A Quiet Time for Molly by Norah T. Pulling

This book is old enough that it doesn't even have a publishing date in it, so don't expect to find it in your local book store - or even the library. But it isn't worth fretting about. The story is not bad, but it is a bit dated. I bought this book, thinking it was another British boarding school book. It isn't. Instead, it is a story about a girl who goes for a holiday at the house of one of her mother's friends. The friend and her husband have two children, both boys - one older and the other younger than Molly. The house is an older one, and is amazingly large and complicated. It also has two secret hiding places that the two boys steadfastly refuse to tell Molly how to find. She is determined to find them, however. After a few mishaps, which cause her to fall out of favor with the boys, she not only finds the first of the two, but finds a second, even better one. This turns out to actually be a different one from the one the boys knew about. While showing it to the boys, they accidently are trapped in it, during the birthday party for the younger boy. The cleverness of their eventual rescue is interesting.

One aspect of this book strikes me as particularly difficult for a current audience: the complexity and size of the house itself. I have been in some big houses in the United States, but none of them even come close to this one in size - it is 4 stories tall, not including the basement and just the picture gallery room is 60 paces long. Assuming that, for a child, a pace is about 2 feet long, that would make a single room in the house 120 feet long. Even if a pace is only a foot long (and the girl does take pains to say that she took LONG strides), that would still make the room 60 feet long. That is one big room - and it is only one of many. There are three main staircases and corridors and halls that merit mentioning for their turns. The grounds around the house are equally spacious - including a lake and massive gardens. In fact the description of the picture gallery and the gardens reminds me a lot of Versailles. The house strains credulity a bit - at least for this American.

Well, at least Molly's quiet time was anything but quiet.