Page:Wha Katy Did Next - Coolidge (1886).djvu/132

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122
WHAT KATY DID NEXT.

Raleigh, she marched out of it with a pale and wrathful face.

"If this is English history, I never mean to learn any more of it, and neither shall Mabel," she declared.

But it is not possible for Amy or any one else not to learn a great deal of history simply by going about London. So many places are associated with people or events, and seeing the places makes one care so much more for the people or the events, that one insensibly questions and wonders. Katy, who had "browsed" all through her childhood in a good old-fashioned library, had her memory stuffed with all manner of little scraps of information and literary allusions, which now came into use. It was like owning the disjointed bits of a puzzle, and suddenly discovering that properly put together they make a pattern. Mrs. Ashe, who had never been much of a reader, considered her young friend a prodigy of intelligence; but Katy herself realized how inadequate and inexact her knowledge was, and how many bits were