hen the children returned to school after the winter vacation, they discovered something wonderful and new, and greeted their discovery with shouts of joy. Opposite the row of classroom cars stood the new car, beside the flower bed by the Assembly Hall. In their absence it had become a library! Ryo-chan, the janitor, whom everyone respected and who could do all sorts of things, had obviously been working terribly hard. He had put up lots and lots of shelves in the car, and they were filled with rows of books of all kinds and colors. There were desks and chairs, too, where you could sit and read.

"This is your library," the headmaster said. "Any of these books may be read by anyone. You needn't fear that some books are reserved for certain grades, or anything like that. You can come in here any time you like. If you want to borrow a book and take it home, you may. When you've read it, be sure and bring it back! And if you've got any books at home you think the others would like to read, I'd be delighted if you'd bring them here. At any rate, please do as much reading as you can!"

"Let's make the first class today a library class!" cried the children, unanimously.

"Is that what you'd like to do?" said the head-master, smiling happily to see them so excited. "All right, then, why not?"

Whereupon, the whole student body of Tomoe--all fifty children--piled into the library car. With great excitement they picked our books they wanted and tried to sit down, but only about half of them could find seats and the rest had to stand. It looked exactly like a crowded train, with people reading books standing up. It was quite a funny sight.

The children were overjoyed. Totto-chan couldn't read too well yet, so she chose a book with a picture in it that looked most entertaining. When everyone had a book in hand and started turning the pages, the car suddenly became quiet. But not for long. The silence was soon broken by a jumble of voices. Some were reading passages aloud, some were asking others the meaning of characters they didn't know, and some wanted to swap books. Laughter filled the train. One child had just started on a book called Singing Pictures and was drawing a face while reading out the accompanying jingle in a loud singsong:

The face had to be encircled on the word "wow, and the three semicircles drawn as you sang "Quick as a wink." If you made all the right strokes, the result was the face of a plump woman with an old-fashioned Japanese hairdo.

At Tomoe, where the children were allowed to work on their subjects in any order they pleased, it would have been awkward if the children let themselves be disturbed by what others were doing. They were trained to concentrate no matter what was going on around them. So nobody paid any attention to the child singing aloud while drawing the hausfrau. One or two had joined in, but all the others were absorbed in their books.

Totto-chan's book seemed to be a folk tale. It was about a rich man's daughter who couldn't get a husband because she was always breaking wind. Finally her parents managed to find a husband for her, but She was so excited on her wedding night that she let out a much bigger one than ever before, and the wind blew her bridegroom out of bed, spun him around the bedroom seven and a half rimes, and knocked him unconscious. The picture that had looked so entertaining showed him flying through the room. Afterward, that book was always in great demand.

All the students of the school, packed into the train like sardines, devouring the books so eagerly in the morning sunlight that was pouring through the windows, must have presented a sight that gladdened the heart of the headmaster.

The children spent the whole of that day in the library car.

After that, when they couldn't be outdoors because of rain, and at many other times, the library became a favorite gathering place for them.

"I think I'd better have a bathroom built neat the library," said the headmaster one day.

That was because the children would become so absorbed in their books that they were always holding out until the very last minute before making a dash for the toilet beyond the Assembly Hall, holding themselves in strange contortions.