Read Driving Team for Free Online Page B

library table.
    “How are we ever going to plow through all these pages?” Lisa wondered aloud, eyeing the stacks of books. “That’s thousands of years of horse driving history, and we’ve only got two weeks to get it all together!”
    Carole sighed. “I know. And there are so manythings we need to include, too. Like how they drove teams in the military, in transportation, and in farmwork.”
    “And don’t forget the fun stuff,” added Lisa. “Like racing and horse shows.”
    “I guess we’d better start reading,” Carole said. “All this information isn’t going to just jump inside our brains. Why don’t I go sharpen our pencils while you get out our index cards?”
    “Okay,” said Lisa. “I’ll be right here when you get back.”
    Carole got up and walked to the other side of the library. There was a pencil sharpener next to the children’s section. She had just shoved the first pencil into the sharpener when she glanced over at a child-sized desk. A familiar little blond girl sat there, hunched over a copy of Misty. The book was opened to the exact place where she and Lisa had stopped reading the day before, and the little girl was tracing the illustrations with her finger.
    “Cynthia!” Carole whispered. “You’re here again!”
    Cynthia looked up and smiled. “Hi, Carole,” she greeted her shyly.
    “How come you’re here so early? Most people don’t come to the library on Sunday mornings unless they have important research to do.”
    Cynthia shrugged her tiny shoulders. “Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “I guess I just like it here a lot.”
    Carole began to sharpen her pencil. “What time did you get here?”
    “Oh, right when they opened,” answered Cynthia.
    “And did your mother bring you?” Carole smiled.
    “Yes.” Cynthia looked down and rubbed a page of the book.
    “Is she here?” Carole looked around to see if there were any motherly-looking women nearby.
    Cynthia gave a slightly embarrassed grin and said nothing.
    Suddenly Carole caught on. “She dropped you off here again, didn’t she, Cynthia?”
    “Well, kind of,” Cynthia admitted.
    “Just so she could go shopping?”
    Cynthia lowered her eyes and did not reply.
    “That’s incredible!” Carole cried, jamming the second pencil into the sharpener and turning the crank furiously. “The idea of someone leaving a little kid here two days in a row just so she could go to the mall!” She turned to Cynthia. “You stay right here. I’ll be back in a minute!”
    “You’re not going to tell Mrs. Davidson, are you?” Cynthia cried, a look of panic on her face.
    “No,” Carole said. “I promise I won’t!”
    She hurried back to where Lisa had just opened a big black book called
Horse Transport in Ancient Rome
.
    “You’ll never guess who I just ran into.” Carole pulled out the chair next to Lisa’s and sat down hard.
    “I don’t know.” Lisa barely looked up from the pages. “Somebody from school?”
    “No. Cynthia!”
    “Cynthia?” Lisa looked up and blinked in amazement. “She’s here again?”
    Carole nodded. “Her mother has dropped her off here two days in a row! Can you imagine a parent acting like that?”
    Lisa shook her head. “My mother gets pretty crazy about shopping, but she would never have dropped me off in a library all by myself. Not without a couple of armed guards, anyway.” Carole nodded. She knew that Lisa’s mother could sometimes be a little overprotective.
    “This makes me so mad!” Carole fumed. “It’s so sad to see Cynthia sitting there, just looking at the pictures of Misty and not being able to read a single page!”
    “It is sad,” agreed Lisa. “But what can we do?”
    “I don’t know. All I know is that Cynthia needs help. She needs to feel like somebody likes her, that she’s not just a pest to be dropped off somewhere on the way to the mall.” Carole chewed her thumbnail for a moment, then looked at Lisa, her brown eyes sparkling.
    “I just had