What a disappointment! The big beautiful book was missing; in its place was a dog-eared old paperback with no illustrations at all, not even a front cover picture. Both covers had been torn off, for that matter, and so was the title page – deliberately, it appeared – leaving no clue to its contents, no indication of what the thing was about. In any other place, I would have passed it over without a second glance. But after waiting so long for this moment, I had to stay and give it an honest try at least, especially with the whole afternoon ahead of me. And I couldn't just thumb through this one, my reading ability wasn't that developed yet. So I stretched out on the bed and began resolutely, frustrated but still hopeful, still conscious of the secret hiding-place.
Midway through the first chapter, my frustration started to fade slowly as the story took shape and showed signs of life. And pretty soon – what a surprise! – my disappointment turned to delight. In its own unimpressive way, this well-worn paperback might prove to be a real help to my education, an interesting supplement to the arty picture book, a kind of sequel almost. Some of the words gave me trouble and I thought about fetching a dictionary to work with, maybe even the fat one from my father's study. But I had a feeling those particular expressions wouldn't be listed anyway – and besides, it was growing easier to figure them out just from their repeated use. Even more important, I could feel myself getting all warm and tingly inside, quite familiar now, hardly the mood for looking up words in the dictionary.