “I opened the letter that you sent to your aunt because I now live in that house and it was delivered to me. If I knew where to send it, I could have forwarded it on to her unopened. But I’m afraid that I have no idea where she is. She went away from here years ago and did not leave a new address. All I can say is that I believe that she worked in a circus. This meant that she was away from home most of the time and never had the time to make many friends. So nobody knows where she is anymore. I’m very sorry, and I do hope that you find her.”
    I put the letter down and closed my eyes.I was bitterly disappointed, but I knew that I was not going to give up. At least I now had a clue. Aunt Veronica worked in a circus. There were probably quite a number of circuses, and I might not find the right one, but I was sure to discover somebody in the circus world who had met her or who would know something about her.
    I had not been told what she did in the circus, though, and that could make my search more difficult. Did she sell tickets in the box office? Did she work with horses, or even lions? Or was she one of those people who swing on the high trapeze? All of these were possible.
    From then on, I studied the newspaper every day to see if there were any circuses performing nearby. There were all sorts of other events—concerts, races, motorcycle shows—but nothing about a circus. Then, at last, just when I was beginning to think that circuses had disappeared altogether, my eye fell