Miss Billy (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | Eleanor H. Porter | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

Billy’s father, annoyed to find himself with a daughter instead of a son, insisted on naming her after his childhood best friend William Henshaw. Billy’s parents both died when she was a child, and when the book opens she is eighteen and the aunt she has been living with ever since her parents’ deaths has just died too. She’s alone in the world, so the family lawyer suggests that she invite herself to her namesake’s house.

William is a widower who lives in a house in Boston with his younger brothers Cyril and Bertram. Bertram calls their house the Strata; each brother has his own floor and his own interests, and keeps himself to himself. Cyril is the austere, musical one, William is the kindly collector of everything from spiders to teapots, and Bertram is an artist.

Billy writes to William, and of course William fails to realize that she’s a girl until she shows up at the train station and he has to quickly telephone to his sister to be a temporary chaperone. The sister, Kate, is very interfering, so they only have her stay until they can get an old friend called Aunt Hannah to come on a more permanent basis.

Billy settles in. She makes friends with all three brothers, and involves herself in all of their activities; she helps William catalogue his collections, she’s pretty enough that Bertram often wants to paint her, and when Cyril discovers that she has a very good ear for music, he becomes less cranky and starts giving her piano lessons. The levels of the Strata begin to mix together more, and everything seems good, which of course means that something bad is going to happen.

Eleanor Hodgman Porter (1868-1920) was an American novelist. Born in Littleton, New Hampshire, Eleanor Hodgman trained as a singer but later turned to writing. In 1892 she married John Lyman Porter and moved to Massachusetts. Porter mainly wrote children's literature, for example three Miss Billy books, Cross Currents (1928), The Turn of the Tide (1928) and Six Star Ranch (1916). Her most famous novel is Pollyanna (1913), later followed by a sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up (1915). Her adult novels include The Story of Marco (1920), Just David (1915), The Road to Understanding (1916), Oh, Money! Money! (1917), Dawn (1918), Keith's Dark Tower (1919), Mary Marie (1920), Sister Sue (1921), short stories include Money, Love and Kate (1924) and Little Pardner (1927).