Miss Enderbridge smiles. "Three thousand, two hundred and seventy-two. Though some of the old textbooks are boxed up in the attic, poor things, nobody wants an out-of-date chemistry primer. Novels, though, those never go out of date." Miss Enderbridge smiles slyly at Annie. "I might even consider showing you around, dear. I take bribes in baked goods." 

"We made you date squares."

"Delightful! I'll put on some tea and then we can have a nice little wander." 

"- A cold drink for Annie would be better," Evelyn says quickly. "She - gets hot very easily. It's a medical condition." 

"Oh, well, we really must have tea with date squares but I supposed iced tea wouldn't be too improper." She squints at Annie over her glasses. "You're a funny little one, aren't you. Too hot to drink tea, can't stand music, and you're blind but you can read?" She doesn't seem to expect an answer, just leads them out of the tiny shoe-room and down the very narrow hallway to the parlor and kitchen. 

It turns out that the reason the hallway is so narrow is that both walls are lined with bookshelves the whole way along. In fact, just about every wall in Miss Enderbridge's house has been enbookshelved, with the exception of the one where the stove and sink are. Most of the books look very old, but well taken care of. There are a truly unreasonable number of Penguin Classics dating back to the 1950s and earlier. 

"The children's books are upstairs," Miss Enderbridge tells Annie in a stage whisper, "but I don't mind if you have a poke around. Just don't let your stuffy foster mum catch you reading anything naughty." 

Evelyn HEARD THAT but she doesn't say anything, just brings the tin of date squares to the small mahogany dining table in the parlor while Miss Enderbridge gets out some nice bone china plates from the glass-fronted cabinet. 

"How am I supposed to know if they're naughty before I read them to check?"

"Well, dear, if there's not a picture of a scandalously-dressed lady on the front, it can't be too bad." Miss Enderbridge winks. "Don't worry, I'm only teasing. I don't keep the saucy books where just anyone might snatch them."

She marches over to the kitchen - it really is a marching sort of walk - and fills a black steel kettle with water at the tap before putting it on the stove. (Miss Enderbridge does not believe in electric kettles.) 

Evelyn's eternal question is whether Miss Enderbridge was always like this, including with her girls at the exclusive upper-crust boarding school where she taught for most of her life, or if she just spent long enough having to be prim and proper that she accumulated an enormous backlog of...well, this.

As usual, she doesn't say anything, just sits down in one of the hard-backed polished wood chairs and watches Annie with a smile. 

Annie is browsing titles.

She's currently perusing the 1920s Penguin Classics section, where offerings will include:

- The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

- Ulysses by James Joyce

- Cane by Jean Toomer

- The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

- The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

- Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

- The Trial by Franz Kafka

- The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes

- All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

- Passing by Nella Larsen

(There are, in Miss Enderbridge's head alone, gaps where Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence and Cheri by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette would go, if they didn't qualify as naughty books even by Miss Enderbridge's standards.) 

Ooooh.

She pulls the Kafka.

Evelyn is not herself particularly a literature person and does not exactly have fond memories of Kafka. (Jeremy had to write an essay about Symbolism(TM) in Kafka's The Metamorphosis for 11th grade English and complained bitterly about it for weeks.) 

She frowns at Miss Enderbridge. "Are you sure that book is appropriate? She's three." 

"She's a wise old soul trapped in a little body, is what she is." Miss Enderbridge cups a hand around her mouth. "Annie, dear, that book has a nasty magistrate in it. And you should skip some pages!" She names them, voice still raised, then whispers to Evelyn, "someone gets flogged and someone else gets seduced. It's not too bad, really."

The kettle boils. Miss Enderbridge measures some tea leaves into the teapot and fills it. 

The thing is, this probably will be a very good influence for Annie overall. Evelyn bites her tongue. 

Annie repeats back the page numbers dutifully. She likes Miss Enderbridge a lot. And also Kafka, apparently.

Miss Enderbridge makes a cup of "iced" tea by pouring some steeped hot tea into a cup and adding half a dozen ice cubes and some lemon juice. She sets it on the table on a crocheted placemat, then gets out bone-china cups and saucers and pours regular tea for herself and Evelyn. 

"I own nearly everything Kafka wrote!" she tells Annie. "Even some incomplete works. I'll take bribes in little book reports once we're out of date squares. Come along, dear, have some iced tea with us." She gives Evelyn a look over her glasses. "I don't mind if you read at the table." 

Annie will sit at the table with her date square and her iced tea and her book! "Are they all the same translator? I don't know how much that's making a difference."

"I would have to look it up in the covers! I know that one was translated by a Scottish couple, the Muirs, and they did some of the others, but maybe not all. There were quite a lot." 

Reading at the table together and occasionally commenting aloud on one's book is a very civilized way to spend a morning together, in Miss Enderbridge's opinion! Miss Enderbridge gets out her own book. She's rereading The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford, from the 1940s block of Penguin Classics. 

....Okay, Evelyn is going to feel like some kind of boor if she sits here on her phone. She goes to the shelf and picks out an Agatha Christie, which feels like a safe bet. 

Giggle.

Reading!

Miss Enderbridge occasionally giggles to herself over her book. She delicately and politely eats her way through five date squares, washing down each one with a fresh cup of tea. (She reboils the kettle twice; it's a little teapot, spread between three people.) 

Evelyn couldn't eat that many baked goods without regretting it, or at least without the bathroom scale making her regret it later. She's never sure if Miss Enderbridge is so thin because she secretly does yoga all day and has a metabolism like a furnace, or because she doesn't actually eat much when no one is bringing her food. Having more reason to visit is probably a good thing. 

She thinks a two-hour visit is reasonable, and after that they should make their way home, though she checks first with Miss Enderbridge if her police check is still valid, which Miss Enderbridge confirms it is, it lasts five years and she's only been retired for three. She promises to ask Annie's social worker about having Annie over here sometimes. It seems very good for her to spend some time with a fellow book-lover. (Not that Evelyn thinks of herself as disliking books, but she's definitely feeling outclassed here.) 

Miss Enderbridge points out that she rightly owes Annie another four books, for the date squares. Does Annie want to pick some out? If she liked Penguin Classics and wants to branch out to some other authors, she can scope out the rows from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s as well. Or Miss Enderbridge could just recommend her some more Kafka. 

She waggles her finger, teasingly. "Though they'd better come back here in perfect condition! No dog-earing my books, they're precious. Take a bookmark if you need one." 

"I wouldn't dog-ear your books! I might drop them, I'm very clumsy..."