Lenora didn’t like the sound of that. Could she enlist any patrons for help? She felt she should not look away from the men, not for an instant, but glancing out of the corner of her eye, she could see the patrons strangely hunched and shivering in their chairs, oddly oblivious to the strange conversation going on amid the otherwise perfect silence. No help there.

The second man rolled his eyes. “No one is going to eat anyone. Lenora is an intelligent child. Once she understands how dangerous her actions have been, she’s certain to cooperate.”

“Dangerous?” asked Lenora in surprise. “All I’ve done is help patrons at the library! What’s so dangerous about that?”

“We’ve seen the perfect example just now,” the man replied. “In fact, we tried to stop you but couldn’t get here in time. It’s about the girl you gave that book to. It was a terrible, terrible thing to do, Lenora.”

“It’s only a scientific history of the universe,” Lenora said. “What’s terrible about that?”

The man sighed. “She is only a little girl, you see. A happy, contented little girl. But there are facts in that book that will … disturb her. Disrupt her. Cause her to feel fear, uncertainty, and doubt.”

“Are the facts true?” Lenora asked.

The second man was about to answer when the first interrupted harshly. “Who knows? Scientists are wrong all the time! Scientists once thought the Earth was flat, until Christopher Columbus proved them wrong.”

“That’s not true at all,” said Lenora. She had read a book about this very topic while sitting under a tree one day. The lengthy report she’d written about it had pleased her teacher. “Philosophers and scientists have known since ancient times that the Earth is round. A Greek scholar named Eratosthenes even calculated the distance around it more than two thousand years ago. And if Columbus hadn’t ignored those measurements, he would have known he hadn’t landed in Asia.”

The second man laughed. “I told you,” he said to the first. “Lenora is far too smart, and perceptive, and insightful”—here Lenora wondered whether the man thought showering her with praise would do anything but make her more suspicious—“for such foolishness. You can see why she makes such a dangerous librarian.”

“I still don’t understand the dangerous part,” Lenora said. “The girl had questions. I helped her find answers. Maybe the answers will disturb her, but isn’t it better for her to know the truth?”