The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn Read Free

took her some time. As Anthony had noticed before, Miss Eells had trouble doing some things, in spite of her brisk, businesslike air. While he sat waiting patiently, she knocked the hot plate halfway off its little table when she tried to turn it on. Finally she got the switch to obey her, and the coil of wire began to glow red. As soon as she had the hot plate set straight on the table, she took a step backward and knocked the teakettle off the corner of her desk. With a sigh, she stooped, picked up the kettle, and carried it into her private bathroom to fill it. Anthony heard the kettle drop into the sink a couple of times, and he heard Miss Eells saying something under her breath.
    Now the kettle was warming up on the hot plate. Miss Eells opened a small built-in cupboard in the wall behind her desk and took out two cups, two saucers, and the sugar bowl. She tried to hold them all at once, and she just barely managed to get them all to the desk without dropping them. Then she knocked over the sugar bowl and spent several minutes carefully sweeping the spilled sugar off the desk blotter into the little bowl. Some eraser dust and pencil shavings got mixed in with the sugar, but Miss Eells didn’t notice.
    By now, Miss Eells was looking flustered and a bit disheveled. She sat down and mopped her face with her pocket handkerchief. “Well now, Anthony! And how is the world treating you these days?”
    Anthony frowned. “Not so good, Miss Eells. My folks were arguing again last night. It made me feel real bad.”
    Miss Eells smiled sympathetically. “Money again?”
    “Yeah. My mom thinks that we don’t have enough money to live on and that we’ll all be out in the street if we don’t watch out.”
    Miss Eells had to bite her tongue to keep from saying that his mother was a worrywart, but of course she couldn’t say this, not to Anthony, so she just sat and watched the kettle with a discontented look on her face. “Miss Eells?”
    “Yes, Anthony? What is it?”
    “Do you think the man that built this library really did hide a treasure somewheres?”
    “Oh, that old story! You mean you’ve heard it, too? Well, who knows if it’s true? But I’m afraid the only treasure you and I will ever see, Anthony, is the money we make by working for it.”
    Anthony said nothing. He just looked gloomy. Miss Eells went back to watching the kettle, but then, quite suddenly, she had an idea. Turning to Anthony, she said, “Do you think you’d be happier if you had a job of some kind?”
    Anthony brightened up immediately. “Wow! You bet I would! Do you know about a job I could get?”
    “No,” said Miss Eells. Anthony’s face fell, but she added quickly, “However, and be that as it may, I am the librarian here, and now and then I have a little extra money to play with. And too much work besides. Most people think all a librarian has to do is check out books. How would you like to be a page at this library?”
    Anthony was mystified. The only pages he’d ever heard of, aside from the pages in a book, were the little boys in fairy tales who came in and blew horns and announced things. They wore funny-looking costumes and had shoes with long, pointed toes. Anthony wondered if that was the sort of thing Miss Eells had in mind.
    Miss Eells smiled. She could tell that Anthony didn’t have the faintest idea of what a library page was. She had just opened her mouth to tell him when the kettle started making about-to-boil noises. It trembled and rattled and whined, and little wisps of steam came curling out of the spout. Miss Eells got up and opened the cupboard again. She took out a big brown teapot with a gold band around it, and a yellow box of Lapsang Souchong tea. Then she took the kettle off the hot plate and poured a little of the boiling water into the teapot. She swirled it around and dumped it into a potted geranium in the corner. The geranium was dying, and the hot water wasn’t going to help it much. As Miss Eells