I put my fingers around the unmarked ring of the spyglass and twisted. The scene became clear. Oh no! A hairy brown spider clung to a vine! I couldn't go there! I'd go to the desert to find a dragon. I began to reset the spyglass, but then I stopped myself. A spider was worse than a dragon? No. My first monsters would be spiders, then.

I'm solitary as a pulled tooth, Lonely as an unwelcome truth, Lost as a minnow out of school, A genius in a crop of fools.

He -it- was a specter! I stepped back, stunned.

It is helpful to know the proper way to behave, so one can decide whether or not to be proper.

He bowed. 'The young lady must not dance alone.

I never met a word I didn't love

I had to share a room with my sister, who is five and a half years older than I am. We didn't get along well, and I felt that I had no privacy. So books were my privacy, because no one could join me in a book, no one could comment on the action or make fun of it. I used to spend hours reading in the bathroom -- and we only had one bathroom in our small apartment!