Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill Like a Singing Bird CHE was fourteen, going on fifteen; and the world was a fascinating place. There were people who found Cherryvale a dull, poky little town to live in, but not Melissa. Not even in winter, when school and lessons took up so much time that it almost shut out reading and the wonderful dreams which reading is bound to bring you. Yet even school— especially high school the first year—was interesting. The more so when there was a teacher like Miss Smith, who looked too pretty to know so much about algebra and who was said to get a letter every day from a lieutenant—in the Philippines! Then there was ancient history, full of things fascinating enough to make up for algebra and physics. But even physics becomes suddenly thrilling at times. And always literature! Of course "grades" were bothersome, and sometimes you hated to show your monthly report to your parents, who seemed to set so much store by it; and sometimes you almost envied Beulah Crosswhite, who always got an A and who could ask questions which disconcerted even the teachers. Yes, even school was interesting. However, summertime was best, although then you must practiceyour music lesson two hours instead of one a day, dust the sitting room, and mind the baby. But you could spend long, long hours in the summerhouse, reading poetry out of the big Anthology and—this a secret—writing poetry yourself! It was heavenly to write poetry. Something soft and warm seemed to ooze through your being as you sat out there and watched the sorrow of a drab, drab sky; or else, on a bright day, a big shining cloud aloft like some silver-gold fairy palace and, down below, the smell of warm, new-cut grass, and whispers of little live things everywhere! It was then that you felt you'd have died if you couldn't have ... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.