Usually called the doctor. Or the caretaker.

My friend Mido gave me the world's most awesome birthday present this year: a photocopy of a novel that I'd read one chapter of as a wee tyke in an anthology of horse stories but never been able to find the novel itself. When she was telling me about her thesis last spring I suggested that she look into the novel, if she could find it, because it sounded like it would provide breadth for her work, or at least be a nice entry in her Wilamowitz pile. I did warn her that the novel itself might not be obtainable. Turned out she submitted an ILL request (something I did about a million times as a ten-year-old) and found a copy residing in the library of a tiny private women's college on the East Coast, and they packed it up and sent it to her.

She made a photocopy of the whole thing, WITH PLATES, and presented it to me in a plastic sleeve at my birthday party. I put it on my shelf when I got home from the party in order to save it for "the right time" to read it. (I enjoy the anticipation, and the longer I can stretch it out, the more awesome it is.)

Tonight I read it.

It was worth the wait. An utterly charming book, no less enjoyable for taking twenty-five years to reach me.

The fact that she found it at all made me really happy, though. It is incredibly annoying to spend a quarter-century with the thought nagging at you that in fact, you might have dreamed the whole thing, and the book you spent years as a kid looking for might have been imaginary the whole time.

The book is Silver Snaffles by Primrose Cumming, and it's adorable. Published 1936 or 1937 by Blackie, with illustrations. Supposedly Fidra put out an edition in 2007--and there it is, I just found it. Amazing.

But so, yeah. Silver Snaffles, finally. :)